A FAN’S NOTES

Oh, How We Howled

The saga of the NHL Coyotes is almost biblical. Jettisoned from Manitoba the club spent thirty years wandering in the Arizona desert before Great Salt Lake parted (evaporated, actually) to reveal the Promised Land: Utah.

Coyote wandering eventually led to a sort of breather in Glendale, a city of some 250,000 on the outskirts of the Phoenix metroplex. I saw a game there, maybe twenty years ago. I recall a short, quaint main street, sort of a southwest postcard cliché. The team played in a brand-new arena whose naming rights were purchased by Jobing.com – I never did learn what that company did before it ceased to exist. Glendale bet its future on pro sports. In addition to the arena, the city built a football stadium for the NFL Cardinals (Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix). The city also gave five hundred acres of land to the MLB Dodgers and White Sox, enticement to join the Cactus League, play nine innings now and then in March. None of these initiatives paid out double at the window.

The Jobing rink was empty. I clocked the men’s room and the beer station in the concourse by my section. When I ordered my first beer the vendor asked for a picture ID. I was pushing fifty. He lingered a moment over my Alberta learner’s driving permit. We chatted, there was time because nobody, not another soul was around. I felt pretty exclusive, personal bartender and all. I tipped him generously: Remember me. When I returned for a second one, he began pouring it as I approached the counter. He asked me for my ID again. I said, “Really?” “It’s the law.” We went through that ritual a few more times.

I watched Jeremy Roenick as the pre-game skate wound down. He patiently and diligently distributed pucks to the few kids who’d ventured down to the glass in the home team’s end. He underhanded some like softballs, golf chipped others with the blade of his stick. All that diplomatic effort on behalf of a lousy team in a lousy location where buying a cup of beer is as complicated as a Fanny Mae or Freddy Mac mortgage application. Maybe that’s why he’s the only Coyote I can name.  

I still enjoy sports. Not as much as I used to, but I try and keep current even if the results and standings in my morning newspaper are incomplete and stale, day-old; I don’t watch network TV. There was a time when the circus was desperately important; when I could name most of the players on most of the teams in the leagues I cared about. These days I lean more toward the old timers and their colourful old stories. I’ve more interest in Stan Mikita than Chicago’s current “generational” rookie phenom whose name escapes me. My creative impulses and lifelong appreciation of graphic design keep me in modern games: team laundry (home, road and alternates) and logos (primary and secondary) always intrigue.

I belong to a public Facebook group that frets about athletic aesthetics. Stuff can get hilariously though inadvertently arcane. Still, even pedants are capable of actual humour. One fellow suggested NHL Utah should follow in tradition set by the NBA’s Jazz and name the club for a genre of music no one in the state has ever heard: the Reggae. I laughed. Speculation on the transplanted franchise’s colours and nickname is rife. The sweeping generalization, the common misconception of Utah, is that it’s a theocratic outlier state in the Union south of 49. Holier, but as distinct in popular perception as the white supremacist state of Idaho, if only because Jesus spent the inaugural Easter long weekend on an impromptu getaway to Provo. Maybe Ogden. I don’t know: Saints, Pioneers, Bishops, Hypocrites and Polygamists (that one compliments of the 300 Club’s Uncivil Servant) might be in play.

When I was still in the game, I had, because of various client contracts and agreements, extensive dealings with a printing company in Salt Lake City. I hosted members of that shop’s team dedicated to my Calgary firm’s account a couple of times. They were good people, a dedicated, competent crew. Not one of them had been born in Utah, they’d all moved for work and couldn’t wait to leave. The message dismayed me as we were getting things done together and I trusted them, but at the same time it was important information to be aware of, to file away. I suspect Salt Lake City will become the new place of NHL exile, the most popular destination in no-trade clauses.

My only experience with Salt Lake City was a layover at its airport for a few hours, waiting on the last leg of a journey home. I was relieved to find a bar with ashtrays because I’d imagined the facility as a sort of dry non-believer hell. I think the bartop was zinc. I settled in near the ale taps, one eye on the arrivals and departures screen and the other on an afternoon west coast ball game – Giants maybe, possibly the 49ers; I really don’t remember. But I do the remember the cowboy customer. He walked in, boots and bowed legs. Whatever you may picture as his hat and jacket, you’d not be wrong. He reminded me of the dude mascot on the cover of every single Pure Prairie League album. He sat down beside me and nodded a greeting. He lit a Marlboro. He ordered a shot of bourbon with a Budweiser chaser. He repeated the process twice more inside of half an hour. Then he nodded farewell and ambled out. The “Cowboy” I’d known in Edmonton as a barfly friend and who was stabbed to death by his mail-order Filipina girlfriend had nothing on this guy.

To avoid overtones and undertones, it’s possible NHL Utah could turn to Zane Grey, author of the genre classic Riders of the Purple Sage. Salt Lake may become home to Cowboys, Rustlers, Wranglers, Outlaws or Rodeo Clowns. The Coyotes name will stay farther south as the newly bereft Arizona ownership group is expected to be granted an expansion franchise within the next five years. What could go wrong? That diehard core of hundreds of taxpayer fans will surely step up. Lazarus Coyotes would suggest a necessary balancing, an expansion team in the already bloated league’s Eastern Conference. I understand that Atlanta’s primed because the failures of the Flames and Thrashers provided the city a proven hockey town pedigree.                                 

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.

NONSENSE VERSE

See You for Tea by the Sea Next Tuesday

I confess I remain somewhat mystified as to why The Muster Point Project rejected these lyrics. Cringeworthy, perhaps.

A tinge on the fringe of her fascist minge

Yellow, like Jell-O and left by a fellow

A lover, above her and under the cover

A disease if you please, a source of unease

Her doctor and proctor snorted and mocked her

That smell, Danielle, sulphuric as hell

She had a notion, a potion, a lotion

To fix in a stitch a bitch of an itch

To reign insane in the political game

The cure was impure and so we endure                       

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.

A FAN’S NOTES

CKUA Spring Fundraising Drive

When you ask them, How much can we give? They only answer, More, more, more! – Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Fortunate Son”

Transmit the message to the receiver, hope for an answer some day – Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime”

Sometimes, a big ask is genuine, from a desperate heart.

