SAINTS PRESERVE US

Keep Calm and Ostrich On 

Personal trauma? Bury it. A troublesome corpse? Bury it. Evidence of corporate malfeasance? Bury it. Scandalous allegations of ineptitude, corruption, sex and graft? Bury them. Commissioned studies that don’t arrive at a desired conclusion? Bury them. Mountains of refuse? Bury them. Used radioactive metals? Bury them. Carbon emissions? Bury them.

We bury everything, including history. And just when I figured there was nothing left to bury excepting a few old grudges of mine, Alberta strong and free in all her majesty and an outlier on Canada’s political scene, is seriously contemplating burying water. But not just any kind of water.

Many commodities are buried too, they must be mined, quarried or dredged. Consider sand beyond Vaseline, beach volleyball and a sunny holiday. It’s the bed under a properly paved road. It’s in glass and concrete. It’s the abrasive in fracking fluid – which is mainly composed of water. Sand in some form is as omnipresent as water in your life. The manufacturer of your shampoo likely lists its main ingredient as aqua. When Nestle sells 500 mL of your own tap water back to you, it used way more water than that to produce its convenient plastic container. Clean water, like sand, is a highly valued industrial commodity.

Alberta is Confederation’s angry mini-petro state, a province with republican fantasies. The source of its mismanaged resource wealth and its tired boom or bust economic cycle is the tar sands, gooey fossil fuel deposits up north around Fort McMurray. Extracting heavy bitumen and gussying it up for further downstream refinement requires a lot of fresh water. When I wash the sand-based crockery here at the Crooked 9, I fill the kitchen sink with potable water though I wouldn’t drink it after my chore is done because I know my greywater is a tepid soup of detergent and diluted debris and, anyway, it would taste like McDonald’s coffee. I open the drain knowing it will be treated and maybe even come through my tap again one day. Tar sands wastewater is something of a misnomer. It’s liquid slag whose additives include bitumen, sand and chemicals. As sludgy as most of Led Zeppelin’s catalogue. It’s collected, pooled in artificial basins called tailings ponds. They tend to leak and their toxins tend to seep or spill downstream. They do look good from above, ask a dead duck.

A commission convened by the United Conservative government of Alberta to study the environmental impact of tailings ponds (something of a shock in itself) and chaired by the Honourable Member from Fort McMurray suggests one solution to dispose of mining wastewater is burying it. Naturally, the effluence would be decontaminated before interment deep within the earth’s crust. If that’s the case, I wonder why it’ll still need to be buried. Tailings injections bring us halfway to China and the world of Jules Verne, drilling down into impermeable rock. Suitable sites aren’t abundant. Proposed captured carbon storage sites compete for space. Draining tailings ponds will necessitate pipelines. The Universal Law of Wham! applies to pipelines as much as anything else: If you’re gonna do it, do it right, now! Pipelines are efficient conduits, but improper installation and neglectful maintenance are valid concerns because there’s a whiff of Boeing ineptitude wafting over past projects. And there’s no revenue in moving dirty water and no profitable payoff to be realized in goodwill.

Love Canal was neither a soap opera nor a porn flick. Evidence has surfaced showing fracking fluids will eventually permeate groundwater. Still in dispute is whether their highly pressured injection into subterranean rock fissures triggers earthquakes. So. What could possibly go wrong burying mining wastewater tailings?

I don’t know. I’m no cynic; I’m a realist whose brain is pop culture wired. All I can picture is that last scene in Carrie. Nothing buried stays that way. As for ostriches, I assume it’s best not to see it coming.                     

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is inane. I’ve no recourse, no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress. 

SUNSET OASIS CONFIDENTIAL

Jacket Required 

Sunset Oasis Confidential has been in the marketplace for about two weeks. A soft launch. No rapid unscheduled disassembly to report at this stage because nobody’s actually had a chance to read it yet – excepting Ann, my partner in crime and more innocent capers, who patiently reviewed and corrected six drafts. All of the informal feedback I’ve received is kudos for the novel’s striking cover.

I know a guy.

Rene is the principal of a boutique Calgary-based design firm called CreativeWorks. He’s an artist in his own right, three of his works hang on the walls here at the Crooked 9. I met him thirty-five years ago when I turned up for my first shirt-and-tie job in Canada Safeway’s Alberta Division advertising department. I noticed a package of cigarettes in his breast pocket (he’s since quit). Smokers tend to congregate. We liked the same music. I made mix tapes for him. He bought me a rare CD edition of Lou Reed’s Street Hassle while holidaying in London.

Rene and I are friends. I’ve divorced three times. He literally helped me move through two of them. And if there’d been a body, I think Rene would’ve been somewhat okay burying its bits and parts too. If there’s a cosmic ledger, I have taken more from Rene than I have given him. A reciprocity deficit. But we’ve also been freelance partners through the years: “I need some copy!”; “I need some design!” Rene designed the cover and promotional materials for The Garage Sailor and the print ads for Of Course You Did.

Because I don’t reach out to people I merely telephoned Rene. I asked him if he was up for another book jacket. He agreed. I said, “I can send you a draft, but you probably won’t read it.” He agreed. I began, “All right, here’s the short version: imagine guys like us, maybe a decade or two down the road, living in a retirement home…”

A book’s cover is as important as its title. Design is another device to intrigue a casual browser. The challenge is to suggest a book’s content by alluding to some aspect of the story, a visual prompt to read the summary or blurb on the back. Sunset Oasis Confidential. Together we broke down the title; Rene and I love type fonts.

“Sunset Oasis” is squirm-inducing name straight out of a twisted marketing brochure. A resort name in a winter city for seniors in the winter of their lives. Rene’s solution was a warmly coloured sans serif, like what you’d expect to see in a discounted sun vacation print ad. He then took the type and placed it over one of his own winter scenes which in turn echoed the Group of Seven references in the novel. The juxtaposition said everything.

