SAINTS PRESERVE US

The Fifty-first Column: A Canadian Thought Experiment 

The news cycle in Canada of late has spun into a cyclone. The Liberal government knows its going to have to give up the shop even as a thug from Queens, NY demands protection money. The extortion The Wall Street Journal called “the dumbest trade war ever” is on hold for the length of the warranty on a shoddily made American consumer durable.

The chaos created by the only billionaire in history who bankrupted his own casino resort (if you’re going to stack the deck, it’s at least got to be full), has forced a dormant, complacent Canada to take stock of its very essence. Maybe global affairs should matter more to a middle power. Maybe we should live up to our NATO treaty obligations. Maybe the absence of free trade within our borders is inefficient. Maybe, as a trading nation, we push harder for closer ties with the European Union (a pact is in place – as yet unratified by six or seven members). With eyes wide open, maybe we defrost our relationship with China if only because the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

Shame if the shop happened to catch fire.

Der Trumpenfuhrer says his blustery existential threat, this existential angst and dread he’s generating, could all be swept away simply by Canada agreeing to join the United States of America as its fifty-first state. And to be fair, eliminating the border would, in way, virtually erase the scourge of illegal American guns in this country. I’ve devoted some thought to this worst-case scenario. It’s going to be a bit more complicated than one more star on Old Glory. The odious vulgarian could actually end up fucking himself, his party and his country with unintended consequences. But maybe, just maybe, the felon’s big imperial idea is only half-insane from a north of 49 perspective.

Canada and the United States are wealthy Western democracies with dissimilar political traditions. For my thought experiment I will assume Canada cedes its Westminster system to our neighbour’s republican model. Alaska and Hawaii were the last two states to join the Union. That was 1959. The even number matters here. Legislators at the time, partisan even then, assumed one new member would lean Blue or Democrat and the other Red or Republican. They would cancel each other out in the United States Congress.

The US Congress is like a Montreal duplex, one up and one down. The upper storey is the Senate; every American state has two elected senators. The House of Representatives is the street level unit. There states are represented by their populations, so California will have more congressional districts than Rhode Island or Delaware. Majority margins for either the Democrats or Republicans overall tend to run lean.

Canada’s awfully big, ten provinces and three territories. Unwieldy. Regionalized. Diverse. The melting pot chime of Manifest Destiny never rang true up here. And a fifty-first state, an odd outlier rife with socialists just wouldn’t do. Checks and balances. My thought experiment assumes that Canada’s northern territories would be relegated to the status of Guam or Puerto Rico, or perhaps stitched to Alaska. I’m still left with ten new states (six if Quebec finally achieves independence and the four Atlantic provinces are mashed into one), a nice round partisan number to stitch on the Stars and Stripes. But six or ten new states with an overwhelmingly progressive bent because the Liberal Party of Canada wasn’t dubbed “the natural governing party” for nothing.

Imagine twenty new US senators, maybe fourteen or sixteen of whom will be certified pinkos. Sure, gerrymander former federal ridings into congressional districts, go crazy, make some cuts. There are currently three hundred and thirty-eight seats in Canada’s House of Commons. Slash that to a lower number easily divisible by two. Still, an alarming number of freshly minted Dems and habitual libs suddenly sitting in the House of Representatives. We’d control Congress. Both chambers. And since we’re Americans, why, we could run one of our own, saved by God to be reborn in the USA, for president (not Ted Cruz).

Someone’s knocking at the door. Let us in. We’re going to burn your nice white playhouse down. From the inside this time.                     

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 that will change in the coming months.

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

Compendium and Consolidation 

It Was Here He Received His Only Formal Education is the latest vinyl (blue) offering from Calgary indie rock act The Muster Point Project. Released around the date of Keith Richards’s eighty-first birthday, the album was swept aside somewhat by the avalanche that is Christmas, a frenzy of marketing and grandiose domesticity. It’s possible TMPP did itself no favours dropping two new songs (“It’s Gonna Be Christmas” and “Darlin’”) so soon afterward. It ain’t easy keeping up with a prolific artist now realizing his full potential.

