It’s Raining Mensches

Living with a dying dog is hard. One day Siko is fine. The next day he chews off his toes because his leg hurts him so. Between fetching pills and bandages, Rich and I are such regulars at our pharmacy that we can anticipate its demographic-pleasing Best-of-the-Eighties playlist. Last month I ugly-cried into my face mask while sing-sobbing to The Weather Girls. But friends have been so wonderful with dinners, dog treats, waived veterinarian fees, high-end meat and pots of honey. Because of all this kindness, Siko’s toes are pinky-new and he is with us for a little while longer.

Inspired by What kind of music do you like?
Photo: “Good Boy” by Laurie Leclair.

What kind of music do you like?

To answer this question, I mentally ran through my—I was going to say Spotify playlist, but who am I kidding?—CD collection: Sarah Vaughan, jazz and opera compilations, Edith Piaf, Guardians of the Galaxy and Shrek sound tracks, Christmas muzak, Stan Rogers, Queen, some Beatles, Mozart, Maroon 5, KD Lang, Joni Mitchell, The Clash, MuchDance 2009, and a well-played double-CD set of Jesus Christ Superstar show tunes, the lyrics of which are drilled into my kids’ heads for life. Do I have any discernible musical taste at all? “Ugh, well...,” I stalled, but thankfully the conversation had moved on.

Inspired by First Church of Christ, Superstar.

First Church of Christ, Superstar

Towards the end of her marriage, my mother started attending church again . . . not—as you might expect—the Church of England, but rather the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

     I hadn’t been to church since my christening, and so it was all quite new to me, especially the part about all the secret Christian Science celebrities! Jean Stapleton—of Archie Bunker fame—was a Christian Scientist. The Monkee’s Mike Nesmith. Doris Day! But the only real star to ever visit our church was Ginger Rogers—twice—while she was refining her new show, downtown, at the Royal York’s Imperial Room.

Inspired by Feast of the Epiphany. The image is of an invitation to a free lecture on Christian Science, signed—in pencil—by Ginger Rogers on Sunday, February 15, 1976.

Feast of the Epiphany

Yesterday Soo asked me when I stopped being a Catholic. I told her early undergrad. But the question provoked: Apart from an enforced baptism at three weeks old, why was I EVER a Catholic? I loved the stained glass, the rosaries, alters full of Christmas poinsettias and Easter lilies, candles. After she left I bought a pair of lug-soled leather loafers embellished with a Channel-esque gold chain across their vamps. And then it dawned: It was the bling. I loved the bling. And it’s amazing how seamlessly Catholic guilt segues into buyer’s remorse. Fits like a glove, or a shoe.

Inspired by Heresy Above. Little Laurie by Roy Schulze and Laurie Leclair, based on a photo by G. Leclair.

Heresy Above

All this talk of stars and movement made him nauseous. Or was it Galileo’s voice? The fool was droning on about the earth revolving around the sun. A ridiculous notion; and if it wasn’t nipped in the bud some nutbar might eventually question Genesis itself.

The Pope glanced at his sundial. His next audience was with a delegation of Bohemians pushing Saint Barbara for patron saint of miners. Jesus. A woman—what next? 

     “Just kiss the ring and go,” he told Galileo curtly, wondering what he would tell the faithful at the “Make Rome Great Again” rally later that afternoon.

Inspired by Starry Night. Image: Galileo before the Holy Office by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury

Starry Night

I lay on my back on the canoe, and it was so dark, you couldn’t see where the water ended and the sky began. I looked up at the Milky Way as he talked about the Great Bear, the Swan, the Dragon, the double star here, the star cluster there. But I wanted him to shut up so I could hear his paddle as it broke the void, plunged deep, came up behind, and dripped, dripped forward to be plunged again. I wanted to relax into the rhythm. I didn’t want any talk. I didn’t want to hear what I didn’t know.

Inspired by Space 1977. Photo by NASA.