The radio in the Crooked 9 is like the one in “Roadrunner” by the Modern Lovers, on for a stretch. Ann and I tend to tune in for two or three hours each morning while we enjoy our coffees and newspaper sections. Our default FM frequency setting is CKUA, Alberta’s public radio station, which has been broadcasting since 1927. Our AM band alternative is CBC Radio One. Canadian readers of this blog who pay attention to actual news (a legitimate source, unbiased, just facts, context and information) will note that the “Mother Corp.” was graced with a very plump $42-million plum in this week’s federal budget – no complaints here except that maybe buying more rights to more idiotic American game shows for the television arm is cultural heresy, or just lazy – I digress.

CKUA is a legacy institution, a heritage institution that predates the formation of the CBC. It contributes to Alberta’s cultural life and, crucially, promotes and chronicles the province’s arts and culture scene in real time. That’s a major mandate and a self-imposed one at that. There is nothing else quite like CKUA in Alberta, maybe even all of Canada. Listeners are free to tune in to anything out there on the airwaves. If “Brown Sugar” is commercial-corporate radio, CKUA is “Moonlight Mile” and “Sway”. Its programming is essentially formatless. The menu of shows and the genres its hosts concentrate on is extensive: jazz, funk, blues, country, classical, choral, world beat, reggae, rap and all their fantastical hybrids. 

The odds of CKUA surviving long enough to celebrate its centennial are looking long. Skin of its teeth but not fly by night, the station survives mainly on donations from its audience of nearly half a million people, only a fraction of whom actually chip in. Government grants are miniscule. Advertising revenue, mainly because there’s very little, is minimal. Ann and I are regular donors.

Money’s too tight to mention; things are tough all over: The ability to contemplate a donation of any size after your own needs and obligations have been seen to is something of a gift in itself. There are some 80,000 registered charities in Canada on top of other tax deductible giving options – together they almost all add up to the number of paint swatches at Home Depot. Choosing isn’t easy. I figure God doesn’t need my money, so He/She/They/It is out. I’ve never donated to a political party because I look at the shallow talent pool and figure pond scum doesn’t need feeding. Ecology, medical research and treatments, educational institutions, food banks, street ministries, youth athletics …

To me, a society with a sterile cultural life defined and exemplified by the books it bans and Disney+ substituting for soma really is a Brave New World dystopia. Admittedly, CKUA has been precious from time to time, flawed. Old songs whose lyrics may be perceived as insensitive by evolving contemporary standards have been introduced with trigger warnings. "Coloured” was bleeped from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”. And, so help me God, Ann and I once heard an utterly wretched, breathy, Diana Krall-inspired, airport Holiday Inn cocktail lounge happy hour light jazz version of “After the Gold Rush” as sung by (we imagined) an anorexic waif. Sometimes, you know, you have to twist the input knob on the tuner and put AC/DC in the CD player. On the other hand, thank you CKUA for introducing us to Eddie 9V and Shaela Miller. Overall, Ann and I as listeners have been winners, chart toppers by virtue of sitting in our kitchen.

Albertans need arts and culture in all of their forms: high, low and pop. Like CKUA’s programming, we don’t have to like or appreciate all of it, but it’s got to be available, even just to dismiss, sneer at. The province (the country and the world) is a big and magically diverse place, sometimes too big to see until something like CKUA supplies a proper lens.

CKUA’s spring fundraising drive is underway now. For more comprehensive information about the current tenuous state of affairs at this venerable public radio station and its programming schedule visit www.ckua.com where you can also tune in and listen from virtually anywhere on the globe.                          

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 (as heard on CKUA) 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. 

CORRESPONDENCE: DEAR meGEOFF

A Letter from Tony to the Consumers

Eccentric, itinerant and intermittent correspondent Tony Intas has returned to his home turf of Montreal following a pleasant winter in Florida. There was some shopping to be done, errands to run. A market-savvy retiree, Tony’s not cheap, just genetically predisposed to thriftiness.   

I am doing a “Happy Dance” today. Julian, my beloved uncle and godfather, the "Give me a discount so we have a deal king of Montreal" is smiling from Heaven.

I was at my local Walmart, or "Marte de Muir" as it known by nobody here in La Belle Province. I queued up in the "Cash only" line. Excellent customer service strategy on the part of this multinational conglomerate. This was the first time I had ever experienced such preferential treatment. Wait ... it gets BETTER!!!!!

When I looked at my bill, I noticed that I was not given the discount deal of "Buy two for the reduced price of ..." for which I thought I was entitled on a certain item. I was then directed to Customer Service who in turn verified that the shelf price, not the till price, was correct. I did not know this was Walmart (or Marte de Muir) policy, but in the case of a cash register programming error, the customer is entitled to one item FREE, IN ADDITION to the reduced-price equivalent on the other item.

Oh boy!!!!!

Not only did I get a free bottle of salad dressing - low fat because after all it will be swimsuit season soon - I also purchased my favourite Easter chocolates at 50% off, which they still had LOTS of!!!!!

Today, I was reminded of two important lessons: (1) know your prices; (2) always check your receipt.

I do not think my Uncle and Godfather Julian ever knew of this Walmart (Marte de Muir) deal. And he knew them all. And he taught me well.  The torch has been passed and I hold it high in his memory …

Readers of this blog who find themselves in places where they don’t normally find themselves, actual or otherwise, are encouraged to write meGeoff a letter detailing their experiences and impressions. Get in touch with me. I’m on Facebook. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Don’t Call Us

We can work in factory/And make misery/Frustrated Incorporated – Soul Asylum, “Misery”

I’m schizophrenic. Not because I’m crazy but because misery loves company. But life took a real positive turn on Thursday, floored me. I was looking up at the peaks of “The Big Rock Candy Mountains” through one of those decorative, off-the-rack, temporary Facebook armchair social activist picture profile frames – mine was “raindrops on roses” brushed with kitten whiskers; non-binary unicorns with Lifesaver rainbow horns, raspberry blue Jell-O dyes on their manes and lovey-dovey, flirty ping pong ball-sized eyes elegantly dusted with Revlon eyeliner.

Ann and I had to telephone a couple of company toll-free customer service numbers. Those types of calls take some working up to, girding. Too much time and effort for no expectations, a certain less than satisfactory resolution. It’s frustrating to navigate the prerecorded keypad prompts for up to nine service options, none of which include your particular problem. When somebody actually picks up, you pray they have a clue: I’m thinking of the lovely lady in Manilla who assured me a furnace repairman would be at the Crooked 9 shortly, 24 to 48 hours hence. January, 40-below. I said, “I don’t think you understand.”

