EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Of Cigarettes and Polar Vortexes

I’ve lived most of my life in less delicate times. Hypersensitivity was the result of an injury. Actual nerve damage. Real pain. School and work were unavoidable obligations unless my excuse involved severe physical trauma. A cold or flu merely meant switching to menthol cigarettes for a week or so. They seemed to work as well as cough drops. I’ve missed them from time to time since Health Canada banned them – I can’t remember when. I’ve always managed a cigarette whatever the conditions. 

I imagine Canadian Hell to be so liquid nitrogen cold that sinners burn anyway. Last week Edmonton dipped beyond that closing time seductiveness when Celsius and Fahrenheit flirt about hooking up over a cold one at 40-below. I hope they don’t fall in love because a dirty weekend fling puts enough strain on the electrical grid. Besides, there’s no arguing with a child like El Nino whose ferret fingers also disrupt every other established climate pattern. It’s similar to toddler grandchildren messing with your audio equipment. Volume knobs are meant to be eaten because they taste better than Goldfish snack crackers which are meant to be spun around in a CD player. Not that I would know. A diminished jet stream cannot keep arctic weather in its place, neither contain nor filter its chill.

It's still too soon to notice any change in the low light this new year side of the winter solstice up in Edmonton. The mornings are as black as my coffee, the ink of the newspaper, my prune lungs. Dawn arrives diamond blue, hard and clear. Distant cirrus clouds glow appliance filament orange. Freezing, still air is as good a conductor as any metal. The snap of my Zippo lighter’s lid could be the retort of a hunting rifle. The tobacco smoke, a hotter gas, congeals enough to cast its own shadow.

Savvy smokers understand that cigarettes can burn stuff: beds, housing, tracts of land; genitalia too, as multi-tasking on a toilet seat is best left to gathering one’s thoughts or perusing an out-of-date magazine. Live and learn, once bitten, twice shy. The discount cigarettes I buy burn like high school joints, unevenly. Their embers can be freakishly long and the paper turns brown. The seasonal mats I lay on the slate of the front porch of the Crooked 9 have burns in them. My seat cushion on the tete-a-tete has burns in it. My Neil Young flannel shirts and jackets which I layer on in extreme weather have burns in them. There are burns between the index and middle fingers of my winter gloves - both hands. Sometimes, I think none of this will end well.

Inclement weather cigarette burns whose frequency varies follow a relatively standard pattern. Once Fahrenheit and Celsius decide to conjugate my eyes and nose run like fugitives. Health Canada has yet to ban snot tipped cigarettes. There’s no such thing as a dry cold in my head. I do the wrist-to-elbow flannel wipe even as I lick my cracking lips. Saliva becomes Elmer’s Glue when a cigarette’s filter is involved. There’s no friction between slick insulated nylon gloves and smooth cigarette paper. The hot ash needs flicking. So begins the sticky-lipped slide to the orange ember. The fingers of my glove begin to smoulder and melt. I rip it off and then rip the cigarette from my mouth. Enough! Time to go back inside. My exposed palm is damp. I reach for the metal handle on the front door.                    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer. 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Gimme Some Truth

How long does an era last? This post-Obama one seems like eons. Endless oxymoronic days crammed with “fake news” and “alternative facts.” Both terms can be true or false, bad or good, depending on your point of view. Hell, they can even be mixed and matched like ideological bakery doughnuts. Whatever suits. So, it’s little wonder then that Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”

The dictionary publisher’s metric is based on online lookups (very different from online hookups) and prevalence of usage in contemporary culture, pop, corporate or otherwise. The primary definition of authentic in my Canadian Oxford is, “of undisputed origin: genuine; trustworthy, reliable.” Sort of a shame that people must remind themselves of the meaning of such a common and useful word, but, on the other hand, very encouraging too. Still…

As Keith Richards once said about cool (I’m paraphrasing): If you have to work at it, you’re not. Sort of like one of those third-rate countries with “Democratic” in its name: Voter beware! So, I bristle when an advertiser, politician or celebrity is compelled to tell me they’re authentic. I’m skeptical about restaurants who promise authentic cuisine because chances are I’ve never sampled the actual domestic cuisine in situ. Authentic shouldn’t be so fraught, but it’s so often misused and misapplied.

We need all the qualities the word embodies and all the synonyms it implies more than ever. Tomorrow is “Game on!” for the US presidential election cycle. But certified and genuine authenticity has already had a few mortifying weeks of late. I was amused to learn that the president of Harvard University was resubmitting her doctoral thesis with, erm, “clarifications.” Speaking of plagiarism, I’m interested in the outcome of the federal lawsuit The New York Times has filed against Microsoft and Open AI for stealing its copyrighted content only to regurgitate it incorrectly. Once venerable Sports Illustrated has copped to online copy generated by chatbots presented under fake bylines complete with thumbnail “correspondent” portraits.