Space 1977

Our new apartment got its TV the old-fashioned way, from a big old antenna on top. Cable might’ve given us a few more channels, but even my little black-and-white set, with its rabbit ears and its UHF loop, was able to pull in as much Star Trek as the airwaves could hold, because Star Trek was what I cared about most, and here I was getting it two times a day! . . . Channel 9, when I got home from school, then again, after supper, while mom watched her news. 

     She concerned herself with current affairs. I was looking to the future.

Inspired by Hamlet Hamlet do be a Lamblet. Excerpt from Star Week, April 30, 1977.

Hamlet Hamlet do be a Lamblet

I sunk my tetracycline-stained teeth into Shakespeare by watching the Hamlet episode of Gilligan’s Island. Along with a fleeting interest in The Bard, that show sparked an obsession with tropical islands, a gateway eccentricity to my pirate phase. Although the Drouillard Road locals could’ve rocked a parrot or a wooden leg, Windsor in 1967 was no ocean paradise. So imagine the five-year-old serendipity when I spotted a cookie bag emblazoned with palm trees and clipper ships. Those coconut cremes were in my mom’s shopping cart before she knew what hit her. Desert Isle–Dessert Aisle? It could work: It had to.

Inspired by The Be All and End All. Image from Wikipedia.

The Be All to End All

To be, or not to be, a drabbler, that is the question. Whither the point to suffer the mind, spill ink upon blank page, then feel the slings and arrows of outrageous critics? (Or worse, feel none, and be unheard, unread, which marks perchance calamity for so brief a composition.)
     Devoutly to be wish’d: To be a drabbler no more, and by our silence bid an end to the heart-ache of a hundred measly words, the contrivances of plot and rickety premise, the sly shuffle with hyphens and compound-words.
     To drabble, or not to drabble: ay, there be the rub.

Notes: (1) So far this month we have been on a bee/b/be of sorts. Check the archive here. (2) A “drabble,” by the way, is (according to Wikipedia) “a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length”—witness the confections served on this blogsite. “The purpose of a drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.” We make no claims regarding interesting or meaningful and vouch only for the hundred words (though sometimes we cheat with sneaky hyphens or made-up compound words, these end notes being a case-in-point).

Inspired by More Bs. Image of Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, 1899, from the Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon

More Bs

Beginning with a barrage of brags and boos, and a bonk on the bum when Brenda bumped into Betty, the brawl burst out of Bob’s Bowling Bar, with a blur of broken beer bottles and bashed bodies.
     Brandishing a baseball bat, brought forth from her Buick, Betty bawled: “You bitch!”
   “Bite me!” blasted back Brenda.
     Betty began bashing. Brenda bobbed. Brian the Bouncer bellowed: “Break it up! Break it up you blonde bimbos!”

“Blonde bimbos?” the two beauties bellowed back, and began beating Brian, who, banged up and bloodied, booming and battling, bagged the bat and banished the bickering broads.

Inspired by Buzzman’s Honeymoon.

Buzzman’s Honeymoon

Julie and Phillip keep bees. “You kept them watered all summer!” Julie explained, handing me a jar. Watered? Then I remembered how these guys loved our deck fountain. We’d sometimes get a dozen or more, lined up in a polite row, like British Holiday makers. Some would swoop in for a dip, others were content to relax on the stone and warm their little legs, all chubby-dusty with pollen. We even saved a few sun-drunk ones from drowning. They repaid us tenfold with each spoonful of this lovely, caramel-coloured elixir, reserving a place next year at our Bee & Bee.

Inspired by Democracy’s Unsung Worker-Bees. Photo by Laurie Leclair.

Democracy’s Unsung Worker-Bees

Spare a thought for those who sweated the election. Not the politicians, but the poll workers who made it happen. In a few short weeks 200,000+ Canadians volunteered and trained to administer the vote. On Election Day they deployed to hundreds of voting places where, masked and using analog technology, they set up and staffed the polls to which their fellow citizens, sometimes cranky, thronged. They processed and registered voters, sought solutions on the fly. At closing they counted—by hand—every ballot cast, recorded the results then tore their workplace down, leaving no vestige of their role or presence.  

