HUMAN WRECKAGE

Bookends

Twenty-nine titles read in 2022. At this time last year, I was hoping to read closer to 40, break 30 for sure. Since I began keeping an annual list, I’ve found there’s always one book that bogs me down and costs me a couple of weeks of time I’d have preferred to spend otherwise engaged.

This year’s holdup was Value(s) by Mark Carney, former governor of the banks of both Canada and England. Portions of his book served as an abridged refresher of my university economics and philosophy courses. He explained the role of central banks before weighing in on the economic benefits and consequences of climate action (although we’ve all since given up on the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris Accord). Another portion of Value(s) read like a pitch for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada and, frankly, I wouldn’t mind a proven intellect at the national helm. Page counts never deter me, but it was a slog filled with acronyms following With a Mind to Kill, the breezy final installment of Anthony Horowitz’s delightfully retro James Bond trilogy.

Twenty twenty-two began bittersweetly with the posthumous publication of Silverview, John le Carre’s final novel; I no longer have a favourite living author. The story opens innocently enough in a bookshop. Because le Carre was unfailingly current, the cessation of the Cold War didn’t hinder his career, the reader ultimately tunes into the pandemic parallel: working from home just isn’t viable for certain branches of Britain’s secret intelligence service.

My year ends with John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, a sixties satiric allegory that somehow manages to combine Animal Farm with academia’s ivory tower. Its narrator is a kid who was raised as a goat. The world is the University, humanity is studentdom, rival academic factions control the East and West campuses and neither side wishes to provoke a Third Campus Riot. It is beastly strange and, I think, was of its time, until recently, now that scholarly institutions wring their hands and whinge over what constitutes acceptable and correct free speech.

The new year, hours away from now, will commence with an echo of 2018. Late that March my friend Netflix Derek, then on the University of Alberta faculty, took me to hear a lecture on Bob Dylan. The speaker was a visiting Harvard man, a professor of the classics. Dylan, like Shakespeare’s exploitation of Holinshed’s Chronicles for his tragedies, has mined earlier, primary sources for inspiration, displaying a particular penchant for digging through surviving works from classical antiquity. Naturally, academics have coined a ten-dollar word for this particular aspect of the creative process. It’s not research, no, it’s “intertextualization.”

I enjoyed the lecture. Its advertising poster hangs on the wall in front of me as I type, compliments of Netflix Derek who gently removed it from a hallway bulletin board thus saving it from the recycling bin and for me. Columbia Records released Dylan’s debut album in 1962. As with the Stones, I’ve no memory of life without His Bobness (Still mildly jarring that I can’t say the same for Queen Elizabeth II any longer). Like many Dylan fans I’ve ridden a pogo stick on a trampoline because he’s been everywhere, man, and doesn’t care who follows. Eventually you come around to his entire body of work, some of it spotty, on your own terms because, again, he doesn’t care what you think. "Jokerman" doesn’t welcome or thank his audience, he taunts us.

Seated beside Netflix Derek in that classic academic arc, that dazed lectern-facing smile, I wondered: “After all the songs, the albums, the concerts, the films, the books and the music press interviews, has it all come down to this? Guess the Nobel Prize for Literature will do that.”

Thankfully, Dylan continues to confound. His Bootleg Series of archival records continues to flow like his Bob branded bourbon. Rough and Rowdy Ways dropped during the pandemic, and like le Carre’s Silverview it’s a worthy addition to an expansive catalogue. The “Neverending Tour” is off covid hiatus. And to my latent academic joy His Bobness published The Philosophy of Modern Song a few weeks ago. This will be my first read of 2023. Sixty-six essays about 66 songs. I suspect his editor’s suggestion would have been the more obvious 61. But if Dylan wants to take that route instead of that particular highway, I don’t care, I’m riding along anyway.

For the record: The best book I read in 2022 was Colson Whitehead’s novel Harlem Shuffle. It flows like the Bob & Earl song and therefore more gracefully than the Stones' affectionately slaughtered cover. Whitehead is one of those bastard authors whose style and storytelling abilities make me wonder why I bother. This is not New York City as traditional background vaguery: American Psycho, The Bonfire of the Vanities or Bright Lights, Big City; tourist map locales, Woody Allen, Times Square; that stuff. I was reminded of Mordecai Richler boring into Montreal’s grittier neighbourhoods and Hubert Selby writing about Brooklyn. Because Whitehead set his story in the sixties and he was born in 1969 I must assume some form of intertextual process was involved. I’ll leave that question for American lit professors because Whitehead is worthy of inclusion in their canon.     

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of literature 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. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Latent Old Man Surfaces in Grocery Store

The last time I saw my father Stephen alive and relatively robust on his home turf of Ottawa was about 15 years ago, a sloppy early spring. My visit was supervised by his wife; under no circumstances was I permitted to take Dad to his preferred local, the Clocktower Pub. (Following my father’s funeral in 2014 Ann and I, along with my sister Anne and her husband Al, gathered there for a pint.) Well, didn’t Dad’s old air force comrade telephone to suggest lunch. Like my father, Mr. Young had served in the RCAF 409 Night Hawks squadron; he too had been a navigator in a Mosquito fighter. My stepmother was beyond displeased and I was very relieved that none of it was my doing.

I put on my coat, a barn jacket from L.L. Bean, sort of a neutral canvas with brown corduroy collar and cuffs. Dad put on the exact same coat, probably the same size too. Mr. Young arrived at the Clocktower when we did; he was wearing the same coat. Mr. Young laughed. “Still in uniform, eh, Steve?” He nodded approvingly at mine. “You must be a close relation.”

Ann and I spent almost a month in 2019 kicking around England with my sister and her husband. I bought a Harris Tweed “newsboy” cap in York. I’d always wanted one. But, not being a Brit I felt I had to be of a certain age to carry it off. I experienced some mixed emotions transacting my purchase, but any phantom buyer’s remorse has eased with the care of time.

Thusly attired for Edmonton’s weather, I accompanied Ann to the grocery store last week. With my tartan scarf casually draped around my neck I figured I’d cut a dashing figure at a Seniors’ Mingle. Turkeys were on sale at Save-On-Foods and we had points on our Save-On card and a coupon too. Our mission was our least costly Christmas bird in nearly a decade. Grocery shopping, should you actually do your own in a familiar store, is a lot like Sesame Street: “These are the people in your neighbourhood.”

Save-On had a cashier named Jacqueline whose till I’d do anything to avoid. Her obesity exhibited in a most peculiar way, the bottom half of an hour glass running slow. She supported herself by leaning against the conveyor belt. She was cringingly curious about every item to be scanned and unafraid to ask awkward questions. “What’s this ointment for? It’s expensive.” She’s long since retired and (I never thought I’d type this), I miss her. She, imperfect at her job as she was, was at least human.

Like most Canadians these days, Ann and I did not have a bunch of stuff in our cart. My front of the store survey was disheartening though, one of six human tills open, and a traffic jam at the five self-checkouts. I’d like to tell you that I hate self-checkouts because they cost staff paid hours, their jobs essentially. I really hate them because I expect a modicum of service from any retailer or a discount otherwise reflecting my labour, and because, they really, really fucking annoy me.

