Pot Smoking Cyclists

            I took a bike ride on Wednesday. It was a hot and muggy day. On the way east I felt like I was wrapped in cellophane. But when I went north on Warden there was a nice breeze. As I was climbing the hill from Danforth Rd a cyclist turned onto Warden from a side street and was taking the slope a lot easier than me. I could smell marijuana smoke as I trailed him and at the top of the hill I passed him as he stopped to finish his joint. They didn’t put vitamins in weed when I was a pothead.

            Near Pharmacy I stopped to take pictures of an abandoned department store that I'd never heard of but the sign implied it had been part of a chain. .

I didn’t have to pee on the way out and I barely had to go on the way back but I thought I rather be safe than sorry and stopped to use the washroom at Starbucks.

When I got home I bought a can of beer and for dinner I cooked one of the burger patties I’d gotten from the food bank. I had it with tomato, cucumber ketchup and mustard and watched the first episode of the 1997 TV series, Mike Hammer, Private Eye. I hated it immediately for a lot of reasons. First of all, it was set in 1997, the production values were low, the dialogue was corny, Velda was blonde and not in love with Hammer. Stacy Keach was 56 and too old and overweight to revive the character he did in the 80s. He was a few kilograms short of playing Cannon.

The story starts with Hammer helping an old friend and ex-cop named Chick Farrell try to nab the drug dealer that killed his son. But it turns out to be the Russian mob and Chick gets killed. The only witness is a junkie hooker. Hammer works closely with a cop named Gorby who’s a Russian mob expert. He tells them the Russian mob is like the KGB without the charm. They got big fast as soon as the Berlin Wall came down. Hemmer goes to UN to talk with a Russian official named Itchy who tracks the activities of the Russian mob. There’s a secretary licking stamps who looks like Melania Trump. Hammer asks her if her tongue gets tires and she says, “Is good exercise.” Hammer finds the prostitute witness and saves her from being beaten to death by the mob. He takes her to his office and Velda takes care of her while she’s recovering. Gorby gets killed. Chick’s last living son Nick is at first a suspect because he has a drug record but he tells Hammer that he took the rap for his brother because Nick was underage and his older brother would have done time, but Nick has never used drugs. Nick couldn’t join the police because even though his juvenile record is sealed, it’s not really. Nick helps Hammer with the case. Itchy turns out to be the head of the mob and his secretary is an assassin who kills the hooker. Nick becomes Hammer’s assistant at the end and so he’ll be a series regular.

Velda is played by Shannon Whirry who did a lot of erotic B movies in the 90s and was one of the scream queens.

The hooker was played by Sherrie Rose, who is also a director, producer and writer.

The only interesting plotline that seems to thread through the entire series is a woman that appears before Hammer in various places and then is gone. In this case she’s in an elevator but the doors close before he can reach her. She’s referred to only as "The Face". Her name is Rebekah Chaney, she's an actress and a horror film director and she's the great grandniece of Lon Chaney.