TMPP is essentially Kevin Franco augmented by some well-known hired guns. He writes the songs and plays most of the instruments. Kevin and I have been friends for, Jesus, thirty-five years now. One of my newer friends. We’ve worked together in past professional lives. He’s promoted my fiction since and I’ve co-written a few songs with him. We were sitting in a bar years ago, talking. Kevin said, “You know you’re better than this.” I had filters then, sort of. I thought, “Who the fuck are you to lecture me?” even though grocery flyer prose didn’t quite fulfil me (Pork butt whole – missed a comma, genius, whoops). I didn’t understand then that the guitar riff on his recorded Code-a-Phone “I’m-not-here” message was more than just a lark.

TMPP has been compared to Steely Dan. I don’t hear it unless “Steely Dan” is some sort of internet shorthand for literate, carefully constructed and well produced. The songs aren’t slick so much as sophisticated, and curious listeners do expect some context from which they can dip a foot in cold water. The real deal is the “The Singing Mailman”, the song of praise and thanks to John Prine which closes side one: And now, I wanna be like John/Telling stories and spinning yarns …

“Old Black Suit” reminds me of O. Henry’s short fiction. The fabric of a lifetime. Bought stylish and new for celebration days, eventually relegated to funeral wear and then ultimately forgotten in the back of a closet. “This Town Has Changed” suggests that maybe it’s not the site or the city itself shifting so much as the observer. My Gen X friend is feeling his age. Welcome to the club, new member!

I tend to date the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, rock music, from 1951 with the release of “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats who were actually Ike Turner and his Rhythm Kings playing behind their vocalist. Someone else might argue for “Earth Angel” by the Penguins. Nothing’s firm some seventy-five years on except that rock is now a subgenre of popular music. Its roots in blues, country and folk proffered subjects beyond automobiles and teenage wildlife; worksongs dedicated to its high culture outlier status: chain gangs, railway and highway construction, factory work.

Khakis forever! “Now We’re Successful” bleaches blue-collar lament white. There’s no satisfaction anywhere; things are tough all over. Rock has grown up. “Don’t Give Me Anything” lacerates a typical business meeting: Big words, you think you’re the tops/You even fool some with your malaprops. I’m not a particularly sensitive soul, but that line triggered some professional PTSD for me, having sat downwind around a few boardroom tables. A close friend (not Kevin) informed me once, very cheerfully, that working as an ad man made me worse than a whore. Ipso facto in vino veritas: these days even sex workers have better PR. There’s a loose but not lurid theme to It Was Here He Received His Only Formal Education: the right-brain directive to pursue the muse over career opportunities.

TMPP is an indie act releasing songs with actual bridges and verses into the Spotify and YouTube realm in the post-album era. The dozen songs on the LP have been surfing the ether faster than 33 and a 1/3 RPM these past 12 months. It Was Here He Received His Only Formal Education is, at its heart, an annual report: TMPP consolidated; 2024 was a very good year.

If you’re intrigued, the best place to start is musterpoint.bandcamp.com. Other sources of music and information include Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Pandora and fuck knows what else. What's App and TikTok for all I know. Bluetooth and cable TV. Radio, newspapers and magazines.                 

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

SAINTS PRESERVE US

The Addictive Flavour of Tasseled Gucci Loafers 

Her voice still rings down the telephone line; the memory still makes me laugh. My sister calling from Montreal: “Ha-ha, Quebec’s no longer the national laughingstock!” What could I say? I was embarrassed for Alberta.

The fragment of conversation is from 2019. The nascent United Conservative Party (UCP), an uneasy coalition of traditional Tories and the lunatic fringe, had been handed its first mandate. Premier Jason Kenney commenced the province’s populist reset. The good old days had returned because the people were galvanized by a common enemy: everybody else in Canada and a minority of Albertans who couldn’t quite fit into his regressive narrative. Kenney’s tragic flaw is that he was a tad too sensible for the more extremist elements gathered underneath his big tent. God-fearing rural folk such as Alberta’s current premier, the Banshee of Invermectin, Danielle Smith, didn’t just jiggle Kenney’s highwire, they cut it.

Smith’s first piece of major legislation, passed in November, 2022 was the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, essentially a pre-emptive complaint about every potential bit of federal legislation real or imagined. Despite the “United Canada” phrase in the act’s official title, it’s better parsed as “fuck off and die Ottawa”. Hello, bonjour Quebec! But Quebec too can fuck off along with everyone else. Smith once suggested that had her Sovereignty Act been in place she would’ve used it to dispute Ottawa’s attempt to curtail the scourge of single-use plastics, shopping bags for instance and, notably, drinking straws. Hills to die on.