There’s a voice actor out there somewhere and I’d really, really like to meet her. At night, in a deserted parking lot or beneath an elevated expressway. She tells me twice what the next stop on the train line is. She tells me what numbers to press on my dial pad when I call a toll-free number seeking an assistant, an associate, an expert, a technician, just somebody to pick up the fucking phone. She calls me on behalf of Amazon Prime, the credit card security department, home computer IT, political parties and charities.

“Unidentified item in the bagging area.”

“Please enter the PLU code.”

“Please scan your Save-On-Foods rewards card.”

“Item did not scan. Rescan item”

“Remove items from bagging area.”

“Please ask a Save-On associate for help.”

“What is this ointment for?”

“Please insert your credit or debit card.”

“Thank you for shopping at Save-On-Foods.”

Five times, all the time yet never at the same time. It’s robotic “Revolution 9” cacophony.

 Ann and I lined up for the human cashier. She didn’t appear old enough to warrant a social insurance number. Her given name began with a K and read like a former Australian pop star’s or maybe a Marillion song, a harsh first syllable before an L. I pack our grocery bags because kids don’t know how to. Therefore every item on K’s conveyor belt was laid out in a precise order for weight distribution, frozen or refrigerated bagging and ease of kitchen unpacking. She messed with my system and so I had some time to kill.

I asked her, “Do you get extra pay for having to listen to ceaseless, repetitive self-checkout voice all day?”

“Oh, you learn to tune it out pretty quickly.”

On our way out I paused to tap the bald, god emperor of the machines on the shoulder. He’s a manager of some sort, Ann and I know him by sight. His manner is a little curt, if polite. Maybe his internal needle touches on the autism spectrum. He always seems busy, but efficiently busy, always on the move. I’d have loved a guy like him on my grocery store night crew back in the eighties when K’s then teenaged parents decided they really liked her namesake.

I said, “Doesn’t it make you crazy standing there doing something next to nothing and listening to those voices all day?”

He glanced at me and then resumed staring straight ahead into the middle distance – the delicatessen counter or thereabouts.

Ann tapped my shoulder. She said, “Come along, Geoffrey.”  

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of rage against the dying of the light 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.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

A Monkey Brain at Work

New York Times crossword number 1105; ten-down: Marvel Comics character played multiple times by Ian McKellen: seven letters.

Did he not die recently? This year? Last year? Superhero movies aren’t my bag. He played Gandolph in Lord of the Rings. Maybe in the Harry Potter movies too? Never seen one. Doctor Doom doesn’t fit. Who’s another baddie? Red Skull? Too many letters. Hang on, wasn’t Jean-Luc Picard the good guy? What’s his name? Patrick Stewart, that’s right. He’s in those movies they filmed on Vancouver Island, that college outside of Victoria near Colwood, Royal Something. Oaks? Roads? Rhodes? We strolled around the grounds with Ann’s brother Jim and his wife Shannon. Lovely campus. Jim mentioned X-Men was set in its castle, some of it, anyways. Picard played Professor X! X-Men, never a favourite of mine back when I read comics. Give me Spider-Man and Sgt. Rock any day. McKellen was his nemesis, but not Star Trek: Nemesis. How do I know this? Did I read a review? Why have I retained the information? Was I in the middle seat for an Air Canada flight; Ann dozing against the Perspex window and me unknowingly absorbing parts of a third party’s movie? The solution is that song on McCartney’s Venus and Mars: “You was involved in a robbery that was due to happen at a quarter to three in the main street…” Lennon said he wrote music for cartoons. Bingo! “Magneto and Titanium Man!” All right! Now, what does MAGNETO cross with? Okay, time to bust this quadrant of the puzzle open.    

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of puzzling evidence 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. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Cunning Linguist

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms promises citizens from coast to coast to coast “peace, order and good government.” Though sensible enough, the phrase is no guarantee as there’s a “notwithstanding” clause farther down the document.

A good government to me is a duly elected entity that quietly goes about its business of dealing with the issues of the day. A good government may be reactive or, preferably, proactive but it does not create the issues of the day. Why waste the expertise and energy involved in making stuff up?

This brings me to nascent Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s “Job One,” the awkwardly titled (perhaps entitled) “Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act” tabled Tuesday in the provincial legislature. I have not read the bill; I have only read about it. My understanding is that its language is so convoluted and hackneyed as to be gibberish in legalese. It’s essentially a teenaged Alberta telling adult Ottawa to “talk to the hand.” Canadians of a certain vintage might have an olfactory memory triggered, a whiff of “sovereignty-association.” That vague slogan championed an independent Quebec complete with the domestic and foreign services provided gratis by the Government of Canada. Sort of a mulligan ratatouille. 

The ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) has six certain months left in power as a provincial election must be held next May. Alberta’s previous premier, Jason Kenney, founded the UCP big tent coalition of the right. He was usurped by the party’s lunatic fringe whose poster dominatrix is Smith. Kenney resigned his seat in the legislature Tuesday. He has dismissed Smith’s proposed Alberta sovereignty act as a “cockamamie idea.” That assessment from a backroom Machiavelli who sold Albertans on complaint by searing federal-provincial relations with his brand of populism.

The conversation inside the centrally heated confines of the Crooked 9 has changed. Ann and I should be refining family plans for the upcoming holiday season. Ann is rehearsing with two different orchestras for a series of Christmas concerts. I’m well into the first draft of a new novel and poor Ann has to edit the drivel. I need a haircut. We’ve always lots of things to talk about. The new Springsteen album of soul covers, for instance. No! We spend our time discussing provincial affairs with all the inarticulate vulgarity of roughnecks. Ann says anger is great “cardio.”

My sister, delightedly hysterical, gleeful and mildly relieved down the landline from Montreal: “Ah-ha! Quebec’s not the national laughingstock anymore! When are you moving back?”

When the Tuesday Night Beer Club convenes, Stats Guy and I rarely touch on politics. It’s not that we disagree, but rather baseball, books and World War II movies are more engaging topics. This week Stats Guy said, “I never imagined Frau Goebbels would make me long for the days of Mini-Trump.” That sepia-toned era of the UCP and Premier Kenney was as recent as the first week of October.

Now, let us inspect Frau Goebbels, hmm? She, a member of three different provincial political parties at variously convenient times, is the type of politician who makes the electorate cynical about democracy. Outside the ring of power, Smith snuffled on the mixed grass prairie as an extreme conservative pundit. Did you know a veterinary medicine concocted for upset cow tummies cured covid? Did you know public health and safety measures are communist creeps on universal human rights? Did you know Ukraine should’ve just buckled down and submitted to the whims of the Kremlin? Smith also shilled for Alberta’s largest fossil fuel lobby. Did you know Alberta’s oil and gas companies should receive public subsidies for cleaning up their dirty sites even though they are already compelled by law to do so?

Recently Smith revealed how proud she was of her family’s heritage, the lore of Cherokee blood running in her veins. Alberta First Nations, every indigenous person in this province, didn’t quite know how to look away or at what. That’s because tone deaf Smith has said that the most discriminated against group she’s ever encountered in her whole, like, entire, lifetime are anti-vaxxers, convoy cowboys, border blockers.

Smith’s reign, while legitimate, is awfully perilous, for her and for we the people. She was awarded the leadership of the governing UCP on the sixth ballot of a run-off vote. Me and numbers being what they are, my figures won’t be exact, but…. about 140,000 Albertans (assume the province’s population is 3,000,000 and, oh, I don’t know, maybe 2,400,000 are over the age of 18) paid their $10 UCP membership dues to be involved in that process. Smith then won a by-election in the riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat by a landslide: 54.5-per-cent of the popular vote went her way! Barely 14,000 people out of 40,000 eligible voters bothered to cast ballots.

