A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Rambling One Province Over

Circumstances can conveniently converge and collude.

Ann and I had yet to change our backdrop this year. Summer air travel hadn’t appealed, fuel surcharges and labour disputes, the rigmarole of airports and delayed flights. Germs and other people. Other people’s germs. Years had passed since we’d simply tossed a couple of pieces of luggage and a cooler in the car and set off with no particular place to go, nowhere we were obligated to be.

A holiday roadtrip compass in Alberta usually points in just two directions. West to the mountains and maybe through them to British Columbia. The other is south, a dip below the forty-ninth parallel which demarcates a significant stretch of what was once the world’s longest undefended border. This Labour Day long weekend, we heard the siren song of the near east.

Lloydminster has always intrigued me. The city’s main street demarcates the boundary between Alberta and neighbouring Saskatchewan. Different time zones (Mountain and Central), different telephone exchanges and different consumption taxes. Schizoid. And praise the Lord, thank God Ann’s son Harry suggested we continue on to Saskatoon, “You’ll be halfway there.” I believe he ran a cross-country road race in the Paris of the Prairies whilst a university student. I’d never set foot in Saskatchewan except for an hour’s layover at Regina’s airport back when Canadian Airlines was still a viable carrier.

Ann and I set off. Beyond Edmonton’s corporate limits Ann said, “Is the Alberta roadmap in the glovebox?” “No.” “Do you know where it is?” “Yes.” “Where is it?” “On the stand in the front hall.” We listened to the radio for many kilometres.

There are two constants in small town Alberta. There is always a Chinese restaurant on the historic downtown main drag which will also serves “western” food in a pinch. And that town will have a whimsical municipal monument which speaks to its cliched character. Mundare’s pride and joy is a massive and massively unappetizing sausage link (the real sausage is delicious). St. Paul offers visiting space aliens a landing pad – provided their craft is no bigger than a station wagon (SUVs did not exist when the concrete was poured in 1967).

Vegreville is renowned for its colossal Easter egg which hovers over a well-maintained park. The patterns painted on it suggest Ukrainian folk art or perhaps the hope and faith of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There’s also an “ite” colony in the vicinity, one of those strict, traditional sects that adheres to the old ways – modern conveniences excepted; electricity isn’t inherently evil. I was charmed by the dun art deco Capitol Theatre on Fiftieth Street (the town had big plans upon incorporation in 1905). Its marquee promised tales of brave Ulysses and the amazing Spider-Man, and Elvis in concert before he descended into a pathetic hell – as Vegreville obviously had.

When you drive east on Highway 16 into Lloydminster it’s natural to expect something, anything, once you pass the malls, big box retailers and chain restaurants on the outskirts. Together the local tourist bureau and the Chamber of Commerce should offer, proffer something, anything other than the string of garish orange steel obelisks at the crossroad. Because of the insanely peculiar state of political affairs in Alberta and because I feel an affinity with dystopian fiction, I could imagine some sort of “Checkpoint Charlie” right there at the traffic light, mere goosesteps away from Lloydminster’s woefully nondescript city hall. Razor wire rented like building site temporary fencing.

Ann pulled into a parking lot so we could stretch our legs and have a cigarette. We were wanting our supper and a room for the night. I pointed to an Original Joe’s. I needed a beer and a toilet and the two of us needed to confer. I didn’t want to eat at OJ’s. An Edmonton location is a Tuesday Night Beer Club lynchpin. Stats Guy likes their food. My American refugee neighbour Ted likes the chicken wings. I appreciate their company and our conversations more than the food which ranges between indifferent and okay. The Lloyd OJ bartender suggested a place called The Proper just across the provincial line, the left-hand lane of Fiftieth Avenue (Albertans tend to drive on the right these days). Meanwhile, Ann scanned the traveller apps on her iPhone. 

The highway Holiday Inn promised a decent room for $154. When we turned up at the desk the clerk informed us that same room was to be had for $159. I said, “But it’s advertised online for $154.” She said, “I can’t match that.” Five dollars. I said, “So if we were to step back from your desk, maybe two feet and book online right here in front of you in the lobby with our phone, you’d charge us $154?” Five dollars. “Yes. Feel free to go right ahead.” I said, “Do you understand the nature of irony?” She did. That phantom five dollars was refunded to us in the form of a seniors’ discount.

Edmonton is divided by the North Saskatchewan River. Saskatoon is split by the course of the South Saskatchewan River. Both river cities boast extensive and elegantly designed park systems lining their defining feature. Tragically, both cities have scarred their modest downtowns with midrise pre-fab Brutalism. Edmonton and Saskatoon are sisters.

Listen to the music of the traffic in the city/Linger on the sidewalks where the neon lights are pretty …

When I book urban hotels for Ann and me, my default is downtown. I’ve never been a quick study and so I’m still learning to sublimate my inner Petula Clark. My flaw is blind faith in the teeming vibrancy of a big night out on the big town anywhere we go. A bit flash, a bit swish. Poor boy. The reality is usually some after dark netherworld populated by the homeless and crazy or combinations thereof. I’d just like to stroll around without looking over my shoulder. I’d just like to smoke a cigarette outside my hotel without being accosted. Ann and I realized we should’ve opted for some sort of neighbourhood stay, but what did I know?

Should you ever find yourself in downtown Saskatoon, head for the Blackrose Whiskey Club. You can’t miss it because there’s no place else to go. Its proprietor, an imposing gentleman with green tattoos and unsurprisingly clad in black, was friendly and engaging. His menu boasted a ratio of fifteen whiskeys to one food item. Very tasty. If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that what you want in the moment vis-a-vis what is a very bad idea frequently courts disaster, even marries it. I ordered a Kilkenny.

Like Jimmy Cliff and Willie Nelson, Ann and I crossed that river. We walked up and down Broadway Avenue on a fine, fine September’s day. I was reminded of Edmonton’s hip, south side Whyte Avenue except there weren’t as many FOR LEASE signs. I was reminded too of Magazine Street in New Orleans, a distinct and inviting strip of small businesses who welcome browsers and casual conversation. No pressure. We shopped and didn’t sweat the added expense of a provincial sales tax.

Heaven cost me $44 plus tax at Vinyl Diner: a quasi-legal, untitled clear vinyl British pressing of the Red Devils with Mick Jagger. Sharp Chicago blues recorded about twenty years before the Stones’ own Blue and Lonesome and mercifully short of excruciatingly extended audio examples of six-string virtuosity – a common crime in contemporary blues. “Checkin’ Up on My Baby” is the sole officially available track from their collaboration, something of an afterthought on The Very Best of Mick Jagger (not entirely oxymoronic although it's no Forty Licks).

Vinyl Diner tweaked a memory of Paradise Records in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The shop is on a second storey (I always fret the weight of the inventory). You go up a narrow flight of stairs papered over with too many layers music posters. The colour of the paint on those walls is open to endless speculation. I lingered by the electronic cash for a chat. The owners, Darren and Darrin, had poked around all the record stores in Calgary and Edmonton I had and still do from time to time, time after time. Maybe they’re both introverts or maybe I sensed a sudden cursory, terse politeness in the face of a rambling annoyance. A housefly with a wallet. 

Ann and I went back down to the river on our last night in Saskatoon. The Fireworks Festival was staged in Friendship Park and the seamlessly adjacent River Landing. Food trucks lined the river valley mixed use path and extended across the precise iron geometry of a repurposed Canadian National Railway bridge. The event was sponsored by Nutrien, a fertilizer company whose black, svelte yet curvy headquarters just might be the tallest building in Saskatoon. Our Delta Hotel by Marriot (Oh, please) was nineteen superstitious storeys. Our room was on the eighteenth and Ann and I were aware of the missing Janga tile between twelve and fourteen.

