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.