Anti Vaxxers Ate My Book Launch

            On Sunday morning I finished translating “A Cannes cet été” (To Cannes This Summer) by Boris Vian. I listened to the song a couple of times and started memorizing it. 

            I ran through singing and playing “The Charm is Gone”, my translation of “Au charme non plus” by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog and began preparing it for publication. I should have it posted tomorrow. 

            I discovered that the last few paragraphs that I wrote in my journal before bed were deleted. I was able to recover some of it from “Recover Unsaved Documents” but a lot of it is gone, so I’ll have to write it again. 

            I spent my hour and a half song practice rehearsing for my book launch today. I ran through the set of three songs about five times and I don’t think any of the takes were seamless but there’s no more time to rehearse. Playing live sometimes gives one a focus that causes one to do better than in practice. I can only do my best and try to have a good time. 

            I weighed 86.55 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since November 2. 

            At about 12:30 I had time to practice “Paranoiac Utopia” a little more but I still didn’t get through without fumbling.

            I packed up my Martin acoustic guitar, my guitar stand, my guitar cable, my tuner, my pick, and my copies of my book and headed for The Supermarket for my sound check. I got there at 14:30 and the door was locked, so I went to the bar across the street to pee. When I came back it was still locked so I sat for about ten minutes before Morgan the sound person came to open up. He seemed like a nice guy. He said he studied sound engineering at OIART in London, Ontario. I asked if I could record my set digitally and he said he could hook his laptop up to the sound system and do it, so I gave him my usb drive and tipped him $20. I don’t know what the going tip is for sound people but he seemed to appreciate it. I did a sound check and it sounded good. It was the first time I’d heard the pick-up on my Martin in a live setting. 

            I sat in a booth to the right of the stage. Tom Smarda came with his guitar. I don’t know if he thought there might be a chance for him to play during the event or if he was playing somewhere else later but he came for my book launch. Because he played in my band for free all those years I gave him a free copy of my book. Helen Posno came and wanted to buy the book but Richard Olafson didn’t have a credit card or debit machine and so she had to go to the ATM but fortunately there was one there. I signed my book for her. My daughter Astrid arrived and it was the first time I’d seen her in about a year and a half. She sat with us and I gave her a copy of my book. Brian Haddon came and sat with us but he was in an awkward position because Tom’s guitar was taking up space in the booth. I eventually had Tom let me put his guitar on top of my jacket beside me so Brian could sit back. Allan Briesmaster came because he was also launching a book. Richard came to me and told me that the box of my books didn’t arrive and so he only had a couple to sell at the table. He said to make up for it he would send me twenty books for free. 

            Richard’s wife Carol Sokolof was the first performer. She just finished recording an album in a small studio in Nashville and it was playing over the sound system. She performed about three of her songs. They’re cloyingly sweet songs with ultra positive but not particularly creative lyrics. She sings in a kind of doll’s voice and her phrasing is strange as she puts emphasis on hard consonants to dominate a word such as “Waw-TER”. 

            I think unexpectedly for everyone in the audience Richard spent about an hour promoting “Covid 19 Pandemonium: A pandemic of ignorance, fear and greed” by Steven Pelech and Christopher A. Shaw. He had the authors on stage from Vancouver via Zoom and one of them even went so far as to praise the results of the US election and Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Junior as the US Secretary of Health and expressed the hope that something like that will happen in Canada. I don’t think most of the audience was sympathetic to these anti vaccine arguments but only one person, and elderly man with a cane shouted that Richard was propagandizing. They argued and he told Richard he was like the RFK Jr. of Canada. He also shouted “My voice is louder than yours!” which got a laugh from everyone, including my daughter. 

            Richard spent a lot of time trying to justify why his response to the pandemic lockdown is so important. He claimed the vaccine was only tested for two weeks before iyt was used on the public. But the Covid 19 virus is a type of Sars virus and scientists had the basis for a vaccine for the last 15 years. Scientists from all over the world worked on the vaccines and shared information. Plus the computer technology for simulated testing has gotten extremely advanced. The covid vaccine took almost a year to develop. Richard claims hundreds of people died from cancer because of the vaccines. But if everyone was getting vaccinated to say people died because of it is like saying that everyone who got cancer also ate breakfast and so breakfast must have caused cancer. Pelech claims that more than half the population of British Columbia already has natural immunity to covid. He also says Invermectin is an effective treatment for Covid. Invermectin is used for treating parasites. It was tested but found to be ineffectual against covid. Christopher A. Shaw claims that the aluminium in vaccines causes autism. 

            We finally got to some poetry. My daughter liked Myna Wallin’s reading from The Suicide Tourist. Allan Briesmaster’s poetry was good as usual. There were two more poets. Then Antonio Delfonso read a tedious dialogue from his novella, during which Richard told me I would be up next. But then Antonio invited Carol up again. He then grabbed my guitar and started jamming with her. I didn’t stop him because he’d already started playing before I noticed.

            Then Richard got up to introduce me and told everybody that he liked my poetry because it’s “street and edgy”. Then he started telling his own life story to show how that led him to liking my poetry. My daughter shouted for him to let me perform. 

            By the time I was on stage there were maybe 20 or 25 people left. I performed “Paranoiac Utopia” and “The Next State of Grace”. I screwed up the chords on Paranoiac Utopia but nobody seemed to notice. They wanted me to do another and so I sang “Memo to the Heart of Insecurity”. I fumbled the chords some more but nobody noticed. I think my vocals for all the poems were pretty good. I think people thought that I relieved a weird night by being the finale. 

            Near the end Richard came to me and said that he had the box of my books after all. So my books had been there all along but for most of the event nobody saw them. 

            Nick Cushing came and brought Cad and Goldie who I hadn’t seen for six years. I gave them collectively a signed copy of my book. Allan bought a book from me as did Albert Moritz even though I wanted to give him a copy for free. He said we’ll get together for dinner soon. 

            Morgan gave me back my usb drive but I didn’t find out until the next day that the two sound files he put in were dead. I paid him $20 but didn’t even get a recording. 

            Astrid, Brian and I went looking for a place to eat. Kensington was pretty much dead on a Sunday night. We found a taqueria but they said they’d be closing soon. We walked to Chinatown and all the way to Spadina and Dundas but nothing appealed. Finally we decided to walk to the Village Idiot at Dundas and McCaul. I had the Idiot Burger, Astrid had the pulled pork poutine, and Brian had fish and chips. Brian and I each had a pint of Stiegl Lager. My daughter and Brian are both gamers and so they had a good conversation about their mutual interest. We also talked about what a bizarre book launch it was to have been eaten by anti-vaxxers. 

            Astrid walked back to Kensington with me to get my bike and then I walked her to the bus. 

            I got home at around 22:30 and tried to write in my journal but I was sleepy and went to bed with my clothes on and without brushing my teeth.