HUMAN WRECKAGE

The Coffee Maker

Ann “hearts” her morning coffee. Me too. I’ve come a long way from freeze-dried granules of Maxwell House (Good to the last drop!) or Nescafe and hot tapwater. But we’re not precious about our coffee. We brew a 12-cup pot of coffee-flavoured coffee every morning and none of that medium roast stuff. I prepare everything the evening before because it saves nine minutes come dawn. Whoever awakes first hits the BREW button before their ritual ablutions – again, time management is crucial – while the other comes to to a delicious smell.

Late October Ann and I began having to jimmy open the lid of our Krups unit’s cistern with a bread knife. The latch mechanism permanently jammed. After about a week we both got pretty adept at it, one more step added to the routine. We knew something had to give, probably a hard water-encrusted plastic hinge. Disposable consumer durables tend not to fix themselves – especially after their limited warranties have expired. Ann was proactive, researching replacements. We asked around our circle of family and friends for recommendations.

The coffee snobs chimed in. One recommended an elaborate system or solution (no mere coffee maker) retailing for some $500. Another couldn’t get past our electric grinder because, you see, coffee beans require an artisan touch, pressing or crushing. Spinning grinder blades create heat, enough heat apparently to further roast a roasted bean and the desultory result is, of course, bitter. In his defense, he lingers over a cup of coffee while Ann and I swill ours. Also, he hasn’t smoked 25 a day for 50 years. My palate is unsophisticated. All I desire is black diner joe in my Stones, Beatles or Who mug. If there’s an oily slick or Carly Simon clouds on the surface, I’m cool. Ann’s a bit fussier, hot coffee into hot milk, not quite half and half. Her ratio changes with each subsequent cup: less dairy, more joe.

The Crooked 9’s kitchen was designed and built before either of us were born; working space is limited. A countertop appliance is no easy purchase. It must fit into its designated place; its footprint must be compact. A coffee maker’s height is of particular concern: it cannot obstruct the kitchen light switch (the second thing to be turned on each morning) nor interfere with the bottom of the cupboard door where we keep our mugs. We elected to buy a Braun unit. German again. According to the email I received, Ann and I are now part of the Braun family which, I suppose, is less lucrative but morally superior to being welcomed to the Krupp family whose company armed all of Europe in the two centuries prior to this one.

Our morning coffees are my gig – even if I forget to add water from time to time. Ann suggested I might read through the operator’s manual and do the set up for our new machine, learn its ins and outs, which I did. Simple stuff. I scanned the instructions in the way I look at most posts on my Facebook feed, blankly. I wasn’t exactly going to Mars with Elon or even booking a domestic flight and hotel room.

My first task was to set the unit’s digital clock to Mountain Time. The display read 10:28 out of the box. I plugged the unit into the wall socket under the cupboard on the backsplash and depressed the CLOCK button for three seconds. I jigged local time. Cyan lights flashed but the clock didn’t move from 10:28. Jesus Christ, this thing’s going back to the store. A fresh off the assembly line dud. I got my face up real, real close to the clock and saw the actual functioning clock face was protected for shipping by an opaque black cling decal reading 10:28. Well, fuck.

Next up was programming for water hardness. Some new-fangled function. The unit’s default setting was H3, Alberta hard, eh, bud? Mineral content. The button I was supposed to depress didn’t work. I thought: Fuckit, it’s the default anyways.

The third button was for setting the temperature of the hotplate. That button didn’t work either. The default heat setting was MEDIUM. Ann had wanted it set to LOW. I thought: Fuckit. We always pour the pot into a different carafe so it won’t stew on the burner anyways. The clock’s working and we won’t have to open the lid with a fucking knife.

Ann was in the kitchen too, her back to me, taking care of other business. She asked, “How’s it going?”

I said, “Good, good. I’ve got this.”

The fourth button was STRENGTH. This button was the subject of some previous discussion because ROBUST takes twice as long as REGULAR and time is a delicate subject for seniors. Waiting on a ROBUST brew might not see us out one morning and I can’t imagine facing Judgment Day without a couple cups of coffee and a few cigarettes first. Must present at my absolute best; seconds count. I couldn’t set the strength button either but its default setting was in our favour: REGULAR. I thought: Fuckit.

Ann said, “All set up, ready to go?”

I replied with my favourite hedging portmanteau, “Welp.” I continued, “I got the clock working, but the other buttons don’t seem to function, so I’ve left them on their default settings.”

Ann said, “Would you mind if I take a look?”

I said, “No, no, not at all. Have at ‘er. I think I did everything right. I read the instructions.”

We switched places in the kitchen. I got out of Ann’s way.

Ann said, “Geoffrey.”

I thought: Uh-oh.

“Did you turn the power on?”

I said, “Coffee makers don’t have power buttons. You just plug them in, the clock lights up and then you press START or BREW or whatever, whenever.”

“This one does.”

“Fuck me. That’s two buttons to press in the morning now.”

Just yesterday, our new machine in service for more than a week, Ann showed me how to remove the filter basket.                  

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Two Paintings on a Wall

Our bedroom is at the rear of the Crooked 9, a corner room. The window on Ann’s side of the bed, in the far corner beside a vanity, overlooks our backyard. My window above my night table stacked with books is directly diagonal. My view is Mosquito Alley, a semi-neglected space between our home and that of our miserable solitary neighbour whose dog is some sort of large and expensive poodle cross bred without a brain. Mosquito Alley is where I upend the wheelbarrow for the winter and stack firewood that’s too risky to burn during spring, summer and autumn months; embers float and Edmonton’s been awfully arid these past years. Mosquito Alley has no sky, it’s umbrellaed by an overhanging branch of mountain ash. The red clusters of fermented berries are especially plump now. They weren’t plucked by a cartwheeling flock of waxwings on a bender this season. There’s been nothing to see. Instead, I’ve been looking to my left, studying the pair of paintings hung stacked perpendicular to my window.

Both of these oils are older than Ann and me. They’re modern in a way because the reputation of the artists supersedes the merit of their works. One was painted by Ann’s father Alec. He dated the signature on his canvas: 1935. He was twelve. The other was painted by my mother’s father, my grandfather Charles. It’s undated and he has abbreviated his given name (my middle name) to Cha’s, bottom right. Both paintings are landscapes.

If I were to see Alec’s painting in a museum, I would pause before it. It’s a rugged, wild, Alberta scene, mainly sombre colours. The sky above and behind the Rockies is white, cumulus clouds inflating and billowing, weather’s blowing in from further west. The closest peak to the viewer is purple-blue, one slope crusted with a glacier. The entire scene is divided unequally by a river, a ribbon in varying shades of blue, darkening toward the far bank, highlighted by delicate suggestions of whitewater. The river’s source must be the distant glacier. The balsam firs in the foreground on the near bank, evergreens, are half black. Their pine cone clusters are a ripened beige, almost glowing in the late September or early October morning sun behind the artist.

Books on art, the masters, comprise more than a few volumes in the inherited portion of our library. While I completely comprehend how economic depression in a remote Canadian prairie province quickly followed by a war overseas may impact a boy’s plans for his future, I am compelled to ponder, speculate about a road not taken.

Cha’s chose to paint a winter scene in rural Quebec, perhaps even just outside Montreal’s early to mid-twentieth century city limits. Even now the island is still not entirely urbanized. A sleigh-rutted road winds through a stand of patchy birch trees and past a farmhouse toward a wooden bridge. The cloudless sky is a hard pale blue. The snow shadows the same freezing shade. Charles’s perspective is hopelessly skewed, the road widens as it recedes. Maybe it’s a trick of the light the artist was working in at the time, but a rut becomes a snowbank on an S-turn or vice versa and sort of goes uphill from there. Charles did render his firs as Alec did, heavy with the black paint.