“Confidential” was more problematic. It’s a word associated with detective noir, thrillers and non-fiction exposes. The graphic clichés are typewriter Courier and rubber stamp Stencil, usually red. I was thinking more about Jerry Lee Lewis and Rough Trade, high school. Music. “Stairway to Heaven” shut down every high school dance in my day. I said to Rene, “There are a lot of Led Zeppelin references in the book. Have a look at their wordmark. I’m sure it’s inspired by Arts & Crafts which, I believe, was based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s hand-written blueprint notations. Tell me what you think.”

Before Rene had time to put together a couple of composites, he wrote to tell me he wasn’t “feeling so great” and needed to take a few days off. The health care system here in Alberta (despite the efforts of support staff, nurses and doctors) is similar to its judicial system, best not to be involved if you can help it. I wrote back saying he’d picked a really inopportune time to die or become otherwise incapacitated.

When Rene’s comps did arrive, I was floored. In one of them he’d incorporated pretty much everything we’d discussed, wrestled with, and then overlaid that on a collage of magazine covers. Dated magazine covers. I phoned Rene. “You didn’t even read the manuscript!” The narrator’s best friend at Sunset Oasis subscribes to a slew of magazines. They provide a little backstory, a little flashback colour in their way. “How’d you know?”

“Old folks’ homes are like waiting rooms, there’s always old magazines lying around.”

As Rene shepherded his design toward final art (he reads production specifications, thank God), he had a little fun arranging the magazines’ cover images and their feature headlines. But that’s another story.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress. 

SUNSET OASIS CONFIDENTIAL

Signed, Sealed, Delivered 

A new novel. Three years of writing: six drafts – a stack a little taller than two desktop printer stationers’ bundles of letter-size; reams of sometimes incomprehensible marginalia scribbled in red or blue ballpoint; a file folder crammed with notes, press clippings and examples of slick marketing materials; two title changes. All this paper tied up with string, shakily stomach-knotted with fear and doubt.

All right, here I go again on my own (Gratuitous Supertramp/Whitesnake mash-up, apologies, I’m not particularly fond of either band myself).

The premise of Sunset Oasis Confidential is simply “High School Confidential” in a retirement home. What I took away from many visits with my grandmother or mother in Montreal, and my former neighbour here in Edmonton, was mainly a sense of complaint. All inevitably sad, from the food to the company, from the childish level of rational discussion to the entertainment and activities. But in those places, I always found a modicum of humour even if it was of the tragic sort.

My friends have told me similar stories.

I remember trying to fit my mother in her wheelchair into a crowded elevator. Not a chance. As the doors began to close, I told its occupants, “It’s okay, we’ll take the stairs.” I slayed half the house, the second and third generation portion.

Nana Moore, my father’s mother was 99 when she decided to move into an Anglican Ladies Residence. She grew tired of cooking and cleaning. Nana took me on a tour of the lovely old building. She dragged her cane (Mom used hers as a pointer and a sword) behind her. She didn’t require it, but the staff insisted. Along the route we encountered an elderly woman maybe twenty years’ Nana’s junior. Nana stopped in front of her, blocking The Sound of Music video. This lady was slack-jawed, vacant. Nana said, “Geoffrey, do you remember your Auntie Agnes?” “Of course I do,” I (rep)lied (I did not recognize Auntie Agnes). “Look at her. She’s a cabbage now.” Nana gave Agnes a gentle tap on the shin with her cane. “Agnes! Maybe the doctors will give you a new head.” Agnes told me how much all the boys loved her beautiful red hair when she was a teenager. Nana said, “Let’s go.”

We sat outside together on the expansive verandah. Grey boards, white spindles, green railings. Looking north, I could just about see where Toe Blake’s Tavern and A&A Records used to be. Nana explained to me that her accountant had designated the Anglican Ladies Residence an institution for income tax purposes. And her eyes were faltering: knitting, crochet, crossword puzzles and Bridge were more difficult these days. Anyway, Agnes never was a good Bridge player.

The future is unwritten. I’ve been coming to realize that the future isn’t what it used to be. Late innings. And so I began to wonder what might transpire should I or members of my cohort end up alone in a retirement home. You can’t take it all with you, the books, the records and the Stones tour posters on the wall when you’re downsizing while your body and lifespan wither. On the other hand, memories, emotions and habits, good or bad, always weighty, will fit inside a matchbox.          

                                      

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should shop directly with FriesenPress.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Low Bars (Not Juke Joints) 

A few years ago I broke down, bought a new lawn mower, a battery charged e-tool. I knew the make and model I wanted because I’d used my neighbour’s the entire summer previous for Edmonton’s twelve mows from Victoria Day through to, maybe, Thanksgiving. It’s an efficient unit, mulching blades, 21-inch deck (Ain’t that a man?) and quiet. I can cut the lawn any time of day or night. My neighbour, Ted the American refugee, really likes my new mower, mainly because I no longer habitually putter around his garage.

We’ve had a little rain recently. Gentle, steady, welcome. The crabapple tree by the Crooked 9’s alley gate blossomed immaculate white. When I mowed the lawn last week, a sunny and breezy day, petals drifted down around me like snow flakes in a Hollywood holiday movie. Just for a moment the miraculous magic of actually existing had clarity, a sharp grace.

Just for a moment, because I had to pause every five feet to decapitate the yellow head of a dandelion. I swear to God the bastards have learned how to duck. I do not like them in our yard. Should one metastasize into a grey R. Buckminster Fuller dome of spores, I torch it with my Zippo. Unmoored spores can ride the wind for kilometres – or a yard over.  I spray dandelions with Killex on hot days when I know they’re thirsty, begging for moisture. I try to dig them out with an inefficient tool designed for the job; parsnip tap roots run deep (Dad used a bayonet. He cleaned eavestroughs with a nine-iron. Those are other stories). My preferred “Dandelion” is the B-side of the Stones’ “We Love You” 1967 single and that’s neither here nor there except that maybe a good song should’ve previously provided me a positive predisposition to the weed.