Along with Rogers Communications, Air Canada is one of Canada’s most despised companies. They have more in common than the patriotic corporate colour they share. They are the lynchpins of their respective oligopolies. Ann and I received notice from Air Canada informing us that the seats we had paid to preselect on one of the return legs of an upcoming overseas trip had been arbitrarily reassigned. We’d been separated and consigned to middle seat hell between strangers (I distinctly recalled using a row mate’s roll of belly fat as an armrest on a flight to Denver). A second notice from the airline then informed us that that particular flight would depart two hours later than scheduled.

Seven weeks prior to our departure I was stalking around our very, very fine house seething with air rage. Ann figured the required call to Air Canada customer service might be a more productive exercise if she placed it. Ann had to gird. She gave herself a pep talk: “I will be firm but polite. I will be firm but polite.” The recorded message promised a callback from a human being within 20 minutes and, by God, didn’t an Air Canada agent fulfill that bullshit promise. It took another hour but Ann managed to rearrange our return itinerary. Saints be praised, an Air Canada miracle even though the airline had created the problem and then left it in Ann’s hands to fix.

Her positive result was mildly elating. I was inspired to step up my game, make that second, procrastinated customer service call.

Eight or so years ago Ann and I undertook some extensive renovations to the Crooked 9, exterior and interior. An incidental was the installation of hardwired (battery backup) combination smoke-carbon monoxide detectors. One started chirping two weeks ago. We changed the battery. The unit kept chirping. We opened all the windows. The unit kept chirping. We removed it from its ceiling anchor. Ann suggested she review the user manual. While she was doing that a second unit began chirping, the same pattern, the same song. Built-in obsolescence; they’d gone a little beyond their intended lifespans and needed replacing.

Ann and I drove over to our usual Home Depot. The orange shelves were bereft of suitable replacements, bare. We spoke to a clerk, an “associate” in Home Depot human resources corporate jargon. This gentleman, a big box retail employee, knew his patch. He said his lack of inventory was a consequence of increasing demand for copper, a fine conductor. There are new demands on the metal, from EV batteries to solar panel arrays to crypto-currency mining, electricity’s gotta move.

I’m not sure what disturbed me more: the prospect of Ann and I dying in our sleep or the dangling wire holes in our ceiling. After a grudging and fruitless Amazon search, I summoned the verve to telephone Kidde, the alarms’ manufacturer, product number at hand. I reached Cheryl in South Carolina. I asked her where she was only because I’d learned that Canadian furnaces weren’t a huge concern in the Philippines and, anyway, smoke alarms probably don’t rate in Bangladeshi fast-fashion sweatshops or offshore sub-contracted call centres.

Cheryl said, “I’ve had so many calls from across the U.S. and Canada about the same problem.” I related the anecdotal copper theory. She said, “I’ve not heard about that. I will have to look in to it.” I asked Cheryl if Kidde offered a substitute alarm product and would it mesh with the existing anchor already screwed to our ceilings? “The harness? Yes.” Cheryl recited a product number one letter off from our dead units. “What’s your postal code?” Cheryl didn’t say “zip.” I instinctively liked Cheryl, her casual Canadianism.

I can’t imagine Cheryl is passionate about her job at the other end of a toll-free line. But maybe she does genuinely like other people and, truthfully, Ann and I often wonder what that’s like. Some people are wired differently. Cheryl is the embodiment of the Universal Law of Wham! If you’re gonna do it/Do it right, now! Cheryl is good at her job. Maybe she should run Boeing.

“There’s no inventory at Home Depot-Strathcona.” Yep, been there, done that. “Do you know Home Depot-Westmount?” I said we did, our fallback, alternative location. “There are three ‘contractor’ three-packs available on aisle 3.” Really!? And you know this from South Carolina? Now I’m getting a handle on conspiracy theories and privacy concerns in the digital age.

Aisle 3 in Home Depot-Westmount looked exactly like its sister aisle in Home Depot-Strathcona. Empty. Ann and I told the hovering associate what we were seeking. I handed the kid a slip of notepaper with Cheryl’s product number written on it.

“I’ve got this?”

“You’ve got this.”

“I don’t know.” Cheryl does.

It took a while, and a ladder. The Kidde contractor packs were inventoried on a top storage shelf of the orange rack, still sealed in their shipping carton.

Our new smoke alarms are a slight upgrade on our defunct ones. They not only chirp, they talk. And they’re bilingual too. They’ll be as annoying as Air Canada should they ever be triggered although I suppose that’s the point.                       

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.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Friday Night Blights

“‘Baby Jesus is everywhere,’ Mary said kindly.” 

“Mother of God, woman,” I whispered, unkindly, “insert a comma.”

Ann and I are sort of in a clearing house mode. Should we be fortunate enough to age and die in place here in the Crooked 9, our survivors will still have a lot packing to do. But we’re attempting to reduce the number of boxes required. Should we downsize, there won’t be a whole bunch of space for a whole bunch stuff. Our bane is books; we love them all. If you were to point to a book on one of our shelves, there’s a good chance I can tell you when, where and how it was acquired even if I’ve lost the plot.

The opportunity cost of a book, no matter how pleasurable its content, is time. There are enough unread books in the Crooked 9 to see us out. However, their subjects don’t always appeal when one of us is seeking something else to read. New stuff keeps arriving. Ann and I confer when we cull our collection. Will you ever read this book? Will you ever reread this book? And then there’s the mystery of curation. Will our survivors grasp that particular authors and certain works were of great importance to both or either of us while others were simply overlooked during a cleansing binge? Will they even care? Does any of this evidence of enlightenment at leisure really matter?

Our community league hosted a book exchange at the hall by the playground and the hockey rink Friday night. I managed to assemble a two-foot stack of spines, an array ranging from decent stuff to good stuff with a smattering of good old stuff, still unwilling to surrender great or meaningful stuff. Ann and I anticipated the social aspect of the event; we thought we might catch up with some neighbours we’d not seen over the course of another winter. The evening’s alternative diversion was blasting my new Who live album (Shea Stadium, 1982, second show). Curiously, Ann wasn’t as excited about my latest purchase as I was – it bludgeons like Lizzy Borden using the blunt end of her ax and pairs nicely with the Clash’s live set from the same night(s).