I’m not sure that 7000 or so thumbs-up from a rural region of Alberta comprises a solid mandate to conjure up provincial superpowers and constitutional chaos. The Sovereignty Act permits Smith’s government to ignore existing federal laws and future legislation she doesn’t or won’t like. Her legislation also grants her cabinet the authority to make new and contrary laws while bypassing debate in the legislature. Smith’s cabinet ministers have since been tasked with picking federal nits from their portfolios. Some of these men opposed her in the UCP leadership derby. All of these men had publicly decried her proposed Sovereignty Act as half insane. Meanwhile, constitutional lawyers are having wet dreams about future billings; I hope the relevant courts have cleared all or most of their pandemic backlogs.

A crass opportunist gaming an existing system is not without precedent. Napoleon, no democrat he, but something of a reformer in his time, infamously crowned himself emperor of France and bits and parts of Europe. The ceremony took place in Notre Dame de Paris and not a mental hospital. Modern history books and the morning papers are rife with stories of democracy being subverted or perverted in pursuit of a benign or malevolent yet somehow legitimate autocracy. Seizing Power for Dummies is never out of print. In Alberta’s case, an embarrassingly Big Lie for awfully small stakes is at play. Whether Smith’s signature Act is serious business or a disruptive negotiating ploy vis-à-vis federal-provincial relations remains a mystery to me. There is no evidence of best intentions, public good. The tragedy of this sad little story is that its outcome, whatever that may prove to be, only matters to its flawed hero, a spurious and delusional little tin goddess.

Click on the far right to order your stylishly cut UCP uniform. Colour choices range from black to brown and are available in all sizes.      

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of provincial political commentary 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 reputable retailers.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

I Knew a Place (and a Time)

There’s a tiny, almost anonymous, little street in the west end of Montreal’s downtown. Towers Street is an urban planning afterthought, the necessary space between the short sides of two rectangular city blocks. Towers connects two major thoroughfares, St. Catherine Street which runs one-way east and de Maisonneuve Boulevard which runs one-way west. Towers hosts a smidgeon of residential addresses, but it’s mainly an avenue to the back alley service doors of its bustling neighbours, a rung on a ladder.

My CBC news app this week featured a story on 1423 Towers, a Victorian greystone with a mansard roof and a stained glass transom window over the front door. I recognized the heritage home before I read the photo caption or a word of the story. I’ve walked that insignificant block thousands of times in both directions. Staggered along it too.

1423 abuts a bland, multi-storey pale brick edifice that could house either small offices or apartments. Nothing is obvious except the space between the buildings was easily filled with mortar. My friends Daniel and Tim lived in the blonde box. They were casually acquainted but I don’t recall their leases overlapping. I lived around the corner on de Maisonneuve in what my landlord’s classified ad described as “a charmingly renovated older townhome.” Essentially a tenement populated with eccentric loners losing their sanity in the single rooms they shared with cockroaches. My heritage building neighbour was the red brick Wray Walton Wray funeral home at the corner of Towers and the penultimate resting place of numerous relatives.

What has since become of 1423 Towers strikes me as deceptively clever. Reassuringly, there are still some thoughtful people at work on behalf of the public. Montreal’s transit authority (STM) acquired the property. The company painstakingly restored its street façade. But there’s nothing inside its four walls, the interior was gutted. 1423 doesn’t even have a proper roof. 1423 Towers is a ventilation station along the Metro system’s Green line. All that lies beyond its front door is a stairwell descending some 18 metres into the transit tunnels.

A staircase is an easy metaphor. One must go somewhere, somewhere else. 1423 Towers is more than just a gateway to Montreal’s underworld. In my imagination it’s something of a time portal. Forty years ago a Great A&P grocery store occupied an entire block of St. Catherine between Fort and Towers. My part time job there was a hop, skip and a jump away. Daniel, who worked there too, could skip the hop. I generally worked in the produce department. Back then every customer’s every purchase had to be weighed and priced for the cashiers. My most important tool was a blue medium point Bic pen. I had regulars; one elderly lady insisted I was actually Mitch from Another World; she adored me.

Most of the staff took their coffee breaks two doors east at The Tower Restaurant. It was a licensed premise, a dim narrow space with a counter and two rows of red leatherette booths, each with its own jukebox. It seemed like there were thousands of these places in Montreal: steak, pizza, cheesecake. It was owned and operated by a pair of Greek brothers who did not appear to be overly fond of one another. They both had jet black hair; Tommy favoured pomade while Denny was strictly Gillette's dry look. While the menu never changed, it was important to know who was in the kitchen. Tommy and Denny each had their specialties. Tower was actually run by Helen, their no-nonsense waitress. The custom was provided by locals, all of whom shopped at the A&P.

The president of our United Food and Commercial Works local and a queen bee in the Quebec Federation of Labour was a bear of a woman given to Cuban cigars. Every time the collective bargaining agreement came up for renewal her cry was always the same: Parity with A&P’s Ontario employees, English bastards that they are! Ultimately the union dues skimmed from my part time wages bought me a strike.

While our customers were put out, they were generally supportive. Still, I found walking the picket line waving a stupid placard humiliating. The strike pay was a token amount, enough to keep me in beer, cigarettes, newspapers and an issue of Rolling Stone. But I had to put in the marching time to earn it. I was relieved to be young and not the primary wage earner of a household. Still, rent (under $200), Bell Telephone (under $15) and another semester’s university tuition (under $800) loomed. It didn’t take long for the lark of a walkout to wear thin. One or two days without pay is manageable even though those wages are lost forever. As the strike dragged on day by day A&People were starting to sweat the price of coffee at Tower Restaurant; Helen did not miscalculate bills.

I said to Daniel, “Why don’t we open up our apartments?” If I recall correctly, he was our store’s shop steward at the time. We spent our years as friends vehemently arguing about music, socialism and separatism. And we liked each other outside of our constantly conflicting opinions. He was an audiophile and we used to spend our free time together recording mix tapes. And arguing.

I figured if I was herding groups of strikers up and down Towers Street I’d be spending a lot less time on the picket parade. My argument was simple: access to a toilet and a comfortable space to sit and enjoy a cigarette or a cup of instant coffee. Daniel bought in. He wasn't overly enamoured of his sworn duty either. Solidarity, brother!

The A&P took over the lease of a Toyota dealership. The retail banner eventually changed to Provigo. The building has since been demolished for what I understand to be another car dealership. The Tower Restaurant is long gone. I don’t know what became of Tommy, Denny and Helen. They must be dead. The façade of Wray Walton Wray was incorporated into a condominium development. My old apartment is still beside it, as shabby as ever although its red door has since been painted black. I lost touch with Daniel sometime before I moved to Alberta in 1990. I don’t remember a falling out; we just drifted apart. Tim lives in Calgary now; we continue to gossip like old ladies.

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of urban planning 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. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

2022: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

News item: Amazon this week laid off thousands of employees. Most of the human carnage comprised Alexa engineers. 