(Digressive, interrupting tangent ahead: It’s a bit of a stretch to describe the Stones’ psychedelic phase as particularly druggy because, well, gee. “Dandelion” is like a rainbow, an ethereal, mystical girl, “Ruby Tuesday” and a “Child of the Moon”. Their dreaminess may’ve been the fashion at the time, but every Stones ballad is surprisingly tender, something of a minor shock to the listener when paired with a snarling rocker.)

You are familiar with the “broken windows” concept of urban blight. Unreplaced, a single pane of shattered glass multiplies as quickly as social media memes. Thousands of broken windows now. A recent edition of The Economist examined the theory’s complacent corollary. “Public decay” suggests that ten broken windows are, for the most part, all things considered, better than a hundred. Declining civic standards are massaged into normalcy.

Take dandelions. Please. Edmonton’s boulevards and verges are rife with them. Public parks and playing fields are an unkempt yellow. The City’s indifference to its greenery is tacit permission to neighbours (not Ted) to stop maintaining their properties. Nobody seems to care. Weeds are good, make a salad, mix dandelions with kale. God, you know, if you spray dandelions somebody’s dog might get cancer and though dogs don’t vote, their owners do and don’t forget our friendly neighbourhood pollinators because everything’s connected (Note to self: Must hang wasp trap from Ohio buckeye) and, anyway, it’s “No Mow May” which is a bit like disease marketing’s “Movember” when men grow porn star moustaches in honour of their delicate prostate glands.

Everything’s connected, especially when fundamental baseline standards slip a few limbo notches. Canadian cities, most Canadians live in an urban environment, require more funding than property taxes, modest user fees and speeding tickets can provide. Political jurisdictions and responsibilities are web-like, complex, but everything that’s rotten shakes down onto the streets of the naked city. The transit authority’s underground train stations and bus shelters were never intended to be dual-purpose structures, homes for lost souls. Somebody in a higher level of government consciously and callously off-loaded that social problem.

Edmonton City Centre is a misguided downtown mall across the street from city hall. Thirty-five years ago I used to change buses out front. I’d go in frequently to buy transit tickets, cigarettes, do some banking and browse the book and record shops. I hustled through it the other day bent on delivering some documents to my accountant. I saw a lot of hoarding obscuring vacant retail spaces. I counted more security guards than shoplifters, let alone casual clientele. Christ, the anchor tenant used to be a Woodward’s flagship department store. This is the poxy face of public decay and the wreckage wrought, concealed by plain drywall. There’s no covering it up with decorative decals, snazzy graphics. Evidence of decline, of public decay, of a pervasive creeping laxity, is everywhere.

Edmonton is a winter city. Property owners are obligated to ensure adjacent public sidewalks are free of snow and ice. Up until last winter, every neighbourhood boasted a modest network of sandboxes, free grit to help citizens with their civic duty. Locating one now is an irksome treasure hunt. The City will no longer collect discarded live Christmas trees come next January, a traditional courtesy service. This is a small cut in a multicultural society, but I cannot help but wonder about that decision’s impact on service clubs raising funds to ease some other form of public decay. It’s annoying enough trying to get a healthy one home for the holiday.

Summers are short in a northern town, but the season’s days are long. Everybody’s outside, whether active or relaxing. Of course, the City no longer sprays for mosquitos, mainly because their natural predators, bats and dragonflies, don’t invoice. The invisible vise of authorized public decay is everywhere, compressed hours for public facilities like libraries, truncated transit schedules. The squeeze is applied inch by inch. There are 63,360 inches in the mile ahead. Most days I feel like we’re halfway there, sliding on down.       

                                      

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available.

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

“Stuck in Transit” 

Guideless and guileless tourists learn by experience. Eventually you learn to fit in by not standing out. The cavalier ignorance I’ve sometimes displayed in foreign places makes me cringe. As Ann has observed about our travels and life itself: “You don’t know until you know.” Her Zen aphorism reminds me of wisdom found in Genesis: “You’ve got to get in to get out.”

Calgary indie rock outfit The Muster Point Project has just released a new single called “Stuck in Transit”. The track’s rhythm guitar is evocative of Keith Richards bashing away at his blonde Fender. That unmistakable sound, chunky shards: you hear it weaving throughout Black Crowes music, in Tom Cochrane’s “No Regrets” and even in the delightfully sardonic “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” by Waylon Jennings (I would kill to hear the Stones butcher that one).

I wrote the lyrics to “Stuck in Transit”. I’ve co-written a few songs with TMPP’s Kevin Franco. Not many. Our working relationship is strictly part-time. It’s also symbiotic. These past three years I’ve been immersed in Sunset Oasis Confidential, my latest novel which is now mere weeks away from publication after drowning in two false starts and six drafts. I surfaced to clear my head from time to time, write a blog post or a set of lyrics for Kevin. TMPP doesn’t need any input from me. Kevin writes, composes and arranges his stuff. He did tell me though that my erratic contributions tick a box allowing him to concentrate on other aspects of songcraft. Sympatico. Our collaboration is so casual that we didn’t even pinkie swear because I live in Edmonton and he lives either in Calgary or south of the equator in Santiago, Chile. I never know where that boy is, but he’s not my kid.

I never did learn how to operate a motor vehicle. My rites of passage were confined to puberty, acne and metal braces on my buck teeth. I’m public transit savvy. Always had to be. Last June Ann and I touched down in Netherlands. A night flight to Schiphol. We took a train from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal. From there we were to ride a tram to our holiday digs inside the canal belt(s). We knew the tram’s number. We knew the name of the stop, Leidseplein. We knew how many stops to count before ours (I lost track once I spotted Velvet Records through the window). We bought tickets at the station. What we didn’t realize is that Amsterdam trams have dedicated entry and exit doors. They’re clearly marked by idiot-proof pictograms, but Ann and I were running on fumes and severely depleted nicotine levels. Nor did we realize you have to “tap” your ticket to get on or get off. I’d rate our experience as an embarrassment rather than a humiliating fiasco. Within twenty-four hours we were sniggering at other tourists. Everything was fine until Ann and I were trapped inside a grocery store, turnstiles with infrared receipt scanners this time. “What did you do with the bill?” “I don’t know.” “Is it in the bag?” “Maybe?” You’ve got to get in to get out.

