Poets Get the Bum's Rush from a Glee Club: a review of the Plastiscene Reading Series for Sunday, December 13

           

            On Sunday evening I rode through a light drizzle to get to my first Plastiscene Reading Series event in three months. I had been too busy with school to go in either October or November; and I’m still occupied with studying for my exam but it seemed ridiculous to not go one more time this year.

            I hadn’t been to the Victory Café since the end of the century when I went there to talk with the owner about moving my reading series, The Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy, there when we lost the Gladstone Hotel after being there for six years. I’d brought newspaper reviews and told him about our history but it didn’t sell him on us. Perhaps it was the name that threw him off and he didn’t want the word “orgy” in any public listings beside his club’s fine name. Shortly after that, the Art Bar reading series moved there though from the Imperial Pub. I don’t know if it was because I’d mentioned to Allan Briesmaster that I’d been looking into the place.

            It took me a few minutes to find the joint because I hadn’t remembered that it was all the way down at the south end of the block, and because they don’t have a very visible sign. Once I’d found the address, I went to lock my bike and when I came back, Cad Gold Junior was waiting for me at the front door. He said, “It’s cancelled! It’s all locked upstairs!” I went in and found Goldie, then gave her a birthday hug before going to talk to the Plastiscene hostess, Nicki Ward. She gave me a little hug when she saw me. I guess because of my friend, Paul Valliere’s death, and offered her condolences. It turned out that the event wasn’t cancelled and Cad hadn’t even asked anyone about it. When I chastised him about that he just argued that he couldn’t see well enough to recognize anyone to ask them. I suspect that there’s more to it than that but I won’t go into it right now.

            We followed Nicki up the front stairs while someone from the Victory was climbing the back to open the door for us. The physical space of the room is the best that Plastiscene’s had in its history. They started at the long and narrow Central, up the street and then moved to Paupers, which was extremely unconducive to poetry readings. The new space has a stage, good seating, good acoustics and a good atmosphere. Plastiscene should probably start putting the truth to their claim that they start at 18:00 though, because things get noisy on the other side of the second floor at around 20:00.

            Cad told Nicki, “I’m gonna read tonight!” but she teased, “I think I’m the one who decides that, but I think you’re okay.”

            We sat one table back from the stage on the left, but nobody took the table in front of us. Cad and Goldie on a cushioned bench against the wall and I took one of the many sturdy old style barrel back wooden library chairs.

            Cad had gotten Goldie a small pendant for a birthday present and she asked me if I could see what it was despite its tinyness. I had to look for a minute before I saw that it was the planet Saturn. I think that the smallness of the gift was a small disappointment for Goldie.

            It didn’t take long for Cad to start onto one of his favourite topics of conversation, that being naming which ethnic groups dislike Jews. He said that his rabbi, who he says looks like Tony Soprano with a beard, informed him that Scandinavians hate Jews now. I think that Cad has a nutjob for a rabbi.

            Nicki had brought a portable sound system to create a pre-poetry atmosphere. She played some Brazilian hip-hop and Cad told me he didn’t like it because it sounded too left wing. He added that communists don’t like women. I pointed out to him that I’ve looked at his favourite book list on Facebook and a good number of the authors he likes are left wing. There’s a good chance, I told him, that Arthur Miller, for example, was a communist. Cad protested that, arguing that he couldn’t have been communist because he’d been married to Marilyn Monroe. Then he said dismissively that communism in the Fifties was different.

            Cad said that his rabbi told him that he’s one of the most intelligent people he’s ever met. His rabbi, who is from Cincinnati, is also, like Cad, a bug fan of Donald Trump. This of course led to Cad’s favourite topic of all, which is the romantic notion that Muslim immigration will destroy all the left wing countries that let the refugees in.

            Cad showed me a picture of the latest collage he’s been working on, which is on the subject of the Jewish mafia. Cad’s collages tend to be just a jumble of photographs that follow a nostalgic theme but there tends not to be any kind of aesthetic flow to the pieces. One of the images is a photograph of Bugsy Siegel, who Cad proudly informed me killed more people than did any Italian gangsters. Fortunately, at that point, at 18:35, Nicki stepped up to the microphone to kick off the evening.

            She introduced herself as the hostess with the mostest and introduced Susie Berg as the “curator with the …” and invited us to find a rhyme for that. I could only think of “roller skater” at the time, but maybe “the curator with none greater” works as well as “hostess with the mostest”.

She pointed out to us the fact that above centre stage is a designed depression in the ceiling about a meter and a half square and about a meter higher than the rest of the ceiling, which serves as a great echo chamber. She concluded then that if we want to go a cappella we can go outside. Then she paused and told us that it’s going to be a long night if we don’t laugh when we’re supposed to. Then she repeated, “If you want to go a cappella you can go outside!” and people laughed. I didn’t get it.

Nicki then started gathering volunteers to read the poems by other authors that the featured readers put into the hat. I got the feeling that Goldie might enjoy reading one and so I asked her and she put up her hand to Nicki.

Nicki invited me to perform on the open stage first but asked me to take a little time, adding “not too much”, to say a few words about Paul Valliere.