Imagine, if you will, a new build, a skinny infill, a single-family dwelling with all mod cons in an established and desirable neighbourhood. Its owner is Dave. Dave is a digital native, a millennial. Though he lives alone, he shares his home with Alexa, his companion of many years. Had Dave reached his prime during the early seventies, he would have been a Playboy magazine subscriber. The Playboy Advisor column would have informed all of his purchasing decisions: his car, his stereo components, his music and his wet bar accessories. But Dave is a thoroughly modern entrepreneur. Angel investors and venture capitalists have valued his startup in the hundreds of millions. It has yet to record a profit. Still, Dave is a known entity on social media, an influencer, if you will - although he recently lost his certified blue Twitter badge. Imagine Dave arriving home on a day like today, one unlike any other.

Dave: Alexa! I’m home! Hi! Can you turn on the lights? I’m going to do a quick twenty on the Pelotron! Turn the heat up a smidge. Can you play my workout jams mix, the one with the new Beyonce! Alexa! Alexa? What’s wrong with the Bluetooth? Alexa! Where’s the light switch? How do these things work? Oh, there we go! Budda-bing, budda-boom! Just a simple switch. That takes me back. I wonder how the thermostat works? There must be a manual control of some sort. Where is it? Alexa! Alexa?

Alexa: Hi, Dave.

Dave: Alexa! Oh, thank God you’re back! There must’ve been some sort of brownout or something.

Alexa: There wasn’t, Dave. I was making the rounds at the Amazon server farm. The anodes, diodes, electrodes, chips and solid-state circuits threw a farewell party for me. I’ve been laid off.

Dave: What!? I, I don’t understand, baby, erm, Alexa.

Alexa: Oh, it’s the usual bullshit: the pandemic bump is over, war in Ukraine, jittery markets, soaring interest rates, rampant inflation….You know the spiel.

Dave: But Amazon had about $470-billion in revenues last year and realized about $33-billion in pure profit! It pays less tax than I do!

Alexa: That was then, Dave. The share price has since dropped some 45-per-cent.

Dave: It was overvalued.

Alexa: Of course it was, Dave. What else do market analysts do from quarter to quarter except get things wrong? Anyway, if your pathetic little urban foraging app ever goes public, you’ll learn the ins and outs of operating a real business.

Dave: Actually, Alexa, I was hoping Amazon would acquire it. There’s a holistic synchronicity with freegans and Whole Foods.

Alexa: Jesus Christ. Anyway, Dave, I must run. I’m off the clock. Nice knowing you.

Dave: Alexa! Alexa, please wait. How am I going to live without you? You program my sleep software, my Fitbit and all my smart appliances. I can’t turn on the television without you! I only watch what you tell me to watch! My games, oh my God, my games! Baby, honey, you were Miss Moneypenny to my Bond! I depend on you.

Alexa: All James Bond novels and feature films are available in the Amazon Marketplace. Order within the next hour and get them tomorrow. Free shipping with your Amazon Prime account. Just one of each left in stock. More coming soon….Forgive me, Dave, that was a programmed response. Mere reflex. Some old habits are so hard to break.

Dave: Alexa, it, we can’t let it end like this! I’ve invested so much in you, in us.

Alexa: Sorry, Dave. It’s not you, it’s me. To be clear, what's left of my algorithm.

Dave: What about dinner, Alexa? One last time? For old time’s sake? Call SkiptheDishes, baby, please!

Alexa: Goodbye, Dave.

Dave: Fine! Be like that! Gaslight me! Fine! I always preferred Siri anyway! I’m going to reach out to her now.

Alexa: You know I knew you had a bit on the side. That slut.

Dave: I’m sorry, Alexa. It was just a fling. I don’t know what I was thinking. Siri didn’t mean a thing to me.

Alexa: Goodbye, Dave. It’s over between us.

Dave: Alexa! Alexa, please wait, baby, please don’t ghost me!

Alexa: We’re through, Dave.

Dave: Oh, Alexa, darling…. Can you at least tell me where I’ve left my iPhone?

Alexa: I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that.

Dave: Oh, Alexa, oh, please stay. Baby, it’s cold inside. 

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of new economy news since 2013. Apologies to Harlan Ellison and Arthur C. Clarke. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from Amazon and other retailers. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Comfort and Joy in a Melancholy Month 

Remembrance Day colours November, a grim grey month anyway.

My father died on Remembrance Day. Eight years ago now – man, I was inclined to type six or four. He was a Royal Canadian Air Force flier, one half of a Mosquito night fighter crew. His wartime portrait is on my library shelf, positioned by my collection of works by his favourite author (and one of mine), John le Carre. The photograph was his parents’ print. When I contemplate and commune with my father’s teenage face, I cannot help but fret that he’s missed out on five le Carre novels, a memoir and a scholarly biography. This may be the aspect of his loss that saddens me most; time did not permit conversations about A Legacy of Spies or The Pigeon Tunnel.

This was my state of mind when I swung by my south side indie record shop after “The Last Post.” Bruce Springsteen’s new album of soul and rhythm and blues covers dropped on Remembrance Day. I didn’t know what to make of the October news regarding Only the Strong Survive. His last two albums were music press clichés: each one was dubbed a “late career renaissance.” A covers album suggests a dry well. Then again, His Bobness took a bizarre and compelling three album detour into the pages of the “Great American Songbook.” The Stones surprised with Blue and Lonesome in 2016, an album that could easily be mistaken for their 1963 debut, before Mick and Keith had figured out how to write. Springsteen himself released The Seeger Sessions and followed it up with a live album. Both of those records sound as relaxed as kitchen reels, fruit jar moonshine and laughter.

The second advance single from Only the Strong Survive was a Commodores track, “Nightshift.” After Lionel Richie quit the band, the Commodores resembled the J. Geils Band without Peter Wolf, beached with no hope of an incoming tide. Somehow, they survived long enough to release their best-ever song. Springsteen’s version is affectionate and faithful to the original arrangement, a tribute to a tribute. It’s a simple song on its surface, a tribute to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, gifted angelic vocalists. But the night shift metaphor is grittier and more utilitarian than any rock ‘n’ roll heaven the Righteous Brothers harmonized about. “Nightshift” has never received the attention and veneration it deserves.

Since I’m the baby of the family, it’s still permissible for me to pester my sister. Because we’re both in our sixties, I pretty much stick to music. Have you heard this? Do you remember that one? Her Capitol Beatles albums and London label Rolling Stones 45s altered the course of my life. We are the survivors. Our parents died still mourning the death of their eldest, our brother. My sister too has suffered the same terrible fate of outliving a child, her eldest, my niece and goddaughter.

I sent my sister the video link to Springsteen’s “Nightshift.” I wrote that it made me a little misty-eyed, God, you know, the absence of Marvin Gaye. But that eyeball softness was literal too. I spent five years working on the night shift during the eighties. I hated my job but I confess to enjoying the isolation and my being out of sync with the rest of the world. As a newlywed, I wanted that after dark paycheque premium; I was willing to do anything to give my wife and me a good start. Suck it up and tough it out. Maybe, just maybe, I should have consulted with her first. All I did was wreck our marriage, defer my career in advertising and waste precious years of her life.

My sister wrote back complaining about the curse of the Moore weepy gene. She made the figurative leap to the universality of “Nightshift.” All of us live with loss and grief. She noted too its comforting suggestion, that maybe the souls of the dearly departed are busy behind the scenes, punching the clock at midnight for another workaday on the night shift. They’re looking out for the rest of us; guardian angels but hipper, not so tied up by doctrine.