The prairie is never boring because how can anything in life be boring? Tiresome, for sure. Still, the two-dimensional aspect of the landscape, its immensity, can hypnotize you like an incessantly chanted mantra. Hard proof for Flat Earthers. But just as you’re about to lock in to a permanent Zen zombie state the land will suddenly rumple and wrinkle like a patchwork quilt on a hastily made bed whose stitches are railway tracks. And all along the steel are sidings of grain terminals and great vats of what Nutrien describes as “in-depth solutions” on its website. Green and gold Nutrien signage on the prairie is as prevalent as red Coca-Cola shields and “Golden Arches” in any city.

Food truck buffets are very hip urban happenings these days. They also tend to goose my inner daintiness, release the fussier traits of my flawed character. I dislike skimpy serviettes, plastic cutlery, dining al fresco and portable chemical toilets. The Fireworks Festival Sponsored by Nutrien boasted all of this and more: scores of other people and their spoiled dogs. Ann and I ate overpriced food that did not even rate with the Tuesday Night Beer Club’s Edmonton OJ’s. I was desperate to get back to the Delta to decontaminate long before the big saltpetre show. Just as well. The twilight twitched to black a titch too soon; Ann and I recognize thunderheads when we see them. Low billows of darkness dragging themselves over the horizon.

Fireworks have a fixed trajectory and ceiling. Lightning knows no boundaries. The fireworks display was syncopated to snippets of Canadian corporate radio staples from decades ago. The storm provided its own soundtrack. We opened the suicide-proofed windows of our hotel room to listen. Way below us Twentieth Street West doubled down, glistening with reflected headlights and brake lights. The fireworks’ explosions of primary colours faded against the electric cyan of the crackling big sky. Were this the climax of a film, definitely a thriller, I’d accuse the auteur of pathetic fallacy; I’d be incapable of suspending my sense of disbelief. A great night in.

Landis is where you end up if you miss the turnoff for a bigger place like Biggar. NEW YORK IS BIG, BUT … Landis is a village. According to the Statistics Canada 2021 census, Landis houses 133 souls who occupy 68 of its 78 private dwellings. How were Ann and I to know?  The main street was a wide, oil and gravel road which terminated abruptly at perpendicular railroad tracks. We flexed our legs and spines on a small patch of lawn in the shadow of a grain terminal. We’d driven past a clapboard church and a squat brick post office. The Country Kitchen Bar & Grill was across the way, a CLOSED sign dangling in the window. No food and no toilets for us. Our roadmaps were spread out on a public picnic table. Our plan had been to take a more southern route back to Edmonton rather than retracing our steps through Lloydminster and Vegreville. Our plan seemed to be unfolding as a big mistake.

The plain, solid white door of the bar and grill opened. A woman about our age stepped out. “Are you lost?” she called. “Are you waiting for me? Can I help you?” I called back, “We’re sort of hoping for a sandwich, a cold drink and a toilet.” She said, “I don’t usually open until noon, but c’mon in.” Ann and I introduced ourselves to Karen. Karen said, “What can I get you?” Last night’s Toronto Blue Jays game was on the flat screen television. And the deep fryer had been fired up. Would a couple of BLTs on brown suit us? A sentence on the whiteboard menu read NO SOUP TILL AFTER HARVEST. I didn’t dare provoke Karen by requesting a bowl of something hearty from her stovetop.

Karen was a seamhead. The three of us compared notes on our respective, relatively recent trips to The Show in The Big Smoke. We chatted about the deplorable state of the American League once you get past the Rays and the Yankees. The Expos even came up. If sports talk doesn’t fly with a stranger, there is always the weather. After closing last night Karen had sat outside with her dogs to marvel at the same storm Ann and I watched in Saskatoon. Karen said her clientele was “antsy.” Despite what has been a remarkably abundant growing season, “You can’t harvest when it’s wet.” There are other concerns in Landis. Both the school and the grocery store have closed permanently. “The post office will be next.” Karen’s Country Kitchen Bar & Grill is the only game in the village.

There’s not much in the joint. Cafeteria furniture, a padlocked wrought iron cage for off-license hard liquor, a convenience store fridge stocked with soft drinks beside the bar which faces a wall of grey scale airbrushed portraits of The Highwaymen and Janis wearing those big, round Summer of Love sunglasses. For all that and our own antsiness to get back on the highway and maybe even gut out another four to five bladder bursting hours all the way to Edmonton, miles from nowhere, Ann and I were reluctant to leave. There we were, a really long way from many more famous places, but that incidental modicum of magic that turns up like an extra charge on a hotel bill when we connect with a stranger is the same everywhere.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

A FAN’S NOTES

A Big Day Out, a Big Game

The area around the box office at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium was deserted. A kissing booth at a covid fair. I’d missed the opening kickoff by half an hour. I requested a single ticket, the cheapest aisle seat available. A baker’s dozen years had passed since I’d last attended a Canadian Football League game.

Football was my favourite sport when I was young; the one I was best at. I was good enough to be co-captain and third-string quarterback on my high school’s worst-ever bantam team. Players in grades above and below me were so much better. The perks of a double-sized locker and early dismissal on game days mattered as much as the prize of an embroidered school letter for extramural sports. I believe I sustained just one concussion. Having your brain folded like an omelette back then was just having your bell rung. Once the field see-sawed back to level you got up and a whistle blew, play resumed.

As a kid I collected CFL player cards. I knew all the poses. I had a Coleco CFL electric football game. I painted the plastic players to make them appear more authentic: black or white cleats, white socks and various skin tones. I saved up to buy a set of plastic team helmets, smaller than a golf ball, at the local stationery, a one-man operation with half an aisle devoted to toys. I arranged them by division atop the cardboard grandstand. I rearranged them on Mondays after reviewing league standings in the morning newspaper’s sports section. All very professional.

In Montreal we had the Alouettes and later the Concordes. The francophone media dismissed football as an “English” sport, perhaps because of its rugby roots. Failed franchises. Baltimore’s Stallions, ridden hard and put away wet, the lone surviving club of the CFL’s audacious and disastrous US expansion scheme, relocated to Montreal and revived the Skylarks’ French nickname. Whoever was charged with operating the “expansion” franchise grasped grassroots engagement. Two of Quebec’s premier francophone universities are now U Sports (similar to America’s NCAA except for the cash and the graft) football powerhouses. I was well established in Alberta when the Second Coming of the Als was made manifest by the launch of an on-trend cartoony logo – sort of Woody Woodpecker raging on expired Soviet Olympic drugs.

Culture shock in Canada is a lot like a board game. You roll the dice. Should you move one province over you’ll find yourself in a milieu you’re accustomed to and yet something inexplicable is awry; it may be the streetcars and skyscrapers, but no, that’s not it. If you hop a string of provinces, you may wonder if you’ve landed in a different country. I migrated from Quebec to Alberta in 1990. The hardcore passion for Canadian football I encountered on the Canadian prairies stunned me.

The Edmonton Eskimos (now Elks) and Calgary Stampeders entertained fanbases whose cores had coalesced around VE Day. Broadsheets, tabloids, AM radio and television stations treated football as hockey’s equal: experts, analysts, talking heads, beat reporters and columnists. Those types of people now toil for the football team’s social media feed, an information source as reliable as Pravda or The People’s Daily. Cutesy nicknames and sports jargon, very in-crowd yet very necessary. A casual Edmonton Journal reader would never know the Elks exist, let alone the baseball Riverhawks, thoroughbred racing and university athletics. This is the state of the aptly named Postmedia newspaper chain. And there is little else beyond traditional print. Local legacy electronic media outlets are dimming or already dark. Static and snow. 

Genuine word of mouth will trump an orchestrated marketing campaign every time. And there is no better sports marketing tool than a winning record. The Elks were at home on a recent Saturday. An early game hosting Toronto’s Argonauts. That’s when football should be played, in the afternoon. And the morning promised the first nice Saturday we’d had in Edmonton since the summer equinox. No rain. No nighttime prime time TV ad rate grab and no American cable football competition this time of year.

