My Least Favorite/Favorite Stooge Shorts

When I was a kid there was a local TV station that hosted a show I’ve written about on this blog before (Slam Bang Theater) that was broadcast all over North Texas twice a day.

Before and after school Slam Bang Theater was where kids got their daily fix of Warner Brothers and Popeye cartoons (among others) as well as their daily dose of the Three Stooges

Much to the dismay of parents trying to get the kids Ready For School, this thankless task was not made any easier by the kids like myself glued to the antics of Moe, Larry and Curly. To this very day when I watch the Stooges I can still hear my dear Mother’s voice reminding me to get ready as a subliminal audio soundtrack in my head.

Slam Bang Theater went off the air decades ago, but I post Stooges shorts on two different Facebook pages on a daily basis in an attempt to keep the spirit of the show alive today.

Invariably someone will post a remark about how much better Curly was when I post shorts featuring Shemp or Joe Besser. To me it’s Apples Vs Oranges.

Curly was good at improvisation, which worked to his advantage because he was not a polished professional actor. His famous bit about spinning around on one shoulder and whooping his “woo-woo-woo” was just a cover for when he couldn’t remember his lines. But he also had a high likability factor with audiences which he rode like a wave for 97 shorts until a series of strokes sidelined him and he was replaced with Shemp.

Shemp was the original Third Stooge and was a consummate stage and film actor. The Stooges originally were paired with a comic named Ted Healy and cut their teeth so to speak with Vaudeville audiences before they eventually made their way to Hollywood. Ted Healy had a lot of connections in the Vaudeville business and was responsible for getting them bookings when many acts were struggling to get gigs at all, but he was also an alcoholic subject to frequent mood swings and Shemp found him insufferable to work with. When the Stooges went to Hollywood Shemp called it quits with the Stooges and Curly was recruited to take his place. While Curly was not a seasoned professional actor his popularity with audiences would override his lack of experience. To this day he is probably the most popular Stooge.

Curly however was really only as good as the scripts he was given. There were a few shorts that when they were shown on Slam Bang Theater, I would get ready for school instead of watching them.

While researching this post, I pored over the Stooges filmography and making this list wasn’t easy.

My least favorite Stooges shorts were easily the ones where they went “out-of-character”

The Stooges were at their best when they reveled in simplistic anarchy; the ones I liked the least were when they were trying to be sappy likable characters. And before we go any further let me just remind you that all of this is merely My Opinion; it’s NOT holy writ. Unlike every other prick with ears writing on the Internet, I’ll be honest enough to say this. So let’s get started, shall we? I’d much rather end this on a good note so we will start with my least favorite shorts and work our way up to my favorites.

My Least Favorite Stooge Shorts:

1. CASH AND CARRY (1937) The Stooges 25^th two-reeler and by this point of their careers the Stooges were riding high on the mere autopilot of their newfound stellar popularity. But this one always put a bad taste in my mouth. The Stooges are prospectors who are trying to raise money for a kid who needs $500 for a leg operation. Someone rooks them out of their money and sells them a map that leads them digging into a United States Treasury. At the end of the short they are pardoned by none other than FDR himself who personally pays for the kid’s leg operation. Pretty sappy even by Stooge standards.
2. NUTTY BUT NICE (1940) Another tear-jerker and way-too-convoluted plot involving the Stooges as Singing Waiters trying to find a little girls father who has been kidnapped by gangsters. If you think yodeling is funny you’ll love this one. Otherwise it’s a hard pass from me.
3. LOCO BOY MAKES GOOD (1942) The Stooges sixtieth two-reeler has them trying to help an elderly woman renovate her soon-to-be-foreclosed hotel. It wastes much time with them trying to wallpaper and re-carpet the place, then goes into them doing a corny act for the hotels grand reopening.
4. I CAN HARDLY WAIT (1942) The Stooges seventy-third short has them as wacky defense workers and is rife with lots of WWII propaganda. Curly needs a tooth pulled and the entire short as a whole is about as “funny” as root canal
5. GENTS WITHOUT CENTS (1944) In the Stooges eighty-first short they are performers who team up with a trio of showgirls who manage to get a gig performing for defense workers (the audience is never shown) and this is the short that introduced the world to their “Niagra Falls” bit. A slow-moving short that never really goes anywhere.
6. RHYTYM AND WEEP (1946) In the Stooges ninety-fifth short they are once again unsuccessful actors who decide to kill themselves by jumping off a skyscraper. They meet three young women on the top of the skyscraper who are by the strangest coincidence also up there to kill themselves. Funny stuff, right? They meet up with an eccentric millionaire they hear playing piano on a lower floor who promises to finance their act but is taken away by two men in white coats at the end.
7. THREE LOAN WOLVES (also 1946) In the Stooges ninety-third two-reeler they are operators of a pawn shop who also are a trio of fathers to a son who was left at the pawn shop as an infant. There are a couple of funny gags but for the most part this short goes nowhere. Curly’s health was visibly declining by this point; he looks gaunt and is noticeably less animated.
8. THREE HAMS ON RYE (1950) Not to continue beating up on poor Curly, this Shemp-era short is notably bad on it’s own terms. The Stooges are stage hands who get small parts in a stage play and also make props for the play, accidently mixing a pot-holder into a cake mixing bowl. The highlight of the whole short is the Stooges coughing up feathers as they eat the cake on stage.
9. WHAM BAM SLAM (1955) The Stooges one hundred and sixty-fourth short is a remake of 1948s Pardon My Clutch and much like the original never really goes anywhere. Shemp has a toothache, the Stooges are conned into buying a used car and some camping equipment. They spend the length of both shorts trying to load the camping equipment into the car and getting the car started. To call it “slow-moving” makes it sound more interesting than it really is.
10. TRIPLE CROSSED (1959) How could I leave out a single Joe Besser short? Nearing the end of their contract with Columbia this is the next to last of all the Stooges shorts. The Stooges look way too old (Moe has those horrible bags under his eyes) to be chasing women by this point and the comedy rests on all three Stooges sniffing after the same woman.

MY FAVORITE STOOGE SHORTS

1. WOMAN HATERS (1934) A very unique Stooge short; all-musical and with a simple plot that concerns the Stooges all chasing a woman that Larry secretly marries. The Stooges shine in this, their first two-reeler for Columbia. The comedy is non-stop and moves with great efficiency. A gold standard for Stooge comedy.
2. PUNCH DRUNKS (also 1934) Another Stooge classic. The Stooges are separate characters in their second two-reeler for Columbia. Again a simple plot: Curly goes berserk when he hears “Pop Goes The Weasel” Moe puts him in a ring for a championship fight and places Larry and his violin at a ringside seat but everything that can go wrong does.
3. MEN IN BLACK (1934) The Stooges third short belies its tiny budget and is a 18-minute exercise in Marx Brothers-level anarchy and in fact was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. Chaotic from beginning to end, the Stooges wreck havoc in a hospital, riding mini-race cars and even a horse through the hallways of the hospital. Glass doors are shattered, an intercom system repeatedly blares: “Dr Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard” and is destroyed by mallets and shot with a pistol at the end.
4. HOI POLLOI (1935) The Stooges tenth two-reeler begins with a formula that the Stooges would repeat many times throughout their career: introducing the social miscreants into High Society. The Stooges are garbagemen that two professors use as a combination of bet and experiment that anyone can be a gentleman through a proper environment and the correct training. The Stooges are unveiled at a party but by the time the party is over everyone at the party is acting like Stooges, slapping each other and poking eyes. The Stooges walk out in disgust saying “this is what we get for associating with the Hoi Polloi” but not before the professor that lost the bet breaks a champagne bottle over their heads.
5. THREE LITTLE BEERS (1935) The Stooges eleventh two-reeler, they are driving a delivery truck for a brewery and find out about a golf tournament their company is sponsoring with cash prizes and head to a local golf club. They gain access by pretending to be reporters, steal golf clothes and clubs and head out to the course to practice a game they know nothing about. They trash the golf course and escape in their beer truck but not before losing the entire contents of the truck (several large wooden kegs) while trying to drive up a steep hill.
6. DISORDER IN THE COURT (1936) In the Stooges fifteenth two-reeler they are witnesses in a murder trial. They perform a bizarre musical number with a scantily-costume dancer, play tic-tac-toe on the seat of a lawyers ass, shoot a gun and spray the jurors box with a fire hose. If it sounds chaotic, it is and in the best possible Stooge fashion.
7. TIE: YOU NATZY SPY/I’LL NEVER HEIL AGAIN In the Stooges forty-fourth and fifty-sixth shorts respectively they play the same characters twice, something they wouldn’t do again until much later in their careers (HOOFS AND GOOFS and HORSING AROUND with Joe Besser) Moe is a thinly disguised Hitler, Larry is his Minister of Propaganda and Curly is a Mussolini look-alike. Chaos reigns supreme from beginning to end in both shorts and both have the same level of anarchy as the Marx Brothers DUCK SOUP.
8. THE GHOST TALKS (1949) Moe, Larry and Shemp are movers hired to clean out the Smorgasbord Castle but they encounter a walking, talking suit of armor, Lady Godiva, a talking skeleton and an owl flying around inside of a skull ( a gag repeated in later shorts) Anyway you slice it, it’s a bizarre sixteen minutes.
9. BLUNDER BOYS (1955) In this their one hundred and sixty-sixth short Moe, Larry and Shemp are detectives after a criminal known simply as The Eel. It is presented as a very loose parody of the then-current DRAGNET TV series. By this point almost all of the shorts they were doing were remakes of past shorts and this one is notable because it’s the very last Stooge short with an original script. Shemp was having health problems of his own and would only film four more shorts with Moe and Larry after this, but it’s one of his best performances.
10. FLYING SAUCER DAFFY (1958) Joe Besser was Shemp’s replacement and at this point the Stooges were merely doing shorts as a contractual obligation. And while most people didn’t care for Joe Besser as a Third Stooge I can’t help but like this particular short for multiple reasons. Flying saucers were making headlines at the time and several photos of them turned out to be fakes and this short plays on that so well. There is a lot of pathos in Joes character and it’s kind of fun to see him get over on Moe and Larry at the end.