A recent poll conducted on behalf of The Economist found that one in five Bowiesque Americans, young people aged 18-29, believe the Holocaust to be a myth. Now, human society is the healthiest and wealthiest its ever been. Ever. And we’re collectively smarter too. For instance, we figured out that the Periodic Table contains more than four elements. We know Earth is an orb, a ball, a globe if you will and not a flat disc (well, most of us). We know these simple facts to be true (most of us). And yet, the president of the University of Pennsylvania explained to a congressional hearing that the rampant antisemitism on her campus, including calls to finish the job Hitler started, was “context-dependent.” It all smells and sounds like authentic bullshit. And a big shout out to Himmler before the homecoming game!

Happy New Year. Christ. I’m predicting “dread” as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2024. I’m not mistruthing here.              

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is celebrating ten years as your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything. My companion site www.megeoff.com has been refreshed, revamped, revitalized and otherwise reinvigorated. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Table Manners

Eden has been paved over and is populated by coyotes, some of whom bet on the Maple Leafs. Indeed, turn this crazy bird around by any and all means necessary. That’s meGeoff’s Joni Mitchell 101 course description, her oeuvre as a thumbnail clipping inside a nutshell.

A song of hers that I’ve come to admire and appreciate in recent years is “The River”, which has become something of a holiday season standard: It’s comin’ on Christmas and they’re cuttin’ down trees, puttin’ up reindeer….  I imagine the narrator comfortably ensconced in the California warmth of Laurel Canyon, glad times. Still, depressed as almost always, she longs for a frozen river to skate away on. The imagery is disparate and sadly beautiful.

I’m sitting in the dining room at the head of the table. The view through the picture window behind me, which I took in for a moment before I sat down, was peculiar for Christmas Eve day. The only white I saw was on the trunks of the two birch trees in the front yard. Deciduous and particular, they’re the last of their kind in the neighbourhood, maybe the city too. The grass was green. There was an extra rock in the garden, a still hare doing its best impression of a stray patch of snow.

I’m expanding the table, twisting a gerry-built crank, a ratchet welded to a steel rod which in turn is welded to another steel rod to form a T-shaped tool. Leftie loosey. The original crank has been lost since nobody can really remember when. Imagine a more elegant tool of the type that would goose the engine of a motorcar or a bi-plane, ergonomic and efficient. It’s tedious work. My view is the primary colours of the kitchen backsplash tiles, yellow, red and blue and shades of the latter two.

There are two leaves for the table, both warped. One is 14 inches wide, the other 15. They were originally labeled “left” and “right” which kind of makes sense for an oval although which side are you on and anyway, left and right is kind of a grey area for me - cursive writing excepted. I relabeled the leaves “kitchen” and “window” a few years ago: this one slots in here and that one goes there. Simple. But that was then, when I used to crank the table apart with my back to the kitchen while looking out the dining room window. Since then, the table has done a complete rotation. So now, the “kitchen” leaf goes toward the window and the “window” leaf goes toward the kitchen.

Sometimes, I believe I’d like to escape the needless complexity of this, the most commercial of seasons. My Christmases through the decades have run the gamut from low comedy to tragedy, lonely to chaotic and joyous, and more than one “Fuck me, I can’t believe that went well.” Just like yours. These days I tend to pre-worry about the dishes, the mess and the cleanup. I wish some of those crime scene biohazard restoration companies held Boxing Day sales.

Winter solstice has passed. The days are getting longer. In days like these, the times we live in, that’s sort of a mixed blessing. Christmas as a declaration of Christian faith is a one-sided deal, a bit like trying to redeem a lifetime warranty from a Sears or Eaton’s. Salvation as a corporate mission statement has proved false. No coincidence fervent believers are described as sheep. The terrible truth lies in advertising. Buy fulfilment in goods and services because Indulgences don't payoff like Trifectas. At least the Coca-Cola Santa said, “Enjoy!” Ice cold, of course.

I’ve always dwelled on that side of town, on the cynical side of the tracks. Christmas (and maybe Thanksgiving) is a big deal about the everyday. For the most part, all things considered, it’s pretty good to be alive most of the time. Some days I can’t believe my luck. And for the vast majority of us, circumstances can always be worse and I’m the type who figures it’s just a matter of time. I sweat the fates of others less fortunate than me and do the little I’m capable of for them as best I can. I’m not always kind to strangers, but I at least try to be polite. Maintaining and strengthening bonds with friends and relations sometimes takes a little work, some effort, although it’s never hard, backbreaking. I don’t need to be reminded of any of this one particular day in each passing year.