When Ann and I arrived, we realized immediately that our neighbourhood had transitioned while we were otherwise occupied. We were the only seniors there; the only grandparents. The young people running the league and who occupy the infills and new builds were strangers to us. There were children motoring around, screechy, full-tilt fun. While I seeded the lone and barren “adult books” table, Ann browsed the quartet of “children’s books” tables. She caught my eye, as she always can and does, to summon me with an arched eyebrow and a borderline subliminal nod. Ann handed me one of those glossy, indestructible toddler books called Where Is Baby Jesus? Ann moved on to another table, our grandchildren’s latent reading skills on her mind. Mine too because God knows “Elmo” and “Paw Patrol” on an iPhone just won’t do. “God, there’s got to be another way.” But who are we?

Myth tells us there was no room at the inn for Mary and Joseph, that Christ was born in a barn. They were travelling to be enumerated for Herod’s census. Chances are you’re familiar with the origin story of a Christmas creche diorama. In a different genre, they’d find space at Frankenfurter’s place – I digress. So, where is Baby Jesus? “Is He snuggling with the cows?” “Is He snuggling with the pigs?” Suckling, maybe? A quick read, a real page-turner.

Sometimes you enter a place, maybe a particularly shabby café or barroom whose atmosphere suggests danger rather than slum dive amusement, and you glean in a nanosecond that the wise thing to do is to proceed no further. My silent facial signals to Ann are less discreet than hers. “Let’s get out of here.” She read me. She rubbed an itch on her nose, a finger extended. “One sec.”

I thought, “Oh, c’mon, please, God, Costco’s more interesting. Is Baby Jesus snuggling with Kirkland Signature brand’s soft and absorbent bath tissue?” Ann told me shortly afterward she’d been listening in on a group discussion. The gathered parents were earnestly speculating about the Tooth Fairy’s gender. “Non-binary?” was Ann’s silent guess. Trans? Hermaphrodite and Michael Jackson may’ve fallen out of fashion.

As we made our sweeping exit, exchanging no off-stage lines until we were well out of earshot, a kid darted between us dragging a fuzzy rope: thirty feet of toy snake, boa constrictor, anaconda – I don’t know. When he disappeared around a corner, through a doorway, I stepped on its tail. I watched it stretch. I watched it grow taut. I watched it climb the doorframe to about knob level. When I judged the tension to be just about right, I stepped off it. Snuggle with the Christian reptiles and vipers, my child.

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.

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Coming Up

A flip gets switched. It happens over the day of a few courses. The subtles are sign.

The transformation always commences in the staging area off the kitchen by the back door. The knee-high snow boots vanish, their uppers stuffed with my Montreal Canadiens toque, my black fleece neck warmer and my snot-encrusted mitts. My outdoor work coat, Coca-Cola branded swag from a lifetime ago and which I’m not (and understandably so) permitted to wear beyond the property line of the Crooked 9, finds its summer hanger downstairs in the laundry room.

Up from the depths come Ann’s rubber gardening sabots – the two pairs come in two colours: yellow and red. This is the time of year when Ann can walk the line, actively plan her gardens rather than sketching them on January graph paper or strolling them in her February imagination before she falls asleep, no need to count sheep. Her concerns this year are our June travel plans and yet another season of drought with municipal and provincial water restrictions looming. The going’s getting weird; the wildfire season is already underway. We don’t care if the lawn is parched, but the established stuff, the trees (our lovely birches – two of the last few in the city), the shrubs, the perennials require a wet custodian with an unkinked garden hose. Perhaps the showier annuals, usually proud in their patio and porch pots, will remain unpurchased, wilted greenhouse inventory.

Spring. Possibly. Maybe. Very likely. I’ve put two of three shovels away, but I haven’t pulled out the rakes yet. Experience tells me I’m acting too hastily and maybe Ann and I are tempting fate by wondering about the near future. But, this time of year, God, we are compelled to stretch our spines and square our shoulders. If you’ve ever seen the Rolling Stones perform, watched a concert video or listened to a live album, you know Mick Jagger unfailingly asks you a deeply personal question: “Are you feeling good?” Yes, Mick. “Well, all right!”

My unofficial spring anthem is “Fishin’ in the Dark” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Ann knows all the words and unlike me she can carry a tune. Though “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds” I only played it four times in a row because one person’s giddy happiness may trigger a domestic incident. Now, “Fishin’ in the Dark” might be a little hillbilly, but at least it’s not a wretched sugary confection from fuckin’ ABBA and their avatars.

I feel good. Better than James Brown. I dropped the pen the other day on the second draft of a new work of fiction. It’s halfway toward completion now, the distant goal, somewhere around N between A and Z; 22 months of work to date. The December vinyl release of The Muster Point Project’s 5 KG EP for which I wrote the lyrics received positive notices and continues to benefit from radio airplay. Selling better than my books, apparently. All of this upbeat stuff is necessarily tempered by my wariness of the ides of March – which can be brutal.

There’s no portal to the afterlife. Fact is, it’s impossible for Him to let me in because there’s nowhere to go – should there be 1000 harps in Heaven, I hope Little Walter and Junior Wells are playing them. Still, these past few days, I must confess to a few “come to Jesus” moments.

I was outside on the front porch, early afternoon, basking in the spring sunshine, enjoying a cigarette, trying to bloom like some kind of Buddhist lotus. I imagined I could hear the snow seeping in to the earth. I imagined I could see its surface evaporating in the yellow heat. This time last year, the 300 Club jungle telegraph was alive. Membership in this Gang of Six is granted solely by friendships and constant, if intermittent, contact going back 50 years or more. We were talking about a proper reunion in Palm Springs, a full quorum since I can’t remember when. Ann said to me: “If you don’t do it now, the next time may be a funeral. You’ll be one down.” Somehow, it happened, came together. That trip’s first anniversary is coming up. Its countdown has been reduced to days. My God, I’m still trying to shake the desert sand from my shoes; I just got back to Edmonton last weekend. 

“Those romantic young boys …” Later that same day’s night I was home alone swirling around in the YouTube vortex. I came across live, hi-def footage shot at the beginning of this month: Bruce Springsteen guesting on stage with John Mellencamp for a duet of “Pink Houses”. I thought, “Oh, man, if this had been broadcast maybe forty years ago on The Midnight Special or that PBS music show In Concert, my joy would’ve been transcendental.” And network television in those days, when both rockers were in their primes, one and done. I watched the YouTube clip three times. As I sat in front of the computer monitor, I thought, “Man, they’re getting on.” Mellencamp especially, pasty and doughy, like a too-long-retired elite athlete or maybe Alec Baldwin yesterday. Me? I haven’t changed a bit since, I don’t know, 1984.