Fourteen Days In Quarantine

14 Days In Quarantine

It all sounded simple at first.

The Canadian government in an attempt at cutting down on infection rates is currently requiring the very few foreign visitors it allows into the country to quarantine for fourteen days. Even though the wife and I have been separated for eight months, it was still a requirement.

We talked about this for a while before I flew up; Canada doesn’t have a lot of low-end rentals. The town my wife was staying in was, for the most part a tourist destination and doesn’t have many Motel 6s or Red Roof Inn, no Holiday Inns, no Quality Inns, mostly upscale resort-type places. Fortunately her son works at one and could get us a significant discount so it was decided I would stay at the resort for fourteen days.

The rules are Big Brother-simple. Can’t go anywhere. No walks around the neighborhood. Can’t go to the grocery store or even to the vending machines down the hallway. No visitors, period. I am quite simply confined to my room. Since the room has a kitchenette and a fridge, her family would bring me food and leave it outside the door then call me and tell me it was there. No physical contact with anyone. What the hell; it’s a nice place. The kind of resort my former boss would stay at if he was vacationing here. I should be able to do this standing on my head.

And after the plane trip I took (three connecting flights with two long layovers) it actually made sense. The first leg of the flight (DFW to Phoenix) was a covid nightmare; everyone crammed on the jet like sardines with zero social distancing. Oh sure everyone was wearing masks but we’re still sitting mere inches away from each other. The next two flights (the first Phoenix to Calgary, followed by Calgary to Nanaimo) were much better with lots of space between the passengers but if I got infected anywhere it would have been on the first flight, so the whole business of quarantine started to make more sense.

I wasn’t apart from my wife and two dogs for eight months just to jump through those kinds of hoops and then try to cheat and get booted out of Canada; I was determined to do this right and play by the rules. There was a phone number I had to call every day and answer a bunch of Push One for Yes and Push Two For No-type questions, which I did religiously every day before I had my first cup of coffee.

I was grilled at length by the Customs agents in Calgary; four of them in fact. They wanted to see my ID and asked me numerous questions. I showed them a physical copy of my wife’s passport as well as a copy of our marriage license and they more or less waved me through. By the time I got to Nanaimo I was brain-dead from being on my feet and sleep deprivation. I checked into the resort at almost midnight. I left a trail of clothes between the door and the bed. Sleep came rapidly.