I was born in February 1960. Charles died in March. I don’t think it was my fault; most newborns are ugly or at least peculiar looking but I wasn’t exactly Rosemary’s baby either. The painting hung in my big brother’s Montreal bedroom while I was trying to grow up. It came to me when he moved to Edmonton in 1972. I wanted it because it was his. I wanted it because it was my only connection to a grandfather I never knew – a wit, I’ve been told, a charmer, something of a character; beloved. Charles’s landscape has hung everywhere I’ve ever lived since I left home in 1980. Its ornate frame, some type of plaster composite, is disintegrating – perfectly square chips decide to fall from time to time and lay where they may.  Prior to my moving out, his work wasn’t able to compete with the crucifix over my bed, a portrait of my guardian angel, Esso hockey posters, Spider-man and Mick Jagger.

I’ve seen all the things depicted in two paintings of disparate quality. Most of them I can see from the front porch of the Crooked 9 where I spend too much time smoking cigarettes and simply gazing at my surroundings. I’ve watched the puffy skies, thunderheads gathering, weather rolling in. I’ve seen skies so hard and blue I believe I could reach up and scratch them. I’ve studied the blue spruce towers along our street, black in most light yet ripe with brown cones or yellow with pollen; our front lawn birches’ papery white bark with artists’ sketchpad charcoal studies on it amid ochre stains left by running sap; blue and purple shadows cast on ice and snow.

I’ve seen all these things myself. These things or something like them are there for you too should you care to pause for moment and not take in the view so much as absorb it. The wonder of it all is I’ve also seen these things through the eyes of others, and I can’t help but see them differently. Alec and Charles taught me to look at things twice.          

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. 

A FAN’S NOTES

Sparks Fly on E Street

Edmonton! You’ve just seen the earth-shakin’ soul-quakin’ educatin’ motorvatin’ legendary E Street Band!

The fans in our sold-out downtown hockey arena could not dispute that natural fact. While not quite all night, living proof stretched beyond three hours. Ann and I were primed; soul engines tending to baby boomer bladder management. A Bruce Springsteen concert is like “Suspicious Minds”, you can’t walk out.

E Street in Canada is like a confused comet, it comes around irregularly, infrequently. A newsworthy event. I’ve been lucky enough to see Springsteen in person at least once in every city I’ve lived in, a decade or more filling the spaces between encores. And every single time without fail, well, I’ve never seen anything like it since the time before.

Should you attempt to construct a bar graph of Springsteen’s songwriting through fifty years, you’ll find the promises in his romantic escapist sagas tightening into darker concise stories of resignation and despair; his thesaurus lost, red-shifted. There’s the guitar too, that one, the blonde Fender Esquire, the one with the finish worn off, the one he taught to talk. He’s pretty good at ripping off a solo, shredding. And Springsteen can sing, wrap his tongue around a hundred syllables at a thousand miles an hour while staying on key or howl like something out there in the night. He’s no Roy Hobbs with any of these burnished gifts, not the best there ever was. But combine them in concert and you get a real life giant like Willie Mays, arguably the most complete baseballer ever. Springsteen understands the stage is no place to loiter, look sullen and brood. It’s an entertainment platform. It’s the only entertainment platform.

And you’ve got to bring it night after night, after night, after night, after night!

The core of the E Street Band (do I even have to type their names?) is the Platonic ideal of a bar band: they can play anything. The expanded version (I counted around twenty people – my arithmetic has never been exact) is a steroidal soul revue with every member playing their assigned part, working hard to create the illusion of off-the-cuff spontaneity. And there’s always room for that, space built in. The entire travelling circus is presided over by a gleeful ringmaster prone to fits of preaching and giggling; the winking barker aware we know it’s all performance (and what a performance). But we also know this slick tout will not fleece us: there really is a one-of-a-kind attraction inside the big top tent.

Tuesday’s show was late, a year late although it kicked off on time. Our heroes age and encounter health issues, just like us. Up until curtain I was fretting a doctor’s consultation later in the week, blood work and other interesting tests. I was scared he’d tell me I ain’t that young anymore (I was right). Those fears evaporated with “Spirit in the Night” and I settled in beside Ann for the next three hours. Don’t take us back, take us there. E Street is nothing like a walk through your old neighbourhood or down the street the first insanely major love of your life lived on. Tonight, there’s no time for nostalgia or regret because you are awake and alive right here, right now. Besides, the lockdown-stymied Letter to You is the best full band album since 2002’s The Rising. That record’s theme, the intimations of mortality in the title track, “Last Man Standing” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams” coloured the night. Even the lights-on rave “Glory Days” poignantly surprised because while the lyrics don’t change, your interpretation does. It’s okay to grieve, it’s okay to look back, just don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.

Steve! I think these people are tired! I think they wanna go home! (Steve mugs, shakes his head, No!) Steve! I think, I think maybe we’ve got another song! Just, you know, maybe, one left!

I’ve heard that one before. I hope to hear it again soon.  

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming in 2025 provided I stop fussing with the damn manuscript; it can be less imperfect.

A FAN’S NOTES

Down and Dirty with a Local Hero

Dirty & Down is the new record by Three O’Clock Train. Mack MacKenzie is its founder, leader and sole original member. And sometimes he’s just Mack MacKenzie. When I last saw Mack play Edmonton, he split a solo acoustic barroom bill with Mike McDonald of Jr. Gone Wild. A few months later I caught him on his home turf fronting a band in Old Montreal’s Centaur Theatre. You just don’t know; you never can tell. Both of these nights unfolded from soundcheck to encore months before my morning Globe and Mail began tracking an international story about a mysterious viral outbreak in an obscure Chinese city.

Port cities are magnets, confluences of cultures, always vibrant. When Three O’Clock Train hit Montreal’s music scene, I was waving my hands to get through the haze of an undergraduate degree at Concordia University. Its sound was like some sort of manic party line, CBGB or London calling patched through Bakersfield and Nashville. The local newspapers were on it because back then papers actually covered their city and worked to create compelling content; circulation was a competitive sport. How could this strange noise happen here? What was the source of this dynamo hum? Music critics’ enthusiasm spilled over into the page three city columns. What Three O’Clock Train was doing then, well, it’s everywhere now.

Mack MacKenzie is an accomplished songwriter. He has shared the stage with John Prine and Guy Clark, both of whom were admirers. He’s up there with a few other Canadians who have been pretty successful at their craft too. Forty years of work honing a gift.

Canada is a big, regionalized country. And relatively empty. It’s a market about the size of California. A blanket, generic Canadian music scene is an impossibility. Three O’Clock Train will always be a Montreal band, just as Jr. Gone Wild will always be qualified as Edmontonians. If there’s such a thing as a national music conversation, it’s necessarily mainstream, dominated by the universal appeal of a few familiar faces. Three O’Clock Train is an outlier, always has been. So: I’m a fan; I’m an advocate.

Here comes the full disclosure part. Mack and I are acquainted. We met for the first time maybe ten years ago. A house concert in Edmonton. I was in my mid-fifties. We were the same age. We chatted about her, Montreal. We’d endured the same Ticketron lines for Forum concerts; we’d haunted the same record stores. We’ve since kept in intermittent touch. These past few days I’ve been an email nag. Essay questions, because I excel at overthinking pretty much anything. Mack’s a patient man.

meGeoff: My favourite Joe Walsh lyric is Pow! Right between the eyes/Oh! How nature loves her little surprises. My sense is your previous record Cuatro de Los Angeles was stymied by covid-19. No time for buzz, gigs, gate or merch sales. I believe there was even a production lag for the vinyl. How did the lockdown affect you, a working musician?

Mack MacKenzie: Cuatro de Los Angeles was cursed. We lost Tony Kinman (Tony and his brother Chip were the lynchpins of a few seminal alternative bands including The Dils and Rank and File) right when we had just finished the first song with him producing (“Lucky Day”). Bob Rock (Bryan Adams, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi…) stepped in to help and we moved production from Los Angeles to Vancouver. We gathered everyone who was still kicking from the first Dils recording (“It’s Not Worth It”), which Bob produced back in the day, and carried onward. Moving production to Montreal, all songs written in Los Angeles, hence the title of the EP. Covid-19 hit the planet and left me having to cancel an eighty-date tour in support of the release. ARGH! Or, as my people say, UGH! Also, we lost Zippy Pinhead (Dils drummer) right before the big launch in Vancouver at the Rickshaw Theatre.

meG: You staged a virtual concert and dropped the single “Send Down Your Love”. I don’t imagine streaming pays the bills.

