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Somebody has to speak up about this. If we don’t cast some light on the lies that these “National Treasures” have been spreading, they’ll just keep getting away with it. We have to think of the children.
1. Anne Murray does not want to sing me a love song. Trust me.
2. Sarah McLachlan will not be the one to hold me down and kiss me so hard. She’ll actually ask the management to have me removed if it is even suggested.
3. The Bare Naked Ladies do not once mention coke or hookers in “If I Had a Million Dollars”.
4. Joni Mitchell never opened a tree museum. If she ever gets around to it I bet her admission will be higher than she claims, too.
5. Everybody does not know that that’s how it goes, Leonard.
6. Alanis Morrisette does not know what irony is, ironically. Also, it is often too hot and very often too cold.
7. Nelly Furtado is nothing like a bird and she has never flown away.
8. Stan Rogers was never one of Barrett’s privateers. He made the whole damn thing up.
9. The man in the moon is not a newfie. To say that the idea is goofy is putting it mildly (I have even begun to suspect that there is no man in the moon at all).
10. Paul Anka did not do it his way.
11. I can’t make out most of what Celine Dion says but I’m sure it’s all lies.
12. Shania Twain is impressed very easily.
13. The Tragically Hip are not only liars but they are also panic mongers. New Orleans was not sinking at the time that they claimed it was. They were off by a good fifteen years.
14. Randy Bachman does not take sugar in his coffee.
15. Nickelback claims to be a rock band.
1. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
2.”My Humps”
3. “Oooo, come along. I got a dollar in my pocket for ya and you can have it if ya want it” (A song so stupid and annoying that it is impossible to find the name of the song or the band that played it in Google)
4. “Hypnotize” (Notorious B.I.G)
5. “Since You’ve Been Gone”
6. “Do the Bartman”
7. Achy Breaky Heart
8. “Macarena”
9. I’m Too Sexy
10. Santa Baby
11. Any song by Nickelback
12. Anything “Emo” or “Neo-Punk” (with the exception of several Green Day songs)
Facebook wasn’t to blame. It was Scrabulous. Let’s hope the demise of that time eater will lead to creative productivity.
I blame Facebook.
I have been inspired to try my hand at stand-up comedy. People usually consider me a pretty funny guy and I enjoy making people laugh. I’m having trouble writing material, though. I’m much better at improv than at scripted stuff. I figure a good routine breaks down into four or five topics. So, I’m going to borrow from the improv world and ask my audience (you, the reader) for topics to riff on. Then I’ll invite you all to an open mic night at a comedy club and you can see how I do. Deal?
Chapter 1
It was dark. Real dark. So dark that the street lights had to work overtime to light the streets. The street lights and I had a lot in common: tall, skinny, only useful for our top parts, and I too was working overtime to shed some light on the streets. But on this dark night I had to admit to myself that Jimmy “Peg Tooth” Boland was as disappeared as the dinosaurs, and me with only a few fossils and a toothbrush to unearth the truth. The case had led me to a dead end street; a cul de sac marked with a large “no exit” sign. It was cold too; the case and the night.
One week and one day before I was sitting in my second floor office above the bike shop on Whyte, googling a guy named John Bayard. An insurance company had hired me to prove that his disability claim was fraudulent. That’s the kind of work you get if you’re a PI in Edmonton. Nothing terribly glamorous. Insurance companies, collection agencies, suspicious spouses, and concerned parents. But it was my bread and butter so I didn’t mind it. Google was giving me nothing on the guy. I kept getting hits for some Frenchman who wrote a book about not reading books. I found this pretty funny, but not too helpful.
I’ve often considered moving to a larger space. One with two rooms. A room for my office and a room for a reception area and a receptionist. But my student loan payments and the support payments to my ex made the expenses of a new place and an employee impossible. I had also been meaning to install a buzzer and intercom system, but had never quite gotten around to it. The problem I had was with street people wandering in off the street. Drunks, druggies, and panhandlers would often stumble into my office looking for a toilet or a place to rob. Whoopleheads, I call them, like on “Deadwood”. Edmonton’s a lot like “Deadwood” except not quite as interesting. Whoopleheads were a nuisance that wasted my time and left the place smelling awful for hours afterward. I had just about given up on Google when one such nuisance opened my office door and strolled in.
She wore a dirty, blue and pink nylon windbreaker, a dirty white t-shirt, dirty gray sweatpants, and a pair of muddy work boots. She could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty years old. It was hard to tell. Her face was leathery and saggy and covered in sores or pimples. Her teeth would have made a corpse puke. Her hair would have made a rat reconsider its nesting options. She looked around the office through bloodshot eyes and pulled a skeptical face.
I made shooing motions with my hands. “There’s no bathroom and no money on the premises,” I said tiredly. “Take a hike.”
“Is this the PI office?” she said.
“You’re looking for the EI office. It’s not here,” I said, gesturing again towards the door.
“No. I’m lookin’ for the private investigator. Sam Raymond Investigations. Where is it?”
“This is it.”
She made that skeptical face again. “This is it? Are you Raymond?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look like a PI.”