Day One

I woke up startled; had a really bad dream. Don’t remember what it was but it was bad enough to make me wake up and look around and get my bearings. Put on a pot of coffee and made my way to the glassed-in shower stall. The hot water felt good running down my body. Dried off, put on a fresh pair of boxers and a clean pair of socks. There were two white robes hanging on the wall; I put one on and walked over to the curtains and opened them wide. The view was beautiful: beach below at low tide, seagulls flying by, the ocean and mountains in the distance. There was a wooden boardwalk that ran the length of the beach and even though it was really early in the morning it was crowded with people walking dogs, riding bikes and just strolling along without a care in the world. Poured myself a cup of coffee and stared out the window. A bald eagle flew by. These fourteen days were going to fly by fast. Or so I thought.

I quickly figured out how to hook up the WiFi to my laptop and cellphone. Called my Mom. Chatted with the wife. Poured another of many cups of coffee and did some writing on the laptop. My wife’s family had stocked the fridge with prepared meals I could heat up in the microwave. Poured myself a second cup of coffee and called the number for the Canadian authorities to check in for Day One of my self-imposed confinement. Answered Push One for Yes, Two for No to a series of questions. That was it? This was going to be a cakewalk.

Sipped coffee and looked out the window. Ate lunch. Drank more coffee. Looked out the window some more. Before I knew it, it was dinnertime. Heated up some more food, brushed my teeth and took a couple of melatonins and fell back into the cushy king-size bed. Quarantine wasn’t so bad; I was going to do this standing on my head. Sleep came quickly once again.

Day Two:

Woke up and put on a pot of coffee. Called the 1 800 number and answered the same set of questions.

Ate a bowl of oatmeal, drank coffee and strolled around in my white bath robe feeling like Ray Liotta in that last scene of GOODFELLAS. What was the point of getting dressed? Couldn’t go anywhere. No one was going to see me. Threw open the curtains and once again stood in awe of the jaw-dropping view I spent the previous day taking in. Despite the temperature hovering at about 40 degrees and a lightly drizzling rain a steady stream of hearty Canadians strolled down the boardwalk, some on bicycles, others walking dogs just like the previous day. I was slightly jealous; I wanted to go do some walking myself. Oh well. Quarantine, remember?

There were two televisions in my suite, one in the front room and one in front of the bed. I discovered the batteries were obviously dead in one of the remotes but the other remote worked both TVs so no problem. I explored Canadian television for a while. They had AMC, Fox “news” and National Geographic. SpongeBob Squarepants was a comforting and familiar face. There were channels broadcast in French (if you’ve never seen PAWN STARS in French…..) and they had their own counterparts to American Pickers called…guess what? That’s right CANADIAN PICKERS!

Looking out the window made me wish I had packed a pair of binoculars, especially when I spotted sea lions cavorting around just off the shoreline. In fact I found looking out the window more interesting than what was on TV. This wasn’t going to be so bad. Get some writing done. I had plenty of coffee and food. Why did I need to leave? I was determined not to let this quarantine thing get to me.

Being winter the sun went down early each evening. I tried to stay up as late as I could but wound up going to bed early anyway. Sleep the third night wasn’t as easy as the previous two; I kept waking up every few hours. I would pop a couple more melatonins and go back to sleep. Someone in the next room sounded like they were either rearranging the furniture or having industrial-strength sex; lots of thumping and bumping from the other side of the wall. What the hell?

Slept on and off. Had a series of dreams; some of which were genuine nightmares. The one in which I woke up from I was being chased by the cannibal family in Texas Chainsaw Massacre; I even had a pistol with me but the had sawed off my trigger finger and couldn’t shoot. Woke up in a cold sweat. WHERE does stuff like this come from?

Day Three:

Began the day with what would be my daily routine: put on a pot of coffee and then call the Canadian toll-free number and answer the same set of questions while the coffee brewed.

Threw open the curtains once again and turned on the electric fireplace. Guzzled coffee as I waited for the sun to come up and ate a bowl of cereal. Stared out the window; no sign of the sea lions today. The tide was WAY out there and the beach was busy with beach combers despite the early hour. I was just a little jealous of them, but dammit I was determined: NO CHEATING. I was in the room for the duration, no matter what. Taking a walk wasn’t worth getting put back on a flight to the US.