I took the stage and reminded everyone that Paul had been coming to Plastiscene almost every month for at least the last couple of years and performed on the open stage every time he came. I said that his approach to writing was kind of a shotgun method whereby he’d just write poem after poem and considered each one finished in its first draft. I told them that he was an annoyingly positive person who was a good father to some people who turned out to be good young adults. I added that I don’t really get it when people say things like, “I’m sorry for your loss”. When a friend dies, especially if they’re a writer, you don’t lose anything because it gives you the rest of your life to catch up with them. I finished by saying, “If you didn’t know him, I’m sorry for YOUR loss”.

What I didn’t say, because Nicki had stressed, “Not too much time” was that on the day before Paul died, I spoke to him on the phone and he told me about what a disappointing time he’d had the last time he went to Plastiscene. I wasn’t there, but Nicki had apparently open stagers that night to only read one poem. There’s usually a three-minute time limit and Paul had told Nicki that the two poems he’d brought were way under that time. He told me that Nicki had been testy with him when she acquiesced, saying, “Make it quick!”

I also didn’t mention that when the October Plastiscene was approaching, Paul had emailed me excitedly to give me the news that Michael Fraser was taking over Plastiscene again. He’d misunderstood at first the email promoting Michael’s feature that night.

When I spoke to Paul that last time he told me that he wasn’t interested in going to Plastiscene again unless I was going, so we agreed we’d see each other there in December.

For my open stage set, I read an excerpt from my non-fiction short story, “Death by Alcatraz”- “One night three days later, Stadig removed his mattress and pushed the bed to block the door of his cell. From the springs of his bed he twisted off a ten-centimetre piece of wire and tried to use it to slash his wrists. When this didn’t work he broke one of the lenses from his eyeglasses and used the biggest piece to slash his left wrist in two places. Blood began to flow but not quickly enough, so he drove the broken lens deep into the muscles of his throat, successfully slicing and severing his jugular vein.

When the guards managed to force their way through the blocked door they found prisoner number 49536 in extreme shock, and minutes later he was dead. Hands that had invented so many things in his cousin’s workshop back in St. Francis, Maine had finally invented a way to die. The escape artist had finally cut himself free of both Alcatraz and Leavenworth in a few days. It may have appeared that he’d taken his own life in Leavenworth, but John Stadig was without a doubt murdered by Alcatraz.”

            Cad said when I sat down that I should have mentioned that Stadig was my second cousin, but I didn’t see that as relevant.

Next came the first poem from the hat, which was a seasonal piece by Robert Southwell, called “The Burning Babe” – “As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; and lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, a pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed as though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed. “Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; the fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, the metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls, for which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, so will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.” With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, and straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.”

This was followed by an open stage set from Sophie, who said that she had three poems and wanted to know how many she could read. Nicki looked at them and said, “Either that one or those two.” Sophie started with a poem called “These New Places” that had the phrase, “a soft invasion of letters”. Her second piece was entitled “Leaving Worlds” – “These storms … such a swell of little fish … the moon descends like a great white owl …”

Cad was invited to the open mic next and this was his first time of reading at Plastiscene in years because he has often concluded that people would be offended by his writing. His offering was called “Handbook for Boudoir Pranksters” – “I met her down in Michigan … She was a Spanish-Hungarian … She was always laughing out loud … She wrote a cookbook called ‘Eat My Fuck and Beat My Meat’” Everybody laughed and clapped. Nicki said, “Damn! That was my working title!” Later when I reminded Cad that everyone liked what he read, he argued, “No they didn’t!”

A young man whose name I didn’t catch was the second volunteer to read a poem from the hat, but he snuck in a poem of his own first, called “Pocket Billiards”- “ … the four’s the ball that I adore … its purple shade the handmaid wore …” The poem from the hat, he said, was Robert Service’s “My Picture”, but I think the correct title is “My Madonna” - “I haled me a woman from the street, shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model’s seat and I painted her sitting there … I painted a halo round her hair, and I sold her and took my fee, and she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire, where you and all may see.”

            Nickie, responding fondly to the use of rhyme in the poem, wondered why so many poets avoid using rhyme these days. I called out, “Because they don’t have enough talent for it!”

            It was then Goldie’s turn to read her poem from the hat, which was Kate Rogers’s “Your Horse in the Field” – “Like your horse I wait by the fence … I wait wondering if I am broken … As long as I've been running I've been afraid of freedom.”

            After Goldie came Richard, who read a poem for his brother entitled “Brother of Mercy” – “The doors open automatically as I go into the building where my brother lives … upstairs I sit by Victor's bed … his hands tremble … code orange … I can smell the shit in his pants … Mercy? What does mercy mean to these brothers of the church? When I needed mercy my brother gave it freely …Where’s the TV remote, his roommate shouts … My big brother falls asleep. I walk past the manger and cry.”

            The last open stage poet was Margaret Code, who read her own “Temps Perdu”, which mentions the Café on St Clair called “Pain Perdu”. Margaret explained that perdu means “left-over”, but I’ve always understood it as meaning “lost”. When I asked her about it she confirmed that the general meaning for the word is “lost” but that the owner of Pain Perdu told her it meant “left-over”. On looking it up later, I see that “pain perdu” is the name the French sometimes use for what we call French toast. So I would interpret it like this French toast is what we make when the bread is lost or wasted for normal use as bread. Margaret uses perdu in the same sense in relation to time, and I may be wrong but I think that maybe she can’t properly use it that way.