Inspired by Protest. Photo by the author at a real live polling station.

Protest

The year Trudeau Junior won his majority, I needed a new fridge, so I worked the advance polls. Four days of squinting at IDs, repetitive strain from crossing names off lists, with no time to eat or pee, blur in my memory. Except for one young man, who, having waited forty minutes and showed me his ID, was given a ballot to make his mark. He announced: “I'm refusing to vote.” His protest—against the futility of elections? The corruption of politicians? Democracy?—witnessed only by me and three other tired election workers, living on chocolate, gummy bears and caffeine.

Inspired by Sign Wars! Graphic from the Elections Canada home page.

Sign Wars!

The NDP here are a tight little group. No matter the campaign—federal, provincial, or municipal—you see the same faces, year after year. And so, we’ve all gotten pretty good at campaigning; and we sure had a pretty good run there for awhile—until the damned Liberals beat Toronto’s best MP . . . really.

     Thing is, I’m a sign guy, and so that’s how I’ll judge you. Our signs are straight; their signs are crooked. Our signs stay up; their signs fall down.

     By sheer numbers alone, we won the last three sign wars. Next time, hopefully, we win back the seat.

Inspired by Woke Salad Annie. Photo from the author’s extensive collection of Liberal Sign Fails.

Woke Salad Annie

Ever since they stopped the 7:00 P.M. pot-banging she was in an ethical quandary. How could she show her neighbours that she too liked a side of luke-warm activism with her piney Riesling? That’s why clanging kitchen utensils worked so well: All that community schwarm and a good night’s sleep for only a two-minute effort. But then the lawn signs came. First one, then another, then a third . . . Was she diluting her support for one cause by the proliferation of others? Who cares? Hate had no place on her grass. Neither did dogs—and she had a sign for that too.

Inspired by One Copes. Photo by L. Leclair.

One Copes

When asked what he did during the French Revolution, the Abbé Sieyès replied, “I survived.” I’m grateful to say the same (so far) of the pandemic. Yes, it’s tedious. Long, properly-distanced walks in the city distracted for a while—until I’d walked everywhere. A new bike, I decided, a shiny roadster for my Tour de Here. Hahahaha. Global supply chains are locked up tighter than Gitmo. Often I met friends in the park. First we had a brisk walk then, two meters apart, a beer on a bench. Sometimes we forewent the walk. Sometimes I forewent the friend. One copes.

Links are to previous Exquisite Corpse pandemic-era posts to show how we’ve coped. 

Lockdown Games (for when you’re really bored)

I got out a glass, left the cupboard door ajar, and poured some milk. Mom jumped up, closed the cupboard and sat down. I got a plate, left the door open again, got a knife, didn't shut the door. Mom’s eyes bugged out. How long could she last? One, two, three . . . She death-gripped her coffee. My toast popped; I brought my plate to the table, leaving the bread out. Four, five . . . Mom's eyes twitched. Six, seven . . . I left crumbs in the butter. Gurgling came from her throat. Eight . . . Oops! Butter dolloped onto the table. Nine . . .

Inspired by Who will help me.

Who will help me.

Just before COVID, I lost my computer to causes unknown. 

     True to form, I was pretty quick buying a replacement, only to let it languish downstairs . . . then the world ended. And why bother at all when any old computer will get you doom-scrolling through Twitter all day? . . . until that one died too, in October, and I moved to my iPhone fulltime.

     Two more months of that, and the fever broke, finally. I unboxed my new-year-old iMac, and plugged it all in. It wasn’t like I’d come to my senses, I just really wanted to download the new Doctor Who special. 

With apologies to Laurie for following up on the loss of her dear Starmen with a story of my inconsequential computer problems.

