I finished working out the chords for “Five easy pisseuses” (Five Easy Pieces) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing the song in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian’s Translations where I began to prepare it for publication on the blog.
I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first session of two.
I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast.
At noon I decided to have lunch early since I planned on leaving at 13:00 to go to The Supermarket for the Ekstasis launch, which I thought started at 14:00. I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. I was pretty much ready to go when I checked the poster for the event that Albert Moritz had emailed me and saw that I’d gotten the time wrong. It started at 16:00 and so I decided to take advantage of that and take my siesta, which I’d thought I was going to miss. I went to bed at 13:00 and got up at 14:30.
I left just before 15:00 and took a full bike ride downtown but this time turned west on College and then south on Augusta.
When I walked in I saw Albert Moritz’s smiling face greeting me from the bar. I hadn’t even known he was going to be there. I’d asked him if he thought it would be beneficial towards me getting published by Ekstasis if I went to the event but he hadn’t answered. I bought a pint of Supermarket house lager and we went together into the already crowded back room. He introduced me to Richard Olafson the Ekstasis publisher and promoted my manuscript, reminding him that I was the one he’d emailed him about. I told Richard that I’m more of a pre-Gutenberg style poet. Albert told him that he might like a rhyming poem about shock therapy and he agreed that would be interesting.
Only the front row had two empty seats side by side and so Albert and I sat down front and centre.
Albert has always seen my poetry as somewhat influenced by the Beats and so he inquired about my poetic roots. I said I was mostly influenced by song lyrics from the late 60s and early 70s, some of which were inspired by the San Francisco Freak movement, which in the works of artists like Frank Zappa to some degree took up the mantle after the Beats. I said Leonard Cohen was also a major influence, who to some degree was also influenced by the Beats among others. Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” has elements that are lifted from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, with the lists of apocalyptic imagery following the lines that begin with “I saw…” That kind of imagery all goes back to William Blake.
Richard kicked off the event and introduced his wife Carol Sokoloff who sang some of her songs. The MC was Antonio D’Alfonso who is also an editor for Ekstasis and has a book out that wasn’t ready for the launch. Domenico Capilongo was a very outgoing performer of his book 1972. It has a lot of pop cultural references from that year and tends to be clever if not deep. Mary Melfi read from Welcome to Hard Times and she was charming. She said flowers show their disapproval by dying. Merle Nudelman was probably technically the best poet and sculptor of images with Michael and Me. We heard from Clara Blackwood and her book Pomegranate Heart. She uses a lot of imagery of mythological archetypes applied to the speaker’s life. John Oughton had some interesting stuff using the imagery of particle physics and references to the Hedron Collider.
Richard came up again and went into a long anti vax rant. He claimed that one of the reasons Ekstasis fell behind a year was because he and his wife were ostracized and exiled because they refused to get vaccinated. He claimed that the truckers convoy were responsible for the lifting of the mandates. I don’t think that’s true. They were being lifted coincidentally around the same time as the protests. He claimed that Trudeau said that all anti vaxxers are white supremacists, which he didn’t say. But without a doubt there were white supremacists amongst the truckers. He also claimed that he knows a lot of authors that have developed neurological disorders as a result of being vaccinated for Covid. Research shows that there are inherent neurological disorders in our systems already waiting to be triggered by trauma. A lot of the trauma relating to vaccination is emotional, especially when everybody was afraid of getting very sick. There is more evidence of neurological and other problems resulting from the taking of aspirin. This is really true of all medications. People were already leaving while Richard was doing his rant. I think he should have just read the poem that the rant preambled.
Carol finished with a couple more songs.
A tall, attractive woman with white hair wanted to take a picture of Albert with Richard and Carol and for some reason wanted me in the shot as well. I snuggled in and put my arm around Carol. The photographer had to coax me to smile. I said I hadn’t realized I was going to have to work.
I went to the washroom and when I came out I ran into George Elliot Clarke. I was surprised that he liked Richard’s anti vaccine rant. He invited me to a songs from poetry event on December 15. He confirmed that he wants to go for supper with me and we could maybe do it in December.
I talked with Alan Briesmaster and then asked his daughter Clara Blackwood to sell me a book and sign it. She reminded me that I gave her her first feature at my reading series The Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy about 25 years ago. She wrote that she remembers my poetry vividly.
I left with Albert Moritz and we chatted outside. We also talked about getting together for dinner sometime. He was extremely surprised that I’m 68.5 years old. He exclaimed “People say I look young!” I was surprised that he was surprised. I think I look younger than I am but not that much younger.
I rode home in the dark through the busy streets. There were a lot of cops out with their menacing all season Christmas lights. Like a nightmare about evil tanenbaums.
I weighed 85.1 kilos at 19:25.
I made pizza on naan with Bolognese sauce, hot salami and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 3, episodes 28 and 29 of Green Acres.
In the first story a pregnant woman whose husband is away is in Sam’s store with her two kids when she goes into labour. Oliver and Lisa happen to be there and Oliver drives her to the hospital while Lisa says she’ll take care of the children. When Oliver gets home he discovers that Mrs. Mullen actually has a total of six children for them to take care of. Ralph is hired as a cook to help out. There is one girl among the children and so Lisa tells Oliver he’ll have to sleep with the boys in sleeping bags on the living room floor. The next day Oliver drives the children to school but they go to three different schools at three different times. By the time he gets home from dropping off the last kids he has to go and pick up the first. By the time he gets home from the final pickup it is suppertime and he hasn’t eaten all day. This is their last night and so Lisa promises they’ll take them to the movies. They fill the car and go to a drive-in where confusion ensues. Oliver sends one kid to get snacks but he doesn’t come back and so he goes to look for him. The kid comes back with the food a few seconds later. Then Oliver comes back with somebody else’s kid. He takes him back where found him and almost gets punched in the nose by the kid’s father. Oliver comes back and sits on a pizza. The next day Oliver is looking forward to being free of the kids but then one of them gets the measles.
Molly the sister was played by Pamelyn Ferdin, who did the voice of Lucy in the animated film A Boy Called Charlie Brown and in two Peanuts TV specials. She was the voice of Fern in the animated Charlotte’s Web and of Sally in The Cat in the Hat. She played Cookie Bumstead in the sitcom Blondie and Edna Unger in The Odd Couple. She co-starred in the short lived series Space Academy. She auditioned for the part of Regan in The Exorcist. She co-starred in The Toolbox Murders. he was the director of public relations for the Centre for Animal Care and Control but quit because of mismanagement. She was arrested in 2000 for carrying an elephant bullhook at a protest. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
In the second story Arnold the pig performs as a British police dog detective in a local production of Who Killed Jock Robin? He gets great reviews in the local papers and Lisa is so impressed that she calls an old friend of hers from Hungary who is now a Hollywood producer. She doesn’t tell him that Arnold is a pig and so he says to bring him out for a screen test. A telethon is held to raise money and after four days they’ve raised $9. But Lisa donates enough of Oliver’s money for the trip and also agrees against Oliver’s wishes that she and Oliver will be Arnold’s escorts. This story is continued to the season finale.
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