Something happened Monday in Washington, DC. Something alarming in the Capitol’s Rotunda. A really anemic sequel should mob violence be your particular peccadillo. Traditionally the inauguration of the US president-elect is like John Lee Hooker’s “House Rent Boogie”: outdoors, y’know, people. Der Trumpenfuhrer’s second one was moved inside to the scene of sedition because of chilly weather. The change of venue was something of a snub to Premier Smith, she being one of the 250,000 ticket holders who, unlike former Edmonton Oiler and whine merchant Wayne Gretzky (bland, big nose), didn’t make the A-list cut. Premier Smith watched the ceremony at the Canadian Embassy, a turn of events that can only be described as ironic in the full, complete Alanis Morrisette definition of the term.

Just last weekend Premier Smith was socializing at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, licking the designer footwear favoured by an odious, vulgar felon who was saved by God to fulfill his mission of making America great again. I never guessed Smith had a foot fetish. Maybe she even paid out of pocket for a $TRUMP, a fungible token which should not be confused with a cryptocurrency. All of this fawning diplomacy to persuade der Trumpenfuhrer not to levy a 25-per-cent tariff on Alberta's energy products. As for trade goods from the rest of Canada? “Just fuckin’ yard on ‘em, eh, bud!” Yes, because the rest of Canada funding an Alberta oil pipeline to Pacific tidewater to the tune of some $30-billion just wasn’t good enough.

What’s particularly irksome about Premier Smith’s lost weekend is that the Thursday prior, 16 January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all of Canada’s other premiers signed a NON-BINDING declaration of unity against the massive economic threat suddenly posed by my country’s largest trading partner and greatest ally. This document was facilitated by a prime minister whose career trajectory is eerily similar to the fate of a certain Norwegian blue parrot and whose country is incapable of facilitating free trade within its borders; yet somehow some stuff gets done - if only symbolically. But my sense is that Quebec Premier Francois Legault and Ontario Premier Doug Ford are prepared to shut off light and heat throughout the northeastern United States to make a point, to counter der Trumpenfuhrer’s blanket tariff (due 1 February apparently) in our national interest. Quebec acting for Canada! C’mon! Alberta Premier Smith refused to sign the document although she mused that maybe Canada could erase some of its trade surplus with the US if it bought more, like, American food?

I don’t know, Madam Premier. It might taste leathery with hints of crow and humble pie.   

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

NONSENSE VERSE

DJT 

Disavowing democratic dealings

Dilettante doyen denizens

Desire diktats doling

Dollar days disbursements

Delicate doves decrying

Disastrous damage decreed

Destructive deportations

Dripping darkness descending

Demonic drones dueting

Discourse disinclination

Digging dirty deeds down deep

Dismembering decapitated DC

Deferring decency dispensing dirt

Disrespecting dedicated departees

Devilish dotard demanding

Denigration deployment

Despair despair despair

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

SAINTS PRESERVE US

An Unnoticeable Major Tweak 

When I began scribbling this blog in 2013, retail giant Walmart appeared in business reporting as Wal-Mart. At some point during the past dozen years the hyphen was dropped and the “M” became lower case. I’ve no idea when I twigged to the change.

My latest memory of Walmart (as it wasn’t then) is from a lifetime ago when I was still living in Calgary. It was coming on Christmas. The outlet was in the former Sears space in one of those fading ring malls outside of downtown; the dying dream of 70s developers, medical clinics and prosthetic limb boutiques eying discounted square footage. Walmart greeters in wheelchairs. The cash register lines snaked throughout the mish-mash of vertical and horizontal aisles. Nobody appeared overly joyous, no, more angry, more miserable, much like the frightful weather outside. Some hardy souls were losing their minds at Walmart’s innovative self-checkouts. Elsewhere in the store a promotions company was giving away paring knives, an encouragement for shoppers to buy the entire set of blades. Eyes down, mouth shut, study the wet tile floor. Everyone around you is packing a four-inch shank.

Walmart stirred social media denizens this week. A press release will do that. The Arkansas-based discounter tweaked its logo. The blue background is a little more intense, brighter, I suppose. The simple sans serif font, yellow, has been bolded as has that asterisk above the name. A major overhaul for those who pay attention to the affectations of design and virtually unchanged to a consumer’s casual glance: same brand recognition prompt.