We were sitting on the backyard patio. The al fresco Saturday crossword’s ass had been collectively kicked. I was feeling frisky. I said to Ann, “I’m tempted to go to the football game this afternoon.” Ann said her interest was Elvis Costello, less than zero. Who would I call for company? “Nobody we know cares.” Check that. My friend Glenn would, but he lives in Burnaby. Glenn and his wife Margaret are certified and genuine football fans. The BC Lions should shower them with team swag – provided they keep their season ticket account current. I met Glenn in CEGEP, Quebec’s corral between high school and university. He was the sports editor of our college paper. I drew a comic strip and reviewed albums. We got to know each other at bedtime – pasting up the tabloid for the printer: hot wax, rollers, X-Acto knives and ruby tape. The four of us had dinner together on a Saturday in 2018, a Grey Cup eve. Glenn and Margaret were in Edmonton to attend something like their twenty-fourth CFL championship game. And more power to them for the extremity strangling excitement of freezing in the November dark at Commonwealth. That was the last time we hung out. There was no point calling long distance to float an inconvenient commute when I was already running late.

I caught the train from the Crooked 9’s neighbourhood station to the stadium. One direct line, just like the shopping channel. I was neither molested nor murdered or otherwise accosted. I was the only rider absorbed by a real window. Human desperation and architectural crimes. A grotesque tableau. Framed cinema verite. Despair and Brutalism: not so incongruous. The Edmonton Elks game played out as something of an impromptu shot of vitamin EE.

The concrete desert surrounding the stadium proved misleading. The lower bowl and the interior concourse teemed with modern life as I view it through a jaundiced lens: unfortunate fashion choices and tattoos. An engaged Elks executive must have been ecstatic over the crowd’s diversity and demographic. My impression was that CFL football had become something akin to YouTube episodes of The Rat Patrol, a fleeting distraction for old and hopelessly sentimental white guys like me. A family can afford a big day out at an Elks game. Better days are right here right now even if Woodward’s Knothole Gang barely qualifies as a wisp of memory.

My seat was in section FF. I never sat in it. I watched perhaps a half-hour of football from various vantage points. Had Glenn made the trip, he’d have been annoyed with me. I am my mother’s son: “Mary Riley, Mary Riley.” People watching and private investigations were infinitely more interesting. Mom lost her filter toward the end and I wonder about the integrity of my own. I lapped the stadium. I lapped up the highlights of the scenery. I try to remember that life is like a men’s toilet, you best just stare straight ahead at nothing. But, man, this innate need of mine to know. Mary Riley, Mary Riley.

The monopolistic premium atop concession prices for stuff you can buy cheaper almost everywhere else was modest in the way a $9 can of Heineken registers as reasonable. Do I add a tip at a concession stand? Am I a miser? Or am I just fed up with post-covid nickel and diming? The correct action which may or may not be proper these days eludes me. Take ten points. Is that enough? God, shut up and walk on.

I wondered on my wandering whether I’d encounter a green and gold bleeder, a football fanatic from nearly four decades ago; a former acquaintance, a friend and colleague I used to know. Would I recognize them? They would be wearing a faded green home jersey harkening back to the club’s original nickname. It won’t fit quite as comfortably as it once did and the brand of that season’s Official Supplier of the CFL will be defunct or tragically unhip: Starter or Puma. I can’t speak for other people, but me? I haven’t changed a bit.

Most sports venues have a no re-entry policy. Smokers are required to enjoy their entertainment in a mild state of agitation. Housefires, wildfires, cancer – smokers are the usual suspects. And fair enough in a wilfully blind and sniffy way. I look down on other people for other reasons, mainly zealots and other self-righteous types. And idiots. Especially idiots with power. We’re all a bit uppity, I suppose, a level above our natural grade and incapable of accepting our cosmic angle of repose.

Gates 7 and 8 at Commonwealth are directly behind the north end zone. Heavy duty fencing restricts access from the street and parking lot. This was the pariah pen. The surprisingly large space was some sort of torii beckening a benign and benevolent state of Zen emission bliss. I could smell reefer. The private security guards in their snazzy black uniforms looked smart and looked and sniffed the other way. A beer hawker made her rounds through the high mass. She was diligent restocking her tray.

Back in 2018 Glenn presented me with a custom Grey Cup badge since pinned to the bulletin board above my writing table. Its main purpose is printed on it: ALWAYS SOCIABLE. It served as a goodwill token for his travelling circus of BC Lions fans upon their arrival in Edmonton. A cheery souvenir freely handed out to fellow visitors, fans of rival teams (God bless the rapidly depleting core of Baltimore Stallions fans and the Atlantic Schooner fantasists). I view professional spectator sports in the way I’ve listened to Foreign Tongues; it’s no Let It Bleed although I remain enamoured by the very idea of the Rolling Stones. I am glad they still exist in some form. I enjoyed my football Saturday afternoon even if the full four quarters and the score (the Elks ran it up, way up, in the second half) didn’t matter. I felt at home in Commonwealth, comfortable in the company of strangers. Mary Riley, Mary Riley.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

The Summer of Disbelief

Ann has three weather apps on her iPhone. I have one that functions fairly well on my geriatric iPad Mini whose operating system is beyond upgrading because planned software obsolescence wades in the same muck as disposable consumer durables; some kinda cooked up job. Anyway …. We compare the competing forecasts every morning before selecting the one we’d prefer for the unfurling day. Sometimes the digital world jives with the real world, it just don’t jibe.

There was a time when weather reports were no-nonsense, straightforward stuff. Temperatures were absolutes. Windspeeds were described as gusts. Sunny or cloudy skies. Rain or snow. Step outside and have a look. Make your own call. Be a cat – conditions may vary between your front and back doors. The UV Index became a forecast staple around the time Helios switched ultraviolet rays from a source of Vitamin D to melanoma mode. Sunbeams are now right up there with cigarettes and delicatessen meats. The newer Air Quality Index attempts to quantify why a noontime summer sky may resemble the fantastical jacket art of a used science fiction paperback.

“Rain” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. I’ve been singing that one under my breath these past eleven weeks. Ann has a better handle on the lyrics than I have, she knows the lines about the sunshine. This was the summer Ann and I decided we’d stay put and enjoy the season in our town. Little did we know it would be one for the books. Not one for a Polaroid album of warm memories so much as a compendium of photojournalism detailing flooding and broken trees. Neighbourhood weeping tiles and sump pumps are working overtime. My informal theorem of twelve lawn mows between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving holds, but only because the window of opportunity is the size of an iPhone screen. Mushroom grow in the tall, very green grass and they intrigue me: “High or die?” Best not to know.

The constant rain has been manna for mosquitoes. We have been infested by one or more of their 3600 species. I’ve been dropping poison pucks into our rain barrels and the murky pools of standing water in the lane behind the Crooked 9. This summer’s horde of bloated bombers sport horizontal stripes on their abdomens. Because I’m partially a product of my leisure pursuits, their markings remind me of the Allies’ D-Day aircraft recognition paint, bold black stripes on a white field. Equally confounding is insect absenteeism. I’ve not had to hang a wasp trap from our Ohio buckeye because there haven’t been any buzzing around this year.

Neither Ann nor I are gung-ho handymen. We manage to get chores done in our own time. Burnt-out light bulbs are a fine example. We treat them as psychologists would. Do they really want to change? I don’t procrastinate so much as gird. That process, getting my head around things, can range from hours to weeks. Sustained delay sometimes allows for things to sort themselves out minus any impetus from us. But last weekend we managed to refinish our two backyard patio picnic tables. The job was supposed to be completed before the summer equinox. The lag wasn’t laziness. We were waiting for a dry, bug-free window. Like wisdom, it was a long time coming. Then we just effin’ gave ‘er, eh bud? The refurbished tables were intended as useful surfaces for the weekend barbecues we’d planned to host. We’d anticipated our grandkids playing tee-ball and kicking around a cheap commemorative 2026 World Cup football whilst screeching like Yoko Ono. I pre-girded for that future scenario by purchasing a pouch of No Future rosin gummies. Five to 10 milligrams provide a pleasant fog of benign, almost Zen acceptance of chaos.