Besides wishing I had packed binoculars, I was also regretting not bringing some DVDs; the front room had a disc player. Canadian TV had a pretty limited selection of viewing. The cable system in the resort had about forty channels. Some were in French; there were also channels for the visually impaired that had a narrator who would explain EVERYTHING you were watching. I found one series my wife and I enjoyed (SCHITTS CREEK) that had such narration (“Daniel turns to the left and says nothing”) There was even a station or two that catered to Asian viewers and were broadcast in what? Mandarin?

The Border Patrol show held my interest for a while; then I watched Spongebob for an hour or two.

By mid-afternoon my choices got down to Dr PimplePopper and Sesame Street. Back to looking out the window.

The sun came out at one point for a few brief minutes. This was the highlight of the day so to speak. Although the temperature was still hovering at about 40 degrees I wanted to take a stroll but resisted. Not supposed to leave the room. Okay I get it. Don’t leave. Quarantine, remember?

I pictured myself walking down the boardwalk with bacteria and germs spraying from every pore and orifice of my body like some sort of germ warfare lawn sprinkler. “Unclean! Unclean!” A typhoid Texan.

Okay now. Breathe. Take a deep breath. It’s okay.

On one of the news stations they were talking about the covid-19 rate accelerating in the United States.

A million cases in Texas alone. Yikes.

And although I wore a mask the entire trip and touched as little of anything as possible, I couldn’t help but wonder how many times I was exposed to covid-19 on the way up here.

I was being quarantined for a reason. Time to grow up and accept it.

But I didn’t FEEL sick.

A welcome break in the afternoon happened when my wifes daughter and her best friend came by and left some food by the door as well as a cup of McDonalds coffee. Compared to the coffee I was drinking it tasted like hot cocoa; I savored each sip as if it were liquid candy.

The sun began to set eventually. I heated up some dinner in the microwave and ate as I watched the light outside turn to darkness. I had gotten through Day Three. I flipped through the TV channels; the “info” button wasn’t working, so I had to guess which movies were on AMC. Did some writing on the laptop and called it a night.

Day Four:

Slept for a few hours but woke up early. Too early. Peeked through the curtains but couldn’t see much yet. When the Canadian coastline goes dark, it’s REALLY dark. Only a few lights on some other resorts on the coastline were on, otherwise it was a black void out there. Okay.

Took a hot shower and put on some coffee. The McDonalds coffee cup from the day before was still on the counter taunting me. Oh MAN was that a good cup of coffee.

The stuff I was drinking wasn’t bad mind you. My doctor in Texas had told me to stop drinking coffee because she was afraid of what it was doing to my heart. In an effort to compromise (ok cheat) I had started buying whole decaf beans and mixing a 50/50 blend of decaf and regular coffee in an attempt to cut back on my caffeine consumption without losing that holy precious sacred coffee flavor.

Give up coffee? I’ve quit tobacco, drugs, alcohol; without coffee I might as well convert to Mormonism or just go Amish.

Before leaving Texas I went to the store and bought a pound and a half of whole decaf Colombian beans and used the grinder in the store to grind them into a pulp that resembled wood chip shavings. I then mixed a 50/50 blend of that and regular coffee before brewing. It tastes like coffee to me. But man that McDs cup….THAT was coffee.

Funny I paid way too much for coffee at a couple of airports on the way up and neither of them was anywhere near that good.

Ate a variety of things for a morning-long “breakfast”: a bowl of cereal, a bowl of oatmeal, a couple of warm slices of pumpkin bread. For lunch I tried a bowl of spicy chicken noodles followed by a last cup of coffee and then my stomach started doing flip flops. Thought I was going to get physically sick. Took a couple of Tums and it didn’t get any better. Drank a can of ginger ale and every time I burped I felt a little better but the underlying feeling of nausea was still there. Laid on the couch for a long time, several hours in fact before I could stomach the idea of food again. My wife sent her son over with some nausea pills which I held off taking until bedtime because they make you sleepy. After a few hours I made a sandwich, kept it down and fell asleep on the couch. Got up a few hours later and took one of the pills my wife sent over and went to bed. Slept like a rock until 4am, got up. Looked around and decided it was too early to get up and went back to sleep.