Starmen

This year we lost our wonderful friend Mike. And our talented pal Tom just two years before that. I often think about the fun times we had in grad school with the one, and in our fledgling adult lives with the other. For some reason, this cautionary tale on the precious impermanence of life and joy always leads me to David Bowie. At one particular-spectacular moment in time Mike, Tom, my parents, my first dog, Prince AND Bowie were all living their lives. A sort of Kuiack-Purvis-Laurette-Gerard-Brillo-Prince-Bowie Confluence. They were all alive. Like me. And most of them were happy.

Inspired by Dying. Photo by Mary Ellen Kelm.

Postcards From the Pandemic

Tourism in the pandemic leaves much to be desired. Forget flights or trains. All destinations are local. There is much to witness from your window or balcony. Birdsong. The moon. A cloud. Maple blossoms (which you’ve never noticed before) are striking. Sunset is must-see.
     Venturing further afield, find somewhere you can walk without breaking the two metre protocol. Forget dining out. If there is any good in this, it’s that you can’t stage a food-porn photo of your restaurant meal. The new normal is you, all alone, sightseeing in your mask. Post that to social media and wait for Likes.

Home Delivery in the Time of Cholera

Towards the end of my career with the Toronto Star, and with a young entrepreneur’s eye to scoring a few more tips from that year’s final collection, a fifteen-year-old me bought a bunch of Christmas stickers to stick on my copies of the Saturday paper.
     Okay, so that didn’t work.
     But I’ve learned a lot in the last four decades, and since they have yet to come up with festive pandemic stickers, I decided to create some myself for my current route, not for the money this time, just for something to let folks know I was thinking of them.

Pandemic Togetherness

There are no clubs or cozy cafés, no pints on tap, no films downtown, so at exactly 7:30 we stand on the sidewalk, appropriately distanced of course, and launch into cacophonous tribute with our pots and pans as a between-calls ambulance cruises slowly past and replies with a siren WHOOP and lights, and we bang our cookware harder, hearts bursting, who doesn’t love a parade, grinning like idiots and telling the kids, you’ll remember this—then we all peaceably disperse, thankful for our responders and our fellow citizens and the relative sanity of our politicians, and knowing we are #StrongerTogether.

Photo by Ron Thompson, April 2020

One Adult, Please.

Please tell me there’s a decent action-adventure playing downtown tonight, without a stupid romance crammed in, because that’s really the movie I’d like to see . . . alone this time; or even a drama, where the first girl to get the obvious close-up doesn’t automatically go on to become the love interest; or one where so much is happening in the hero’s life that he doesn’t even need a girlfriend; because, you know what, most of us never do get to meet our obvious girl, or worse, the one you thought was your obvious girl doesn’t find you the least bit appealing.

Image from The Summer of ’42, obviously.

Olive’s Centennial

Olive Oyl first appeared in the cartoon strip Thimble Theatre on December 19, 1919. For a decade Olive was the strip’s main character. Her boyfriend was Harold Hamgravy, a no-good lay-about and philanderer. When they finally fell out, Olive’s affections settled on Popeye, who became so popular that Thimble Theatre was renamed for him. The Sailor Man always had a schtick. Initially he rubbed the head of the Whiffle Hen for luck; later he obtained superhuman strength from eating spinach straight from the can.
     Today, we know that spinach is best sautéed in butter or olive oil. Happy Birthday, Olive.

Inspired by Butter Brawl and Olive Oyl's birthday. Image: Popeye.Fandom.com

Butter Brawl

A friend once told me that the way to stop the butter from burning in your frying pan is to add just a bit of oil.
     And it was an excellent piece of advice, too, except that I had this huge falling out with the guy—more than 32 years ago now—and still would be very happy if I never saw, or even thought of the fucker ever again, except that I do, every single time I add just a bit of oil to the butter in my frying pan . . . and I do eat an awful lot of eggs.

Photo found in Miz Gee's Kitchen.

Patterns of Force

A 100-word story shouldn’t require a 100-word introduction, but here goes…
     Recently, Ron wondered why we’re not writing here more about Trump, and I think a good part of the reason is that it’s simply too hard to keep up. This came to me a week or so after the inauguration when the first batch of Nazi stuff came out, and those stories of an addled president wandering the halls of the White House. With that, I started work on this bit of comedy gold, but by the time I’d finished futzing with it, everyone had already moved on. 
     Enjoy . . .