            The final poem from the hat was called “Snow”. I caught that the author’s first name was Orson and the surname sounded like “Shear” – “My father was a drunk … he married my mother the night after he came from Russia … He showed her from her own body the colour of snow.”

            Nicki then told us that the next Plastiscene would be on January 16, 2016 but asked rhetorically, “How is that possible?” Then she called a break.

            Cad’s ex-wife and our long-time acquaintance, Anna arrived. 

Near the end of the break I went to chat with Albert Moritz and Allan Briesmaster but our conversation was cut off when Nicki began to introduce the first featured reader.

James Wood began with “Tool Box”, which I’d heard him read the last time he featured at Plastiscene in August of 2014. The poem is about the toolbox that he inherited from his father and how it keeps them connected. He concludes by describing his son also using the toolbox and how when he inherits it, it will keep him connected to his grandfather – “ … He lives on, spirit level with my son …”

James’s second poem was entitled “Odysseus’s Return to Ithaca” – “Oh Penelope, the arch we trace is halcyon …”

James then told us that he believes that poetry readings should be like talent night at the Apollo: three songs and you’re off!

His third piece was one I’d also heard him do before, called “Vinyl Nights”. In it he extols the pleasures of listening to music on vinyl, as opposed to any of the post record album technologies. He declares that it is “real music” and even praises the romance of the crackling and popping sounds the needle makes as it lightly trips over dust and scratches. Near the end he says, “Take your smart phone and drop it!” in response to which Anna shouted out “Yes!”

I must say that while I find the sentiment over the sound of record albums to be as charming as that over any love of antiques, the argument that the sound is superior to digital recordings is highly debateable. To a trained ear there may be a discernibly warmer sound to vinyl but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. I’ve also read that on records, the way that the grooves spiral outwards stretches out the sound of the recording as it approaches the end. I would argue that most people probably couldn’t pass a blind listening test that compares digital sound to analog.

James’s fourth offering was a poem about his native Scotland – “ … this is a thistle crowned nation … see the tyrants hands set farms alight … guns and dogs stripped this place of men … nothing left but seaweed and stone … far from hatred forged by coin or cross …”

His final composition was called “Departures” – “Then one time point your car towards the shore to where the ocean grey swells skyward … each journey ends in remembering how we excuse our failures …”

James Wood is a formally good writer in that he knows how to put words together. His poems that convey more personal sentiments tend to hold together better than the more contrived pieces, which tend to be just long-winded life support for one killer poetic punch line.

Perhaps because James did a shorter set than was offered, Nicki read another of his poems. I thought she said the title was “Plug” but judging from the poem it might have been “Plum” – “ …Its sweetness deepened all summer long … I reached up … I wiped the juice from my mouth … and kept eating the fruit until September had gone.”

At this point Nicki called another break.

Anna ordered some food and offered to buy Goldie a drink. As she prefers mixed drinks to wine or beer, she said she would like to have a pina colada, but they don’t make them there. It took her some time to decide what to order instead. She settled on something called Prim. When I looked up their menu later though I saw that what she’d gotten was Pimm’s.

Cad told me that he has accessed the akashic records and found out that he was a slave master in his past life that enjoyed his work immensely.

Before introducing the second feature reader, Donna Langevin, Nicki read Donna’s “The Stone Angel” – “ …the stone angel moved … softly, sorrow trailed behind her.”

When Donna came to the stage she said that it’s every writer’s dream to have Nicki Ward read one of their poems.

Donna said that she was going to follow the traditional pattern of bridal gift giving and read something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

She started with “The Best Way to Eat a Snowflake” – “Say grace, taste your way round and around its divine pattern …”

She told us that the next piece represented “something new”. It had the line; “There are many holes in snowflakes …”

Her next was “Arachne” – “The snowflake on my window challenged me.”

At this point the batteries on the microphone started dying and so Nicki came and took it, but urged Donna to continue without it.

She said she would read some pieces on the theme of risk taking, and told us that the first, “The Hand”, was for Charles G. Stephens – “I am the hand reaching out of a barrel … the hand of the demon barber from Bristol … the hand that fishes the sky … the drowning hands so desperate they will grasp you and pull you under …”

When she was done with that piece Donna commented that she loved having no microphone. “I can move!” she exclaimed.

Then she asked, “What would you sacrifice to get your work published?” George A. Stathakis went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in hopes that the revenue he gained would help him publish his writing on metaphysical experiences – “ … Your hand, a brave flower, stems from the hole in the barrel and waves ... You are extracted still-born.”

Continuing with the theme, Donna then did a poem about a woman who chose to live dangerously. This was about Dinah Nuthead, who, after her husband died, fought for and won the right to take over her husband’s printing business, thus becoming the first licensed female printer in the thirteen colonies that later became the United States of America – “ …why must a woman who teaches herself to read be accused of witchery?” I couldn’t find any reference to Nuthead being accused of witchery but Donna must have dug a lot deeper than I did. Chances are though, there was just an accusation and no trial.

Around this time there was a lot of loud stomping coming from outside the room as people were climbing the stairs and talking loudly as they came up to perhaps watch the hockey game in the other second floor bar.

Donna then told us that she was now going to begin the “borrowed” section of her set – “ … Take me to the Mardi Gras … wear a penis on your nose … laugh at the grim reaper … before it's too damn late.”