Endless rain has put something of a damper on sectors of Alberta’s ever-lengthening wildfire season (Alas, other provinces and territories are bearing more brunt). And the dog days of August never really wallop Edmonton. Mornings dawn as imprecise as the number of wasps I’ve counted so far this summer; single digits give or take one or two. The chill following thunderstorms and thundershowers creates fog heavier than the worst hangover over ever with the precision of a special effects machine. The fog doesn’t descend or roll in. It materializes as suddenly as the puff of smoke from one of Mysterio’s flash-bang grenades in a 1967 Spider-Man cartoon. Tuesday morning Ann and I flicked our Bics at each other on our front porch. Rustled sections of the grey, now camouflaged morning newspaper: “I’m over here, about two feet to your right.” The distance between us had never been an issue before.

Fire and rain. This ain’t James Taylor. This is climate change.

Although I keep a couple of scribblers upstairs, the basement of the Crooked 9 is my preferred place to write. It’s a solitary, immersive space. The décor inspires, spines of books and music on the shelves. Something of a elephants’ graveyard of non-trending paper. Thousands of pages of paper and reams of card stock which must remain dry. When I write and the words don’t come, or when a particular word I’m seeking eludes me, I pace. I have a route. A guaranteed stop is inspecting the collection tank of our portable dehumidifier. This summer its low voltage electric motor has been pushing the envelope of its limited warranty.

I usually place the unit in the doorway of the furnace room which is at the bottom of the stairs. A central location with a smooth concrete floor. When I’m in there fussing with it, I can’t help but take stock of our cache of furnace filters. This summer has been something of an abstract, a convenient noun for an informal grouping of consecutive months. Winter, inevitable, is never so obscure.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Our Tuesday Night Beer Club Dinner with Billy Budd

Our waitress said, “You three guys look like dads, smart.”

Stats Guy and I exchanged glances. Ted, an actual father of two teenagers, raised his eyes from the live meteororological radar app colouring his phone’s screen. And she looked like a woman no mere boy would dare mess with: black, dead caterpillar eyelashes, an impossibly tight black t-shirt sporting an impossibly distorted 49ers logo and tattoos running up her legs from her ankles into salacious speculation.

One of us said, “Uh …. And how are you?”

The Tuesday Night Beer Club has its usual haunts. Stats Guy calls it “the rotation.” One of us always picks up the entire tab. I lose track of who was last and who’s next, not Stats Guy. We patronize particular preferred places, pubs where we’re not invisible to staff and where sports TVs are muted. A modicum of attention and a lot less noise. Perhaps we’re fussy, grumpy or even persnickety.

Stats Guy is something of a snob. Billy Budd’s is strictly south side slumming. It’s situated at a busy intersection with too many lanes to count. It’s a neighbourhood draw, it’s a low-rise industrial area draw. It anchors a strip mall and its fellow businesses purvey pot and liquor (the rubber stamp store space is vacant). There’s a kitty-corner storage facility, and a hotel-hockey rink complex across the street. I wonder how Herman Melville would score in the endless digital quiz game. There are more televisions than Best Buy and Costco combined. Enough pool tables to support recreational leagues; VLT’s and off-track betting; booths, banquettes and tables. The food eschews pretension and associated prices. A decent Monte Cristo sandwich is a rare flightless bird. And none of that soda cracker-thin pizza crust. Side salads are always crisp and fresh. And the men’s toilets? Given our standard Tuesday night rotation, they are Fairmont hotel lobby quality. Beyond blessed relief, all things considered. I may be somewhat impatient, delicate and pretentious, but I’m no a snob.

This Tuesday we figured we were under the gun. Another colour-coded Old Testament thunderstorm approaching. What’s a cubit, Lord? Ted, our American refugee friend, used live in Indiana, Tornado Alley. He’s said he never imagined those conditions this far north. Climate related PTSD is alive and well. We figured Billy Budd’s was a sensible choice, the nearest place in the rotation to get home from.

How was she? A few irritations, she said. Namely mosquitoes.

“That’s a hundred thousand irritations,” I said.

“How come there are so many?”

Stats Guy said, “We’ve had the wettest summer on record. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. They can survive for as long as a decade; they’ll hatch when conditions are right.”

I added, “The City doesn’t spray for them as much as it used to.” Recalling one of our more idiotic city councillors who advocated nature taking its course, I added, “Bats and dragonflies are their natural predators.”

“I saw a dragonfly today!” she said.

“Of course,” Stats Guy said, “the bat population has been decimated by white nose syndrome.”

“What’s that?”

Stats Guy continued, “It’s a fungus that disrupts their internal clock. They starve to death.”

“How do you guys know all this?”

“We watch the news,” Stats Guy replied.

“We read newspapers,” I added.

“Like delivered to your door every morning?” she asked.

The three of us occupied a square table for four. Ted was to my left. His head was down, the brim of his Under Armor cap obscuring his eyes. He seemed to be absorbed by the oversize menu which hid the rest of his face. I saw his shoulder twitch, something stifled. Beyond him, through the plate glass window, I watched the sky steadily blacken over The Brick mattress store, the Lush sex shop and Latina Cantina.

I said to our waitress, “You know, if you’ve the time to scroll social media, you’ve probably got time to read or watch something, um, a bit more informative.”

“All right, smart dads, what do you know about the census? Someone came to my door and said I’d be fined $500 if I didn’t fill it out.”

Stats Guy said, “Do you own your home? Are you the head of the household?”

She said, “I’ve owned a house since I was nineteen.”

I said, “Whoa, that’s tremendous. Good on you.”

Stats Guy said, “Then you’re legally obligated to fill out the form. The short form takes five minutes.”

“There’s a long form?”

“Have you never filled out a census?” Stats Guy asked her.

She said she hadn’t. “What’s the point?”

I said, “The government doesn’t ask much from Canadians.” I continued, “Accurate statistics help inform policy. There’s a code on the notice you received. You just go online, it’s easy. You may wish to get on that, save yourself some money.”

“I lost the paper.”

Stats Guy and I said, “Ah.” ("Coke on you! You owe me a Coke!" Except I don’t drink the stuff.)

Our waitress poised her pen over her pad of paper. “So, what will you have?”

Ted said, “I haven’t had a chance to look at the menu. Can you please give us another few minutes?”

The window flashed electric blue like a black and white television with a blown vacuum tube. We heard the thunder crack. One of us said, “Here it comes.” Oh well. Just another delay on a night like tonight. I couldn’t decide between a hot dog with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut or pizza toppings into a baked sesame submarine sandwich loaf. Nothing but killer calories and time to kill.                     

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Talkin’ Camrose Blues

The Turquoise Bridesmaid complained about her 34-year-old bones as she shooed her son inside the Days Inn by Wyndham to be halfway useful in transforming the lone conference room into a wedding venue. Part those accordion walls! The frames of her glasses and her hair matched her gown. She was a striking figure on an asphalt stage, the ass-end of a Circle K as a backdrop, a dumpster and a near-distant Kal Tire sign standing in for the sun. She was smoking; we both held burning cigarettes in the baking humidity. I reminded her not to upstage the bride. “Oh, it's just my sister,” she replied. “And it’s her second one.” I said, “If that’s the case, go for it.” 