MM: Universal Audio, a well-known audio equipment and recording company, chose twelve artists from across Canada to record during the imposed isolation. The challenge for each was to compose and record a new song with equipment they would provide for one month. I recorded “Send Down Your Love” as well as producing a video for the tune. Producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen) approached me and asked if I was interested in recording with him at Hotel2Tango and we began work on an EP – which turned into an EP and a full album!

meG: Dirty & Down is the new EP.

MM: I took the chance of being locked down as a time to rebuild. Having a tour knocked out from under a touring musician was rough,  but I was determined to see things through as far as music goes. Rod Shearer (guitars, co-producer), in the band since the early nineties, and I started working with Howard. We recruited bassist Andy McAdam (The Planet Smashers, Boids) and drummer Mike Gassellsdorfer (Boids) as our official rhythm section. My friend Marc De Mouy (YUL Records) was generous with his time and money, helping me get everyone on board. The sessions worked like this: one song per session; the song for the day would usually be chosen the morning of, on the way to the studio. Whatever I felt was going to be different from the session before. This left the band flat-footed every day and having to learn a new song, allowing for a fresh performance. The songs all sound different and they all have the same basic lineup behind them. I’m gaining in years and don’t have the time I once spent having a good time. Ha! 

meG: The vocal on the title track sounds to me like obscene phone call audio, threatening, enticing. You wear war paint in the video, a fearsome sight. I’ve not heard a song so dangerous – unsettling in a good way – for a long time. How did you come up with that one?

MM: When the lockdown started, Howard asked if I wanted to do a quick, down and dirty EP with him. It inspired the title and the song just wrote itself. “Dirty & Down” was the first song to be recorded. I showed it to the band and we learned and recorded it in an afternoon. Jonathan Cummings smoked the lead solo. I wanted the vocal to be creepy, to contrast the roaring chorus. Creepy like Frank Zappa’s vocal on “The Central Scrutinizer”. A simple hand-made megaphone did the trick. I wanted to make a video similar to the early MTV era, pre-interweb. “You Might Think” by The Cars, a crazy green screen type of thing. Playhouse lead singer Peter Cat often wears makeup for his performances and the black heart on his right cheek inspired me to play with face paint. The war paint is actually a precursor to the upcoming album Badly Bent Arrow Boy, which is another story for another time.

meG: What really hooked me on the Stones was the rest of any particular album. The songs that weren’t singles. I’ve heard you cover the Stones in concert. I’ve always figured should you ever decide to record a Stones song you’d go digging. Maybe something from side two of Exile. But you chose “Luxury”, Mick’s faux Jamaican accent and all. That’s not just out of left field, it’s from the parking lot behind the outfield wall. What prompted that? Coincidentally, It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll turned fifty this month.

MM: 1974: I was fourteen and It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll was awesome! This track stood out for me. It was the first reggae groove that the Stones recorded. Harder! Harder! It just pushes the one drop beat. The original recording sounds like it would easily fit on Exile.

meG: I can’t count the hours I spent staring at the album cover. During the lockdown I bought a jigsaw puzzle of the sleeve. Love that track. The version on El Mocambo ’77 really cooks.

MM: There’s also another bootleg from some Detroit show during that period. I may have the city wrong….

meG: Trains, locomotives are such evocative images and metaphors in music, blues, country, soul, gospel, you name it. The first song you wrote was “Train of Dreams”. There’s the name of your band of course. The other cover song on the EP is “Big Train” by Chip Kinman. You’ve worked extensively with Chip and his late brother Tony throughout your career. Why do you think you guys are so sympatico?

MM: David Hill, bass and co-founder of the Train introduced me to Rank and File. We were both bucking trends at the same time. I finally met Chip and Tony back in 2015 and we pretty much hit it off. I remember Chip invited me to a BBQ at his place in Burbank one Sunday afternoon. He cooked up a pile of burgers, sausages, chicken, and prepared a slew of salads and sides. No one showed up except for myself. I teased him about having so many friends. We had a bite and then broke out a bottle of fine whiskey and listened to some early Kanye; Chip said my songs were similar. Good times.

meG: Really? How so?

MM: Well, I vaguely remember him saying we had similar sentiments. That’s Chip. Myself, I don’t hear it.

meG: “Pyjama Girl” is country, catchy, cautionary – not that I was expecting Bryan Ferry, but the title is suggestive. When the words come, do they take you in a certain musical direction? Does the melody dictate the lyrics? Or is your creative process messier, mix ‘n match, more organic?

MM: “Pyjama Girl” was fun. The scenario was the lockdown and most people were stuck at home in their pyjamas, webcamming, usually in a small room. The chorus knocks those walls down. We threw every “extra” idea collected during our sessions and used most of them for this song. The three acoustic guitars were all done at once in two takes. Cecil Castellucci, who sang on “I’m Not Your Indian Boy” back in 1996 was the voice I heard in my head for this song. Sara Johnson (Bran Van 3000) and Chris Velan (Montreal-based artist and producer) also lend their voices. Finally found a song to play with my ebow too! Good times!

Dirty & Down and more Three O’Clock Train music is available from Apple Music and streams on Spotify. Badly Bent Arrow Boy coming soon. There’s a Three O’Clock Train YouTube channel, a Facebook page and of course Instagram. You can also dig a little deeper with a visit to www.threeoclocktrain.com.                                        

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming soon.

A meGEOFF EXCLUSIVE!

Inside the Tragic Death of the Great Pumpkin

“Aw, God,” Lucy van Pelt says. She stubs out her fifth Marlboro Gold. Her hardpack of 20 won’t last an hour. She is rueful, full of regret. It’s not yet noon. Lucy peers around the dim, shabby barroom, taking everything in except the visage of her ex-husband Charlie Brown. They’ve been estranged for years, but their relationship seems as fraught as the subject of the discussion: the Great Pumpkin.

Charlie sighs. “I feel responsible somehow.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Lucy says. “It was everything. When did the Halloween special come out, ’66? All its scenes were cut. Like Kevin Costner’s in The Big Chill. I counselled Pumpkin for years. I tried interventions. I tried everything. There was no talking to it.” Her plucked and bladed eyebrows arch. “I had my own problems to deal with.”

Charlie sighs again and shrugs. He’s looking everywhere else too. He says, “The whole thing, it probably wrecked our marriage.” He adds, “What do you have to do to get another drink around here?”

“Ditto, balloon head.” Lucy sneers as she fires up another lung dart.

The Great Pumpkin was found fatally blue in the toilet of a legendary Hollywood motel on this exact date three decades ago. The Los Angeles County coroner’s report confirmed an overdose of cocaine and heroin, a “speedball” in hardcore street parlance. And the Tropicana on Santa Monica Boulevard was hardcore before its demolition: home to vagrants, touring rock stars and Tom Waits. Sandy Koufax, the Baseball Hall of Fame Los Angeles Dodgers ace was its owner.

“I lived down the hall from Pumpkin at the time,” Waits recalls. “I crashed there for about six months. Good for my image. Very bad influences. It was a very jazzy place, more Charlie Parker – smack and whiskey – than Vince Guaraldi. I never saw Pumpkin. It was like the elephant in the room, like clinical depression. Peppermint Patty was always hanging around though. Some other girl too. Marcie? Maybe she had red hair. Trashed. Wasted. They were mules, groupies. Bringing stuff in. What do I know, no Polaroid memories. Me, I just fake it; watch, it’s an act, always has been. Pumpkin was the real deal. And Schroeder was always there too; I do recall that little toy boy, always up for a jam session with me. Knocking on my door, which was always open by the way.”