Next came a poem called “Dandy” – “ … clouds … disappear like people we once knew … after bearding the moon … eclipsed in flying sun shot days.”

From Donna’s final poem - “Dear Madonna in blue, I entreat you to open your cerulean cave … guide his soul to a harbour leave his cargo of shadows… Ho ho ho ho Santa … a star zings and zaps the heavens ... she growls and grunts for hours … she nurses him and whispers … while outside this world bumps off virgins, as babies die in the dark …”

There is a sense of play and innocence to Donna Langevin’s poetry that lightly turns even the darker subject matter over and examines it with a childlike curiosity, describing it playfully but without making fun. As is often the case with poets though, she loses touch with her muse when she tries to write about things that she has to research, like historical figures, no matter how interesting they are.

By this time the noise on the other side had gotten a lot louder. Nicki made reference to our contending with “the natives to the north of us” before introducing Ian Keteku. She asked Ian for some help with the pronunciation and he said to say it as though there is peanut butter on the roof of your mouth.

Around then the waiter come up on the stage and started gathering up some cables that were being stored on stage left. Nicki seemed a bit annoyed and told Ian that she wouldn’t invite him to the stage until he had it to himself.

Around this time a young woman with blonde hair and a sparkly tan sweater and came up to Nicki and introduced herself as the bartender who’d just come on duty for the second floor. Although I couldn’t hear the conversation, she seemed to be asking when we were going to be wrapping things up because she had a group coming in to use the space. Despite that, Nicki told Ian to take his full, allotted time without worries.

Ian Keteku unhooked the microphone, moved the stand out of the way and began without introducing his first piece – “If I leave this planet before you, if my last breath retires without pension … less phobia and more magnolia … dried limestone forged from the alchemy of plankton … scrawl my name and tell them this is how you write what you love.”

Ian told us that Calgary is a weird place to be from and that its fucked up philosophy of life produces many stories – “ … June 4, 2014, I found out through YouTube … I never thought you would be the bomb … when you demoted god from an idea … idolized to adolescence … disappointment into this appointment … nothing nice will be said about you … pounding like the wings of an anxious … Islam is a religion of peace, god doesn't negotiate with terrorists.”

His next piece was called “Kay”– “Her father was a soldier with the USSR army …  when they held her she was reminded of the Moscow ballet … she visited men in the trenches … stealing United Nations food provisions …. Kalashnikov …”

Ian said that what he hears most when he tells people he’s a poet is, “So you’re a poet? How do you make a living?” and “Where’s your love poems at?”

So he wrote “Laptop Love” – “I wanna open you up, and turn you on, push all the right buttons to get you going … I’m caressing your backspace …  but sometimes you freeze … You see you’re getting old Ms. Vista, I miss the old Ms. Vista … you used to stay up all night when I had a paper due … and my friends would come over and say, Hey, Ian, yo...buddy, you’re computer really sucks man (Ian paused to tell us that everyone in Calgary talks like that) … What? No, no, no, Mac? Mac… is just a girl I do video editing on … ok baby, lemme tell you the truth, I do video editing on her, but I do poetry on you, you know, I mean, I’m sorry I cheated on you … I’m sorry I dropped you on the ground, I’m sorry I banged you around, I’m sorry I spilt hot chocolate on you even though you don’t drink … I tried to enter my home, but your keys were stuck (He paused again because he either didn’t think or he was pretending that he didn’t think that we got it. He explained, “What I did was a double entendre … It took me four years to write that line!” So he repeated it and got the reaction he wanted.) … But you haven’t been that great to me either, you see you, shut down whenever you want to, you fall asleep too often, you pause too much, you should get an a-pause-trophe, and I know you don’t want me to talk about it but you've got those viruses, I don’t care who, what where happened, I’m just saying I’m glad Norton was able to help us out, y’know? Remember the days, when I wanted to … put my USB in your hard drive … So, wherever you are I hope you sleep well, Ms Vista. I hope he treats you right, Ms Vista, and if you ever plan on coming back to me, come back as the old Ms.Vista …”

Before he began his final piece, Ian said that Nicki Ward is one of the greatest hosts he had ever seen.

“ … No matter the method all my words still come out dark … Jesus still painted his nails red … were all once the size of a period … now only happens once in a lifetime.”

Ian Keteku is a great spoken word artist and his poetry has good rhythm and some clever plays on words. Writing about things as people is something that a lot of poets do as part of early experimentation, whether they are speaking of their car or their guitar or whatever, but it seems a bit much to read two long pieces about anthropomorphized objects. Many of his choices of things to write about follow the slam subject formula. As I’ve said before, writing about oneself brings one closer to one’s muse, but Ian only writes about himself from a distance. A lot of the phrases Ian uses have been said before and while he dances well with the rhythm of words he doesn’t find new ways to dance with the language itself. In that sense, he is really not a very good poet.

Nicki closed off with her usual quotes about poets being the unofficial legislators of the world. She added that it’s only OCD if you don’t have talent.