Remember the one where that “really smart guy” convinced himself the Nazis actually had some good ideas and so introduces them to one faction of a divided and unbalanced planetary system, in an attempt to remodel their world on what he calls the “most efficient society ever created,” except that the thugs who support him end up focussing on the bad Nazi stuff, persecuting outsiders, consolidating their power, and propping up the “stable genius” as a rambling, angry, and perpetually doped-up figurehead.
     Well, it seems those people who missed that episode of Star Trek are now condemned to repeat it.

A time for semantics (part 2)

“Van attack” has a “short sharp shock” metre going for it, but, for assonance, “van rampage” – the name the Toronto Star and Huffington Post are pushing – is hard to beat. And it has a spirit of something more extraordinary, of old made new, beast made man, of erratic movement and duration, of predictable unpredictability.
     “1715, in Scottish, probably from Middle English verb ramp ‘rave, rush wildly about’ (c. 1300), especially of beasts rearing on their hind legs, as if climbing, from Old French ramper (see ramp (n.1), also see rampant).”
     Yeah, on this one, that’s all I got.

A time for semantics (part 1)

Some earlier mass killings-by-vehicle, e.g., “the Berlin Christmas Market attack” or “the London Bridge attack” are named for more specific places. This one, on our “longest street in the world,” makes “Yonge Street van attack” unworkable.
     But is calling this “the Toronto van attack” (CNN, The Guardian, Globe & Mail, National Post) a done deal? How events get their names is the question of Peter Eglin, who traces how a 1989 event initially called terrorism, tragedy, and disaster, became “the Montreal Massacre.” Holocaust, Shoah, Final Solution: names encapsulate our views of cause, effect, rightness, wrongness, extraordinariness, ownership, and appropriate redress.

In a Surreal World

Is Exquisite Corpse dead or merely moribund?
     The Corpse’s last post was made in November, 2016. Since then, Donald Trump has become U.S. President and Ford Nation has returned to life. In the Corpse’s absence, Britain is careening towards Brexit, ice caps are melting, hurricanes and blizzards are rampant, gunmen are rampaging, plastic particles are clogging the sea and our drinking water. By my count there have been five new Marvel Universe films released since the Corpse’s last breath. Can you dismiss any of this as coincidence? What kind of Bizarro World is this? (Disclosure: I’ve always preferred DC myself.)

Cartoon drawn by Jake Tapper of CNN.

Another Cent-less Loss

On February 4, 2013, in a typically arbitrary and mean cost-cutting move, Steven Harper’s Conservative government withdrew the Canadian penny from circulation. From that day forward, cash transactions were to be rounded to the nearest nickel.
     That summer, August 10th to be precise, I purchased a bag of ice from the general store at Wymbolwood Beach for $2.99, forked over my three dollars, and with some fanfare was presented with what would be the very last penny I would ever receive in change.
     And to honour that one-cent worth of rebellion, I have carried it in my pocket ever since.

Then, on the morning of November 8, 2016, when I was changing into short pants for a chiropractic appointment—swapping my wallet, my keys, and the coins from the pockets of my long pants—I realized I had lost the last Canadian penny I’d ever received in change. I had never considered it my lucky penny, just an important penny, and a comfortable little ritual in trying times.
     It was not on the floor of my bedroom, it was not in the little basket Dr. Eric keeps for the stuff that falls from people’s pockets as they lie on his table.

Really, I had never considered it lucky, and after three-plus years in the left-hand pocket of my many pants, I have to admit it was looking pretty grotty. Lots of pretty good things had happened to me in all the time I’d been carrying it, but lots of shitty stuff, too. And honestly, I was already getting my head around the loss of the silly thing, when a Tuesday that had already started out badly ended with the election of Donald J. Trump.
     Then, as if I needed any more proof, I found it again on Wednesday.
     Sorry, America.