Linus van Pelt, alone in his luxurious Century City condominium sits guru-like, cross-legged on the floor on a tattered blanket. "The Trop was close to the animation studio. Pumpkin moved in there just to be close by. Standing by, so to speak. Poor bastard waited for a call that never came. I sensed it wouldn't end well. It was a crazy scene. The whole thing, it makes me very sad."

“I was Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’,” Schroeder insists over the line from his permanent residence at the Betty Ford Centre in Palm Desert, a mountain range away from the Tropicana’s infamous and notorious sleaze. “I really was. But when Tom wrote ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking’ about me, I realized I had a problem. Pumpkin was into way harder stuff. It was happy to share. I remember Lucy tried to help us but to no avail. And Pumpkin told Linus to ‘fuck off and die’ straight to his face, that poor fragile kid. I remember that; I was there. Can you imagine? Pumpkin's biggest disciple, apostle, fan or whatever.”

“I was the sort of de facto leader of the Peanuts gang,” Charlie says. He sighs heavily. “So, yeah, when I found out the greatest baseball pitcher of all time owned a Hollywood motel, of course I wanted to hang out there. I mean, that’s just what you’d want to do, right? I was working on my curve and slider. The team had to get better. I had to get better. But Sandy was never there. He was like the Great Pumpkin in that way. Good grief, it was all very frustrating.”

“Like kicking a football, Charlie Brown!”

“Not my best sport,” he tells Lucy.

When Lucy laughs, she emits a lovely, wet chesty sound, at once crapulent and captivating. She clears her throat. “Pumpkin was more insecure than the bane of my life sitting across the table here,” Lucy says as she points to Charlie. “All Pumpkin needed was a cameo in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or maybe just one panel in the newspaper.” Lucy continues, “Charlie always had creative control, so Spike, Franklin, whoever, whatever, got their moments. But not Pumpkin. It’s Charlie Brown’s fault. It’s all his fucking fault. Fucking Snoopy got all the ink. Nothing left for Pumpkin! Snoopy! Snoopy! Snoopy!”

“That’s not true!” Charlie Brown slams the table, his fist clenched. He sighs. He grimaces. “We actually had that fleabag put down before we got married. They’re hard on furniture, hardwood floors especially. They shed. You wouldn't believe the vet bills.”

Lucy places her hand over Charlie’s. She says, “It was a long time ago. Best forgotten. Wounds have healed.” Lucy smiles. "You really should treat yourself to a new t-shirt."

Charlie Brown agrees ever so gently, ever so reluctantly with Lucy van Pelt. There is a softness in his voice. “Everything was a long time ago,” he affirms. “We can’t change it, not the Great Pumpkin's fate, not anything. We were all, in our own way, casualties.” Charlie's head droops. The great bald orb weighs heavier than usual. He sighs. "I mean, good grief, those were the times. And fuck Charles M. I never wanted any of this. I don't think any of us did."                                    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming in 2025. 

NONSENSE VERSE

Bedtime Reading (Sleepover)

It’s time to say, “Good night, my dears”

But first some verse by Edward Lear

Perhaps ‘Bluebeard’ by Charles Perrault

Who knows where our story will go?

A meat hook or fancy runcible spoon

Implements aglint by the light of the moon

A green wicked witch or a very sly fox

Reynard a trickster, the son of Aesop

A vile nasty ogre grunts ‘neath your bed

Would you prefer seven dwarfs instead?

There’s an odious troll in the open wardrobe

Don’t worry, he just came in from the cold

How can I explain ‘The Hockey Sweater’?

Bygone days, les Canadiens were better

My Nana worshipped Maurice Richard

A rocket, a legend, goal-scorer at large

‘Three Little Kittens’ and ‘Little Red Hen’

I can still hear my Papa reading them

Cabbages, mad hatters, queens and kings

Your grandparents’ library has all these things

They can be scary, pages ‘tween covers

Skin-curdling adventures for young book-lovers

Pray, keep the curious habit of our past generations

Because words are the source of all creation                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming soon, not very soon as in immediately but sooner than later.

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Baby Break It Down

Ann and I still play Pinch-Punch-First-of-the-Month. I won last year, hands down. My lead this year is slimmer. Our game is important to me because there’s not enough talcum powder left in the world for the Scrabble ass-kickings Ann inflicts on me.  Maybe I pinch a little too firmly. A third competition is who will clock the first robin investigating our lawn come spring. Robins are like trends, the next big thing; they arrive with great fanfare, puffed out chests, and then quietly slip away as August dwindles. We don’t notice their absence at first.

We do take note of the Canada geese who haven’t made a chirp or a peep all summer. They stir unfailingly on Labour Day when the Canadian football schedule gets interesting – doesn’t matter when summer’s last holiday, September’s first Monday, falls. They must react to the lower light, the chill of the night. Put on your stockings, baby, the nights are getting cold. The mornings are notably crisper, half-zip fleeces or flannel shirts required for front porch coffees and traded sections of the Globe and Mail. Soon the day will dawn when we’re out there at our usual time, but morning’s late and we’ll have to wait awhile for enough daylight to read the paper by. And, it’s Ann’s new year even though she’s not taught music in Alberta’s primary or secondary school system for quite some time. Sticky fingers on cheap violins.

As is rarely the case with some of my run-on sentences and long paragraphs, the patio flower pots have been edited, some spent annuals weeded out so to speak. I’ve started cutting back the perennials. The day lilies are always the first to turn to straw, stems and fronds. The ferns, bleeding hearts, ragged yellow hostas and bloomless peonies are next. I mow our lawn about twelve times between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving. A City of Edmonton diktat declares cats strictly indoor pets, akin to those wretched, eye-watering albino bunny rabbits. Cats exact their toll on bird flocks (magpies excepted), you see. So do modern reflective UV-treated tinted windows. They’re also something of a delicacy to our burgeoning population of urban coyotes. On the other paw, a savvy outdoor cat, our late tabby Scamp for example (He thrived some eighteen years, ignoring skunks and staring down aggressive dogs and knew exactly where to lay across our Saturday morning crossword puzzle), is ruthlessly efficient at rodent control. Catless (like the entire neighbourhood) these days but not pining for the smell of kitty litter dust, I limbo the lawnmower’s blades for the last couple of cuts; get them down as low as they can go: Ann and I theorise we’re shutting down the local voles’ winter salad bar. A sneeze barrier of a s(n)ort.

I took down our patio umbrellas. Their storage bags are still fire engine red. The umbrellas themselves have paid the cost of doing their job in the heat of the sweet summer sun. They’re like cheap plywood, one side good. But the fabric has held up and, anyway, we don’t hover over them, we sit beneath their faded shade. I can’t remember if red was our primary choice for colour or if we settled for late September clearance pricing and lack of selection five years ago. Same goes for the patio overflow set of Canadian Tire folding chairs in day-glo urine sample colours. When they go on sale now they cost $10 more than we paid. I store all this stuff at the rear of our attached single-car garage, one without a human door. To do this I have to move the snow shovels, the ice chipper and the ice scraper. I’m always tempted to move them outside a titch too soon because, you know, autumn in Edmonton, sometimes a leaf rake just won’t do.

Changing seasons, changing hats. My outdoor work cap features a football logo now because the summer game is winding down. After Grey Cup I debut my Montreal Canadiens winter headwear. A Habs cap I’ve worn for twenty-five years has faded to pink in some places. I only mention this because it used to be as blue as their home helmets. Just 76 points last season; they’ll have to rack up another 16 above and beyond that total to sniff at the playoff pool this year. Ideally those points come with wins rather than cheap overtime loss rewards because the league's cock-eyed accumulative methodology, essentially a football rouge, does manage to subtly sort contenders from pretenders. Eh bien, I digress; too soon to talk hockey.