Around this time a group flooded in while we were getting ready to leave. They set themselves up at the back tables. Banoo Zan was sitting at a table halfway back, then the sparkly sweatered bartender approached her and I think she asked her to leave. One of the new group in the back who was standing, began to sing something a cappella and the rest of them began to accompany her in perfect harmony. It was some sort of Christmas song, I think. I assume then that this was some sort of private Christmas party of a glee club or choir. They sounded nice, but it was annoying for us to get the bum’s rush like that. I suspect though that it will happen a lot more if Plastiscene stays at the Victory Café.

I headed off to buy Goldie a birthday dinner.

FUCK!!!

           

            On Saturday I found I could put a little more of my weight on my right knee. During yoga I can put both knees on the floor without having to tilt my body to the left. I still can’t go up into the crescent moon pose on my right knee though. The right upper arm had a little more mobility and it was less uncomfortable to raise both arms over my head. The wrist gets sore when I vacuum and both parts are tired in the evening before the rest of my body is.

            I spent a lot of the day making notes for my two exam essays that are happening in a week and a half. I’ve chosen the topic of “the power of words” in a comparison of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess” and Diana Wynne Jones’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”; and the theme of “truth telling” in Elizabeth Wein’s “Codename Verity”, M.T. Anderson’s “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing” and Louise Fitzhugh’s “Harriet the Spy”. I’ve noticed some interesting similarities between Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wonderful World of Oz. The wicked witches have similar names: the Wicked Witch of West in L. Frank Baum’s book and the Witch of the Waste in Jones’s book. Also, both Dorothy and Sophie encounter scarecrows at the beginning of their respective journeys. 

            I listened to a couple of episodes of Amos and Andy. In the first, Amos proposes marriage to a woman by mail but once he sees her real photograph he’s trying to figure out how to get out of the deal. He takes the photograph to his lawyer, Gabby, who says that this is not only breach of promise but also contempt of court. Andy asks him how it could be contempt of court and Gabby answered, “Because if you would court a woman this ugly you’ve earned my contempt!” The second episode was the Christmas special. Amos is helping Andy wrap Christmas presents and he wonders who the handkerchiefs with the letter “C” in the corner are for. Andy tells him that he bought them last Christmas for his ex-girlfriend Carmen but they broke up beforehand so now he’s going to give them to his girlfriend Evelyn. Amos points out that it’s going to be difficult to get away with giving handkerchiefs with the letter “C” on them to Evelyn, but Andy says that he already thought of that three months ago, so he started calling Evelyn “Cookie”.

            I decided not to take a bike ride that evening, but rather to buy batteries for my front white flasher so there would be less danger of another accident. Oddly enough, all of the accidents that I can recall having in the last several years took place in broad daylight, but I don’t want to take any chances. I seem to be especially wary lately of pedestrians standing on the curb and looking like they are about to cross the street. I bought two batteries at Young’s Fine Foods, a block away. My flasher no longer has the elastic loop for tying onto the bike, so I have to wire and tape the flasher to the front. I think it makes it harder to steal that way too.

            Once the flasher was on I decided to go to Freshco to buy tea. Last week I bought a bag of their generic orange pekoe tea and it turned out to be full of green tea. I don’t hate green tea, and I’m glad I have it but what I usually want is orange pekoe. Hopefully they got the right tea in the right package this time.

            There’s a guy in my neighbourhood who I see and especially hear every few days. He walks along kind of like a cave man and his body and voice are knotted with tension as he shouts while he walks, never looking from side to side. It’s not always easy to discern what he’s saying, but he always punctuates every sentence with the exclamation of “FUCK!!!” On this night I was able to here as he ape marched along Queen, “I hate your fuckin guts!!! FUCK!!!” Just before he turned to walk south on Dunn with what looked like a paper take-out bag in his hand. Someone on my side of the street called out cheerfully and mockingly, “Somebody’s having a good night!” Immediately the angry man shouted out, as he continued along, “Somebody’s having a great night!!! Fuck!!!”

            I’ve never seen him in a store in Parkdale but I assume he must shop. I think he has tourettes and I know it’s out of his control, but I have this fantasy of him going into stores and chatting in a soft voice while making purchases and then putting his rage back on when he’s out on the street again.

How Leonard Nimoy got typecast: They said "Zombies of the Stratosphere" but he heard "Some Plays of the Shakospeare"

           

            My mobility during my morning yoga on Friday was pretty much the same as on Thursday but my arm and wrist seem to be aching a little less than before.

            I felt sleepy at around 10:30 so I took a siesta for an hour and a half.

            At around 14:00 I went to teach my yoga class and noticed that it was much warmer outside than the weather for which I’d dressed. I didn’t need two scarves and winter gloves. Anna came to my class, about seven minutes late, as usual. She says she’s circulating a petition to get me a teaching gig at the Masaryk-Cowan community centre, which would be a paid position. I remember giving them my resumé many years ago though, and nothing came of it.

            I finished watching Radar Men from the Moon. One thing I noticed is that in all the fistfights that happen in every episode, no one ever blocks a punch. A guy gets punched until he finds an opening and then punches back. I watched the first episode of Zombies of the Stratosphere. His was supposed to be the second twelve-part Commando Cody series but for some reason the hero was named Larry Martin. The actor who played him, Judd Holdren, returned as the masked Commando Cody in the third series. A rocket ship is detected arriving from outer space and Martin goes in his rocket suit to investigate. It unloads materials to a truck and then takes off again. Martin pursues the truck and lands on top of it. When the men inside poke their heads up, martin starts shooting at them.