An envelope arrived in the post the next day. Something from Service Canada addressed to me. I jogged its contents before slitting its top with a letter opener. Canada Pension Plan registration forms sprang out. I thought, “Surely, this can’t be.” Because it’s tax season, I was able to bring the matter up during a meeting with our accountant. Should I receive CPP now or defer the benefit for a nominally larger monthly sum some five years hence? He said, “You’ve made the contributions. You can’t know how much time you have left. I suggest taking it now and enjoying it while you can.” I said, “Cigarette money.” He laughed: “There you go.”

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.

A FAN’S NOTES

Brian Mulroney (1939-2024)

The death of a public figure who’s had an impact on my life, however remotely or intimately, usually precipitates a pause for reflection, at least for a moment or two. And those fleeting thoughts can encapsulate years. That – me and everything I was experiencing at the time – is always then, which is where it will always remain. Even if I was holding hands with Eddie Money or listening to his greatest hits, I can’t go back, I know, even if I’m feeling so much older. As a rule, recently deceased Canadian politicians rarely jiggle that particular VU meter needle.

“I voted for him.” Not reluctantly, but perhaps out of character. “Me too.” 

This was the consensus on the 300 Club (five guys and me who’ve been friends since Methuselah smoked his first cigarette) instant messaging thread upon digesting the news last Thursday of the death of Brian Mulroney who served two terms as Canada’s 18th prime minister (1984-1993). I was two years out of university with an arts undergraduate degree and holding down a job I hated when Mulroney took power. I harboured no utopian illusions about real life. It wasn’t some sort of anti-social justice crime to vote “capital C” conservative back then. There wasn’t a whole lot of difference between the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties. Canadian Tories were more pragmatic and more flexible than Reaganites and Thatcherites. Social issues weren’t on the table; Mulroney was all about growing a middling country’s middling economy. I wanted a better shot at making a decent living – as much as that depended on my own initiative and not the government’s. Still, things, all kinds of things, are easier to look after in a healthy, robust economy.

Reciprocity – free trade between Canada and the United States – was a liberal and Liberal goal dating back to Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, who declared the 20th century would belong to Canada. Things didn’t start shaking down that way until Mulroney flipped his party’s platform, forcing the liberal and Liberal establishment to repudiate its fundamental principle. It’s telling and damning that the legacy of our current prime minister, Liberal Justin Trudeau, will likely be the preservation of the deal Mulroney cut with the States and Mexico some forty years ago.

Mulroney also introduced the federal goods and services tax (GST). Nowadays that legislation would be described as a CLM, a career limiting move, albeit a courageous one. The GST is a fact of Canadian life now. At the time of its introduction, it replaced a hidden and regressive manufacturing tax which had to go if Canada was to be competitive as an international trader. Wealth creation across all strata of society is a noble goal, neither evil nor nefarious. 

Since Canada was essentially granted sovereignty from the will of the British parliament with the Statute of Westminster in 1931, we’ve rarely punched above our weight in international affairs. Future prime minister Lester B. Pearson was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize because he was instrumental in the formation of the League of Nations. Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to chip in to the Second Gulf War, pile on. Mulroney led the Commonwealth and the States in imposing severe sanctions (they used to work back then) on South Africa’s apartheid regime, paving the way for Nelson Mandela’s presidency. It’s still a bit of a head-shaker, a Conservative prime minister in tune with rockers like Little Steven, U2, Midnight Oil and Simple Minds. But his was the type of firm, modestly substantial voice that elucidated Canadian values, instilling a sort of soft pride in country that contrasted sharply with discontented disciple Stephen Harper’s (by this time the Progressive Conservative Party had devolved in to the Conservative Party of Canada following its amalgamation with the fringe Reform Party) government’s dog whistle, nationalistic spin on that glorious stalemate, 53 years before Confederation, the War of 1812. Action trumps revisionism; patriotism is not a propaganda product where I’m from.

Mulroney, like Chretien, always played up his less than modest rural Quebec roots. Friday’s and Saturday’s newspaper stories about him, whatever the section, emphasized his wit and charm. I’ve always imagined him as a Mordecai Richler character, striving from the sticks for the best house in Montreal. He got that mansion on the hill. Despite serving as part of the Cliche Commission, tasked to investigate corruption in Quebec’s construction industry (the Mafia pours deep sidewalks using low grade cement), while still a labour lawyer, whispers of his being on the take tended to follow him around in his political life. The tired rumours spumed in 2007 with the culmination of the Airbus affair. Mulroney allowed accepting $225,000 (possibly $300,000 – the amount is disputed by the lobbyist) in cash, stuffed in envelopes, was “a serious error in judgment” on his part. Not a crime, mind, just business.      

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.

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Codes

One of the carousels in the baggage collection area of Calgary’s international airport revolves around a diorama depicting a pack of velociraptors shredding suitcases and their contents. It never failed to make me smile. I was always reminded of the old Samsonite television commercial which cast gorillas as airline baggage handlers. Luggage takes a beating.

Before the pandemic hit Ann and I always flew with minimal carry-on. Our go-to was a maroon canvas shoulder bag which fit our books, the sandwiches we’d made the night before and incidental sundries. The sports bags we checked weren’t much larger, but neither one of us had the stomach to fight for overhead bin space. Who needs High Noon on a narrow cabin aisle – and, my God, what some people drag aboard: ratdogs on ropes. My delusional rationale was that our soft sports bags would be the last ones laded into the cargo bay and ergo, the first ones off.

I’ve always maintained a fee should be charged for carry-on and checked baggage should be gratis. Boarding a narrow tube missing a few critical bolts unencumbered sure would speed up the herding process. I suspect that day will come – or at least the additional charge segment, be it morning, afternoon or night; there will be no happy hour.

Ann and I have changed our air travel habits post-pandemic. We are strictly carry-on only minimalists. Not because we’re avoiding the checked bag cash grab, but because our perception is that our checked bags and our destination are analogous to a fool and his money: parted like a Gillette “dry look” haircut.