And it’s too soon to be too hasty, we’re still in September after all – my favourite month in this town, blue sky above green and gold foliage, ideal temperatures. I can’t cut back everything at once because some plants pick their moment, delay it, become a little showy once their competitors are spent. Ann’s already thinking about her garden next spring: There will be fall transplants, weather permitting, and so I do what I can with the information I have, what I know for sure. Anyway, I have labour limits, one-hour shifts – I’m not as lithe and limber as I used to be. I can tell you I feel great but if I said I was in the best shape of my life you’d laugh at me.

It's too soon to break down the picnic table for storage in the crawlspace underneath the back porch. Ann and I are grateful to be in sort of a holding pattern now, enjoying what’s left of our patio and garden before the night of the killer frost. Then we’ll have to scramble a bit. There’s always more work to be done before the ice pellets fly.                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming soon. Finally.

JUST A BOY AGAIN

Pen Drop

My Nana was 101 at the time, maybe 102. At 99 she decided she’d had enough of looking after her apartment, housekeeping, cooking. She moved herself into an Anglican ladies’ residence on Guy Street in downtown Montreal. A grand old place that reminded me of one of those summer resorts in the Eastern Townships or upper New York State. Clapboards and verandahs. Adirondack chairs.  White paint, green doors and green window trim. “An institution, mainly for tax purposes,” Nana told me. Staff insisted she walk with a cane. When I visited her from Alberta, Nana simply dragged it behind her. “They say I need it.” Nana said that knitting, playing cards and completing crossword puzzles had become more challenging because her eyesight wasn’t what it was. Oh, and a dead tooth needed extraction. These were not complaints, just facts.

Nana led me on a tour. The place was quaint and musty. A group of elderly women, decades Nana’s junior, were watching a video of The Sound of Music in a common room. Nana pointed at one woman with the tip of her cane. “You remember your Auntie Agnes, Geoffrey.” I did. “Look at her; she’s a cabbage now.” Agnes began to tell me that when she was 16 her long red locks of hair were the envy of all the other girls in Brighton (UK), or possibly Montreal. She was unclear. She did remember that boys had really liked her. Nana said, “Agnes, maybe the doctor will give you a new head.”

Years later my mother moved herself into a ritzier residence in a ritzier part of Montreal. Mom expected to spend her final years in a reasonably priced hotel as opposed to an institution. Her plan panned out for the most part; scheduled communal activities held no allure. Probably the next to last time Ann and I saw Mom, she required a wheelchair to move around anywhere beyond the confines of her one-bedroom suite where her walker and any number of canes were always at hand. In this particular instance we wheeled her down the hall to the elevator. The three of us were to lunch together in the dining room. The elevator doors slid open. It was crammed with residents and visiting relatives. There was an apologetic shuffle in the lift, a lame attempt to create space for three more bodies and a wheelchair where there wasn’t any. I addressed the crowd: “That’s all right! We’ll take the stairs.” Half of them laughed. Mom did too.

Our former neighbour Forest, a cranky lifelong bachelor and self-described “lapsed Buddhist”, moved into a seniors’ residence on Jasper Avenue, Edmonton’s main drag, just before the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns hit. Prior to that, Ann had two part-time jobs next door, dietician and handyman. I was Forest’s secretary: I sorted and reviewed his correspondence, helped him take care of business. When his latest issue of New Scientist was delivered, I went through it for him at his kitchen table, reviewing the content, describing the illustrations, reading aloud when required. Ann and I accompanied him on his walks. He told us that we had allowed him two additional years of independent living. Very precise.

His new home, while completely understanding he had no other option, still doesn’t quite suit. Legally blind, he doesn’t want to hear about other residents’ grandchildren and their pets. All this useless talk. He was banned from a Bible discussion group because hadn’t doctrine and dogma retarded civilization and therefore enlightenment? Didn’t it make sense that the purported da Vinci portrait of Jesus would portray an androgynous figure because the Christ must embody and personify all that is righteous in the feminine and masculine. The best of everything. And speaking of perfection, the Oilers need 40 goals from their fourth line and better goaltending.

All these things. All these things add up. All these vignettes stored, milled and put through the hopper. They colour my night dreams, sometimes they wake me up a little ahead of my bladder. A story churning. My God, how would I fare in one of those places? What would the tenor of a retirement home be like with the tail end of the baby boom cohort in residence? The Sound of Music on movie night just wouldn’t do. I thought about high school: its cliques, the new student, its dynamics, crushes on girls and smoking in the boys’ room. I thought about Hogan’s Heroes and Stalag 17,  finks and ferrets, rules and confinement, non-adherence.

I dread the thought of having to play out the end of the game in such a place whatever the marketing brochures promise. It could happen: you just don’t know; you never can tell. What would I take when time and space got tight? So many books and record albums. Meaningful pieces of furniture. All the pictures on the walls. Shoeboxes overflowing with mementos and curling snapshots. A threadbare twentieth century t-shirt. An Expos baseball cap. It’s the dessert island scenario for a glutton, the entire buffet is out of the question. One slice of cake, one wedge of pie and as many cookies and brownies as your pockets will hold.

I began to type in May, 2022. My Hilroy exercise book was filled with notes. I decided to run with a first-person narrator again because that technique, that single point of view, allows some leeway for narrative inconsistencies and outright mistakes. They’re not my fault! Tom Danger from Of Course You Did was still in my head (I still don’t know if his surname is on his birth certificate or just in his mind). I knew his backstory inside and out. I decided to run with his voice again, but pitch it fifteen or twenty years into the future. Write what you know – less research. Besides, fiction is made up.

So, a new book due sometime in 2025. Just a Boy Again is not a sequel to Of Course You Did. It’s merely a continuation of that voice. That may sound like a very precious distinction, but I sell so few books that an actual, proper sequel would be an utterly pointless exercise. The continuing futility of my need to create is already enough, maybe too much, for me. But having just dropped my pen in September 2024 after many drafts and lots of fussing, I’m compelled to tell you that I’m feeling all right, pretty good myself.                              

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Stop the Presses! Please.

The fourth estate, an objective, free and tactile press, is a pillar of democracy. Therefore, paid display advertising must be its plinth. Things have changed.

I remember watching a CD-ROM demo on my work station’s brand-new Apple computer (a confusing and intimidating upgrade from my IBM Selectric typewriter, set of Letraset font sheets, clip art, ruby tape, hot wax and blue pencils) that explained how the Internet (a proper noun back then) worked. It was, I don’t know, some overly sophisticated arcade game, a Star Trek upgrade to radio waves and television signals. A telecommunications step forward provided you had a machine to access it. A visual medium underpinned by print, the Internet would simply be another magazine, a compendium. I couldn’t grasp the difference between analogue and digital. How could I?

Slide rules are clever, elegant instruments. I could never get the hang of them. God bless Texas Instruments for their calculators which I found difficult to employ beyond their grade school arithmetic functions. My essential advertising production tools were a little more primitive. Two newspaper-branded rulers: one for broadsheet publications which displayed column widths in inches, centimetres and picas (a printer’s measure) and another for tabloid formats. Tabloid papers scale their type horizontally on vertical broadsheet newsprint, so four pages become eight. One display ad becomes two, completely different dimensions. This arcana really matters as deadline nears. Time is always too tight to massage panic.

When I eventually broke into the advertising industry, I was beyond ecstatic. No more grimy sweatpants on the midnight shift. Work became more interesting even if the negative dynamics of my new job were no different from my old one. Other people. If you’re on a career path, man, you better be engaged. Over time I became aware that some of my practical skills – shaky expertise with an X-Acto knife – had become utterly useless even as the fundamental theories of producing a good advertisement remained constant. While the message remained, the means of production and methods of delivery were transitioning. Digital disruption is something akin to encroaching floodwaters. You can sandbag it for a time. It seems like a little extra work, a little extra hassle, but everything will be preserved as it was, damage minimal. A a carpet to replace, a little paint, an insurance claim. Then the big surge comes and everything you’ve known is scoured away.  

Yesterday’s papers used to drop on doorsteps like editions of the Yellow Pages or perhaps cinderblocks. There were special sections on certain days: Tuesday fashion, Thursday careers, Friday real estate, Wednesday automotive. “Thanks to St. Jude for favour received” classifieds always. Weighty weekend editions were stuffed with features and inserts: flyers, television magazines, colour comics.