Efficient public transit was top of mind with me upon our return to Edmonton. The City’s ongoing and worthwhile expansion of its light rail system remained a challenge for civic planners, contractors and commuters alike.

The songs Kevin and I have written together are strictly separate room entities. I don’t tell him how I hear the words in my head. “Stuck in Transit” was different. I had a common phrase and excuse for a title, usually Kevin decides a song’s title. I had an opening couplet straight out of My Fair Lady less the Spanish bit. I had a double entendre refrain that was Ann Zen as well. All the ingredients for a fantastical Chuck Berry story song. I wrote to Kevin saying I thought I’d written something very “Stonesy” (very different from Dylanesque) for him. The day before he’d finished laying down an instrumental track in their vein. He’d yet to write lyrics. Kevin told me my words just dropped, slotted into the proper places in the music. Serendipity.

The official TMPP video of “Stuck in Transit” is on YouTube. It’s compelling footage, you can watch Kevin at work. And it’s also available for download or playlist addition or whatever on all those streaming services I know nothing about.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Closing Time (There Goes a Regular) 

Monte sent me an email from the Lower Mainland. Our Calgary barfly friend Dave who had also relocated out that way was dead. Heart attack. I’m not sure how old Dave lived to be, but he likely had fifteen years on me. Monte’s message time warped me thirty years backward.

Hillhurst-Sunnyside is a walkable Calgary neighbourhood across the Bow River from downtown. There’s a C-Train platform behind the Safeway store on 10th Street. Nearly every diversionary attraction in town is easily reached by rail. Tenth boasted a record shop and a comprehensive newsstand, Sign of the Times. Kensington Road was the perpendicular, running parallel to the river. There was an art deco cinema, a book store and pubs. Many pubs, my favourites were an Irish joint called Hurley’s that billed itself as a roadhouse and beside it, a slightly lower rent place called Sam’s whose food menu featured delicatessen sandwiches to die for at a reasonable price (and exceptional potato salad). This was the neighbourhood where I chose to live after Canada Safeway transferred me from the Alberta Division advertising department to Calgary corporate.

Monte, a published author and Calgary Herald reporter at the time, was sort of the Nick Carraway of the whole scene, the observer. He liked barroom food but not the booze. He paid sober attention. Ultimately, he would edit and (with partners) publish my first two novels. They were utter stiffs, money losers that did not damage our friendship. Whether at the sticky bar of Hurley’s or Sam’s, Monte and I were well acquainted with the regulars.

Frank was a stockbroker by trade. He was the black sheep scion of a wealthy, well-known Calgary family. He’d seen the Stones perform in Amsterdam in 1970. He grasped the genius of Frank Zappa. He did not sip his Scotch. Had I a spare investment dime at the time, I would not have entrusted it to Frank. He was homeless at the time of his death, splitting time between his office and his car, a BMW. There’d been a cigarette fire in his condo.

Steve was something of a wraith, wispy hair, wispy man. He was in commercial real estate and would go on to form his own company, direct competition to his former employer. His new office digs were in the same complex of the ad agency where I worked. His best friend was Tom, an engineer who was as gruff and uncouth as Steve was refined. I once bumped into Tom at a nearby Husky, one of those gas stations with road trip amenities. His motorcycle was in the parking lot. I needed cigarettes. Tom needed hot dogs. He ate two in four bites as we chatted. I stood well back.

There were two Brians. “Bubble Boy” and “Picasso” as dubbed and differentiated by Dave. Bubble Boy was strictly dot.com, one of those near-autistic wizards; neuro-diverse today, I suppose. One fall he announced he’d secured a half-season’s worth of Calgary Flames tickets. He said, “I’m going to get into hockey this year the way Geoff’s into baseball.” That was the winter Tom hosted a pot-luck Super Bowl party for us barflies. Denver was in it. Bubble Boy brought a mound of chicken wings. I dislike eating chicken wings in public, you need the other end of the toothpick for your fingernails. Bubble Boy’s hot sauce was exquisite, rich and buttery. I said, “There’s something else in here, Brian. What’s your secret ingredient?” Bubble Boy said, “A cup of vodka.” Who needs water?

Picasso was a housepainter. He lived with his mother and in his white overalls. He was very well read. Picasso and I began an informal book exchange: trade and then pass on (excepting his hardcover collection of five Dashiell Hammett novels which I kept – and still have). Sunday morning brunch time at Sam’s, we’d sit like students in exams, sneaking peeks at each other’s grid. After I was out of that scene I risked hiring him for some work. I was relieved to learn Picasso was actually good at what he actually did. I admire that quality in a person.

And then there was Dave. A close-talking Brit whose conversation was often hilariously rude, complete with sound effects. He lived with Moppet his cat. Dave was a salesman. He could’ve sold anything provided sex didn’t arise in his patter. When I met him, he was selling dental materials, precious metals: gold for crowns, silver for fillings. Dave speculated in real estate. I wrote and arranged the production of a promotional brochure for a development he was scheming and dreaming about. It took a very long time for him to pay me. Another life lesson learned.

Dave once told me he’d served in the British military, including a stint with the elite special forces SAS regiment. Details were vague or unforthcoming after that reveal. Every barroom has a shaker of salt for good reason. But I did see him in action. His sexual innuendos had offended another patron sitting beside him at Sam’s bar. I sensed the tension barometer rising. I was paying close attention because I’d no intention of being an incidental casualty in a brawl. Dave stared at the fellow, maybe a nanosecond. Then the other fellow was laid out on the floor. I cannot tell you what I saw because it happened so fast; I’m guessing head-butt. Move along, nothing to see here.