Day Five:

Friday the 13^th.

One of my least favorite horror films and a date I’m supposed to be scared of.

Slept late today. Okay 7:30 am but for me that’s late.

Felt a lot better than the day before and woke up wanting coffee asap; I knew I was better just for that alone. Scrambled an egg mixed with sliced ham, a slice of bacon and some hash browns followed by a bowl of chocolate TimBits cereal which is as tasty as Cocoa Puffs were when I was a kid.

Spent the day attempting some writing and watching TV. I have watched more TV in the last five days than I have in the last five months, and this is coming from someone who has been unemployed since July. Watched a heavily censored version of GOODFELLOWS followed by MY COUSIN VINNY which I confess I had never sat through all the way before.

The news was disturbing; even more covid19 cases than the day before in the US and numbers are rising in Canada as well. I’m “safe” in my room. No one can expose me and I can’t expose anyone else.

Then I just get to worry once this is over about being exposed to anyone who might have it.

We are living in scary times.

Day Six:

I tried to write today but the window keeps drawing my attention. Seals were visible in the water from my window; their heads popping up from time to time. I really regret not packing my binoculars now.

Only nine days of quarantine left; can’t crack now but it’s getting tougher.

I can’t even go to the vending machines down the hall.

There is a Chevron across the street I can’t visit. I’ve been craving (among other things) ice cream but I can’t visit the McDonalds just a few blocks away. I miss my wife; I miss our two dogs but I still have to wait a week to see them.

Been trying not to watch TV but it’s a toughie. The news is only good for raising my blood pressure.

There was a Million Moron March in Washington DC in support of our Mobster In Chief who drove by and waved at the crowd on his way to his weekly golf vacation.

A 100,000 people without masks marching in 32-degree weather is support of our modern-day Nero; one can only wonder how many new cases of Covid 19 this will be good for spreading?

For the second day in a row AMC was running a heavily censored version of GOODFELLOWS and MY COUSIN VINNY again followed by TWISTER.

They have two channels devoted to poker championships. Another channel is running STORAGE WARS all day long.

Back to the window…

Day Seven:

Try to write but the window calls.

I looked out at one point of the day and off in the distance was a rainbow coming from the sky and disappearing into the ocean, framed by a series of rain clouds. I snapped a photo and went back to writing.

A little later in the day I just happen to look up and see an much larger rainbow only a full arc this time stretching from the west horizon and going all the way to a park off to the east of the resort.

I tried to photograph this one and it was so large I couldn’t frame it in one shot on my camera even with the fisheye setting. Nature was certainly putting on a show today.

How am I supposed to get any writing done with a view like this?

Maybe I should pull the curtains shut.

Day Eight:

Worry comes in waves sometimes; today it washed in like a tsunami.

It just kind of hit me all at once; I was taking an incredible chance here; sixty-two is kind of late in life to try and start all over again.

A new job, looking for someplace to rent, living in a new country. What was I thinking?

Have I gone mad?

Negativity likes company. And I suddenly became awash in negative thoughts.

Panic started to set in. The beginnings of a migraine came crawling into my head.

I called my wife and damn her ever-perceptive hide, she knew something was wrong.

“What’s the matter? I KNOW something’s wrong or you wouldn’t have called. What is it?”

I started to spit out the words “I’m scared” and froze.

Started to say: “I’m nervous” That wouldn’t come out either. So I did what WAS easy; I lied.

“Oh nothing dear; everything’s just fine”

My pants were so on fire I felt like I was sitting on Burger King’s griddle.

She KNEW I was lying. And as always she knew exactly what to say to me to make me feel better.

“Relax. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She knew exactly how to swat that weight off of my shoulders.

I took a couple of melatonins and went to bed; sleep came soon after.

Day Nine:

The phone rang and I noticed the area code was local so I picked it up.

It turned out to be a woman from the Canadian government calling to check on me and my quarantine progress. She had a pleasant voice and it was nice to speak to someone, anyone after a week and a half of isolation.

She asked me a garden variety of questions I could tell she was reading off of a form.

How was I? How was I feeling?