Luggage is expensive. But provided you’re not forced to buy it in an airport, you should never have to pay full freight (let alone a premium). Ann and I recently booked late spring return flights to Amsterdam. We intend to ride the rails through the Low Countries and perhaps even venture into parts of France or Germany (Note to self: don’t mention the war). We agreed our carry-on totes required an upgrade. We needed sleeker, lighter, sturdier bags, more forgiving of sidewalks, curbs and escalators. So, we got a bargain on a couple of Samsonites, one burgundy one and one navy one. We were all set, but …

As we pulled our bags from their boxes (very different from squaring a circle), my imagination embraced the Temptations, running away with me: Ann and I had purchased a pair of MacGuffins; the three-digit combination locks by the latches tripped my love of intrigue. A MacGuffin is a thriller device, a plot driver. It could be anything although I always picture it as a briefcase, suitcase or gym bag. The reader or viewer need never know its contents; all that matters is that most every character in the story wants it desperately and will torture and kill for it. The classic stories involve an innocent protagonist, a guileless hero who somehow and inadvertently becomes involved in some very nasty business. The literary masters are Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. In film, the profile of Alfred Hitchcock shades everything backward and forward.

I began to consider three-digit sequences I hoped I could remember without having to write them down because, well, nobody locks the combination number inside the safe. Phone numbers before the introduction of local area codes might do. I can still recite a couple of primary exchange groupings from my days growing up in Montreal, 739 and 288. There is the Crooked 9’s landline of course, though Ann’s cell number is written on a folded piece of paper in my wallet because I always transpose two digits but never the same pair. The only other number I know by heart is my friend Stats Guy’s, he of the Tuesday Night Beer Club, because I’ve been telephoning him for more than thirty years and he has remained as stationary as a parking meter - I had to look it up in my address book the other day, drew a complete blank – luckily, I remembered his real name. Then the easy rhyming nines began playing in my head, telephone number songs: “Beechwood 4-5789” (Marvelettes), “634-5789” (Wilson Pickett) and “867-5309/Jenny” (Tommy Tutone). I cannot remember AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” number. 46201 is an Indianapolis zip code in Burton Cummings’s lovely “Sour Suite”, but I forever confuse it with the Spiegel Catalog’s Chicago 60609. Spiegel was a Truth or Consequences prize sponsor; there wasn’t much on television after school in the late sixties and early seventies, a two-channel, black and white universe.

For simplicity’s sake and because my doddering days aren’t too far up the road, I narrowed the field to four songs with three digits in their titles. The first one I thought of (naturally) was “Flight 505” by the Stones, from Aftermath – the first of the five or six nearly flawless albums in their catalogue. I ain’t superstitious, but the trouble with airline flight numbers is that when they make the news it’s because said flight did not touchdown intact. Sort of what SpaceX might gloss over as “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

“One After 909” is a throwaway on Let It Be (do I even have to type their name?). I can imagine Ann and I at the kitchen counter discussing the merit of this selection:

“909. We’ll both remember that one, right? It’s in the title.”

“So is 910.”

“But, 909 is spelled out in digits only.”

“Yes, but if you do the arithmetic, you get 910. Not your strong point, I know. So, which one?”

“There’s no need to overly complicate this. Shall we move on to The Who?”

Pete Townshend’s writing returns to the same theme again and again, the nature of tribes (“Uniforms Corp d’esprit”). You can opt in like the disciples at the holiday camp in the parable of Tommy or opt out like the migrants going mobile through the wasteland in Lifehouse (released unrealized as Who’s Next and now known as Life House). Quadrophenia was much more down to earth, a story about teen gangs and their costumes and kit in post-war Britain, the mods and the rockers. Like Kinks music before they embarked on their American stadium era beginning with the release of Sleepwalker, Quadrophenia is veddy, veddy British. Very niche, an excessively loud addendum to the rousing Angry Young Movement in British literature, although maybe more new journalism than fiction: compare Ken Russell’s bombastic Tommy movie to Quadrophenia, one of those fantastic, low budget films cloaked in anonymity (Sting’s minor role as Ace Face aside) we’ve come to expect from British filmmakers. Suffice to say, “5:15”, recounting a stream-of-consciousness amphetamine-hyped train ride to join the rioting on the beach under the Brighton’s famous pier in the spring of 1964, rocks like a bastard son’s testosterone.

Mother was an incubator and father was the contents/of a test tube in an icebox/in the factory of birth. “905” is the titular, fully grown, fully thawed hatchling in John Entwistle’s impossibly catchy, dys(co)topian sci-fi contribution to Who Are You. “The Ox” was writing about cloning, the AI of its day. Writers are of their time and it’s a fraught exercise to impose contemporary interpretations and mores on old words, but some forty years on, I can’t help but to hear a chatbot’s existential lament: Every sentence in my head/someone else has said/and the end of my life is an open door.

Ann and I will eventually arrive at some mutually acceptable code for our new carry-ons. I know this. And I know too if I’m asked to open our suitcases at a security check, I’m going to freeze because I’ve forgotten three simple digits. Those youthful popinjays in their uniforms with their epaulettes, flag badges and emblems will have to wait while I run the numbers from an old reel, the mixtape in my ever softening head.   

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.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Mysteries to Me

I’m not an officially recognized behavioural psychologist. I’ve no certificates, diplomas nor any other papers of frameable importance. While working in retail and advertising I actively manipulated human behaviour. As a scribbler I observe human behaviour; make notes, take what I need. Ergo, ipso facto, in vino veritas, I consider myself highly qualified to be utterly confounded by recent events in Alberta. Man, I can’t make it up anymore, let alone embellish it (I understand Harvard University is headhunting a new president? I digress).

Here's an example. CKUA is an Alberta public radio station whose existence predates the creation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation by five years or so. Its programming ranges from fantastic to annoying. Such is the nature of a traditional medium. It is donor supported. Engaged listeners can “subscribe” with monthly donations, kick in to the station’s two annual fundraising events or just give what they can when they can. Any donation in excess of $10 warrants an income tax receipt. A significant portion of any donation to a registered charity is tax deductible, but it’s math and I’m vague on the subject. Still, donate $100 to CKUA and maybe half is applied toward what you owe the government come tax time, or maybe even increases your refund. Everybody wins.

Lately CKUA has been staging 50/50 raffles, a popular method of fundraising. The ticket seller keeps half the jackpot and the winning ticket holder gets the other. It’s a game, a lottery, a form gambling. The odds of winning, which vary slightly depending on the number of tickets sold and the number you bought, aren’t good. But the hook is it could happen. It really could happen to you. The more you spend the more you get to play. It won’t, but it could. Really (When I was in Joshua Tree National Park last May I spritzed myself with Axe perfume and waited by the side of the highway under the big hot sun for the convertible muscle car crammed with supermodels, beer and cigarettes to approach out of the shimmering desert heat, pull over and offer me a ride. It didn’t happen, but it could’ve. I digress). It makes more financial sense to donate money to CKUA instead of buying their raffle tickets. Just does. Alas, dreams can’t come true as a modest entry on a tax form schedule.