No surprise that all these guys were single. I was the only married member of the group. Thing was, I didn’t want to go home to be alone either. I could empathize. And there’s the paradox of Happy Hour: are you aiding and abetting a failing marriage or planning your coping strategy for the inevitable? Cause and effect or vice-versa.

Monte moved to Vancouver a few years before I re-relocated to Edmonton. We’ve always kept in touch. When Dave left Calgary for the West Coast, the two of them renewed their friendship. A couple of years ago Monte informed me Dave wanted to speak with me, could I call him? I said, “Me? Why?” “He liked you.” “Oh.” “Also, he will probably ask you to lend him some money.” I said, “Oh.” I telephoned Dave anyway.

The frailty in his voice was not unfamiliar. I’d heard the same shaky timbre down the fibre-optic line in my father’s and my mother’s. Vocal c(h)ord wrinkles, there’s no disguising old age. We talked for quite some time, about the old times, about Frank, Steve, Tom and the Brians. Mercifully, the subject of money was not raised. It’s possible I deflected an angling introductory remark.

Dave my barfly friend is dead. Too many other deaths in my life have hit me a thousand, a million times harder. That Kensington Road period of my life ran overlong. Looking back, I confess to a lot of embarrassment, some shame and zero pride. We were a collective of inadequate men doing our best to prop up each other. I have regrets, too fuzzy to mention. Dave’s still in my address book. I will get around to erasing his contact details. Still, those eraser crumbs, past particles, will diminish me.

 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available.

NONSENSE VERSE

The Evolution of a Spelling Bee 

Quips, witty rejoinders and repartee

Provide such fun and games for me

Chuckled the Thesaurus Bee delightedly

I’ve upgraded far beyond spelling

Because synonyms are so compelling

Different words can enhance a telling

But be careful when using a thesaurus

Your excessive verbiage may yet bore us

Only to render logic opaque or porous

The dictionary remains my favourite book

And I always love to source and look

Up a word’s etymological language nook

Jargon, “-ese” and lingo in the vernacular

Capitalized acronyms are quite spectacular

Globish, pidgin, patois: I’m not particular

There’s there, their and naturally, they’re

Tens of hundreds of homonyms to spare

You will never mix up “bare” and “bear”

I’ll buzz on about onomatopoeia

Maybe the next time I bumble by to see ya

Your garden variety lexicographic encyclopedia

Rhymes, they haven’t warranted a mention

You’ve surely gleaned my verse’s intention

To promote your vocabulary’s extension 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. My 2021 novella Of Course You Did is still available.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Election Reflections 

Well, here we are now: Save Us. Canada’s federal election day is Monday, 28 April. Less than two weeks to go. Churn and chaos in global affairs (“I’m Afraid of Americans”) have overshadowed domestic issues, subsequently turning this one into a two-party race. One of them has got to win. The result will likely be a majority mandate and something like a prairie burrowing owl, a rare bird in Canada these days.

Even though it’s getting harder to laugh, I was amused to learn that Wednesday’s French language leaders’ debate in Montreal was moved forward by a couple of hours so as not to compete with the Canadiens’ pivotal final game of the regular season. The NHL playoff derby is similar to a tourist compound in a politically unstable sun destination during hurricane season, pretty much all inclusive, but you still need at least 90 points (They won, they’re in).

As I read that item in the newspaper, I thought, “This is us.” I could not help but smile. But hockey, like “Queen on Moose”, maple syrup, the Group of Seven and a two-four of brown stubbies, is a Canadian cliché. A tired truth. “We’re not Americans” is the default Canadian identity. The reality in a big empty country with a housing crisis is deeper, more complicated. When I look south of the Medicine Line, I see the American Dream is alive and well and within the grasp of some individuals. I see too that many individuals will never ever get a fair shot at even attempting to achieve it. Individuals all.

The national dream in Canada was the construction of a transcontinental railroad (twinned a century later with a paved highway). The Canadian experience has been one of collectivity: “We can do this for the betterment of all.” Results and benefits have been spotty; the past and present then are akin to novelist William Gibson’s “unevenly distributed” future (imperfect in the sense of grammatical tense). So, we are contemplating the character of the man who will serve as our next prime minister. Our choice is between an erudite, highly educated and highly experienced policy wonk and an ideological demagogue who spits attack ad catch phrases. Alas, there is no “Northern Magi” on the slate, no philosopher-king, just as les Canadiens have failed to draft an anointed Quebecois saviour. I don’t know, maybe things are looking up all around. Maybe. All this endemic mediocrity has to end somewhere.

Mondays Ann and I collect our granddaughter from daycare and deliver her to playschool. The divine Ms Moore will turn five come October. Her Monday afternoon playschool is conducted in Spanish. I believe it’s important to learn a second language – if you can. I took Spanish in Secondary One. The introduction of a second Romantic Language was supposed to goose my passably brutal grasp of French. Things did not shake down well for me. Eh bien. Alors. When I visit Montreal these days I find myself thinking in French from time to time. Trouble is, my vocabulary consists of a few hundred words (Last summer I tried speaking French to the proprietor of a cheap café in Bruges, Belgium and he looked at me as if I’d just wandered off the grounds of an asylum). While our granddaughter isn’t fully bilingual, she knows that Nana will bring her snacks for the short drive. This Monday she announced from her car seat in the back of the HR-V that she’d dropped her empty treat bag and Nana or Papa would have to pick up after her. Now, I was not raised in a warm family; love but never awkward displays of it. My experiences with very young people have always been peripheral. I’m as cuddly as an exhibit in a reptile petting zoo. I said, “No. You will pick it up. What you just did is called littering and littering is wrong.” I was going to relate “Alice’s Restaurant” but that was probably too much too soon and, anyway, it’s just a tiresome novelty song now.