I suppose I resent Christmas a little bit. The annual hassle and expense of being reminded how to lead a daily life of modest decency. Still, I hope your day will be as merry as it can be. And I mean that.           

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is celebrating ten years as your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything. My companion site www.megeoff.com has been refreshed, revamped, revitalized and otherwise reinvigorated. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

TMPP4XMAS

Vinyl! My collaboration with indie rock artist Kevin Franco aka The Muster Point Project just got all Olivia Newton-John - physical. Now you can listen to this modest body of work talk complete with ticks and pops. Good vibrations move air.

The music industry has always been subject to technological disruption. Sheet music publishers and instrument makers were not happy with the inventions of radio and the phonograph. Record companies were fine selling music fans new media so long as the formats remained exclusive. Home taping wasn’t killing the industry in the 80s so much as lousy albums, one hit and nine duds. Digitization and Napster were, however, real disasters, twinned at that, compressed MP3 files sounded terrible and nobody involved in the creation through to the distribution and sale of a song got paid. Only that venerated little tech prick Steve Jobs at Apple was able to monetize this disequilibrium. If malls, both downtown and suburban, and Amazon combined to kill “Main Street,” the iPod killed record pressing plants. The few that survive scrounge and scavenge replacement parts from the decrepit hulks or their sister factories. 

It's not easy for indie acts like TMPP to get vinyl to market in a timely manner. Get in line behind Taylor Swift and the Rolling Stones and don’t forget your cheque book. The production lag can be as long as a year. I submitted the lyrics for “I Got This” to Kevin last March. Shortly afterward we talked seriously about trying to write more songs together. Kevin said he envisioned an EP of maybe five cuts. Could I write ten more for him to sift through? I thought, “Oh. I can at least try.” He was obviously more confident than me because that’s when he would’ve had to book 5 KG’s pressing. He never said a word, never pressured me.

I don’t stream music. I suppose iPods have their places, summertime picnic table docks. I confine my time in the YouTube vortex to a couple of hours one night a week. The hook is the video, my musical heroes were young and good looking at one time. And sometimes YouTube is no different than leafing through my old address book – everybody’s dead. I told Kevin, you know, should anything come from our project, a CD would be nice. He said, “They’re not cool enough.” I turned to the Stones (as I tend to do) – no expectations. Oh well. A memento on a shelf would’ve been a bonus.

Teenagers sleep a lot, for uninterrupted hours impervious to their bladders. If I wasn’t sleeping (or coping with my bed spinning like a top), I was seated on it, listening to music, propped against the wall, my pillow vertical for padding, my knees drawn up, the record jacket and its inner sleeve in my hands. Printed lyrics were always a godsend, not just to follow along, but because sometimes elocution and enunciation aren’t terribly rock ‘n’ roll. Their inclusion didn’t guarantee anything though. To this day I can’t be certain if Mary’s dress (clingy, mid-thigh length in my imagination) swayed with the movement of her hips or waved something like Marilyn Monroe’s subway grate white one in the draft of the slammed screen door.

Once my first novel was off press (Murder Incorporated, 2003) a box of author’s copies was delivered to me, not at home, but to the ad agency where I worked. I was not an efficient employee that afternoon. My Calgary publisher had contracted Kevin’s ad agency to design the cover. He did that particular job himself. Here we are together again: 5 KG on vinyl. You see your first book for the first time or hear someone sing your words on the radio and, well, you’re in a parallel universe or dreaming in the darkness with a complacent, complicit, cooperative and uncomplaining bladder, because stuff like that can’t possibly happen in real life. It’s beyond surreal to put a record on the turntable and follow along to your own lyrics printed on the back of the sleeve – even if you already know all the words, what’s coming next.

If you don’t or can’t shop bricks and mortar in Edmonton or Calgary, you can still buy 5 KG on line. Go here right now. But wait! There’s more! Cleverly concealed within this post is a discount promotional code worth an astounding 25-percent off! For even bigger savings, bundle 5 KG with What’s the Point? - TMPP’s latest full-length CD! Oh by gosh, by jingle, hurry! Act now! Operators standing by.   

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is celebrating ten years as your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything. My companion site www.megeoff.com has been refreshed, revamped, revitalized and otherwise reinvigorated. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.