Ann and I had returned to “The Rose City” or “Cambrosia,” the setting of her high school years and first year of college. Those formative years, the big important ones. In literature and film Camrose is that small town which forces the hero to choose between growth or petrification – should I stay or should I go? I’ve come to know Camrose slightly, what with funerals or reunions short a few attendees. And a couple of Ann’s old gang even remember my name when prompted. I’m no different: “Yes, of course! Nice to see you again …”

This particular weekend sojourn was goosed by curiosity; the 2026 Camrose Blues Festival, evidently the second annual. We’d heard of three of the nine acts and had heard their music on CKUA. The ticket prices dated from Y2K. Maybe the machines really did stall in rural Alberta? (My first bar bill stupefied me: $8 for a bottle of water AND a proper swilling cup of locally brewed draft beer.) The real festival hook for Ann and I was the venue, the refurbished princess of Camrose’s “historic” Main Street.

The gilded and grandiose interior of the Bailey Theatre still suggests the smell of vaudeville greasepaint clinging to the ageless dusty mustiness embedded in the draped red velvet curtains. There are echoes of Social Credit bible-thumping political stumping. Errol Flynn dashing around in synthetic Lulu Lemon leggings and felt Glerups elf booties. There’s an Elvis movie on the marquee sign. The old doll’s crumbling Edwardian exterior was given a slick black and white Art Deco makeover in 1940. The façade reminds me of the theatre on the cover of The Song Remains the Same – the packaging the highlight of the movie’s soundtrack (and the film, frankly). And Led Zeppelin is relevant here because around the time of the band’s debut the blues in all of its iterations sank into the now standard tedium of elongated, painfully extended displays of six-string virtuosity.

The Days Inn on Highway 13 – Ann and I still call it the Norsemen, a name which reflected the Scandinavian roots of the region’s white settlers – was a festival “silver” sponsor. Billeted musicians were easy to clock at breakfast time in Hagar’s Café. Tattoos, black t-shirts and pork pie hats really pop in contrast to the practical sartorial preferences of wizened local folk and Camrose Police Service constables in their smart uniforms.

Our hotel presides over acres of paved-over farmland. Its closest neighbour is Duggan Mall, a contentious 70s development that strangled Main Street. Judging from the existing signage, the space now houses what must be a massive medical clinic. Duggan was once on the outskirts, separated from downtown by Mirror Lake, Camrose’s signature topographical feature. Newer big box retailers plunked on both sides of the highway subsequently choked out the mall. Ann and I were amused that the local Canadian Tire store, a mere unwalkable Las Vegas Strip block way, was more convenient to us than any of the chain’s Edmonton locations. We just happened to be in town.

We both enjoy poking around the Peavey Mart when we stay at the Norsemen. “The rural lifestyle store!” It’s across four lanes of highway, sort of close by because there’s a traffic light. I’ve never seen catch-and-release coyote traps on sale before. A bargain at $129.  Immense sacks of chickenfeed were on special too. The “-cide” aisle also intrigued me, “insecti-,” “pesti-” and “herbi-”: serious Silent Spring stuff, none of that woke Scott’s Weed-B-Gon like I use on our urban lawn.

Our next stop was Harley’s Liquor Store, one of the festival’s designated “friends.” I bought an eight-pack of low-cal, low-carb, low-alcohol beer strung together by a recyclable cardboard collar. The young clerk said the cardboard tended to disintegrate in a hurry. Would I like a bag? And I was eligible for the senior discount – Ann spoke up on my behalf. The clerk was intent on passing the time of day in a friendly way. I was intent on a discreet chilled tin outside in the parking lot beneath the big hard sun. No dice. A major portion of the parking lot was being resurfaced because Harley’s new neighbour, a boutique medical device store, obviously required a wheelchair ramp before its grand opening.

I said to Ann, “Christ, we’re not in bad shape for our age.” Ann said, “We didn’t spend our lives on a working farm.” I said, “Ah.”

Outside the Bailey on a smalltown Saturday night, killing time and smoking cigarettes between sets, we encountered a man whom Ann knew in high school. He’d been a grade or two ahead of her. His knees seemed to be reliable in 2026, no bow-legged semi-crouch. He introduced Ann to his wife as “former Camrose royalty.” Ann’s father was a prominent lawyer and later an Alberta circuit court judge. I’d met this Mr Snark once previously. Funeral or reunion? Pick ‘em. That time he said Ann used to “swan around town like she was Joni Mitchell.” Which means Ann, coerced to play her violin for Glee Club performances and later a member of the Lutheran College Choir (We have the live album from their Scandinavian tour – honest to God) used to lean into open muscle car windows to chat with every other boy except him on summer Saturday nights. Nothing like a blues festival to remind one those little town blues don’t go away by themselves. 

These days there’s a NO U-TURN sign at the foot of Main Street. The key to the highway lays in another direction. But the Turquoise Bridesmaid, though a bit put out, frazzled even, seemed happy enough there.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

A FAN’S NOTES

Some Old Loves Are So Hard to Shake

Google Analytics paints pretty pictures for me. Graphs and pie charts. Dispatches from the Crooked 9’s readership oscillates between 20,000 and 40,000 pairs of eyeballs per month. I’ve learned that eyeballs don’t buy my books. They tend to read other ones. Before or after I dropped my university microeconomics course, I should’ve dropped one in statistics too. I believed my last couple of titles were good enough to sell more than a few hundred copies. But what do I know about absolutely irrational numbers and logic?

If you’re a regular visitor here, yeah, you with the dusty credit card, Welcome back! You will never scan or scroll alone. And you know by now my marginal propensity to go on a bit about the Rolling Stones. I’ve never contemplated the opportunity cost of my fanaticism. I’m too old, weathered and well-seasoned to be embarrassed by anything anymore. Confidentially, strictly on the hush-hush, I was more sweet 16 than cynical 66 when I lapped up Foreign Tongues on its July 10 release day. I bought the double green vinyl “indie” record store version in support of Blackbyrd, my primary music destination in Edmonton. I bought the workaday CD too because a new Stones album always takes three or four listens to get a handle on. The singles are usually tangential from the guts.

Carbon dating the Stones corporate ascension into irrelevancy is an amusing parlour game. Like discussing old time baseball and hockey in a pub where whiteheads are invisible to an indifferent and poorly trained staff. At some unfixable quantum point in my life the pop culture force that was rock ebbed into a sociological footnote; a fuddy-duddy sub-genre in an upended popular music industry. I read somewhere recently that hip-hop is a dead art form now. Somehow, the Stones – or the ones still alive beneath their banner, the partners too committed to quit – are still standing in the aftermath beside the merchandise tent.

How many tongues can a pair of Nike high-heeled sneakers have? I don’t know, I passed on the fashionable footwear. There must be more tie-ups and tie-ins available in their Carnaby Street department store. The sleeve art of Foreign Tongues is a collage of caricatures by an artist so hip that only Mick has heard of him. It’s not a selling point. My alternatives were FIFA World Cup-themed covers or Marvel Comics superheroes. No surprise though because Hackney Diamonds, their shockingly good studio “comeback” of a few years back, could be had in a dizzying assortment of Major League Baseball sleeves. A sheepish confession: Had they resurrected the Montreal Expos I would’ve given the pigeon gouge some consideration.

I heard my mother shout at me from her Montreal grave last Friday. “TURN IT DOWN!” I spun the CD on the stereo, the amplifier set to my usual preferred volume. A stray cat in a wind tunnel; my ears were pinned like Keith’s pupils in the 70s and what’s left of my hair blew away. Producer Andrew Watt (apt surname) has engineered a sonic boom that punches through iPod docks and whatever subsequent audio technology that rendered them archaic.

Watt is a presence on nearly all of the album’s 14 songs. Mainly guitar, curious for a band with a couple of infamous experts. Watt’s also graced with two co-writing credits (Stones touring party alum, keyboardist Matt Clifford, racks up one). Poor Ronnie Wood, still the new guy after 50 years and still seeking his elusive fourth or fifth hyphen after Jagger-Richards.