            First of all, how did Martin know they were enemies? Is it against the law to land a spaceship and unload materials? It turns out that they do mean us harm but there’s no way that Martin could have known that before he started shooting. They are Martians this time and their dilemma is that their planet is too far away from the sun. Their absurd plan is to knock the Earth out of orbit with a hydrogen bomb so that they can move Mars into our planet’s position. One of their abilities is that they can stay under water for at least half an hour at a time because they are used to an environment with very little oxygen. Somehow I don’t think that’s the way it works. The production values are a little better than in the first series and it still has Aline Towne as the hero’s assistant.

Hungry Reindeer

           

            On Thursday my upper arm and wrist had gotten back a small amount of their mobility, but I still couldn’t put much of my weight on my right knee. Sometimes I wonder if riding a bike in the city is worth it. I seem to have a couple of accidents like this a year and the older I get the slower I’m going to heal after each one.

            I’ve been listening to some recordings I downloaded of the 60s southern psychedelic band, “The 13^th Floor Elevators”. They were one of the first of the psychedelic bands and were an influence on bands like Zed Zed Top. Roky Erickson was a hot guitarist and a passionate singer but the most annoying part of their sound was probably the thing that really made them unique. That was the electronic jug played by Tommy Hall. It pretty much always made the same sound of “doodeloot doodeloot doodeloot” and that just gets tedious after a while.

            I listened to a couple of episodes of Amos and Andy. In one, Amos and Kingfish enter into a competition as a team against another competitor because a certain company was offering exclusive Harlem sales rights to whichever person or team sold the most of their fountain pens. They were so sure that they were going to win that they hired a secretary named Miss Blue, who turned out to be their competitor. In another episode, Kingfish was supposed to put some money in the bank that he and his wife, Sapphire had gotten from an insurance claim, but he decided to invest it because someone told him he could double it overnight that way. He put all the money into the brass mines of Brazil until Andy got “respicious” of the investor and called the police.

            That evening, rather than take a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor, I just went up to the Dufferin Mall to buy socks, since I was down to two pairs that didn’t have holes. I took six pairs of Kodiaks and while I was in line for the cashier I heard, “Attention Walmart shoppers! Santa Clause, if you are listening, your reindeer are hungry. Please go and feed them and have a great night! Shortly after that, the phone belonging to the woman behind me went off, and the ringtone was Bobby Helms’s “Jingle Bell Rock”. The cashier must have been new because she was slow and didn’t know how to price all the food items, but her supervisor looked about nineteen.

            I dodged two toddlers on my way out of the mall.

            I decided to go to No Frills before going home. The middle-aged guy behind me was vocalizing bass parts for Brenda Lee’s “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree”. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood.

In the Fifties, Every Planet Looked Like Arizona

             
            When I went to the foodbank on Wednesday the Second Harvest truck was in the driveway being unloaded and so the line-up was running inside rather than out to the sidewalk. It looks like it’s as much of a surprise to the foodbank as to its clients exactly what kind of food will be delivered. The friendly driver offered boxes of various items to see if they wanted it. “How about some boxes of pears? These are good!” and “Take some of these chips!” When they were done unloading the driver shook hands with all that had helped and one of them told him to drive carefully. The driver commented while pulling down the back door that it was going to be difficult to get around that day because of the strike, as taxi drivers were planning on blocking off some streets. Before he got back into the cab he waved and said goodbye to the people in line. One of us waved back.

            After the truck had gone, Joe, the manager asked the line to swing back to the other side of the door.

            There was talk in the line-up about turkeys being given out, but it became clear later on that it would be turkey vouchers. The line took longer than usual because of the big delivery. Someone noticed that the sign on the wall by the fire escape, telling people not to sit there, was gone. He speculated that maybe the person who had been living up there had moved out.

Joe came out and smoked twice while we were waiting, both times lingering around the door. I heard him tell someone that last year his staff only had one day off during Christmas but this year he wanted them to have three, including Boxing Day.

            Once inside, there was a bit of a wait because the elderly woman in front of me wanted a turkey voucher but the receptionist kept telling her that she had already been given one. The lady was confused, perhaps because she didn’t understand English or perhaps was just confused in general.  When it was my turn, the desk volunteer asked me if I wanted a turkey voucher or a ham voucher. I chose the turkey and was told that they would be giving them out between December 16^th and December 23^rd. I asked if there would still be turkeys left if I waited until the twenty third but she said, “Ya never know!” I took my voucher and number 34 and went home.

            When I came back they had just started to call the numbers. The elderly woman and her friend of about the same age were standing near me with their two wheeled carts. A younger man came over to them and showed her his cart, explaining that she could adjust hers so it would hold more food. The square, canvas bag of hers was sagged at the bottom of the wire cage. He lifted it up for her and showed her that there was a flap on the edge of the fabric that could hook up and around the top of the frame and then stick to the Velcro on the side so that it filled the inside of the cage. Her friend said, “Nice man!” and the lady patted the shoulder of the man’s brown leather coat and said, “Thanks you!”

            There was a woman that I recognized from when she worked for several years as a cashier at the No Frills at King and Jameson. She stood out because she was always so upbeat and struck up a friendly conversation with every single customer she served. She was immaculate about her appearance and did her hair in a bun with elaborate and colourful lacing. She still looks the same and was still talking to everyone as if she knew them. The only difference now is that she moves around with a walker.