“You don’t look like a client. What were you expecting? Tom Selleck?”
“I don’t know. Anyways, I need to hire you. My old man is missing. I want you to find him.”
“I do charge a substantial daily fee, you know.”
She pulled a freezer bag full of coins and a dirty wad of bills out of her fanny pack.
“I’ll pay you fifty bucks and as many blowjobs as you want,” she said nonchalantly. “I’d offer you screws too but my plumbin’s all fucked up.”
I did the hand waving thing again and tried to get the images out of my head. “I only accept cash or credit cards. And it’s more than fifty bucks a day,” I said, trying not to gag.
She sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk before I could stop her. “Well, what the fuck? You don’t accept fair trade? Jesus Christ. How about you call it charity work? Then you can claim it on your taxes or something.”
“That would have to be a certified charitable organization. I don’t think you qualify.”
She stuffed her money back in her pack angrily. “You’re an asshole,” she announced, and got up and slammed out of the office.
I sighed heavily and then regreted it because of the resulting inhalation. She left a wicked hum behind her which I will not attempt to describe because I don’t want to recall it that clearly. I lit a cigarette, hoping that it would cover the stench (I’m not suposed to smoke in my office but I do anyway. Let them fine me). The cigarette didn’t help so I pulled a can of air freshener out of my desk drawer and sprayed the room liberally. Then I found the Yellow Pages and looked for someone to install a buzzer system.
The intercom system cost me an arm and a leg and a few fingers and toes, but the guy showed up that afternoon, which is really good service for this city. He was a nice guy. We chatted while he worked. He was from Ghana but he spoke beautiful English. He told me he was a doctor back home. It doesn’t even surprise me anymore. I don’t even know how many university educated waiters, plumbers, and taxi drivers I’ve run into. And they’re not always foreigners. He worked quickly and efficiently and he seemed to do a good job. He showed me how to work it, and then wished me a good day and left. I was pretty pleased with the new set up so I celebrated with a cigarette. I surfed the web for a bit and then decided to call it a day. John Bayard could wait until tomorrow.
I was just about out the door when the buzzer lost its cherry.
Dreams are not always good sources of inspiration. Very soon after beginning work on the novel mentioned in the previous posts, I realized that neither Hemingway nor Joyce nor Stein would make very good detectives. They all led very mandarin lifestyles, each in their own way. Hemingway ’s boyish admiration for men in uniform would have made him more likely to leave a murder investigation to the Paris police. Joyce was going blind and Stein rarely left her salon, so the idea of these two tromping around Paris trying to solve a murder is ridiculous. There’s also just way too much research involved. I would have to immerse myself in the time and place with about six months of solid reading before I could even begin to start writing. I don’t have that kind of time to invest in a project that ultimately would be, as I said initially, absurd.
I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed anyone (I doubt that I have). I’m going to think about serializing one of the other projects I’ve been working on instead. I also want to keep at the essay idea. Any suggestions for topics?
Once again, a silly idea has taken root in my thoughts and has begun to suggest itself as a feasible project. I am speaking about the Hemingway/Joyce/Stein mystery that my subconscious (or is it unconscious?) mind presented to me the other night. It poses an interesting challenge: not only will I have to devise all of the intricacies of a compelling murder mystery, but I will also have to emulate the style and voice of three very famous, very different writers. This is not just a question of ability but also of legality. How long does someone have to be dead before you can use them in this way? I don’t want descendants and executors descending on me and legally executing me. Does the “this is all made up” disclaimer at the beginning cover your bases?
I’ve also been thinking about this blog as a sort of vanity press. I’ve been considering serializing this novel here on my blog. I’m extremely good at coming up with ideas and beginning to develop them but I have yet to complete an entire project. This has been a real hindrance in aspirations of publication. I’m thinking that serialization will provide me not only with immediate feedback from impartial (or even partial) readers, but it may also encourage me to get the damn thing done so as not to let people down. I tend to work very well under pressure. Deadlines and demands are good for me. I’m not sure about the wisdom of this, though. Will it hurt or help my chances of future publication? Will there be royalty and copyright issues down the road? WordPress terms of service are somewhat vague. I would appreciate any thoughts, advice, or information on this. In the meantime, I’ll keep mulling it over.
This came to me in a dream: I am going to write a mystery set in Paris in the 1920s. Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein must solve a murder. It will be written from their perspectives in their styles. It will be absurd. However, it will be critically well received. At least one critic will call it a “tour de force”. It will be made into a movie starring Luke Wilson as Hemingway, Ben Affleck as Joyce, and Demi Moore as Stein. It will be an unwatchable mess but Demi will win a Golden Globe for her portrayal and Affleck will be nominated (even though he looks nothing like Joyce and his accent will be vaguely Scottish instead of Irish throughout the film). I will feel cheap and whorish, but I will use my money and connections to do bigger better things. You just wait and see.
Zoological. Apparently, this expression pre-dates the racist slur. It’s talking about actual raccoons. Unless you ask an Australian. They say it is racist. Who listens to Australians, though?
