Rest Stop

I think it was called the Green Rooster in Arthur. It was rooster something, anyway. The restaurant where the bus always stopped halfway between Toronto and Port Elgin. The driver gave you enough time to stretch, use the facilities and have a coffee. That day I ended up sitting at the counter beside the old auctioneer who was heading back to town on the same bus. Once his voice rang loud over crowds of bidders. He rasped he was in Toronto for one of his throat cancer treatments. A character who had loomed large in our rural community, now cruelly silenced.

Easy Riders

My favorite seat on the Greyhound is the front one directly to the right of the driver. It’s not a prize easily won as you have to beat the grannies at their own game. They’ve packed the night before and arrived three hours early. Like blue-haired llamas, they can stand for long periods of time. And they know you’re gunning for the same place. Upon securing the coveted spot they’ll put their Harrods tote bag on the empty seat beside them. You’re left to wend your way back through the unwashed as the bus starts its milk run to Sudbury.

A Full House

Much as I like having the choice of any seat in the place, there is something sad about an empty theatre. It reminds me of the films I saw in packed houses, of queues downtown that stretched right around the block and back past the ticket windows, of seats far from the screen you still felt lucky to get. And so it was last night that I didn’t mind the cost or the crowds, I didn’t mind standing in line, because I was going to see a new blockbuster, and you know what . . . I got exactly the seat I wanted!

Petri Dish

I never went to movies when I was a kid. We lived in Quebec where there had been a horrendous fire in a cinema filled with children and many died. So there were laws about kids under a certain age going to movies. Once we moved to Ontario I saw my first movie in an actual theatre. “Santa Clause Conquers The Martians.” I went with my brother and some other kids. My mother was not all that keen on us going. Especially because it was wintertime and flu season. She always viewed movie theatres as giant incubators for germs.

Eat, Pray, Fumigate

Experimenting with the power of suggestion, I once cast a spell on Jim Morand. It was grade seven and I told him that yes, I was indeed a witch and with just a light touch on the shoulder I could make him itchy for the entire day. Of course after that he couldn’t stop scratching, thus confirming my supernatural powers. This week Scotiabank Theatre audiences were wracked by the scare of a bed bug infestation. Like Jim’s spell, the bed bugs were a hoax, but I defy anyone to watch the latest Julia Roberts confection without wriggling in their seats.

2001 in 1972

Famous Players had divided the Uptown theatre to allow them to show five movies at once. Typically, a major release would open in the Uptown 1, formed from the original balcony of the grand old theatre and still pretty spectacular on its own; from there, it would eventually move downstairs to the Uptown 2 or Uptown 3, each of which included half the original vaudeville stage; and finally end up in the tiny Backstage 1 or Backstage 2, which is where I finally saw 2001 in 1972, back in the days when a popular film could run there for years.

Photo by Ellis Wiley.

One Hundred Words

Here are the 100 words we used most during the first four months of the Exquisite Corpse, excluding the most common English words. For instance, we used “the” 1769 times, but you won’t see it here.

Generated by Wordle.

Double Bill

It was a double bill at the drive-In. The first movie, some cheesy action flick about a bank heist. Lots of chase scenes and car crashes. My boyfriend, Mike, and I necked through it, while his brothers in the front seat shifted their focus between rooting for Mike, and watching the movie. The second movie was ‘2001 A Space Odyssey.’ I had been waiting to see it. They were somewhat bemused by the ape scene, but once the Strauss waltz started, the brothers had enough and pulled up stakes. It was years before I saw it all the way through.

Two Out of Three

I was about to say that I’ve never walked out on a film—if I pay for a movie, I’m damn well getting the whole movie—but then I remembered I’d walked out of The Shining of all things. It was the third feature in a triple bill, I’d already seen what I’d really come for, and it was a crappy print. So, when that first wave of faded, purple blood came crashing down the hallway towards the camera, I knew I’d already reached my limit for whatever the hell that was supposed to be . . . but thanks for trying, Stanley.

P’Shaw

Skiz and I just saw Age of Arousal at the Shaw Festival. Set in the 1880s, it’s a play about female emancipation, sexual awakening and Remington typewriters. You’re warned when you buy your ticket that the play’s sexual content might put some people off. Quite a risky move since most of the patrons are old, pink Nibblers out for a weekend of fudge and farce. After intermission the attendance was noticeably lighter and proffered only polite applause. Imagine the Hurlburts driving back to Rochester, Bob appalled by the use of the word ‘quif’ and Diane contemplative over two women kissing.