Last Saturday’s Edmonton Journal print edition (an increasingly crucial distinction these days) dropped on the Crooked 9’s front porch as skimpy as its Monday edition except that the Journal no longer publishes a Monday edition because nothing happens anywhere over a weekend. The Journal, a broadsheet, was once the newspaper of record in Alberta’s capital city. Its sports section (24 August) consisted of four pages tucked away at the back of another section. There were 14 stories in the sports section, one of which was a four-sentence cut line beneath a photograph of a golfer searching for her ball in the rough at the British Women’s Open. Other stories were datelined Japan, Netherlands, Czech Republic and United States. The Canadian stories, just three, were out of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Sports doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things; it’s just another form of leisure distraction, ultimately meaningless. We all know this. But it can be an interesting diversion from hard news. I also know that here in my town last weekend the U Sports University of Alberta varsity teams were gearing up; I know that the professional football Elks are no longer a community-owned club; I know the hockey Oilers are in a twist over salary cap issues; and I know there is talk of the baseball Riverhawks jumping a level from the West Coast League. And I assume some Albertans, perhaps even a few Edmontonians, will be competing in some capacity in the Paris 2024 Paralympics. If your big city daily is incapable of covering local sports, not one jaded reporter on the beat, you’re compelled to wonder about more important stuff, city hall and civic issues. Just how slack is my newspaper’s coverage? There’s only one conclusion.

The Edmonton Journal is a Postmedia property. Postmedia is a national newspaper chain (providing integrated multi-tiered advertising platforms that blah, blah blah …). It remains the financial hostage of an American hedge fund (Chatham Asset Management) that squeezes out cash in the form of endless interest payments with the indifference of a hungry boa constrictor. Wall Street loan-sharking. Regular people visit the pawn shop or skip town. Struggling corporations hollow themselves out – always the core (editorial staff and capital assets such as printing plants in Postmedia’s case), never the incompetents in the executive suite. The next step was a plea for government welfare, because, fucking hell, the corner office never saw the paradigm shifting.

Advertising is a simple game: a compelling message delivered to the widest target audience by the most effective and cost-efficient means available. And the advertising industry is the same as the porn industry in that any upgrade to an existing medium or, even better, the creation of a new one, can make it better. Bang for your buck. The internet provided cheap space in a popular place while continuing to refine its reach. Location, location, location. At the same time, a funny thing happened on the way to the digital chat forum.

Newspapers such as The Edmonton Journal began posting exclusive content, traditionally paid for in part by subscribers and casual newsstand readers, for free on social media in exchange for a “Like” and a “Share.” Whatever the initial free-for-all spirit of the internet, there was no value proposition there for an entity that sold curated information, be it news or advertising (advertising can be helpful information you never sought out). The aftermath is Ottawa’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act. Postmedia lobbied hard for the new medium to subsidize its publishing of its same old story, the song and dance being the threat to informed democracy – this from a media corporation (its name is now ironic) shilling irrelevant content. Google complied. Meta (which owns Facebook) refused, rightfully arguing that it’s a mere platform for all kinds of shit and not a publisher, subsequently blocking all Canadian news from its sites. Advertisers sided with Meta.

Postmedia last week completed the purchase of SaltWire Network, an insolvent chain of newspapers in Atlantic Canada. Cuts to editorial staff were instantaneous. Why shouldn’t a failing company buy a bankrupt one? Makes sense. Postmedia is now the proprietor of unread newspapers from coast to coast. And now let’s cut to the chase or a journalism crime – a very wordy lead: An incompetent and failing newspaper corporation beholden to American financiers and propped up in part by Canadian government regulations extorting cash from American tech companies has reinvented itself as a near monopoly and a paragon of local journalism. Something’s got to give.

There’s got to be a better way. Postmedia must die and not just palliatively, its death must be hastened. Rip out Ottawa’s IV tube and snuff it with its own pillow. Something else will take its place. I cannot imagine what that, or they, may be, but people whose mission it is to competently inform other people who demand to be properly informed will find a way and make it pay. Advertisers will follow. Content is a draw, a lure, a reason to read. The death of Postmedia doesn’t mean the death of journalism.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Field Notes from a Strange Land, Strong and Free

Summer’s here, all is quiet on the western front. The political scene in Alberta is relatively dormant, the legislature is on recess until the fall session. Irregardlessly, a couple of items in last week’s news caught my eye.

The CBC reported that the Banshee of Invermectin, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, has been holding closed-door town hall meetings around the province with the United Conservative Party membership, the good folk who have paid their dues. She’s aware a leadership review is scheduled for November and she’s very aware of the fate inflicted upon her predecessor, Jason Kenney, by the UCP’s lunatic fringe which she has placated and pandered to.

I was amused to death to learn the premier, architect of an ersatz Alberta sovereignty act, deflected a question about chemtrails in Calgary. What did her government intend to do about them? Contrails occur when condensation generated by jet engines meets awfully frigid air at 30,000 feet. Chemtrails are a little more sinister. They are evidence of an ultra-secret federal government plot to sterilize the populace by spraying a sort of, I don’t know, libido retardant. Obviously, Air Canada, WestJet and Porter are onboard with the program. Why Ottawa would sterilize a populace skewing older is something of a mystery to me. On the other hand, if you’re anti-immigrant, wouldn’t it be a good thing if all the shifty foreigners in this country were unable to reproduce?

(This just in: I’ve since been informed chemtrails are an element of a grand international cabal’s mind control scheme and they’re working beyond a doubt because people like me think that’s ludicrous. It’s common knowledge the cabal is comprised of German and Jewish bankers, Bill Gates and Ernst Stavro Blofeld but not Elon Musk.)

The premier replied that aviation was a federal jurisdiction. Apparently in this particular instance, fucking Trudeau wasn’t overstepping his bounds. The premier then allowed that her pertinent minister would follow up with their federal counterpart regarding the matter.

On Saturday the Calgary Herald’s Don Braid, seemingly the last Postmedia political pundit left standing in these parts, related a chat with UCP MLA (Calgary-Lougheed) Eric Bouchard who said he was working closely with Premier Smith’s minister of health to ban covid-19 vaccinations in Alberta. Said minister has, sensibly (somewhat UCP unusually), maintained her distance. Libertarians are a curious bunch. They resent government but they like to be part of it. And individual freedom of course, so loved, so valued, is best exercised when there are no choices available to muddle your thinking.

This is hazy, summer under the radar, crazy stuff. But the calendar turns. These people will soon get back to work writing and enacting legislation. Albertans should be aware that their premier patronized a lunatic by not simply admonishing them for being batshit crazy. There are some 42,000 people in Bouchard’s urban riding, about 29,000 of whom are eligible voters. I’ve my doubts they cast their ballots in favour of a mutating virus, a legislative super-spreader and another pandemic (all in one!). Just a hunch. Fortunately, the health care system is like a Philips TV, solid state, and there’s more beds available in the ERs and ICUs than there are at the Jasper Park Lodge. Calgary-Lougheed was former premier Kenney’s seat, founder of the insane big top UCP circus tent. In retrospect, his tragic flaw was being something of a rational man, Jesuit educated and all, only to be undone by intellects that strike moderate conservative partisans as a bit backward two and a half decades into the 21st century.

Winter’s just around the corner.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is slightly dusty, but up to date.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Just a Shot Awry

Our world has reached the Platonic ideal of an existential state, filled with dread and threats both real and perceived. Absurdly, some of us wonder what happened and how we got here. Others, myself included, become cynical, jaded and, ultimately, numb.

Last Saturday some kid in Pennsylvania took his one shot at immortality, winging der Trumpenfuhrer in the ear as the former United States president and current Republican presidential nominee was speaking at a rally. The weapon used was an assault rifle, as easy to acquire in an open carry state as a Phillies or Pirates baseball cap. The result might’ve been very different had the shooter shelled out for a bump stock, a device which transforms an AR-15 into a machine gun.