The charm of Hackney Diamonds was its undiluted 70s length, about 40 minutes. Foreign Tongues runs for over an hour. It’s no Exile. More A Bigger Bang, an album begging to be pared down to the decent single disc lurking somewhere amid the dross: The moon is yellow/Your tits like Jell-O – ‘nuff said. And it’s a big, nostalgic and certainly foolish cri de coeur to demand that three golden agers – survivors of rock’s golden age – define yet another amphetamine era in western progress when nothing’s making sense to nobody. Expertise is left to influencers and geopolitics to a few old men all whom are just titch younger than Mick and Keith. 

Foreign Tongues is Hackney Diamonds on repeat with less oomph. Formulaic, the new paradigm. Its feel is Mick and Friends (and employees). Not a capital crime because his Wandering Spirit is the second-best non-Stones Stones album out there after Keith’s Talk Is Cheap. Just five keepers on Foreign Tongues for a fanatic like me who now clearly sees the end of the line. “Jealous Lover” may’ve charted 40 years ago, but that was then. My love train’s left the station with blue lights on behind.

Christ. If there’s another Stones album, dregs from the can, I’ll buy it. They can’t leave me. I’ve no solid memories of my life without them in it. Value is an abstract in an artificial market.    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel. 

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

“That’s How They Getcha”

Kevin Franco of The Muster Point Project and I have co-written about a dozen songs. A modest fraction of TMPP’s growing catalogue. Friends for three decades now, we kind of click: I’m his bit on the side. We work well together because we don’t rely on one another. Kevin’s a complete musician, lyricist, composer, player and arranger. And I’ve got my own stalled novel to nudge forward beyond consternation, pages of notes and five frustrating false starts.

Collaboration between Edmonton and Calgary (and often Santiago, Chile) keeps Messenger humming. Separate cities; separate rooms. My lyrics are block printed on a yellow legal pad. They’re not etched in stone. There’s always a better line or a slicker phrase to sing. My silent songs are untitled, that’s Kevin’s job – not my call. “Stuck in Transit” was the only song of ours where I suggested a sound. I got very, very technical: “I hear this one as kinda Stonesy.”

Our creative relationship has evolved since 2023 when TMPP’s 5 KG EP was released. “Goodbye America” is a fine recent example. Kevin sent me his unfinished lyrics and a short initial demo. He had a little more than half a song. Did I have anything to contribute? I loved where he was going. We’re on the same page politically. The current White House administration (if you can describe chaos and incompetence as administration) reeks of end of empire narcissism. I got to writing. I supplied Kevin with another eight or ten lines, enough to fill out his song.

“That’s How They Getcha” had a similar genesis. Kevin said, “I’ve got a title …. I was thinking about desktop printers, how they’re so cheap, they’re not built to last, but they gouge you for the ink.” Have you ever wondered why mattress store A does not match the price of mattress store B no matter what its flyer boasts? Both outlets sell the same mattress. The convenient catch is that mattress A and mattress B leave the factory with different model numbers. “Can you work with it?”

Oh, yeah. I filled up my yellow page, leaving room for Kevin to add more key lines including the audacious rhyming of “wallet” and “product.” Singers are like hucksters with their patter down cold – they can get away with stuff like that. 

We both spent too much time in advertising and marketing. One of my best friends once called me a whore (he worked for an insurance company). And this was before I became something of a burnt-out case. Still, there was no disputing his barroom assertion. And so, channeling the Rolling Stones (“Get Off My Cloud” and a really obvious one which escapes me), Jonathan Edwards (“Sunshine”) and Tom Waits (“Step Right Up”), Kevin and I wrote a song about manipulation in its many forms; the all-invasive persuasive perversity of the consumer culture mindset. It’s endemic; everything’s been infected.

The audio stream of “That’s How They Getcha” drops Friday, 3 July, in all the usual digital spaces. The video has been up on YouTube for a few days; Kevin crafted a reel that see-saws between hilarious and hysterical. There’s no mouse type in this new TMPP song. No double-talk, no scam. “That’s How They Getcha” is a public service announcement: some fine, fine new music in exchange for a few minutes of your time. Nothing but guitar strings attached.                                

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for a taste of TMPP and links to its YouTube channel. You can also buy my last couple of books. And really, buy my books. I mean, fuck Kevin, I’ve addictions to feed.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Of Beer Packaging and Promotional Swag

Moosehead is Canada’s oldest independent brewery. The Maritime operation was established by the Oland family in 1867, the year of Canada’s Confederation. Despite some recent and particularly salacious allegations of patricide (a guilty verdict since overturned), the dynastic enterprise has managed to sidestep the traditional tri-generation pattern of establishment, maintenance and obliteration.

Moosehead is no longer a regional rare bird eagerly sought by beer label watchers east of the four Atlantic provinces. And so, it must have been a slow national news day last year when the brewer received coverage simply by announcing its intention to revamp its packaging. Green, long-necked bottles were to be phased out in favour of aluminium cans. This in the face of der Trumpenfuhrer’s elastic tariffs on Canadian aluminium and steel; aluminium cans are like automobiles, there is tons of cross-border to and fro.

A cheap nylon and highly noninflammable Canadian flag dangles proudly from one wall of the Crooked 9’s garage. Beer case swag, folded into a discounted long weekend two-four. Landfill fodder from a factory in a country where no patriotic Canadian beer drinker would care to live, let alone work. Junk less sustainable and more disposable than fast fashion. Still, as a soft nationalist winner in a cosmic lottery, I felt a black bin fate to be a conscious act of disrespect. Anyway, Canada’s flag is a triumph of minimalist design, essentially a one-colour stylized symbol highlighted on a white field.

There is beer case swag etiquette too. Refuse the petroleum product “coozies” at the cash. Fingernail ping the durability of branded glassware because it sure isn’t crystal. Hats, trucker or bucket, are verboten unless you’re missing more teeth than the rotten ones left between your jaws. Ask yourself, “Are my parents blood relatives?” Beer swag t-shirts are trickier, Miss Manners and Agony Aunt material of a polyester nature.

Last week life was fraught. DEFCON 11 at the Crooked 9. No beer in the kitchen fridge and no warehoused stash in the garage. After the Tuesday Night Beer Club wrapped its evening up at one of the pubs in our standard rotation, Stats Guy graciously drove me to a particularly sleazy liquor store downtown on Jasper Avenue, the kind of place that caters to the desperate. No need for specials or loss leaders. He idled the engine and locked the car doors while I ventured inside to experience life’s rich down-and-out pageant. An imposing ziggurat of Moosehead lager caught my eye. Hooked me. The price was shockingly competitive and my choice of a free medium or large t-shirt besides. Bonus: the shirts were packaged in plastic prophylactics, impossible to pick over like the flayed wares in Costco.

Beer swag t-shirts are problematic because they’re tasteless and their lives are short. Their ultimate destiny is Molotov cocktail wicks, laundry room rag bag shreds or landfill. And yet they serve a perspirational purpose: vacuuming, painting, yardwork; decent shirts absorb the effluvium secreted by a hard-working man who’s earned a cold beer for waking up in the morning. My mother told me to always wear clean underwear in case I was in an accident and had to be rushed to the hospital. A variation of that rule applies to beer swag t-shirts: NEVER WEAR ONE BEYOND THE CONFINES OF YOUR PROPERTY, NOT EVEN UNDER A SWEATSHIRT OR AS THE FIRST OF MANY LAYERS ON A COLD WINTER’S DAY. Dignity goes to the emergency ward to die – no need to embarrass yourself further.

Beer cans have come a long way since I was underage. Light, efficient containers and like mouse traps in their way as there’s not a lot of room for improvement. They’re now made from two sheets of stamped aluminium (the world's most valuable metal back in the day - it caps the Washington Monument). Three if you count the riveted index fingertip “stay-on-tab” (SOT – tee-hee) opening system or pop top. The top or lid of a can is an “end” in industry lingo, a horizontal noun for a vertical container. Pardon the jargon.