The final week of January which lingered for a fortnight zapped the Capital Region, Edmonton and environs, with record low temperatures. People of a certain age didn’t have to bother converting Celsius to Fahrenheit. The electrical grid felt the strain because one generating station was offline for scheduled maintenance. Alternative and sustainable power sources were unreliable: wind turbines don’t rotate when they’re frozen solid and solar panels are useless in the freezing dark. This unnerving news was quickly followed by emergency water restrictions come February. A filtration plant went offline for unscheduled maintenance. The utility in both cases asked Albertans to change their usage habits, their behaviour, so as to prevent catastrophe. The people pitched in, they complied.

These are the same people who believe that suggested public health measures such as vaccinations are an affront to personal liberty, the God-given right (albeit a human construct) to “body autonomy.” Vaccines are prophylactics. Jabs go a long way in stymieing the transmission of pathogens which can disfigure, cripple or kill you and those you sneeze at. The uptake in this province is low. With the onset of winter Alberta Health Services prepared its annual public service campaign, simply reminding citizens to get their shots. The United Conservative (UCP) government’s ministry of health dialed back the message for something more innocuous: nothing, silence, omerta. The butchered creative may’ve been posted on Facebook for maybe an hour.

Mumps, measles, polio, chicken pox, influenza, pneumonia, covid variants and fuck knows what else are other people’s raffle tickets. In a sense, this form of self-harm or neglect, has become something of a right-wing partisan, ideological affirmation UCP policy; an article of faith, similar to Jesus drying the supper dishes in my house. Overwhelmed hospital emergency rooms have become cuckoo nests, there are lunatics on gurneys in the corridors. Alberta’s health care system is the same as its criminal justice system, best not to be involved. Premier Danielle Smith, the Banshee of Invermectin, panders to her populist base by espousing non-scientific alternative therapies. She’s even mused about enshrining the right to be infected in Alberta’s Human Rights Act although it has proved tricky deciding which disease is a scourge and which is a privilege.

Body autonomy is not a universal principle in Alberta. It does not apply to all. Since the UCP government was reelected last May, it has floated some radically counter-intuitive policies conveniently omitted from its campaign platform. Plans for a potential Alberta Pension Plan surprised everybody. Proposed legislation intended to suppress the rights and privileges of sexual minorities in the province’s K-12 school system was next.

Gender identity politics is a minefield in the culture wars that taint contemporary civics. Growing up is hard enough without being dragged in to that mire, especially when you have no say on election day. Anatomy and faith mix like electricity and water. I can’t imagine what it must be like standing in front of the bathroom mirror and wondering if somehow a mistake was made in the cosmic nursery or whether it’s meant to be. Sometimes kids need someone else to talk to; a caring, objective adult, an expert or teacher – not mom or dad, not a religious figure - outside of their homes. And those conversations demand the confidentially of a journalist protecting her source or a lawyer acting on behalf of her client. In the UCP world, body autonomy is only superseded by imagined “parental rights” which pretty much align with the beliefs of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children or themselves.

Nothing makes sense to me in Alberta. And I should know better than to buy raffle tickets.

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. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Big Running Shoes to Fill: Rachel Notley Stepping Back from Alberta Politics

When Brian Mulroney won the leadership of the federal Tories in 1983, my Nana (1893-1997) told me, “There are no statesmen anymore.” Her points of reference would’ve included Churchill, F.D.R., J.F.K. (despite being Catholic), Lester B. Pearson and possibly Pierre Trudeau (“Just watch me”), but Robert Stanfield (leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada 1967-1976) for sure. The death last week of former federal New Democratic Party leader (1975-1989) Ed Broadbent reminded me of my Nana’s lament. There was a time when the pursuit of power wasn’t motivated by its trappings so much as the candidate’s willingness to serve the public and advocate for the greater good.

When my Nana objected to any particular platform or policy, she did not rail, she respectfully disagreed. Perhaps a bit prim, but always civil. And Nana, unlike the majority of today’s voters and an alarming number of career political hacks, understood civics; she knew how the various levels of government were supposed to function, tend their jurisdictions. Times have changed. Long before my brother moved to Edmonton from Montreal in the early seventies (I followed in 1990, a bit late to the party), the Moores had rural relatives farming near Penhold, just a bumpy and lengthy Model T drive from Red Deer. My father spent his Depression summers in Alberta. Had Nana had Alberta roots instead of Brighton’s Pier and had she lived way beyond 105 (maybe kale smoothies over the odd tipple of sherry), I believe Nana would’ve described Rachel Notley as a “statesman.”

I am a cynic. When it comes to the body politic, there’s no better view than the backside of a spent politician (Hello, Justin). There are a couple of exceptions for a couple of reasons. As a somewhat engaged voter, I didn’t have time to get a handle on the two federal Conservative leaders who predeceased (pardon the pun) Pierre Poilievre because they couldn’t get a handle on their party. One election and done – note the dates for perennial losers Broadbent and Stanfield in the first paragraph. And then there’s someone like Rachel and I type that proper noun with the same affection Lou Reed says it at the fade of “Coney Island Baby” even though Alberta’s Rachel is not a drug addicted trans woman in need of a shave although our Rachel would look out for Lou’s Rachel.

Edmontonians grew accustomed to seeing their premier, Rachel, because that’s who she is, the most powerful politician in the province and maybe Western Canada, running through the city’s river valley and ravines or sitting on her tarp at a summer outdoor music festival. “Authentic” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023; since Rachel was first elected to Alberta’s legislature in 2008 as the New Democratic Party member for Edmonton-Strathcona, she’s neither strived nor contrived to be anyone but herself. Rachel has that trifecta magic that keeps the public eye glued to its subject: intellect, integrity and charisma.

Rachel succeeded Brian Mason as NDP leader in 2014. On her watch the party transformed from outlier to mainstream. Its growth and popularity reflected Alberta’s shifting demographics, younger, educated, urban. A pragmatist, she nudged the party’s ideology toward the centre of the political divide. I’m a centrist but not a fence sitter. My general inference is that no proper party leader, left or right, and sensibly enough, wants the lunatic fringe aboard (there are exceptions). My sense of Rachel has always been that if a decision was to be made with the fortunes of the party or the people’s hanging conflicted in the balance, she would opt for the latter.