            Once my number was called to get food, I reached into my bag to give them back a can of fruit salad that I’d taken a couple of weeks before without realizing that it was sweetened with Sucralose. I took a can of cranberry sauce, a bag of Buffalo Bleu Kettle Chips, a couple of cans of organic soup and a bag of sticky granola. Then she waved me away from the cold section with an almost panicked gesture as if she were directing me away from an accident. “There’s nothing there!” she said. I looked over and saw that was the case ad wondered why Sue was even there that day if they had nothing. In the bread section I took a bag of bagels and a large loaf of some kind of orange coloured bread that had a slightly sour taste. In the vegetable section there were pumpkin sections, bunches of a day or so past fresh dill, and a bag of pink grape tomatoes which the lady told me were beautiful for stewing. On my way out, Sue called after me and asked if I wanted my turkey. I told her I’d planned on waiting till the last day that they would be available. She warned me though that even though the voucher says that December 23^rd is the last day, they probably wouldn’t be open on that date, so I’d be better off picking it up next week.

Once I’d gotten the tomatoes home, I smelled that they were off and threw them out.

I watched an episode of Radar Men from the Moon called “Battle in the Stratosphere”. Cody’s rocket ship was about to land on Earth and the Moon agents were shooting at it with their ray gun, so it wasn’t in the stratosphere. It’s interesting though that we think of the stratosphere as a place but not so much the atmosphere, even though they are both places in the same way. The previous episode was called “Enemy Planet” but the “planet” was the Moon, which isn’t a planet. Also, it seems that every planet and moon in our solar system has a surface very similar to Arizona.

Falling Asleep and Dreaming while Playing Guitar

           

            My Tuesday morning yoga was the test of just how injured I was by the putzdestrian on Monday. I found my right wrist and upper arm to be limited but the only thing I absolutely couldn’t do was to put weight on my right knee. I don’t feel the damage to be internal and so I assume the kneecap is bruised. In addition to that though, I was extremely exhausted after my yoga. I had gone to bed and gotten up an hour early but I don’t know if that explains it. I had also drunk a pint and a half the night before, which is something I’m not used to these days. Maybe the injury had just made me tired so I would rest and heal, but I tried to practice my songs anyway. I played and sang several songs but I noticed my chords weren’t sounding very good because I was so tired that I wasn’t pressing down very hard on the strings. I managed to get more than halfway through my normal set when a very bizarre thing happened. I fell asleep while playing and singing and actually had a dream. I dreamed that I was standing there as I was in the middle of my living room and that my daughter, Astrid, now middle aged, was standing in front of me with a cane and her fiancé, Lauren was just in front and to my right, looking sideways at me. Astrid was approaching to embrace me but I was so tired and out of it that I couldn’t respond to her, which made her feel uncomfortable and so she backed away a bit. Then I woke up and found myself still singing the song. I think I tried half of another song when that was done, but having dreamt while singing convinced me to just go back to bed.

            That afternoon at 17:00 I took my velo down the street to Bike Pirates. Two volunteers greeted me as I came in and one asked if I needed to use a stand. I said I did and he said, “There’s a bit of a line-up.” I looked to the back and saw no one there, and then he laughed and said he was kidding.

            I clamped my bike to a stand and told the volunteers about my accident. The less experienced volunteer told me that I should wear a helmet. I argued that I didn’t hit my head. The other volunteer said that a head could get crushed even while wearing a helmet so it doesn’t matter.

            It turned out that the problem wasn’t as serious as I’d thought it was. The fall had simply thrown my front brakes out of line, so the volunteer helped me with it. He helped me a little more than he should have for a do it yourself shop, but maybe he was bored and since I was the only one there he wanted something to do. Once the brakes were fixed they told me that I’m due for a new chain and that though my freewheel is fine it’s best to buy a new freewheel with a new chain so they wear together. I said that would be fine, but I would have to get them and then come back to pay them after I went to the bank. The volunteer asked a guy who seemed to be acting manager at that time and he said that I would need to leave my bike there while I went for the money. I asked with surprise, “You want me to leave my bike here while I go downtown?” He said, “Well, you would have to leave something here so we could be sure we get our money. We need to pay rent. That’s something I hadn’t encountered at Bike Pirates up until then. Usually I’ve been trusted and I’ve certainly never betrayed that trust. I told them, “I come in here all the time and I just live next door! My daughter used to volunteer here!” but they were unmoved. I decided not to get the new parts and that if I needed them I’d come back on another day when there were nicer volunteers working the shop, who recognize me and know I won’t rip them off. If the guy was so concerned about making the rent he should have trusted me, then they would have had some money later on that evening. As it was, I gave a $4.90 donation for the use of the shop and left. As I was leaving, the volunteer reminded me; it seemed to me defensively, that Bike Pirates is still cheaper than any bike shop in Toronto. Wow, I though, he’s really trying to sell it!