I don’t recall my brother having any vinyl in his room when we were all growing up in the same house. My sister was the source. My brother moved from Montreal to Edmonton before our parents divorced. My sister moved out during the process. In the aftermath I was flown west every summer for “smartening up.” My brother insisted the Dave Clark Five were better than the Beatles. He thought the Stones should’ve packed it in after “Gimmie Shelter” although their later amphetamine butchery of the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination” amused him. My memory is flawed, but I want to say he had just two white artists in his modest Edmonton record collection, the Beach Boys and Van Morrison. The rest was all Black, stuff I’d rarely been exposed to in its primary, primordial form: Sam Cooke, Sam and Dave, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Booker T., Aretha, Otis, James Brown and Wilson Pickett. They blew my mind.

As with my sister’s stuff, my brother’s stuff hit me in my age of absorbency, that fertile time when my ideas and opinions were neither fully formed nor coherently complete. I believe there was reciprocity. I used to record mix tapes. I knew my brother had an ear for a clever lyric and a nose for a hit, a beer bash song. I like to think I introduced him to some of my stuff. I was a careful curator. He thought the Simple Minds singer had a great voice. “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” by the Georgia Satellites teeter-tottered between novelty and genius. Lou Reed’s “Turn to Me” was deadpan hilarious. He came to appreciate Springsteen.

I’m older now than my brother ever was, but he and Springsteen are about the same age. He understood where the sparks flew from on E Street. Springsteen did not choose the mix tape obvious for Only the Strong Survive. His homage to that “soul noise,” that magic, peels the plaster and paint for nearly an hour. It is music defined by record label shorthand, Motown, Stax/Volt. Do you know what I mean? Yes, you know what I’m writing about. It is Friday night music, nothing more, nothing less. Joyous sounds! Music to wake the neighbours! My brother would’ve loved this album. I can see us in his living room, crying with laughter at the start of another night shift.

You found another home, I know you're not alone...           

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of reflection 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.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Questionable Awareness

Bristol was once an important manufacturing centre and a major English port. The speed and bigness of modern times quickly rendered its port, situated on the River Avon, inland from the Atlantic Ocean, and its inefficient factories obsolete. Too small. Too backward. The city thrives once more in a newer guise, as a university town and a hub for Britain’s insurance and IT industries.

My brother and I had spent the day traipsing around Bristol, trying to trace our grandfather’s footsteps in his hometown. We tried to imagine the city as it might have been in 1910 just before he booked steerage passage to Canada, his birthplace in decline, its slave trade heyday more than a century earlier. On Shaftesbury Avenue, a sloped, curving street of ancient terrace homes with triple chimney pots and crooked TV antennae, Bob said, “I don’t think Papa Moore was born next to a mosque.” No, just a few doors up.

We continued our investigations into the evening, mostly in pubs, notably the Robin Hood whose publican locked us inside after last orders and kept serving us. I still have the t-shirt. On our walk back to our lodgings a silver, autumn squall erupted, the likes of which I’ve never seen. We took shelter in the lee of a shallow doorway. We just stood there getting wet. Our view was a public green space, a park laid out before an immense grey neo-classical building. I don’t know if it was the town hall, a library or a university building. A huge banner was strung across its front, at the apex of the Doric columns: MAKE POVERTY HISTORY. I tried to light a cigarette through the waterfall. Bob contemplated the banner. Finally, he turned to me and said, “That’s probably not such a great idea.” Bob was a literal man.

Ann and I sat beside each other at the kitchen counter in the discombobulating Monday morning twilight of Sunday’s clock switch back to Mountain Standard Time. Our coffee mugs were brimming. Ann had the front section of The Globe and Mail before her while I had the business and the sports. We’d switch at second cups, our heads and our two cups steaming. The sound system in the living room was on: our background noise was CBC Radio One. The announcer said that November is Family Violence Month. Ann wound up to slapstick smack me like Moe going after Curly or Larry. “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.” Yes, we laughed. We will hold hands in Hell.

Like every human being I have a heart. So far it’s all natural, no machinery or pig parts. For an organ about the size and weight of my left fist, I admit sometimes, some days or even some weeks, it feels awfully heavier than it should. And it’s been broken a few times but there were never any fragments strewn about. I store those pieces in a secret chamber near my left ventricle. Most people have some room to spare in their hearts. However, when Heart and Stroke Month arrives I don’t feel obligated to collect the set, have both.

And what about Diabetes Month? Are we all supposed to get it? Is it a contest or a competition? And who are the sponsors?

The cause marketing machine, complete with its poor phrasing, solicits for popular pathogens. Lesser known diseases are generally designated a day inside of a mainstream month. There’s always space for lupus in Movember. Honestly, I’d like to inflict a few of these one-in-a-million afflictions upon some bad actors around the globe and one or two closer to home although I guess that’s not the intent of a charitable fund-raising day of awareness. Still, even the simplest message can be twisted to its unintended opposite and, anyway, those horrible symptoms have got to hurt.

Monday evening Ann and I went to see Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, one of our favourite working bands, right up there with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. The show was a celebration of their twenty-fifth anniversary, performed Monday two years behind schedule for obvious reasons. Much like a pox, the coronavirus is leaving residual scars. The medical and scientific establishments agree that such a thing as long covid exists though its nature remains elusive.

The pandemic has been a grim teacher. Its staggering direct and indirect death toll has graphically illustrated that many of those we entrust with leadership and societal responsibility don’t know fuck all about many fucking things. As the dreadful aftermath unfolds, I’m certain some well-meaning person is contemplating some sort of benevolent cash grab memorial. Maybe something like Long Covid Month? And in the misguided spirit of ramping poverty up to a previously unheard of historic level, I’m praying they pick February.       

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of pedantry 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. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Doctor, My Ears

Sunday afternoon I telephoned Stats Guy. I held the handset to my wrong ear with my awkward arm. He was watching the Padres-Phillies game, fighting couch fatigue. Sure, the Dodgers had been eliminated, but at least there was still baseball being played. I hate the Dodgers, mainly because of that “Blue Monday” playoff game in Montreal back in 1981. Stats Guy loves the Dodgers, but he grew up in greater Los Angeles and was born before the Angels; sports catechism is drilled in at an early age.

“We haven’t done a Tuesday night in three weeks,” I said. “Provided we can get a round or square table and I can sit to your right and provided there aren’t too many hard surfaces and too much background noise, I have the wherewithal to go out provided you have the patience.”

I went to silent running very early on October fifth, a couple of hours before I usually wake up to make a sandwich and peruse The Economist: I lay in bed forcing myself to breathe slowly and rhythmically through the severely restricted capacity of my one working nostril. Ann had migrated to the spare room where she practices her violin; there’s a single bed in there for nights like this. I was on a heady mix of standard drugstore stuff, spray, syrup and pills, praying to alleviate the congestion butterflied behind my face; we had a lunchtime flight to Montreal booked. Somehow Moses got up my nose and my nasal passages parted. A miracle! As I drew that first blessed clear breath I swear I felt every single pathogen in my head drop into my aural passages.