Litter dumping gets my back up. I pick up litter around The Crooked 9, up off the street, in the back alley. Sometimes I pack a trash bag, gardening gloves and a sharp stick into the river valley. Something useful to do. I keep informal statistics. The litter winner is always Tim Hortons. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are tied for second. It’s a crowded field after that – some of which is best left where it lays. Come election time, I apply a similarly strict data gathering metric to party lawn signs.

Candidates’ authorized lawn signs may strike you as quaint. Advertising from analogue times, much like unaddressed mail. But the key to any message is its frequency. Content defers to repetition. Repetition perpetuates perception. The word-of-mouth isn’t just gossip, the buzz is real! Best get on board, ride the prevailing winds like everybody else. I mean, Jesus as a shepherd and the rest of us as sheep has always pissed me off, but, hey, his public relations apostles were good at what they did (“We’re talking to you Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,” said Lazarus and the leper).

The primary identifier for political lawn signs is the party’s base colour. Our riding of Edmonton-Strathcona is pimpled with New Democratic Party orange. Liberal red is as alarming as a rash in an embarrassing place and so there aren’t any. Another factor in the lack of Liberal presence could be that the party’s usual loser is running this time in Edmonton-Centre where she has a ghost of a chance. Her stand-in is a Sisyphean fellow who is usually ritually slaughtered like a lamb in a rural riding south of the city.

On the drive back to The Crooked 9 after our Spanish playschool errand, Ann said, “Who are the black lawn signs for?” I said, “Black? I don’t know, the Pirate Party?” We detoured from our regular route so we could slow down and have a look. We found another black lawn sign. Upon closer examination it wasn’t really black, more New York Yankees navy blue, a deceptive colour depending upon the light or lack of it. We learned the identity of our riding’s Conservative candidate. I would add “Farm” to his name – make him a real berry-picking roadside attraction (I am childish: I like to finish those fortune cookie fortunes with “in bed” or insert “butt” or “ass” between an American football franchise’s city and nickname).

Contemporary Canadian Conservatives are acolytes of former prime minister Stephen Harper and his regressive right “Calgary School” gospel of shrill complaint. They cannot even be described as 90s neocons, let alone traditional Tories. But the unifying thread through the party’s various guises has always been Royal or Union Jack blue, that blue, however you describe it. When you’re driving past a lawn sign (or a billboard for that matter), you have a fraction of a second to comprehend and absorb what you’re looking at. During an election cycle the accurate reproduction of a party’s identifying colour, its shorthand, is utterly crucial.

Edmonton-Strathcona Conservative nominee Miles Berry probably doesn’t own a farm and so it’s unlikely he cultivates blackberries. Certainly not blueberries. Was any old drum of ink lying around the sign shop close enough (as in horseshoes and hand-grenades) for his pirate signs? Is he indifferent? Incompetent? He’s blown more than a few chances to leave an impression on undecided voters because his botched lawn signs display more as litter than message: thoughtless.

All of the candidates on your riding’s federal electoral ballot have sworn they would be honoured to represent you in the House of Commons. They have promised to fight for you. You will note that some promises made by your slate of candidates are beyond the legislative powers of Parliament and therefore subject to judicial review. You will note too that hot-button issues such as education, housing and healthcare don’t actually fall under Ottawa’s jurisdiction. Don’t be like Miles Berry; pay attention to details – they matter.

                             

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

L’Affaire Alberta 

One problem with the digital transmission of correspondence is that sometimes people who aren’t supposed to read it can. The current White House administration can attest to this. The cause is usually user error shared exponentially and which is very different from predicated active snooping like steaming opening envelopes. Funny what you come across on social media.

Recently I read through the registration form for the Alberta USA Movement, a “flash mob cookout” to be held on a ranch near Camrose, AB which is southeast of Edmonton, less than an hour’s speed limit drive. The e-mail document could be a fake, but given the state of Alberta these days, unlikely. Regulations specified that Canadian flags were verboten! US ones only! A minor quibble like that could prove irksome to unvaccinated Trucker Convoy veterans who co-opted the Canadian flag as a symbol of protest.

Camrose is one of those Alberta towns whose reason for existing is now a little distant, hazy. It is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, so it’s five years older than the province. It was a regional railway hub when regional railways existed. It’s all services now: education, health and retail for locals and surrounding ranches and farms. It’s main street, Main Street, has been designated historic, quaint and eclectic. There’s a refurbished art deco movie theatre, a hotel with a tavern, and a Chinese restaurant. There’s always a Chinese restaurant. Main Street began to wither in the 70s when developers erected a mall just outside of town on Highway 13. The mall began to wither when developers erected stand-alone big box retailers beside it and on the other side of 13. Camrose is The Last Picture Show, Winesburg, Ohio and Hal Ketchum’s despairingly catchy “Small Town Saturday Night”: ...you know the world must be flat, 'cause when people leave town they never come back...

Annexation by a convulsing superpower will fix everything. This mentality makes the separatism movement in Alberta very different from that of Quebec’s. Quebec’s separatists demand solitude. Alberta’s secessionists crave some sort of Christian Mingle hook up as comforting as a mom tending to a scrape with a Q-Tip dab of Mercurochrome, a Band-Aid and a kiss. The way things weren’t but could’ve been. In that other god they trust because the only way forward is backward, leveraging complaints and inflating grudges.

Meanwhile, the “Elbows Up!” federal election campaign is underway. It’s proving to be the most memorable one in my years as an eligible voter because the main issues supersede traditional internal bickering. The very nation is being threatened by a friend and ally. Trust has been broken. So much so that even Quebec is exhibiting signs of Canadian nationalism. It’s strictly a two-party race and I suspect the result will be a Conservative or Liberal majority government. Majority governments are rare birds of late. Black is white, up is down.