She wanted to know where I was at and if I had had any contact with anyone. How was I getting food?

I answered her questions truthfully and told her exactly what was going on. I reassured her that I was feeling fine, hadn’t left the room for a the last eight days, hadn’t visited anywhere and was having food delivered to my door. Told her I appreciated the phone call because I was worried that maybe there was something I was supposed to do that I wasn’t doing.

She reassured me that it sounded like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing and that all was well. She told me to have a nice day and the line went dead.

Regardless I felt better; it was a relief to know I was crossing the Ts and dotting the Is correctly.

Day Ten:

Woke up to another rainbow out on the water; was hoping this was a positive sign of …something.

Wish it was something better on TV. Happy Gilmore on three channels at once? Storage Wars all day long on another channel. Spongebob Squarepants seems to be very popular here in Canada; he’s on here a LOT. This may be a sign to do more writing. Finally figured out a way to get more to that done; close the curtains! The view from here is pretty counter-productive, especially when the sun comes out.

Day Eleven:

Got a few pages of writing done and then couldn’t take it anymore and looked out the window…

sure enough I could see a seal’s head bobbing around in the water and doing full body flips obviously looking for fish. They are difficult to photograph; they only stay on the water’s surface for a few split seconds and by the time I get zoomed in on them and focused they are back underwater.

I wore out one set of charged batteries once this week trying to photograph a seal; trying to get a decent photo of one is a trick.

No less than twice I’ve seen one actually come up on land. Today I saw one waddle up on the beach with a fish in his mouth and disappear under the wooden boardwalk. Kept watching to see if he would come back out but he stayed put even as people walked over him, some with dogs on leashes.

Saw a rainbow today for the fourth time this week; I’ve seen more rainbows here in the last week than I saw in the last year in Texas.

Day Twelve:

So close to being done with quarantine. I knew as long as I had TV, wifi and a coffee maker I could do this standing on my head and so far I haven’t cracked. No cheating allowed!

I haven’t even snuck down the hallway to the vending machines; not as much as a foot out the doorway.

Three flights and two long layovers and this two-week quarantine were the price of admission and I haven’t gotten this far just to get kicked out of here. Going to see this thing through and play by the rules.

The hardest part so far is watching people walking by on the beach sipping out of Tim Hortons cups. It’s a long hike down the street to the nearest Tim Hortons; the McDs is much closer but dammit I am sticking to Terms Of Conditions. So close and so far but I am going to see this through.

I want a cheeseburger; I want fish and chips but I have to wait; that’s all there is to it.

AMC hasn’t been much help; wish I could get Turner Classics instead but Ifs And Buts were candy and nuts we’d ALL have a Merry Christmas, wouldn’t we? Speaking of Christmas AMC has been showing almost nothing but Christmas movies as if going stir-crazy wasn’t tough enough. Actually sat through SCROOGED the other night all the way through; not my favorite Bill Murray flick but it had been just long enough since the last time I had seen it to remind me of the long-forgotten memories of the crush I USED to have on Karen Allen decades ago. Such a sappy film; gawd we were entertained easily back then, weren’t we?

And then NATIONAL LAMPOONS VACATION came on afterward for the umpteenth time this week.

I remember my late friend Tom and I smoking a cone-shaped fatty and guzzling beers onto the way to see this cinematic turd at the theater Way Back When and YES we were the only two people in the entire theater laughing at it. Watching it sober today was a good reminder of how badly booze and drugs can distort your sense of perception; how could a movie with both Eugene Levy and John Candy be SO terrible? It takes a really lame script and a really clueless director to fuck up a film so horribly. It wouldn’t be until ARMED AND DANGEROUS was later produced to equal such a waste of their collective talents and come up with yet another such laugh-free 90 minutes.

Downloaded the Tubi app on my phone; it has a pretty good selection of movies and TV sitcoms you can watch for free; the downside is they interrupt them with commercials but at my age it’s just a bathroom/ cup of coffee break anyway.

Just TWO MORE days!

Day Thirteen:

This is IT. I got through this quarantine process without going nuts, without cheating. Two solid weeks in the same room but I did it. Just ONE more day; although after looking at the news maybe I’m safer here than anywhere else. Maybe I’ll just stay here and refuse to leave for safety’s sake.