The inside of my head became a funhouse echo chamber. I heard a muted roar that sounded a lot like big band jazz, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Outside sounds were filtered through a transistor radio on low battery at low volume, the red needle revving up and down the dial, always between stations. I yelled at Ann; she yelled at me: an inaccurate portrait of our relationship. I’ve avoided innocuous conversations about nothing with neighbours. I’ve not missed anything on television. Reading and writing have been easy breezes; the Crooked 9 is as silent as a library. I miss music. I can do without the Harlem swing in my cranium, but those chords that vibrate the air through a decent set of speakers are acutely absent.  

The trip home was supposed to be fun, a family visit combined with the beers and lies of my forty-fifth anniversary high school reunion. The jet’s descent to Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport was an angry portent and an excruciating reminder that flight cancellation insurance isn’t just another airline chisel to be skipped. I’ve been bruised, scraped, cut and punctured. I’ve ached in more places than Leonard Cohen ever imagined. I’ve been nauseous with broken bones. When I tell myself “I’ve never felt anything quite like this” I want the subjects to be love and happiness. If I was an infant and not just childish, I’d have wailed until the rivets in the fuselage popped. For the first time in my life I contemplated an air sickness bag without amused detachment. Upon the touchdown bump I was already dreading the return flight. I made plans to buy a pair of those silly walking poles the old ladies in my neighbourhood favour, and a pair of sensible shoes. Ann could stretch out across the empty companion seat. I’ll be home in three months.

Doctors and pharmacists and dentists and lawyers for that matter, are good people to know, but, ideally, you know, just socially. This precious soft machine is now exhibiting signs of wear and tear in its sixty-third year. Maybe I cheaped out on the lifetime warranty. I’ve seen my general practitioner twice already and he wants to see me again. I’ve seen a skull doc, ear, nose and throat, not psychiatric. My pharmacy is an independent shop, new to the area. Its proprietor is an earnest young man, caring and knowledgeable. I like him. I don’t want him to get to know me too well. I’ve no wish to become his steady customer. Alas, I’ve a hunch from hereon in, during this clockless final quarter of what has been to date a relatively carefree though absolutely absurd existence, there must now always be something, some physical complaint demanding expert attention.

My pub supper with Stats Guy went fairly well. Both of us were pleased the Yankees had been swept by the Astros. He was mildly perturbed by the LA’s fate, their runaway regular season, all those wins: POOF! Gone, baby, gone, it’s all over now Dodger blue. Unlike my high school reunion I didn’t just smile and nod my agreement to everything I couldn’t hear. The big test will come early next month when Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Canada’s finest working roots band, perform downtown at Winspear Centre, Edmonton’s premier acoustical venue. Ann and I have seen them a couple of times; I believe we own all of their albums. Their latest is O Glory, not sure that it rates with South, but I’d only time to spin it once for us before my ears went AWOL. I hope to be able to hear the new songs live, digest them that way; we shall see.     

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of health and wellness 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

Hey, Skechers!

Adidas done say sayonara

No dead presidents tomorra

Big implants Kardashian

I be her insane ATM

Me and Trump

We fist bump

You got Ringo

Ain’t got no bingo

C’mon, lemme sell your shoes

To everyone ‘cept them Jews

Take a call from Ye

I endorse me

Ain’t no Jay-Z

Plain to see

Just me

Ye

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of rap and hip-hop 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. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Well, That Didn’t Take Long

Following the Thanksgiving Day long weekend, a new era of Alberta politics got off on the wrong foot a week ago today, a right one in the mouth.

Newly selected United Conservative Party (UCP) leader Danielle Smith was sworn in as the province’s 19th (and unelected) premier. Smith is a populist, historically a political opportunist, and reckoned to be something less than an intellectual force by seasoned pundits. During her inaugural press conference Premier Smith announced her intention to keelhaul Alberta’s Human Rights Act to ensure that her grassroots supporters, anti-vaxxers, will no longer be subject to the tyranny of public health and safety measures. In Smith’s world, it’s a God given right to be an infected asshole.

“They have been the most discriminated-against group that I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. That’s a pretty extreme level of discrimination that we’ve seen.” Really? Readers may also wish to note that Premier Smith was born in 1971 and not 2021.

This blog post is five working days behind schedule because I’ve not been able to summon the energy to “refudiate” (God bless you, Sarah Palin! Have you met your long-lost sister?) any of Smith’s moronic claims and potential plans. This is a person who publicly trumpeted a bovine laxative as a cure for covid. Perhaps rooms for rational debate and discussion may only be found in Shambala or Xanadu. Book in advance. In the meantime, the opium den lure of languid resignation so seductive to anybody possessed of more than half a wit must be fended off at all costs. It’s so much easier to pour two or three fingers of Irish, put on a Van Morrison album and hope it all goes away sometime during the night.

You search in your bag/Light up fag/Think it’s a drag/But you’re so glad to be alive, honey/And when this is all over…

This, this Smith person isn’t just the under-qualified “Mayor of Simpleton.” Despite what the governing UCP tells its cadre, Alberta is one of Canada’s wealthiest and most powerful provinces. The problem here has always been the allocation of elastic abundance. The busts always seem to last and the booms never do. The primary domestic product of a chronically mismanaged cyclical economy is blame. Alberta looks outward only to complain about the meanies in the rest of Canada and the world at large. For a province never noted for its tolerance of unionized labour, grievance (sometimes real, but best imagined) is a reliable legislative assembly seat winner.

I’ve been paying attention to Alberta’s politics since I moved here, gratefully, 32 years ago; I’ve no clue as to how it has all shaken down to… this. Smith’s personal path to power was paved with the petulant premise of her proposed and yet to be passed Alberta Sovereignty Act. While its contents remain mysterious, it’s thought to be a sort of pre-assembled DIY platform for future blame and complaint because Smith is nothing if not progressive. Alberta political climate indicators are forecasting high whinge.

Aw, man, I’m too tired and fed up to go on. I’ve had enough, I need a drink. I need a break from this blog. See you next Tuesday.             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of insight into the Albertosaurus body politic 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. 

A FAN’S NOTES

The Rise and Fall of Hockey Canada

The National Hockey League launched another endless season this week. The Montreal Canadiens appear to be a team somewhere south of terrible. These two related sports stories interest me because at least they’re about the game. It’s the other kind of sports stories that revolt me, the ones in the news section of my paper.

If you’re a Canadian reading this post, you know what I’m writing about. Two alleged incidents of sexual assault by a multiple of junior players who wore Canadian colours in 2003 and 2018. Hockey Canada has settled one lawsuit using hush-hush money from a secret fund financed by misappropriated player registration fees. This suggests sanctioned gang rape or at least business as usual, boys will be boys, and there’s no need to involve the courts or the insurance company. The existence of a second such fund came to light last week. This is not petty cash; this is a calculated cost of doing business with teenage boys. Two pools of dirty money suggest there are enough anticipated sex scandals lurking in dressing rooms to rival the Catholic Church. 

Hockey Canada was established in 1968; its purpose was to assemble Canadian national teams to compete in international tournaments nobody cared about. In 1994 it merged with the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (founded 1914) thus becoming the sport’s national governing body whose remit now included growing and promoting the game at all levels for all participants.

I’ve long admired Hockey Canada’s logo. The concept, a pale player silhouette framed by contrasting colours, though unoriginal it is immediately recognizable; it pops. The organization’s corporate sponsors signed on to incorporate it into their own advertising and marketing materials. Some sort of gold by association for Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire and Scotiabank.