I read the CBC New report while on a union break, five minutes for a cigarette on the front porch of the Crooked 9. I thought, “He missed.” It was an objective thought: just another gun incident south of 49. Ann, like me, is a reluctant and self-loathing news junkie. I assumed she’d seen the story. I didn’t bother mentioning it. I went downstairs and got back to whatever it was I’d been scribbling away at.

Sunday morning while we were enjoying our al fresco coffees Ann looked up from her iPhone doom scroll and exclaimed, “Somebody tried to assassinate Trump yesterday!”

Because I’m Canadian, I said, “Sorry!” I continued, “I thought you knew; it didn’t strike me as news.”

“Just another day in the USA,” Ann replied.

I said, “Yeah.”

From Kennedys to King, concertgoers, school children, religious congregations, nightclub patrons and even Batman movie fans for Christ’s sake, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America has exacted its toll. The depressing fact about a loaded gun is that like a directional arrow it can be pointed in any direction. The national carnage is self-inflicted. Its victims, some famous and privileged but most anonymous, are all equals now – just like the US Constitution’s preamble states. This latest and particularly odious survivor of gun violence (as of last week, so, stale data) during his first presidential run speculated that maybe “Second Amendment people” would address the problem of “lying Hillary”, sort her out – but he didn’t really know.

Ann read on, read aloud. Der Trumpenfuhrer’s post-incident statement, surprisingly non-combustible, expressed incredulity that such a thing could happen in America. Ann and I looked at one another and said to each other at the same time, “Really?”

How did it come to this? How could this happen? It’s only been bubbling under and boiling over for decades. If only those on the left side of the partisan divide would dial down their inflammatory rhetoric. By the way, thoughts and prayers for the collateral damage, the dead and severely wounded, innocent bystanders, “heroes” whose names have already been forgotten.

The Secret Service’s expertise combined with an IHOP edible petroleum product dollop of luck outside its secure perimeter averted a national catastrophe (“Tragedy” is not only an execrable Bee Gees song, it’s too strong a word) in the belly of the elephant next door to Canada. The nefarious and shadowy “deep state”, tacitly tied to the Biden crime family squatting in the White House, was foiled once more. Alternatively, der Trumpenfuhrer campaign’s brains trust could have been blinded by a light, a certain kind of light, a collective “Come to Jesus” epiphany following repeated viewings of Clint Eastwood’s Hang ‘Em High: This time the sharpshooter will miss!

This week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee resembled a deranged tour of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. Simpering, sycophantic bandages of solidarity. The pathetic symbolism is important for a couple of reasons. Deaf in one ear obviously. What rankles is the bit of gauze, the bit of tape; the cultish gesture's props are as meaninglessly dramatic as the plastic flowers and teddy bears reverently placed at the sites of mass shootings: elementary schools, shopping malls, softball diamonds …         

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.

A FAN’S NOTES

This Year’s Model

Last year the Rolling Stones released their first album of original material (a brief, sparse and astonishingly poignant epitaph/tribute excepted) in … I don’t know in how many years now – somebody else can do the math. Hackney Diamonds was a sort of K-Tel compilation pastiche: The Sounds of the 70’s! The record had no business being as good as it is. Times, tastes and sensibilities have changed, but the Stones haven’t. The business school lesson here is never intractably pivot from your core expertise, don’t dismiss what made you successful in the first place.

(Should you be prompted to delve into Hackney Diamonds, keep in mind that Mick and Keith are the same age as the President of the United States. Remember too that both their lifestyles were somewhat more excessive than Hunter Biden’s.)

This year’s Hackney Diamonds, that’s to say an improbably welcome return to form is Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. It’s a Netflix exclusive, very different from the “straight to video” kiss of death. It’s the fourth installment in the series. Who knew there’d been a third? That Netflix is reaching back to the eighties for recycled original content, standard American filmmaking operational procedure these days, is another discussion. Axel F has no business being as entertainingly diverting as it is. You can guess the plot; my sense is that everyone involved decided to have fun with the formula (the dig at Beverly Hills Cop III in one scene is subtle but priceless) as opposed to just making the best of it.

The Eddie Murphy I remember imagined James Brown in a hot tub (“Water! Huh! Hot! Huh!”), relocated Mr Rogers’s neighbourhood to the ‘hood, and mused aloud what it might be like to sodomize Mr T. 48 Hours (Nick Nolte) and Trading Places (Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis) were movies worth paying for. When Murphy began reprising roles made famous by the likes of Rex Harrison and Jerry Lewis I looked away.

The track record of Saturday Night Live cast members in movies is dismal. “Spotty” is perhaps more diplomatic. A sketch becomes excruciating when stretched out to feature length. I once paid a dollar to see Wayne’s World in a repertory cinema and deeply regretted the waste of money. Trademark shticks are best buried in an ensemble cast or at least offset by a co-star with a different routine and maybe even one with genuine acting chops (see above). Still, the producers and the stars keep grinding out what they believe the fans want and we usually end up with what we deserve to be served.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a retread that doesn’t feel tired. Key members of the original cast (Bronson Pinchot!) return to share screen time with Murphy and that aspect gives the movie a refresher quality because I don’t imagine anybody alive has seen 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop recently – that’s the last time I saw it. Axel F is good enough for the cynic in me to suggest that its backers will view the film as a relaunch of a franchise now deemed worthy of being flogged to death.

I also understand that the Stones are planning another for early next year.  

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

The Sometimes Dismal Universality of Everything

“Where’s the Burger King sign?”

“By the spire.”

“Which one?”

When Ann and I go grocery shopping together I push the cart. We have a list. When I look back behind me, I frequently find she’s nowhere to be seen. My little magpie has flown, utterly enchanted in a magical land of shiny objects. Something similar happens when we’re disoriented tourists. I tend to march off in the wrong direction heading for the correct landmark. When I pause to look back, see where Ann is, I often find myself alone. The Dutch must have a word for “compass” because Holland was a sea-faring country to be reckoned with in Western Europe back when colonialism and imperialism were hip. They must. Tripping over cobblestones in Amsterdam, feeling groovy, we agreed that should we somehow become separated, a pre-planned rendezvous by the rubber duck store or the cheese shop was pointless. There’s too many of them and their display windows are all yellow anyway, they look the same. You know, those two ubiquitous retailers should merge and hawk duck-shaped cheeses; serious kitsch, fromage; wooden tulips as a sideline.

Our first morning in Amsterdam, a tad too grotty after a night flight (possibly my favourite Led Zeppelin song), Ann and I passed through a shopping concourse in the train station, hurrying in the wrong direction, seeking the tram platforms only to find the waterfront and ferries. I noticed a store that seemed to sell New York Yankees caps exclusively. Not one in the display window was the team’s proper base navy colour. The abominations covered the entire visual spectrum. I hate the Yankees. Filter: I do not care for the American League’s New York baseball club.

Now cursed with unintentional awareness, I was dismayed to see the narrow streets of central Amsterdam teeming with ersatz Yankees baseball caps. I stopped counting. Distant second place was a three-way tie between the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and, oddly, Oakland’s A’s. I clocked one sad sack midwestern Generation Zed frat boy wearing a St. Louis Cardinals cap with the foil 59-50 sticker still on the factory-flat brim like some sort of “playa” badge. Dear me; I assumed he’d get rolled later that night while staggering around the Red Light District, bent over and vomiting into the canal.