I bought a 15-pack of Moosehead lager. NOW AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN CANS! Marketing initiatives payoff. I grabbed a gratis t-shirt because if the spring rain in Edmonton ever lets up, I will mow the lawn because I desire perfect turf when the opportunity arises to release the Umbro Size 5 2026 FIFA World Cup commemorative football to our grandchildren; Yoko Ono off-pitch shrieks.

Moosehead bottles were green. Its cans were always green, but this new design features a red band at the rim which matches the red lid. The pull-tab is still silver. The standard fingernail-shaped punch-out is instead a maple leaf. A precise miniature stencil overlayed on a red field. Subtle, vibrant branding. Clever. On message.

There’s nothing new under the sun. A “King of Beers” pop top sports a crown stencil. Rigid manufacturing standards will always crush a designer’s ultimate vision; factory machinery will never be retooled for a design studio’s affectation. But somebody at Moosehead (and Budweiser or whichever international conglomerate owns the brand, for that matter) or its ad agency, fully aware of the packaging’s constrictive parameters and what big league competition has already done, still sat back and pondered: “What if…?”

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to purchase either one of my two latest novels from your preferred retailer. Collect the set. While you're there, listen to music from The Muster Point Project and link to TMPP's YouTube channel.

A FAN’S NOTES

Opening Day

The charm of minor league baseball is its scale. The ballparks, whatever their state of upkeep, are more intimate. Tickets and concessions are affordable (although beer remains as stubbornly expensive as gasoline on the Friday of a summer long weekend). It’s in places like these that baseball exists in its idealized form, as fiction and longform sportswriting and those few instances when filmmakers didn’t drop a flyball, bobble a grounder.

The West Coast League Riverhawks (who should’ve been nicknamed Magpies – those lovely, noisy, strutting, curious popinjays are everywhere) now trot on to the diamond in place of Tigers, Trappers, CrackerCats, Capitals and Prospects. Baseball in Edmonton is akin to W.O. Mitchell’s roses: difficult here. The WCL is short-season and usually savvy enough to elude the darling storms of May. Opening Day was a night game even though the sun stays up awfully late as the summer solstice approaches.

Canada’s Old Age Security allowance secured three senior-discounted tickets. Ann, Stats Guy and I sat close to an aisle (my bladder bleats like a faulty alarm in the middle of a row) along the first base line. Our preferred spot these days. It doesn’t seem that long ago when Stats Guy and I were in our thirties and would-be rakes about town when the ballpark was named for a person rather than a corporate sponsor, made of wood and bordering on decrepit. Back then he and I preferred watching the Pacific Coast League (AAA) Trappers from the third base line bleachers.

Bill Veeck was baseball’s ultimate hustler. Believe it or not, he was Barnum, Bailey and Ripley combined. The Riverhawks marketing people have memorized his methods. Every home game comes with an opponent and a theme. “Paws in the Park” welcomes dogs and feral children. Star Wars night lures incels from the clammy privacy of their mothers’ basements. Opening Day ceremonies at any level are elongated exercises; some will go to any length for the sake of a good intention.

The Riverhawks inaugural 2026 festivities were in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation. We were gearing up to watch baseball on private property that had been First Nations territory for thousands of years before the establishment of a fur trading post in the latter half of the eighteenth century. An iron horse followed. History cannot be undone. And the gauge of the line separating abashed acknowledgment and pandering tokenism runs awfully narrow. Overwrought earnestness can be cringeworthy. I was however more inclined to applaud the drumming, singing, smudging and speechifying than groan. I’m nothing if not an insensitive and very soft leftist. I supposed it was a minor irony that the staged rituals were to be followed by “O Canada.”

The rendition of a national anthem before an everyday sporting event is an irksome formality. Tonight, there would be two because the visitors were the Wenatchee (WA) Applesox. Anthems pair nicely with affairs of state and it’s not as if Canada is at war with itself or a foreign power. Maybe we are; the nature of that dirty business has changed dramatically in recent years. What has not been weaponized, undeclared or otherwise?

The rain began before I was able to stand and respectfully remove my throwback St. Louis Cardinals road cap. Not the “little drops of rain” from Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” nor the “silver rain” of “London Town” and “Silver Train.” These were great mercury globules, the short, foreboding prelude to a downpour. Within moments my Levi’s jean jacket was washed for just the fourth time since I bought it in the late 70s. Some of the green grime around the inside of its collar was rinsed away down my back. Ann and Stats Guy were in the same sudden miserable state. Water sloshed down the stairs between sections like some sort of elaborate fountain feature. Our running shoes, socks and feet were sodden. We were soaked through. Seeking shelter became an acute matter of interior warmth.

The capacity of our ballpark is about 9000. Its interior concourse is designed for flow, not corralling near capacity. The ramps leading to cover were awash with people but the only movement was water over concrete. This is the nature of the modern digital mob. Stop and check your phone in the most inappropriate place possible oblivious to your obstructing the people behind you. It no longer matters that the exit doors of every major public venue open outward. The hunchback herd will stop in the frame. That little bandsaw lag symbol is real; common sense downloading: This may take a while.

It was raining inside too. An elegantly choreographed cascade of silver through the ceiling indicative of structural flaws. The crush made me anxious; that woollen wet smell of a Catholic grade school cloakroom in winter. No personal space for shivering. The lines for the toilets and concessions demanded elbows up endurance. The three of us consulted. If the game was delayed there’d be at least another hour’s worth of the chafing, saturated hell of other people – and the anthems had yet to be sung. If the game was called, we’d have rain checks. Pull the goalie for a pinch runner.

Aw, but you know, it was nice to be back in the yard if only for an hour to smell those metaphorical roses. And admire the manicured diamond, red dirt and striped shades of green, poorly designed signage on the outfield wall. I always enjoy the view no matter how long it lasts.                    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set! 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

W(h)ither Alberta?

Oh, for Christ’s sake. What now?

Alberta premier Danielle Smith last week announced a provincial referendum about holding another referendum. Their subjects are secession. Should Alberta exit the Canadian federation, cede its place in a wealthy G7 country imperfect as every other member of the club?

Smith’s United Conservative Party is a big top operation. The circus analogy is not unwarranted. The blue and white pavilion with its rodeo dirt floor harbours fiscal and social conservatives, special interest groups, “lake of fire” evangelicals and a lunatic fringe who fret about gun laws, chemtrails and replacement theory. Alberta separatists constitute a fifth column within the UCP. They have infiltrated the party, riding associations, Smith’s caucus and ministerial staff. This is all well and good except that separation (or its chicken game threat) was not a UCP platform plank during the last provincial election. Voters may have wished to have been informed. Elections are not raffles, hastily scribbled policy slips drawn from a cowboy hat.

Compare Alberta’s UPC to Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois. The PQ does not obfuscate its agenda. The electorate is aware of what is always on the table should it grant the party the privilege of governing. The PQ’s argument is a complaint of distinction, a different nation trapped within a larger one. Very Balkan. The UCP’s fifth column whinge is, in this sense, meritless. Both groups, eastern and western, revel in victimhood and they share words like “oppression” and “humiliation.” Their common enemy is Ottawa. Perception is everything.

Confident and competent governments should just tick along like a home furnace in the dead of winter. It does its job, no fuss, nothing to notice or worry about. Sound policies address the issues of the day. Really good governments may even look beyond the fortunes of the party and the election cycle. Incompetent governments distract from the pressing unaddressed issues of the day by conjuring political phantoms and foo fighters only to botch their needless solutions. Smith leads a party and a government devoid of a single core competency.

Smith is a proponent of “direct democracy.” Referenda circumvent the democratic system. The pro argument is that the people are heard at a pitch beyond the tenor of their legislative assembly member. As Brexit has shown, the people know. Here in Alberta’s capital city, casual morning bus stop conversation always touches on the linguistic nuances of the British North America Act and Statute of Westminster. And federal transfer payments and the fucking hockey team. Madam Premier covers it all on her weekly radio call-in show, unconstitutional plastic straws, encroaching bicycle lanes and everything.