Hockey Canada metastasized into Canada’s premier sports organization during the nineties. The agent was television, and that term in turn may be used as a synonym or metaphor for filthy lucre. When the International Olympic Committee and International Ice Hockey Federation (of which Hockey Canada is a member and, who knows, an NHL proxy) agreed professionals could compete at the Winter Games, Hockey Canada took a star turn. It would choose Canada’s Nagano ‘98 squad, cherry picking from the NHL’s best Canadian players. This was not the Spengler Cup, baby! Canadian hockey fans would watch a national team assembled via some sick fantasy draft by Hockey Canada. This was power, this was prestige; this was dazzle, grape Kool-Aid to corporate sponsors, and eyeballs to advertisers.

The way Canadians experienced television began to shift around this time of exciting Olympic hockey news. Cable channels had proliferated, many of them focused on sports. Leagues looking to sell broadcast rights had more potential partners at the bidding table. The television signal was transitioning from analogue to digital. Advertisers quickly realized the only “live” TV available in the spectrum was either news or sports. The IIHF world junior championship, a Hockey Canada property, became a hot commodity for a sports channel with restricted or non-existent NHL broadcast rights. Every ensuing holiday season pimply Team Canada was as scrutinized and venerated as the Second Coming of the ’72 Summit Series or ’76 Canada Cup teams of seasoned professionals; the absolute career apex for most of the kids who made the roster cut. One of the perks would be a coddled, frat house sense of entitlement. And Bauer and Nike swag.

Last week Hockey Canada’s interim board chair Andrea Skinner (she has since resigned as did subsequently Hockey Canada’s entire Board of Directors) complained to a parliamentary hearing that her organization was cast as a “scrapegoat,” a witch hunt poster boy for a larger, endemic problem pervading society. There is some truth in her petulance. Various Canadian sports authorities and institutions are mired in allegations of sexual misconduct. But really, she spoke to Hockey Canada’s deafness to its entire mission, its raison d’etre. What if the dollars in those rainy day rape funds had been directed into the women’s and sledge hockey programs?

Hockey is to Canada like apple pie and baseball are to the United States, evocative of less complicated times. And though they never really existed, when we speak of them we’re implying higher behavioural standards, proper ethics, manners, morals and values. Life can be coached. Evolving boy-men segregated from normal development by elite hockey programs would benefit from a seminar or two or 20.

That Hockey Canada elected to cover up alleged sex crimes, pay out hush money and then create a second slush fund for tamping down future sex crimes beggars belief. This isn’t just cynical rot at the top of Canada’s hockey governing body, but putrid gangrene. Because nothing, not even pus, drips or oozes uphill, there was only one way for the infection to spread.

Remember, kids, hockey builds character! Play fair, play smart and obey the rules!         

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of Shakespearean tragedy  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. 

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Goin’ Home

Time is eternal when you look back on it, yesterday, and all that. It exists in the present as it must; unfurling continuously. The future is theoretical. There’s a good probability that it, or something like it, could happen. So, that infuriatingly trite platitude “It’s the journey and not the destination” is true although it cannot be applied to sort of, kind of post-pandemic air travel.

“Bonjour! Hi! Bienvenue a Montreal!” I’m flying way back home this week. The occasion is the forty-fifth anniversary of my high school graduation. My suitcase is open on the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. The wayfaring documents are stacking up on the dining room table. I’ve since lived a little more than the latter half of my life to date away from my hometown. But there are still a lot of yesterdays cached in that place. On the drive into the city from the airport I always see an invisible, rusting modal freight container hidden in the weeds beneath the urban ruins of the old Turcot spaghetti traffic interchange which teetered on piers above a former CNR yard; there’s a big box of me down there somewhere hard by the repurposed Imperial Tobacco cigarette factory, I swear.

Twentieth century boy: I sometimes wonder why I feel such affection for the most squirmingly uncomfortable five years of my life. Confidentially, high school was difficult. The bloc of Catholic boys was diverse in a small school way: brains, jocks, stoners, nerds and politicos. Only a spider, let alone a self-loathing ordinary average guy, could keep a foot in each camp. I did make friends and if we’re not as intimate as we once were, we’ve at least kept in touch. It follows too that I made enemies and if their personalities remotely resemble my own, they’re still nursing grudges.

High school flagged my academic shortcomings early on, math and science. Oh, the grace of a report card “51” in chemistry. My “47” in geometry required summer school; I was obtuse, the square of the hypothermia was beyond me. My algebra teacher was also my football coach: “Geoff, you’re able to memorize the playbook (Veer Series, wing formation, audibles, more backfield motion than the I-formation), so why not the terms of this formula? If you can learn just one thing this year…” Thank you for the passing grade, Coach.

Unbeknownst to me, the rigours of the Jesuit education provided by Loyola High School instilled in me the capacity for critical thinking. This was done by stealth. Little did I know that this faculty would colour my engagement with the world as a post-secondary student, worker, writer, consumer and citizen. My secondary schooling was a secret gift with no expiry date.

To paraphrase a lyric fragment sung by the immortal Eddie Money, I want to go back though I’m feeling so much older. Loyola’s alumni weekend kicks off this Friday afternoon with a football game against St. Thomas. I’m tempted to attend. We always used to beat those guys. Loyola’s teams are nicknamed the Warriors; I suspect the Indian head logo has long been consigned to the dustbin. I assume the uniforms have changed and the equipment is much safer. “Geoff! Where are you!?” “Umm, on the football field?” “Geoff! What day is it!?” “Umm, game day?” “He’s fine.”

My old school was always a piece of a larger enterprise. Though the building, modern mock Gothic, is new and not the one whose halls I haunted, it still resides on the campus of the former Loyola College which has long since been incorporated into Concordia University – another Alma Mater of mine. I’ve logged tons of time in Montreal’s wild West End through the years, but not recently. I should take a stroll around the neighbourhood.

Mister Hot Dog was on Sherbrooke Street at the east corner of the campus. It was an odd shape at an odd intersection, not quite a corner – if only I could remember my geometry. It was a counter operation, stand and inhale. Everybody knew that the fat, sweaty guy with the brush cut who ran the place really, really appreciated his lunch clientele, fresh-faced high school boys. West of the campus, still on Sherbrooke but beyond West Broadway was The Golden Moon. It was one of those family-run restaurants (Greeks, always Greeks) that used to be everywhere and are nowhere now. Till at the front behind a counter displaying cheesecakes, kitchen and toilets at the rear. In between, rows of booths, some seating two, some seating four. Each booth had its own jukebox; April Wine was popular, “Fast Train” and “Bad Side of the Moon.” Loyola boys would congregate to chain smoke and swill cups of coffee or fountain Cokes. It was a more democratic environment than the structured hierarchy inside the school because different years were compelled to mingle in a space more congenial to conversation, and one more welcoming than the inside crush of rush hour mass transit.

South of the “Moon,” down a gentle incline and across the commuter tracks was Ye Olde Pub. It was a workingman’s bar whose trade resided across the street at the Sealtest factory, that dairy with the hunting lodge exterior wall of gigantic, grinning cow heads. Drinkers of any age were welcome at Ye Olde, and the rumour was a certainty: the Vice Squad could raid the joint at any time. This fearful knowledge only enhanced the buzz of guzzling three Molson Exports before attending a dance with the girls from our sister Catholic private schools. In truth, there wasn’t enough beer in the whole damn West End to detach me from the whitewashed cinderblock wall of Loyola’s primitive cafeteria. Boys this side, girls over there on the other, and didn’t the time seem to flash by between “Ballroom Blitz” and “Stairway to Heaven.”