Because I’m a twentieth century boy and I know just what the fax is and I still do the rock, when I can get it, I couldn’t help but notice all the AC/DC t-shirts out and about. Four of the band’s albums are downstairs in the Crooked 9’s CD library; none of them have ever been spun front to back. Stuck in selfie-taking pedestrian traffic on a Herengracht canal bridge I managed to read the back of one fellow’s black concert merch. The Power Up tour had descended upon the Johan Cruyff Arena (home pitch of AFC Ajax) just the night before. Had I known, I might’ve been tempted although, like other local attractions, I should’ve purchased advance tickets from Canada. Conversely, I can’t imagine Anne Frank Haus and Van Gogh Museum ticket scalpers. The Rolling Stones have branded Earth (and Mars) better than Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Hard Rock Café and sludgy Starbucks. I didn’t look the other way while the planet got licked, I joined the tribe, got the uniform, contributed to the pop art infestation. Whatever your opinion of Jagger as a performer, a singer, a writer-composer or a dusty and dated cultural icon, you must concede him his business and marketing acumen. Every bullshit business school there ever was should grant him an honourary MBA. The music tee that really struck a chord with me was worn by a young woman. Nirvana. She was too young to grieve Cobain’s Hemingway departure, but I gathered she would’ve if she could’ve; she wore it well.

Our short-term rental, a one-bedroom efficiency apartment with compact dining and sitting areas, the suggestion of a galley kitchen and Frans Hals on the wall was located inside central Amsterdam’s Southern Canal Ring. Ann and I were tourists in a tourist zone. While we walked around trying to work out where locals may go, I noticed numerous TE HUUR signs posted. I thought maybe Te Huur was a real estate company, like Re/Max, but there were too many properties available. FOR RENT – took a while. Apparently, Amsterdam, like Edmonton, like most of the rich world, hasn’t worn covid-19’s fallout particularly well or uniformly. 

Amid the ubiquity of wooden tulip kitsch, round Heineken signs and the brands and logos we’ve all seen, stands the bloody-minded universal constant: the Irish pub. The two we favoured weren’t quite as ersatz as maroon Yankees caps; Ireland is a member of the European Union and its diaspora is free to move about the continent. The long-established pub spaces were beaten up, scratched, scarred, heavily abused and devoid of pretension, remotely authentic enough.

Dan Murphy’s (an Australian brewery and brand) Irish Bar is on Leidseplein, a public plaza. The space, should you be habitually trotting off in the wrong direction, was dominated by a rooftop Burger King sign, big enough to eclipse the intermittent sun, a landmark. After a day tripping train ride out of the city or tripping over cobblestones in it, Ann and I liked to sit outside with our backs to the bar beneath Murphy’s awning and watch the people and the rain, rainy day people. 

I thought Amsterdam rain smelled different from Edmonton’s, maybe because of weather off the North Sea, maybe only because I imagined it did. Travel does that: different scenes, different atmosphere. And a different conversation as Ann and I review what really played out as a brand new day and make plans for the morrow, another one just like it; the items of concern we share about the everyday, looming nits to pick on the home front, become cards shuffled to the bottom of the deck. 

Should an Irish drinking establishment even bother with food, there will be a toastie on the menu. At home in the Crooked 9 that’s a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, a quick mealtime bite because some obligation is pressing. In a foreign Irish pub with a kitchen no cleaner than the men’s toilet, a toastie seems a delicacy. Must be the pattern of the scorch marks on the bread – they’re different.

Another Irish pub we kept returning to was beside a Pathe movie theatre, near the outdoor tulip market. I believe its name was TV Satellite Sports. The earthy bulbs for sale nearby were brighter than the two expat barmen who had the run of the place. Refills were hard to come by and empty glasses were apparently glued to the bar. The chattier of the pair had very short hair and grey teeth. He was a virulent anti-papist who harboured a similar loathing of Britain’s Royal Family. Ann and I were utterly charmed by his rants (but not his spittle), especially after we realized all he thought he knew derived from Netflix dramatizations. Ironically, his mate bore a strong physical resemblance to the Spare. The eerie doppelganger stuff that didn’t stop there, no, this good natured fellow proved as harmlessly thick.

Early one afternoon I asked Prince Harry where the joint’s jukebox was because Ann and I had been chatting through twenty minutes of “Dancing in the Dark”, a good song, possibly a great one (the original 45 picture sleeve defined Springsteen’s oeuvre, a rockstar in cool clothing regular people don’t know where to buy, leaping about in an unfinished, cinderblock garage; that’s me sometimes in front of a mirror), but not as repeat-worthy as Celine Dion’s cover of “You Shook Me All Night Long”. It proved a difficult question. Eventually the three of us established the music came from a Spotify playlist programmed into TV Satellite Sports’s house cellphone. The pub was as empty as the broken commode in the men’s room. I wondered if Prince Harry might have a moment to take requests, play a couple of songs for Ann and me. There was this Canadian band we both really liked … called The Muster Point Project …

Now, our “One Country” Benelux Eurail pass could have taken Ann and me anywhere in the Low Countries, an impractical dream. But everywhere we went, Haarlem, Utrecht and in Belgium, Antwerp and Bruges, we saw Irish pubs.

“It’s a fecking fairy tale place, innit?”

We had to wonder if In Bruges, a sly, small buddy film about Irish hitmen making themselves temporarily scarce, was a blessing or a curse for the city’s council and tourism bureau. It really does present as a crime-free magical kingdom, a Brothers Grimm place of Walt Disney wet dreams. Ann and I spent a night there and would’ve spent two if our holiday wasn’t winding down and had we known better. Our impromptu bed and breakfast booking was, some questionable décor decisions aside, plastic flowers strewn about, a conveniently located, intimate operation which we managed to check into after a couple of wrong door knocks and a detour into the courtyard of some imposing red brick, God-fearing seminary that didn’t even rate a call-out on the complimentary tourist map.

The cafés ringing the astonishing circular Markt of course thrive on the tourist influx. One of them almost saw Ann and me coming. Hungry, we were seduced by a sandwich board on the cobblestones by a flowerpot outside an iron terrasse railing advertising steak et frites for an unbelievably reasonable price. The menus we were presented told a different story of many euros more. I mentioned the special to the waiter. Ah! A second menu was reluctantly produced. I had Flemish stew, possibly made with real phlegm.

We met a Parisian couple over breakfast, about our ages although a bit more stylish in dress; my Stones tongue t-shirt didn’t rate. The ice took a while to crack. Eventually the four of us got around to discussing the European parliament and the off-putting D-Day (June 6 – our Amsterdam apartment was two doors down from a polling place and, coincidently, an Italian diplomatic office) election results. Germany, Italy and France had swung to the populist right. The shock was enough to prompt French President Macron to call a snap election (still playing out in a confusing mess). Monsieur said he was afraid these times we live in were evocative of the thirties, an era Churchill described succinctly as The Gathering Storm (in some 600 pages). The four of us were just one generation removed from what legendary journalist Studs Terkel called “The Good War” and not ill-informed about current affairs and twentieth century history. A collective memory, a hive mentality persists. The new bad guys (almost the same as the old bad guys) have it too, like a fever. 

The ice really melted when our companions learned Ann and I were Canadian. Together we pissed all over the United States, Republicans mainly. (Here I must confess to a lack of filtration. A Greek restauranteur with long grey hair, kinky, greasy, interrupted us one Amsterdam evening while Ann and I were reading his menu. He asked, innocently enough, if we were American. I told him to fuck off.) Ann and I were duly diligent, forthcoming over breakfast in Bruges, embarrassed enough to admit that Canada is lurching in the same direction. These Parisians hated Parisian waiters; they weren’t thrilled about their city’s Olympic summer either. We would’ve enjoyed sharing another meal with them.

The street our B&B was on hop-scotched names. I spent half an hour pinpointing its approximate location on our map. Ann and I spent most of our second day in Bruges slowly working our way back toward the train station. We took our time, stopping at a site, for sight or a bite. We managed this because Ann held our map upside down. What’s the draw of magnetic north anyway? If we’d only hit upon this reverse orienteering technique in Haarlem and Utrecht, let alone Amsterdam.

After each spending a euro to use the train station’s toilets we sat together waiting for an express to Brussels. We agreed we wished we had a little more time, but we hadn’t wasted what we had.

“Would you want to come back here?”

I said, “Yeah, it’s different. Man, it’s different, the same but different. What a wonderful day. Maybe, if we go overseas again, next time we arrive from Ireland? There’s a fecking ferry.”       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.