Smith is one of those politicians who transform engaged citizens into cynics. She is a party-jumper and a floor-crosser. Her Quebec counterpart is former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard, once a trusted consigliere of former Tory PM Brian Mulroney’s. Shiny objects, brass rings, are so alluring to political magpies. The penultimate prize, heading a province but not the country, demands backroom politicking: patronizing, pandering and promising.

One suspects Smith is more DENSA than MENSA. She would play Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber of a six-shooter. The bold timidity of staging a referendum about a referendum to appease the backrows within the circumference of the UCP circus tent suggests some midnight parsing of an AI-generated overview of Machiavellian machinations although dithering and symbolic dog-whistle bones may preclude updating her C.V.

UCP president Rob Smith, no relation to the Banshee of Invermectin, has been quoted in the press as saying the Party has to official stance on a potential Albertastan. The UCP does not stand for anything apparently, ill-conceived and uninformed direct democracy excepted. He was confident that a majority of its members will vote for separation.

The immediate goal of Alberta’s separatists is a Czechoslovakian-style “Velvet Divorce” delivered at Amazon Prime speed. That will never happen. And should this disparate menagerie of malcontents present however unlikely as a unified bloc, the ultimate goal is full admission in to the corrupt and decaying empire south of the Medicine Line (it is easier to move bitumen north-south sans the irksome formalities of international borders). Perhaps they would settle for becoming a US territory, Guam North.

The future is unwritten and often surprising. But the likely outcome of this divisive and nonsensical ploy is the disintegration of the UCP as a viable political entity. And that will be on Smith’s watch. And that will be a good thing for forward-thinking, progressive Albertans.

            

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set! 

THE HUMAN RACE

A Substack Publication

Disruption is a universal constant. Always has been. Even though we have an inkling we never see it coming. A blindside hit. In human terms, it pairs nicely with death and taxes and there aren’t enough tea leaves and gypsy crystal balls in the world to predict its aftermath. Digital technological disruption now hits us harder and faster than “Rip This Joint” (side one of Exile, second song).

Me? I’m still trying to get a handle on why the promise of the internet went nipples north. As for the lightning flash advent of Large Language Models or Artificial Intelligence, I read about it in my morning Globe and Mail and my weekly Economist. Tactile print, how quaint. AI is either a Star Trek boon of ingenuity or Promethean fire. My mind drifts to Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison and weirdly, Dolly the cloned sheep. The prevailing view depends on the day and what section of which publication. This compounds my existing nonfungible token and cryptocurrency mystification; why are there Bitcoin ATMs in fortified liquor stores and shabby little depanneurs that sell cigarettes and lottery tickets? That's some kind of blockchain.

My grandfather Leslie Moore was a very British man, well-spoken though usually quiet, always dignified, very precise. A little Charlie Chaplin moustache – white throughout the twenty-four years I was lucky enough to know him. He emigrated to Montreal in 1912 in search of a career. The family business, a millinery in the Bristol suburb of Fishponds, had been disrupted by the introduction of a bus route to downtown and more shops and more variety. Papa was a Bell Telephone lifer who earned his McGill engineering degree at night. Papa learned French by reading La Presse, the Francophone equivalent of the morning Gazette and competing evening Star; a Larousse by his side.

Nana’s and Papa’s apartment was halfway between my elementary school and home. I ate lunch there frequently because the food was better (Sorry, Mom). I always used the tradesman’s entrance, up the wooden stairs at speed to their kitchen door. One noon hour I trudged up. Nana and Papa asked me why I was so glum. I’d had a brutal grade three morning. Arithmetic class had progressed beyond reciting multiplication tables and drawing upside-down long division Ls. Fractions! Papa sat me down at his drop-down secretary with a pad of graph paper and a blue fine point. He taught me fractions in two-thirds of a minute from over my shoulder. I was so relieved.

IBM introduced the Universal Product Code shortly thereafter. An utterly staggering innovation with no unintended consequences to speak of. One lunch visit Papa’s secretary was down. The pad, a hard lead pencil, a steel ruler and a slide rule were out. And an assortment of UPCs. There must be an obvious relationship between the human readable numbers and the sequence and varying thicknesses of the vertical bars. Perhaps the patterns weren’t discernible to the naked eye? An infrared code. There would be technical journals at the public library.

What Leslie Moore did because of his own interest and curiosity was research. Grunt work. What he couldn’t do at the time and what he wouldn’t have done even if he could’ve is now referred to as “cognitive offloading.” A pithy keystroked answer less the who, where, what, why and how would not have sat well with him. He certainly knew of Alan Turing’s Bletchley Park bombe and IBM’s UNIVAC. He was an analogue empiricist; the mechanics of progress warranted study: circuitry, vacuum tubes and punch cards. Applications and consequences (predicted and otherwise) demanded contemplation. Progress had to be thought through. I frequently wonder what he would make of the advanced digitized dross of the Information Age. Is there any practicality or substance to the function?

Leslie Moore died before Time magazine named the personal computer Machine of the Year. The elasticity of time is important here, in the context of life and the exponential acceleration of technology. I have known my friend Jim Gibson for more than twice as long as I knew my grandfather. Jim wrote a book called Tip of the Spear (I read through a couple of early drafts). Picture a crossroads at twilight, it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there. From one direction comes human culture and behaviour – which ceaselessly mystifies economists, historians, politicians, pundits, artists, members of the clergy, friends and relatives, family pets and sundry wildlife. Heading for the same intersection is (glibly) Silicon Valley, whose high-tech apostolates remind me of America’s nineteenth century robber barons and the bankers on Tom Wolfe’s Wall Street: adherence to laws, regulations, principles and ethics may be deferred (point and click on the X). Our high school math word problem subjects are travelling at different speeds. How far apart are they before they collide? Jim’s overarching message was straight from The Beatles: “Dear Prudence.”

Last week two Ukrainian AI-enhanced military drones programmed to attack Russian energy infrastructure lost the plot. Disrupted by enemy jamming, the drones decided a similar facility in neighbouring Latvia, a NATO country, would do just as well. Close enough for rogue robots, like horseshoes and hand grenades. A Brave New World. Fuck me; my neighbourhood cannabis shop has yet to stock soma. My grandfather was with me the other morning when I took Tip of the Spear down from the shelf. I simply sought some informed context, a foundation to help me get my head around the news story (and the porn industry’s embrace of AI and its early adoption by criminal scammers; the insane possibility of der Trumpenfuhrer spouting truth about fake news; the means of production without actual workers; a dystopian future of machine overlords breeding humanity’s next evolutionary step – whoops! I’ve circled back to porn). Jim’s book was published in 2017. The crossroads are still there, but the signposts (those reflective yellow diamond warning ones) have gone missing.

Jim and colleague Laura Haynes constitute the team behind The Human Race on Substack (Laura narrates The Human Race podcast as well). I’m now living in a world I could not have imagined at the turn of the century. This ain’t no meme. Google Chrome nudges me incessantly to introduce myself to Gemini. Astrology is bogus. Anyway, I’m an Aquarian and so predisposed to discussion and debates that hold water. AI is multivalent. It is quantum, at once elegantly Einsteinesque and batshit crazy. Substack’s format allows Jim and Laura to rationally assess AI (and all of its digital baggage, consequences, implications and unknowns) in real time. They’re constructing a “framework of hope” together. Could be Babel, could be truth, I’m not sure, but they're buffering all the white noise. I do know that The Human Race, whether on Substack or alive in the world, is a subject worthy of at least a modicum of contemplative thought. And a little research. Possibly more than that – just a hunch – because the future has just hit us like Saturday night on a Sunday morning.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. And while you’re there, listen to some Muster Point Project music.