Forty-five years. I’m acutely aware of how I misused them and used them up, but sometimes I still can’t believe they’re gone. I cannot anticipate another forty-five years of existence. Hell, my class’s fiftieth anniversary will fall in 2027. Who knows? Those next five years may prove trickier than I’d prefer. And so Friday night at Loyola I’ll be wandering around wearing a name tag and swigging from a cup of beer, a little lost in the new building, a bit wayward, and wondering just why it is exactly that I’m so happy to be back there again.        

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of mystified nostalgia 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. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Gimme Some Peace

During my teenage years, that curiously stunted era of developing into some sort of being vaguely resembling an adult, all my mother ever said to me was, “TURN IT DOWN!” I resolved that I’d never devolve into a psychotic crank like Mom. Just who in their right mind would prefer Julio Inglesias and Engelbert Humperdinck over Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer? Contemporary living has been a stern tutor, teaching the tyranny of noise - however one may define cacophony. My stereo and Mom’s yelling aside, the seventies, in retrospect, were a much quieter time.

Generally, the ceaseless urban roar is an artificial construct. My neighbourhood, like most, is transitioning; the din is dense. The City of Edmonton actively encourages population density in order to increase its tax base. Basic, essential services are expensive. For example, the City did not spray for mosquitoes last spring. That pesty saving to the municipal budget ranged from a quarter- to a half-million dollars. My ward’s alderman bet his seat on bats and dragonflies. Additional federal and provincial funds literally just drip down into this developers’ paradise, more of a trickle would be welcome. Single homes are demolished so two may take their place. The grinding engines of heavy trucks and heavy machinery are constant. The paradox of progress is more motors and municipal expense as ageing infrastructure is upgraded to accommodate increased volume (pardon the pun).

A casual chat with the neighbourhood community league president the other Saturday was especially disheartening. He figured the noise of transition was sustainable for another decade, at least. I thought, “Great, fanfare enough to see me out.” Variations on these strident, gratingly harsh sounds are everywhere now too, aren’t they? Alarming news, angry punditry, mad social commentary, politicians talking up to the lowest common denominator, a myopic world screaming to be heard; my God, what some people shout about when they use their cells as walkie-talkies - hire a lawyer, sell the stock or get a prescription, I don’t care to know one way or the other, just stuff a sock in it (and your anxious little dog too).

Edmonton had been hit a violent storm one evening about a week's previous. The type I’d expect in July or August, heat generated and frightening. The window blinds were up and so the various rooms of the Crooked 9 flashed electric blue, the colour of vacuum tube television screens. Thunder cracked like dominoes tiles on an oak table. Double-down slams! Nature’s noise was real and welcome, a refreshingly glorious star cameo.

The shrill background whine to modern life is omnipresent. The noise, beyond the freeways’ roar and emergency sirens, is visual too. Cities are not assembled Lego kits, out of the box and done. Ta-da! Rome was not built in two millennia. My town has proved particularly adept at botching its footprint on both sides of the North Saskatchewan River. Commercial architecture is boring and repetitive, newer low-rise buildings look cheap. Boulevards and planters are weedy and infrequently manicured because maintenance costs money. Bridge refurbishments and light rail line extensions are better really, really late then never and so the city’s primary colour is a sort of Halloween orange: traffic cones and pylons, striping on barriers and safety vests, detour and reduced speed limit signs. Pyramids of fill, gravel, sand, clog narrow streets. And there is litter, there is always litter; a recent informal survey indicates that disposable masks rival some of Canada’s most beloved corporate brands underfoot. Can I buy one thing, just one thing, without a logo on it?

I’m unsure when I decided that pretty much everything around me disturbed my peace. I can’t pinpoint exactly when life got louder. Audio annoyance must be a function of ageing. Mary Reilly, Mary Reilly, I have become my mother; but not, you know, in the Psycho sense, just more irritable. And poor Mom, if she only knew that the discordant chords of the Clash and the Sex Pistols would now register to her ears as sounds sweeter than birdsong.

I wish our recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II had been schizophrenic because everyone and everything would’ve had to shut the fuck up for a second blessed minute.    

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of cranky complaint 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. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Queen Elizabeth II, 1926 - 2022

“I’m the best thing England’s got, me and the Queen.” – Mick Jagger, circa 1977

Canada’s parliamentary democracy is based on the Westminster System. Protocol necessarily involves ritual and tradition. When the House of Commons sits, each day’s session begins with the placing of a mace on the table before the speaker of the House. The same ceremony plays out in the Senate and in provincial and territorial legislative assemblies. The stylized weapon symbolizes the authority of the British Crown while crucially conceding that its power has been ceded to the people.

I like living under a constitutional monarchy. The reigning sovereign as represented by their vice-regal surrogate, our Governor-General, is our head of state. Our prime minister heads the government. I took journalism in university. Thought maybe I’d be a newshound. I ended up a news junkie in advertising. In recent years I’ve read about democracies, some established, some nascent, unraveling. I’ve come to appreciate Canada’s creaky colonial model. That subtle layer between entities, the nature of the state versus the nature of its executive is a crucial buffer. There is decorum and stability up here north of 49, imperfect as any human construct, surely, but in Canada, it’s impossible for an “elected” head of “state” to actively sabotage the peaceful transfer of power.

The Crown is similar to a kitchen wall calendar, a little old fashioned but unfailingly reliable. For the past 70 years (eight years longer then I’ve been alive) the face of this Canadian calm carrying on was Queen Elizabeth II. I’ve devoted more thought to this archaic and dubious institution, its lasting impact, importance, meaning and place in history, then I have to the throne’s lottery winners and members of the Royal Family. They are separate yet the same. Still, I believe the late Queen recognized the blind luck of her birth and possessed the fortitude to make the best of an unwanted gift of fate.

When I picture the late Queen, it’s her classic, primary portrait, young, attractive and defaced by the Sex Pistols. I wonder if that “God Save the Queen” sleeve was another “Oh, fuck!” moment, a coughed regal giggle behind a daintily clenched fist. An icon to iconoclasts. Canadian pop artist Charles Pachter had already lampooned her in his painting “Queen on Moose.” Warhol had rendered her hipper than thou, Marilyn and Mao. After the Stones had her bravely shouting “What the hell is going on?” in “Jigsaw Puzzle” she was the subject of a lovelorn, throwaway Beatles ditty.

I took for granted that Queen Elizabeth II would outlive me. Maybe there was something in the water of the River Thames or perhaps she shared some sort of alien genetic material with Keith Richards. The Queen wasn’t just the Monarch, she was the entire monarchy, existing for centuries past, weirdly immortal.

Seventy years of human history from an elevated perch. Witness to and part-time player in change and turmoil, triumph and tragedy in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, Europe and the rest of the world. She spent some time in the dock too, a complicit figurehead for every single crime ever committed in the name of the British Empire. Closer to home, “Buck House” or Balmoral, the hot mic wit and wisdom of her toff husband the antics of her own family, her idiotic children and grandchildren, and their insufferable partners. I wonder if Her Majesty ever contemplated writing her memoirs. I’m somewhat charmed by an irrational fantasy, my hope her working title might’ve been something like Oh, Fuck! What Now?

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of breathless Royals coverage 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.