Closer to home, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith spent the weekend in Florida where she attended a Prager University Foundation gala. Prager, a sophisticated right wing propaganda operation, is as scholastic as Trump University. She also revealed to Breitbart News (Hello Steve Bannon! How was prison? A healthier stint than Jeffrey Epstein’s I’ll bet!) that a Canadian Conservative government would be more aligned with the views of the current White House administration (I since understand der Trumpenfuhrer is jury-rigging a mechanism for an unconstitutional third term). Her intended “Midas Touch” endorsement which might prove the “Kiss of Death” to the Conservative campaign. Reading the room in a closed United Conservative Party town hall meeting in a Camrose motel banquet facility is a little different from having a middle finger on the Canadian pulse. 

Premier Smith, advocate for and author of the “Alberta Sovereignty Act” and slave to her simplistic populist ideology (the “Calgary School” to political scientists), is destined to be remembered as either a heroic diplomat, think Chamberlain in Munich (that worked), or something akin to one of the more salacious footnotes in the Starr Report which went rather deep probing President Clinton’s daily dalliances with a smitten White House intern (Hi Monica!).

Now, the time has come for me to get my drag rags on and perform as a Spice Girl for Premier Smith: Tell me what you want, what you really, really want! I’m speculating now, but I think Premier Smith wished to attend that Camrose cookout. Tricky optics, though. I think the elephant in the Alberta government’s cabinet room is Republican. I think this province’s government has a covert agenda that’s as dirty as a coal mine or an abandoned oil well. I think it’s time for this government to come clean.                           

 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Indications of Spring 

This past Tuesday morning I spent too much time in the dentist’s chair. I visit frequently because 50 years of black coffee and 25-a-day doesn’t qualify as self-care in certain circles. There’s a flat-screen TV mounted to the ceiling. It’s a SHARP (“From sharp minds come SHARP products”). I’ve never asked for it to be turned on; so many years, so many visits. I play short-rack Scrabble with the brand: I begin with HARP and HARPS and go from there. Time passes. This time was different: I fumbled with the remote long enough to access the wasteland. I found the Chicago Cubs hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers in (“Crumbling guardrail, slow motion car fall!”) Tokyo. Baseball was officially underway. I settled back for a not unpleasant hour and a half.

“Been waiting all winter for the time to be right just to take you along, baby, get ready…” My unofficial spring anthem is “Fishin’ in the Dark” by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If that three and a half minutes of euphemistic joy doesn’t make you want to square dance with hillbillies like Bugs Bunny, you’re either unconscious or dead (The Alarm’s “Rain in the Summertime” greets the June equinox). I played “Fishin’” five consecutive times Thursday morning, shoes off on the living room carpet for James Brown-Mick Jagger interpretive dancing. Worked up a sweat.

There wasn’t a whole lot of country music in my record collection when I moved from Montreal to Edmonton in 1990. What I had was outlaw. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash (Thanks, Dad!), a fine early days of CD compilation of Willie Nelson, Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett. I was aware of the Dirt Band of course because Will the Circle Be Unbroken (1972) remains a legendary tribute to traditional country music (Their Dirt Does Dylan from 2002 is worth your time should that combination intrigue). The first “shaker” or hall party I attended was unsettling. A choreographed line dance to the Dirt Band’s cover of Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch” filled the floor. I was appalled. Then “Fishin’ in the Dark” came on.

Thursday afternoon I strutted down Whyte Avenue. For the most part, all things considered, I figured I was looking fine. My reflection didn’t crack any display windows. I was wearing my older bomber jacket, the one with the rotted collar and cuffs. Its brown leather has faded to green in some places. My scarf was tied just so, a Eurotrash knot. On my head a salt-stained and sun-bleached Boston Red Sox cap. My destination was Blackbyrd, my preferred indie record store. I overshot it, too distracted by the bright blue sky and the warmth of the sun. I doubled back. I spent almost an hour browsing, something I haven’t done for ages. I bought five discs; some jazz, some blues and a few records by groups whom I’ve heard about more than actually heard. I felt like Hemingway: “It was good.”

Saturday morning, just yesterday, I experienced once again the serendipitous mystic elation of scribbling. My usual cigarette Circle K is on University Avenue across from the dormitories and up the street from the Butterdome, an indoor athletic facility that really does resemble a pound of butter. The young woman who manages the store greeted me warmly. Here comes a regular. She was training a teenage boy. I guessed his first day on his first-ever job. We’ve all been there. I was patient; the day outside was looking to be a fine one, no hurry. I chose a Bic disposable with a Toronto Blue Jays logo on it while I waited. I’m out of Zippo fuel and these days that stuff is a dedicated errand commodity, hard to find.

Once they’d totalled up my cigarettes and applied the bulk discount, I said, “You haven’t charged me for the lighter.”

The Circle K lady replied, “I know. It is my gift to you.” I didn’t know what to say. What could I tell her?

My forthcoming novel Sunset Oasis Confidential opens with its hero attempting to buy a Bic in a Circle K. The scene was inspired by my own attempt to buy a Bic in this very store three years earlier. That particular episode reminded me of an uncompleted transaction with a cashier in a Montreal record store 45 years before. Combined, I now had the refreshed genesis of a niggling story: no middle, no end, but a new beginning after two false starts.

I strode out of my Circle K yesterday, a little pumped, a little primped peacock. The strip mall parking lot was Edmonton in springtime, patches of grey and black ice, dunes of non-skid grit and litter. I stepped over all the debris, not because I took long strides, but because I was defying gravity, walking on sunshine.                   

  

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Have a look at the jacket design at my companion site www.megeoff.com. Of Course You Did is still available. Collect the set!

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Springing Forward, Turning Back Time 

Ann swears daily that she won’t look at the news feeds on her device anymore. Friends and relations report cancellations of home newspaper delivery, news apps and cable news networks. An unrelenting assault of madness agitates. And there’s a secondary factor: consuming reasonably objective information to stay reasonably well-informed is not inexpensive. An ability to afford a ceaseless barrage of bad news is now something of a questionable privilege. We pay to be driven mental.