Space Age Technology

I thought I had died and gone to heaven when the first typewriter came out that had the correction tape built right into it. Later when technology arrived where at the touch of a button you could erase back several lines it seemed things could not get better than that. Then a memory typewriter came out that you could set up to fill in the blanks of a form letter. Holy cow! I thought. Incredible!
… I have not had a typewriter for twenty years now and the last few offices I worked in were not equipped with them, either.

Xerox 9700

I’m thinking I came face to face with my first bona fide laser printer in the summer of 1982, back when the typewriter was still holding fast and children grew up learning how lasers were developed to cut through steel. So, forget all you know about that friendly little unit humming away on your desktop, the Xerox 9700 was a good city block long and capricious as hell. It swallowed toner by the barrel and spat out paper by the ream . . . box after box of reports they’d never read, but look the wrong way and the paper jams were legend.

Photo from the DigiBarn Computer Museum.

Zen and the Art of Photocopying

When I first started out I did everything myself: research, writing, photocopying, schlepping. To keep from crying out in boredom I made a mental game of it: Listening to the hum of the machine, knowing the exact second I could flip the cover up and turn to the new page. At times I was truly one with the machine simultaneously centering the frame, focusing the image, printing it out and doing it again so quickly that the process never stopped. Now Colin my associate does all the copy work. I’d like to say I miss it, but that’s just bollocks.

The Ideal Job

Joan was stuck in a rut. At one point she thought of becoming a librarian and she now wondered if she made the wrong choice. People were always impressed when Joan told them what she did. They were all ears for more details about her job at the prestigious design firm where she worked. When she protested that it was not as glamorous as it sounded, they chuckled ironically. Joan knew they thought it must be better than whatever mundane thing they did. The fact is, after you have been doing something for years, any job gets boring and repetitive.

Up and Coming

In retrospect, Danny chose the worst time to leave the band; but then who could have guessed their next song would make them all rich? . . . except Dan, of course, who came to be known as the Stuart Sutcliffe of the Cowper Gland Band, and who, if anyone had bothered to ask, was secretly relieved to have dodged the fame, the obligations, and the inevitable sitcom. Twenty years on, and he could jam whenever he wanted with the best friends a man could have, while every night, the remaining Cowpers had to smile through yet another encore of “Up and Coming.”

Your Name Here

We never baptized Daniel, so instead of a Christian name he was given a special Hindu name by our neighbours. Not only was this a way to yet again thumb my nose at my Catholic roots, but it also gave him a very cool handle: Daniel Patrick Deepak Haynes. When he got older he could choose any combination from the lot. D. Patrick Haynes the academic, Paddy Haynes the fiddler or Daniel Patrice Leclair the French oceanographer. If his fledgling band makes it big and my son plays bass for a living he could be known simply as The Deep.

Mary Jonesing

My Lebanese neighbour calls me Mary Jones. This is not the first time this has happened to me. I had an Italian friend who also kept calling me Mary Jones. He never shortened it to Mary, even though he knew that Jones was a last name, because he had been previously married to a woman named Mary Jones. But then, he also always referred to her by both names, too. Perhaps that is why the marriage did not last. It would be weird to be married to somebody who called you by your first and last names at all times.

Call Me Joff

Not long after moving into the neighbourhood—Garden Avenue just off Roncesvalles—I was talking to an old locksmith who needed to know where I lived. “Oh, just up Roncey,” he said as if it were some sort of password or my introduction to their inner circle, like the people I’d meet from Geoffrey Street who pronounced it “joff-free,” and I just figured that’s how things were done here on Roncey, and so I did it too, or at least I did until they installed a new system to announce the streetcar stops and opted for the more traditional pronunciation.

Potato, Pototo

Language is a living thing. You’ll notice how young people pronounce “str” like “schtr” so strawberry sounds like “schtrawberry”. Even though the aboriginal and thus correct way of pronouncing Spadina is Spa-DEENA, local Torontonians call it Spa-DINA. And they have for years. I come from a place where Pelissier Street is pronounced Pa-LISH-er, by local folks, no less. But there are pockets of the world where language stands still. Like Tecumseh. Since my ear has been trained to understand this beloved corn-fed patois, I can read eighteenth century French documents like it was Mémé reading out her weekly grocery list.

Vomit Comet

The son of an old family friend from Italy was visiting Toronto and I was charged with making sure he was well-entertained. I arranged to meet him at the Bamboo Club, my favourite night spot at the time. I gave him directions to make his way over to Queen and Spadina. He was a bit late, but eventually showed up. He had been confused by my Toronto pronunciation of Spa-DIE-na, but after awhile figured out it was the street he would have pronounced Spa-DEE-na. Later I sent him a recording of ‘Spadina Bus,’ by the Toronto band, the Shuffle Demons.