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. 

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Tap Dancing

Like too many other people I’ve been the victim of credit card fraud. I’m aware of at least one of the warning signs now. A transaction for a dollar or two on your statement, innocuous enough and anyway, you can’t recall the circumstances. That’s usually the douchebags ensuring the validity of your number before the big hit. After that, you’re at the mercy of your provider.

When Ann and I returned home from Amsterdam (and environs) I reviewed my credit card history. I suffered heart palpitations when I saw the litany of miniscule charges. Breathe. The memory of the way we’d lived for the past weeks was still fresh. Over there, you don’t sing for your supper or a service, you tap. You tap for trams. You tap for public toilets. You tap like you’re a hybrid of “Mister Bojangles”, Leo Sayer and Sammy Davis Jr.

Ann and I spent paper euros just twice. An emergency situation each occasion. The DUTY PAID seal on a package of cigarettes sold within the European Union is also imprinted with the retail price. There’s no room for a merchant to chisel an extra euro or two. A credit card company’s tap fee erases his margin, maybe even costs him. He needs you to buy something else to make the transaction worth his while, a lighter, a Bob Marley tin for pot storage (I watched the recent estate authorized hagiography on the flight over and unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocket Man, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief – the character on screen was an actor portraying Marley, nothing more), a set of windmill salt and pepper shakers. Something else, anything else. We understood; there’s nothing criminal about requiring and desiring a modest profit.

Medieval cities are not paragons of urban planning. Amsterdam was Diana Ross sans the Supremes, upside down, inside out. Our first few days there Ann and I walked round and round. Right was left, east was north. The landmarks kept rotating. One Sunday afternoon we found ourselves in the Red Light District. I’ve no idea how. The bars were open but the neon LIVE FUCKING sign switches hadn’t been flicked, too early, too soon – I’m familiar with this problem. No window shopping on the side streets, all the red curtains were drawn.

One morning while poring over a sideways city map over a second cup of coffee, I had a directional epiphany. Knowledge came knocking, tap, tap, tap. I suddenly understood the lay of the (low) land. Look at the touchless symbol on your credit card. It’s brilliant graphic design, a dot emitting increasingly larger electromagnetic waves in one direction. I visualized Amsterdam Centraal, the train station which backs onto the Het IJ, the waterfront, as the dot. The five curving canals, each one added for defensive purposes as the city grew larger, each fed from the channel behind the station on one side and the Amstel River on the other, are the pulses. The trouble with canals of course is that you can choose to cross that bridge when you get to it, or not. Either way, left and right will pose dilemmas.

He said, You must be joking, son. Where did you get those shoes?

The rich world was inadvertently half-prepared for the covid-19 lockdowns. A home office wasn’t just a branch of the British government. We were shopping online for consumer goods and groceries. We were streaming our entertainment through devices that provide astonishing audio and visual clarity. We rarely saw our neighbours anyway. These Amazon Prime times make us all forget that one of the most powerful retail marketing tools is a well-designed, enticing display window; they have the limited reach of billboards in that you have to be there, but you can’t tap your credit card against a giant sign.

Ann and I spent our time in Amsterdam just being. We tried to live as if we really did live there. We went to the grocery store daily; we bought what we’d need for the next twelve or sixteen hours. Our walk took us over two canals. On the gently arched bridge of one was a kiosk that sold bad coffee, “American” hot dogs and chocolate in all its forms. We also had to pass an Adidas store, and didn’t I clock a pair of blue suede shoes with crepe soles twice a day, back and forth.

Our main grocer was Albert Heijn, purveyor of Heineken, Amstel, milk, coffee, cheese, meats, fruit, bread and pastries. When I first saw the pale blue sign with sans serif white type, I was reminded of an Alberta Treasury Branch outlet (since rebranded in green as Servus Credit Union), same shape, same simplistic utilitarian design. Albert Heijn’s main competitor is JUMBO (pillowy, childish font on a harsh yellow field); Ann and I stumbled upon one on Keizersgracht, our canal straat, though we were never able to find it was again. Anyway, Ann had an Albert Heijn “bonus” card which shaved a few euros off every order.

Our first encounter with Albert Heijn was mildly disconcerting, discombobulating. We brought our basket of groceries to the sole human cashier. She asked us if we were paying cash. We said no. She pointed to the array of scanners. Ann and I hate self-checkouts. I hate those machines so much I’d rather stand in line to deal with a human being and I hate standing in line. Also, I’m not overly fond of other people. Another employee helped us through the process and issued Ann said bonus card. We quickly learned exiting the store was mission impossible without first scanning our receipt at the locked, automated turnstile. Had I already crumpled it up? Was it in the bottom of one of our bags? Just Like the train station. Just like the tram. Just like anything in Amsterdam: you've got to tap to get in or out. We adapted because we had to, so much so that I even went shopping at Albert Heijn all by myself once. This is the essence of living. And to and fro, I kept looking at those shoes. They were sure fine looking, man, something else. 

Our despicable species is the healthiest and wealthiest it’s ever been in all of our recorded history. Most days don’t feel like that whether you read legitimate news media or scan social media. Every petty hobby activist has a gripe. Partisanship. Sectarianism. But, you know, if we all adopted a Carl Perkins-Elvis blue suede shoes sensibility – lay off them, don’t step on mine and I won’t step on yours – our world would tilt into Jackie DeShannon territory, become an even better place for you and me. Let it be, let it rock.

Ann said, “Just buy them.” 

When it comes to spending money on stuff for myself, I’m thrifty to the point of cheap. You don’t need things you don’t need; it’s wrong to want; that’s the way I was raised: make do, save your money for a rainy day. But I’d already been extravagant. I’d found two Rolling Stones albums I already owned in a very cool record shop near Amsterdam Centraal. You must understand they were Japanese SACD editions, different, beyond enhanced, and, besides, only nine euros each. Almost free. Velvet Records is on the No. 2 tram route, our transit lifeline to a destination which seemed just a tad too far to walk over crooked cobbles in the wrong direction. You board the car through the rear WELKOM door tapping either a timed pre-paid ticket or your credit card. You exit up front, but will miss your stop if you don’t remember to tap out.  

Ann said, “Just buy them.”

It rains in Amsterdam. It rains a lot. There are more rainy days and Mondays behind me than there are ahead. I know this and it’s not an alternative fact. Well, didn’t I just break down and buy those blue suede Adidas Spezials, some sort of indoor court shoe that will never be worn for their intended purpose. Tried them on and then tapped my credit card while Ann held my hand. It ain’t no sin to be alive and stepping out in a pair of snazzy sneakers a hundred times the cost of an immaculate public toilet with a floor to ceiling 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.