Ann and I are of our era. Although Ann is more comfortable with small blue screens than I will ever be, we like tactile facts and analysis, the texture of paper. The Crooked 9 receives The Globe and Mail six days a week and The Edmonton Journal on Saturdays (mainly for The New York Times crossword puzzles). We subscribe to The Economist, The Walrus (“a Canadian conversation”) and Alberta Views. The albatross of current affairs – whatever the reporter’s slant or pundit’s point of view – is that they’re current. Sometimes I ache for a different magazine lying around the house. Something new, something less dreadful to peruse.

I am a newspaper and periodical junkie. Not my fault.

The Montreal Gazette was dropped every morning in the house I grew up in. Dad always bought The Montreal Star at Central Station, something to read on the train home from work (Bastard did crossword puzzles in ink, my mother too). Time Canada arrived with Tuesday’s post. My big brother subscribed to Hockey Pictorial. After church he’d buy The Sunday Express, a tabloid whose existence was predicated on Saturday night’s Montreal Canadiens game. My first ever magazine subscription was a gift from my brother, Sports Illustrated with a string attached: he read it first. An American family from Lake Charles, LA lived across the street for a time. Three boys close in age, Doug, Alan and Walter. They devoured Circus magazine, my gateway drug to the music press.

I’ve been something of a moth in my life. I sought the firetraps everywhere I’ve lived or overstayed my visitor’s welcome, shops stocking magazines, newspapers and usually tobacco. Billy’s on Calgary’s downtown Seventh Avenue transit corridor. Mike’s News on Jasper, Edmonton’s main street; Hub Cigar across the river on south side Whyte Avenue. In Montreal there was a place on Cypress behind the Windsor Hotel whose space demanded sideways crab scuttling; I imagine it now as a hoarder’s wet dream. Multimags was street level in the Brutalist building atop the Guy Metro entrance.

Multimags was a constant in my life from 1975 through 1990, Polaris. I lived near it (four addresses), went to university near it and worked near it. It was always there until I left town. I’ve had a recurring dream of late in which I’m in Multimags, its witching hour version I guess because some of the fixtures are from Hub Cigar and Billy’s. I’m browsing for something in-depth about something insignificant. I’m desperate for distraction. I’ve got to get away from it all, flip through a magazine about nothing that matters. I want an issue of Sport, Inside Sports, Crawdaddy, Trouser Press, even a Hit Parader should Mick and Keith be on its cover. The racks are almost empty, no porn in sealed plastic bags even. All I can find are perfect-bind Life commemorative collectibles devoted to Taylor Swift and Jesus. A sleep apnea gasp startles me awake, sudden enough to shake off the night sweats.

Flints and fluid for my Zippo are not easy to buy. Magazines equally qualify as a niche market category. Those dusty, smelly, specialized shops, packed with character and arcana succumbed to the now, our disposable Bic era of simplistic social media misinformation memes. Fahrenheit 451 as ones and zeroes.

Ann and I are not cheap, but we’re thrifty. We frequent three different supermarkets, choosing our primary shop upon review of each banner’s electronic flyer. One store has become a significantly less painful errand experience since the retirement of a morbidly obese, overly curious and infuriatingly slow cashier (God bless you, Jacqueline). And the piped-in music is usually an unexpected treat: I’ve bopped around the store’s perimeter to Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good”, Better Than Ezra and Jesus Jones. We always turn up with a list if we’ve not forgotten it. I push the cart, Ann flits about. I look back sometimes and she’s Hall and Oates, gone. That’s when I head for the modest magazine rack. Simple Minds.

MOJO is a British music magazine. Its editorial content reflects my tastes – it’s stuck in the past. It’s also an investment, $18.99 CDN per issue. It’s also a key element of travel extravagance, I usually buy MOJO at an airport newsstand for something else to read should I choose to close my paperback. Our grocer, to my amazement, had MOJO in stock. And the Stones were on the cover as I always imagine them, a promo photo from 1969. The feature story was a deep dive into the recording of Let It Bleed (the sleeve art a leftover from its original Automatic Changer title), a masterpiece and a transitional album welcoming new member Mick Taylor. I was sorely tempted, but I was feeling sort of like Dr John, wrong place and wrong time: Ann and I weren’t going anywhere except maybe stopping for beer and cigarettes on the way home.

Athlon Sports 2025 Major League Baseball Preview caught my eye. It retailed for a dollar less than MOJO. I’d never heard of Athlon Sports. I was sure my friend Stats Guy had and I was sure he already had it. When he and I convene the Tuesday Night Beer Club (my American refugee neighbour, Ted, likes to join us when he can), we tend to revisit the past because any discussion of current affairs seems to act as a potion that turns us into two (or three) angry men. Baseball can be a touchy topic too because the game has changed (for the worse), the rules have changed (mixed reviews) and the money paid to its one-dimensional superstars is obscene (no debate), but we still love the idea of the sport, its essence.

I hadn’t purchased an MLB preview publication in decades. They went the way of the Montreal Expos, ceased to exist. Athlon Sports? The mastheads would be in a Hub Cigar-Multimags Hall of Fame: Baseball America, Baseball Digest, Lindy’s, Street and Smith …. Utterly essential reading although sometimes already stale at point of purchase. Rosters rock and roil. Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News were weeklies, authoritative, sports biblical, venerated. Their previews appeared closer to Opening Day which meant their team assessments incorporated newsy bits from spring training. I miss all these defunct newspapers and magazines; lately I miss paying a bit of attention to innocuous and meaningless stuff. Does anybody really care about the Miami Marlins? I dropped the baseball magazine in our shopping cart.           

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is with its publisher. Almost time to blow the dust off my companion site www.megeoff.com. Refresh coming soon. 

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.