Speaking of outliers… Since Alberta joined the Canadian federation in 1905 its internal politics have pretty much been defined by nationally anomalous serial autocracies. Believe it or not, the province’s first government was Liberal (1905-1921). That regime was followed in painfully slow succession by the United Farmers of Alberta (1921-1935), Social Credit (1935-1971) and then the Progressive Conservatives (1971-2015). All of the aforementioned parties either withered into insignificance or ceased to exist after losing power. No other Canadian province shares this history. The NDP under Rachel broke the mould in Alberta.

The party’s majority victory in 2015 was seismic, shocking. Forty-four years of Tory autocracy swept away by prairie socialists. Were they discussing policy at the Co-op? The only contemporary analogy I can think of is how good the new Stones album is. The aftermath on the other side of the political divide was for the schismatic right, righter and the rightest to grudgingly Christian mingle underneath the newly erected United Conservative Party big top circus tent. United we stand, but not too, too close together.

I am a realist. I am flawed. Other people are flawed. Our institutions are flawed. As a Canadian I expect “peace, order and good government.” It’s not a big ask. Still, sometimes I feel like a cat because “good government” seems as ignorantly idealistic as believing there must be more clement weather out the back door. Maybe out the front again. If the NDP’s lone term overseeing the fortunes Alberta wasn’t the Platonic ideal of “good government,” it was, an obvious breath of fresh air aside, decent enough.

Trans Mountain got done. According to previous administrations that stagnation of this project, an oil pipeline (pipelines are a federal jurisdiction) to tidewater threatened Alberta’s very existence. The NDP’s solution came with climate caveats and a carbon tax. This was the first indication to me that the party had the courage to plan beyond the next election cycle. The other was increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The argument against has merit, higher wages can drive inflation and strain small businesses. Essentially the NDP government worked to address the issues of the day and potential future ones. It did not grandstand; it did not create issues in order to distract and deceive the electorate.

Rachel lost the two subsequent provincial elections. I’m no political insider, but what struck me was there was nary a whisper of razor strops and whet stones, blade sharpening in the NDP’s backroom. There are just two parties in the legislature today. The UCP holds a ten-seat majority. The NDP is a formidable opposition and, crucially, experienced. As Dylan sings, “Things have changed.” Rachel transformed Alberta politics.

The animus many Albertans direct at politicians from Central Canada is almost genetic, like Huntington’s disease. There is talk of rebranding Alberta’s NDP in the hopes of eliminating the misconception that it’s merely the hayseed cousin of the federal NDP which is perceived here as a party of champagne socialists, hipsters in Toronto incapable of understanding Western Canada. Now’s the time to do it because with Rachel stepping back, the NDP immediately erases its cult of personality label. (That will be a fraught business. The Elections Alberta website teems with registered and unregistered political parties and all the good names are taken although Alberta Democratic Party might do the trick.) The other difficulty with the cult of personality model is that beyond Rachel the rest of the caucus is low profile and faceless. There’s no obvious dauphin waiting in the wings. She has said she won’t endorse any leadership candidate. I can see the party’s brains trust searching outside its ranks, looking to repeat the Rachel formula. Reestablish an identity in an instant. A couple of former big city mayors, Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi and Edmonton’s Don Iveson don’t seem to have much on the go at the moment. 

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. 

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Of Cigarettes and Polar Vortexes

I’ve lived most of my life in less delicate times. Hypersensitivity was the result of an injury. Actual nerve damage. Real pain. School and work were unavoidable obligations unless my excuse involved severe physical trauma. A cold or flu merely meant switching to menthol cigarettes for a week or so. They seemed to work as well as cough drops. I’ve missed them from time to time since Health Canada banned them – I can’t remember when. I’ve always managed a cigarette whatever the conditions. 

I imagine Canadian Hell to be so liquid nitrogen cold that sinners burn anyway. Last week Edmonton dipped beyond that closing time seductiveness when Celsius and Fahrenheit flirt about hooking up over a cold one at 40-below. I hope they don’t fall in love because a dirty weekend fling puts enough strain on the electrical grid. Besides, there’s no arguing with a child like El Nino whose ferret fingers also disrupt every other established climate pattern. It’s similar to toddler grandchildren messing with your audio equipment. Volume knobs are meant to be eaten because they taste better than Goldfish snack crackers which are meant to be spun around in a CD player. Not that I would know. A diminished jet stream cannot keep arctic weather in its place, neither contain nor filter its chill.

It's still too soon to notice any change in the low light this new year side of the winter solstice up in Edmonton. The mornings are as black as my coffee, the ink of the newspaper, my prune lungs. Dawn arrives diamond blue, hard and clear. Distant cirrus clouds glow appliance filament orange. Freezing, still air is as good a conductor as any metal. The snap of my Zippo lighter’s lid could be the retort of a hunting rifle. The tobacco smoke, a hotter gas, congeals enough to cast its own shadow.

Savvy smokers understand that cigarettes can burn stuff: beds, housing, tracts of land; genitalia too, as multi-tasking on a toilet seat is best left to gathering one’s thoughts or perusing an out-of-date magazine. Live and learn, once bitten, twice shy. The discount cigarettes I buy burn like high school joints, unevenly. Their embers can be freakishly long and the paper turns brown. The seasonal mats I lay on the slate of the front porch of the Crooked 9 have burns in them. My seat cushion on the tete-a-tete has burns in it. My Neil Young flannel shirts and jackets which I layer on in extreme weather have burns in them. There are burns between the index and middle fingers of my winter gloves - both hands. Sometimes, I think none of this will end well.

Inclement weather cigarette burns whose frequency varies follow a relatively standard pattern. Once Fahrenheit and Celsius decide to conjugate my eyes and nose run like fugitives. Health Canada has yet to ban snot tipped cigarettes. There’s no such thing as a dry cold in my head. I do the wrist-to-elbow flannel wipe even as I lick my cracking lips. Saliva becomes Elmer’s Glue when a cigarette’s filter is involved. There’s no friction between slick insulated nylon gloves and smooth cigarette paper. The hot ash needs flicking. So begins the sticky-lipped slide to the orange ember. The fingers of my glove begin to smoulder and melt. I rip it off and then rip the cigarette from my mouth. Enough! Time to go back inside. My exposed palm is damp. I reach for the metal handle on the front door.                    

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.