The Ghost of Christmas Putz

           

            On Monday in the late morning I had my last booking of the year at OCADU. As usual, I took Dundas to get there and everything was going fine until just before Bathurst when some idiot with parcels in his arms came running out in front of me. My bike slammed into him and tipped over hard, slamming me onto the asphalt in front of oncoming traffic. The first thing that hit was my right knee, then a lot of the impact was taken up by my right arm which just stopped my face from hitting the pavement. Fortunately the car behind me stopped in time. I struggled to my feet, picked up my bike and limped to the sidewalk. I noticed that the wheels were dragging because something had been knocked out of alignment. The idiot I’d hit was apologizing and telling me it was totally his fault. No kidding! He asked if I was okay. I told him that I’d landed on my knee. He said that his knee was hurting too and I was thinking, “Really? Who gives a fuck about your knee? Your knee and my knee are both your fault!” While I was examining my bike to see what was wrong, he and his precious parcels slipped away. I was probably injured by the Christmas rush. Both wheels seemed to be catching, but I rode them to work anyway.

            When I arrived at Zorica Vasic’s classroom, she was there talking to another instructor, Diane Pugen. They were both surprised to see me. Zorica hadn’t been told that a model had been booked, but she said it was great. Diane though, thinking that the stage wouldn’t be needed for Zorica’s class had left an elaborate still life display left over from her class that was obviously meant to be used for her next. Zorica offered to help her dismantle it and they set about the task. Zorica told me though that she wouldn’t need me for the first hour of class. I decided then that I would take back a book to the library of the Faculty of Information, but first I took the book out to show to Diane. It was Thomas King’s short story, “A Coyote Columbus Story” as illustrated by William Kent Monkman and I showed it to her because we had been discussing Monkman the last time I’d seen her. Zorica photographed the cover because it tied in with a project she was having her class work on.

            I rode up to Robarts with my sticking wheels. The other aches and pains from my collision with the spirit of Christmas putz were starting to creep in. My upper right arm and my right wrist were both beginning to bother me. I was back in Zorica’s class with still half of the free hour left. I sat in the models dressing room and did some writing.

            The class started seventy minutes late. Zorica wanted me to start with gestures and then said that after that I could pose with my clothing on. I told her I would need an extension chord for the heater. She seemed surprised. “You’re cold?” she asked. I answered, “Ah, yes, I’m quite often cold when I’m naked.” I began with a series of two minute poses. She spent about five minutes looking for a chord and then gave up, because, I guess she figured it didn’t matter if I was cold for twenty minutes if afterwards I’d be clothed.

            After the twenty minutes I took the five-minute break that my union allows and spent that time getting dressed and getting ready to do the long pose for her. After getting everything ready and sitting on the stage, I picked up my phone and started looking for my countdown timer, but the phone was displaying something else, so it was taking longer than the usual ten seconds, though it wouldn’t have taken more than half a minute, but suddenly Zorica said impatiently, “Excuse me! Can we start? We don’t have a lot of time now!” I put the phone down and posed, timing myself with my watch, but she really pissed me off with her attitude, as if I’d somehow been ripping her off for time, even though I’d sacrificed my break to get ready. I found my countdown timer on the next break but she had put me in a bad mood for the rest of the class, plus my injuries were starting to ache more and more as time went on.

            After work I rode home. I thought about taking my ride to Bike Pirates when they opened at 17:00 but I anticipated that it might take much longer than half an hour to do the repairs, and I had to leave at 17:30 to go and meet my friend Ivy Reiss for a beer.

            We were scheduled to meet in front of the Jackman Humanities Building at St George and Bloor for 18:00, but she called me while I was waiting and said she’d be five minutes late and for me to meet her at the corner of St George and Bloor. I sat on the cushioned bench in front of Brooks Brothers Flatiron Shop for about ten minutes, then thinking that Ivy might not see me there, I went and stood right on the corner. She arrived about ten minutes later.

            She was very stressed over the course she’s taking. The entire syllabus is taken up with the study of one novel, Thomas Fielding’s “Tom Jones”. She had just met the deadline for her term essay, but she said the essay wasn’t finished and she wanted to get an extension from her professor but he was out of town until the fifteenth. She had already failed a test and so she needed this essay to pass the course and graduate.

            We walked west on Bloor, and when we got to the next block she pointed up the street to The Madison. So, coincidentally, two nights in a row, I drank at the Madison when I haven’t been there since 2008.

            We talked some more about her course and then about mine, which she also took and loved. I brought up the subject of the story of Lilith being Adam’s first wife. She said something about Adam and Eve that I hadn’t thought before. Since Eve was made from Adam’s body, she’s essentially his daughter, which makes the entire lineage of humanity in Judaism, Christianity and Islam based on incest.

            I also learned that Ivy’s parents were born in Germany. I know she speaks Hungarian and so that’s what I thought her ethnic background was, but she said that her parents were both forced into the Hitler youth until they escaped to Hungary in the early 1940s.

            We each had a pint and a half and had a pleasant get together, which only tends to happen about once a year.

            That night I watched a couple more episodes of Radar Men from the Moon, taking me up to episode seven. Setting up storylines to correspond to cliffhanger endings makes the series as a whole seem very slow. The acting is pretty bad and Commando Cody’s boss looks like a young mobster and his speaking is more wooden than that of a porn star, no pun intended. The Commando Cody series that was made later based on this one uses many of the same basic plotlines but there’s better acting and a more interesting back-story, although calling him “Sky Marshal of the Universe” is pretty damn pretentious. It’s like calling the United States of America, “America”.