Designers are a delicate bunch of experts. Some are practical. Some are precious. My advertising expertise was mainly management, projects and production, time and money. A designer’s mind is miles ahead of their tools’ limitations, Pantone markers or Adobe software, and parsecs ahead of printing presses and red-green-blue computer screens. So many conflicted and meticulous designers. So many mechanical limitations from my point of view. I remember one incident (and there were a number of them). Christ.

A point of purchase piece. A bit of co-marketing between a purveyor of sugary soda and a purveyor of amusement park family vacations. A coupon, a contest. A new attraction. My firm’s star designer inhabited an office lit by purple lava lamps. Star Wars and The Simpsons figurines cast shadows. I’d had a mock-up of his stand-up’s design manufactured, six feet of corrugated plastic, die-cut to shape (my main concern), a cardboard easel, lo-res art pixelated because his finished art was behind schedule – probably not his fault because the account manager was indecisive, incapable of directing or even nudging her client forward because deadlines were my problem. He moaned about the reproduction quality of his unfinished artwork. I was very glad in that moment not to have a free Walmart paring knife on me. I said, “Right now, we’re just interested in the die. We’ll be making lots of these in a hurry. I don’t care about the art.” I should’ve said, “Your artwork at this moment is secondary. As long as you’re happy with the shape. We’ve done our best to accommodate your design.” I didn’t. He said, “If it’s going to look like this, you don’t care.” Clearly, we were failing to communicate. I backed out of his office into the common area where production artists were prepping different files for different deadlines. I said to be heard by all, “It’s gonna be in a fucking grocery store. Not the fucking Louvre.” (The delicate boy moved on to another agency shortly after our exchange. Curious. I was gratified to learn through the grapevine that his new party trick was a killer impression of me in that moment.)

I thought of that guy when I read that the Walmart asterisk (buyer beware?) is actually referred to internally as “the spark” because it symbolizes founder Sam Walton’s vision. Of course it does. Who didn’t pick up on that right away? I thought it was a sun because it reminded me of the childishly painted “O” in Eric Clapton’s surname on the cover art of his wretched Phil Collins-doused Behind the Sun which followed the halfway decent Money and Cigarettes which was Backless with a bit more spine.

Reading design rationales and specifications are like sneaking a peek at the minutes of a secret society. Only the in-crowd understands the holy jargon. When I began to work on my agency’s Coca-Cola account, I learned the twisty line on every tin was actually “the dynamic ribbon”, something to be revered as much as the “shield”, that red circle whose Platonic ideal of print reproduction demanded very expensive double hits of Pantone 32. The people who pitch these nuances and nouns are very good at what they do and they almost believe what they say. I’ve seen them in action.

Logo tweaks, modest embellishments, shouldn’t be newsworthy. Usually, subtle changes are made for ease of reproduction. Nobody will notice if they go unmentioned. When I was in the business, no designer I worked with could possibly imagine their creation doubling as a thumbnail app icon. An exception to this would be Starbucks who dropped all the type from the green circle around the mermaid. The company’s (ad agency’s) spin was that the coffee bean fish-lady was so iconic nothing more need to be said; the reality was Starbucks’ aggressive expansion into new markets where English wasn’t necessarily the lingua franca.

So. This Walmart finesse. Designer affectations come with a cost should a company buy in.

I remember sitting in a Calgary pub with my older brother (since deceased). I was the ad man; he was the energy industry executive. He slid his new business card across the table. There’d been a merger. “What do you think of the new logo?” He’d shown me some squibs months before.

I studied it. I said, “The obvious one. Uninspired, but you’re not doing a total rebrand. The agency just sort of squeezed both together. Please everybody.”

He said, “Yep.”

I said, “Given the firms involved, I’d love to know how much you were charged.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m going to guess minimum high five figures augmented by pages of specs and various usage applications.” I pictured the new corporate identity bible, a collated binder with tabs and labeled computer discs inserted in the inside pockets. Hundreds of them. Colour covers.

“Yep.”

I said, “Man, my shop would’ve loved a shot at that. Anyway, you have a new business card. Think of all the stationery that has to be reprinted. The catalogues, technical manuals, office signage, trade show booths, fleet decals, decals on the downhole tools …. God knows what else. It’ll take months, maybe a year or more. Nobody ever thinks about that stuff. It’s like buying a house: you’ve got to pay the movers, the lawyer, the agent, renovate, buy paint, furniture…”

“A waste of time and money.”

I said, “Not from my perspective. But, yep.”                                         

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.