My chances of being exposed to covid shrink to absolute zero if I’m not around anyone else.

Heck I was practicing Social Distancing before it was a thing.

But two weeks of isolation are finally over; I get to finally reunite with my wife and two pups tomorrow after months of being separated. Cheeseburgers, fish and chips and ice cream await at the end of this tunnel as well.

Day Fourteen:

Two weeks of quarantine was finally over. Someone was supposed to drive to the resort and pick me up but I was going stir-crazy and couldn’t wait; I had to get out of that room.

Even though it was roughly a 45-minute walk from the resort to where the wife and pups were staying and the weather was chilly, I got bundled up and walked over.

It felt good to get outside and breathe fresh air and walk down the road that connected us.

The streets were clean and free of debris unlike the trash-filled streets back home. The ONE piece of litter I did see was a brown plastic lid from a McDonalds coffee cup.

As I trudged along I wondered to myself if the dogs would remember me after eight months.

This morning was an early Sunday morning; I walked past a church with only a few cars out front and past house after house with few if any signs of life. In one yard I spotted two large black rabbits and in another yard I saw a furry black squirrel scrambling around in the limbs of a tree. It was a little chilly

but I didn’t mind since I had a thick coat on. I rounded a corner and walked past a RCMP building which closely resembled an American police station and kept moving.

As I rounded a corner I could see the house they were staying at; our Nissan was still in the driveway. My wife was standing in the door with an ear-to-ear smile; I could hear the dogs yapping in the background. The perceptive little dogs knew SOMETHING was up. We hugged as I could feel one of the dogs clawing on my leg demanding attention; our other dog Sophie was stranded on an ottoman around the corner whimpering. She could hear me come in; someone lowered her to the floor and she bolted around the corner with her tail wagging furiously. I picked them both up and my face was instantly glued with dog slobber as the dogs both licked my cheeks, happy to see me.

I took off my coat and sat on the couch as the dogs both assumed book-end positions on either side of me, refusing to move.

It was good to be back.

“Progress” Ruins Something Else Again

It wasn’t far from our house, just a few miles away and ran east and west adjacent to I30 in between Fort Worth and Weatherford, “The Old Weatherford Road” according to the road signs.

On its east end which started in far west Fort Worth just a short distance north of the highway were the subdivisions of cookie-cutter look-alike houses but once you got past those it was a nondescript two-lane road that stretched as far as the eye could see. On each side of it were generic barb-wire fences on the other side of which were fields of Johnson grass, weeds and mesquite trees.

The fields would break occasionally to give way to a majestic ranch-house type of home, probably no doubt belonging to someone who could afford to build their little “JR Ewing” type home away from the city, a doctor, lawyer or judge perhaps, but these were few and far apart unlike the previously-mentioned “cookie-cutter” houses in the subdivisions on the roads east end which were built close together. The road would twist and turn once in a while but for the most part was in a straight line. The local teenagers must have been fond of this road too for the ditches on both sides of the road were always full of aluminum beer cans I would occasionally pick up and when I did I always brought a lot of them home to go sell at the scrap yard.

We loved to drive out there from time to time. It was just outside the city, but not real far away. I would ease off the gas pedal and we would drive slowly down the road, just cruising and taking it easy. We called it “our old country road” and just generally found it very relaxing to take this little drive. We brought our nine-year old grandson from Canada out here and he would sit on the sill of the car window and stick his tongue out as the wind blew in his hair: “Look at me: I’m a dog!” he would say as we all laughed. But like all good things it would come to an end when we saw the gate that led to a large ranch on the road’s west end and we hit a dead end on Aledo Road near Weatherford. I would turn left and get back on I30 heading east and back to Fort Worth.

We always took our cameras because we never knew what we would see. There was usually all sorts of wildlife to be seen: deer would leap over the fences in front of our car and bolt across the road as coyotes called out in the distance. Cottontail rabbits would run alongside of the road with us. We would see hawks flying overhead or ugly buzzards perched on fences or tree limbs just off the roads. Once we found a huge tortoise crossing the road far from the nearest creek. Another time we pulled up to a bird on a fence singing his heart out to us.

There were a couple of creeks running adjacent to the road and once just on instinct I stopped the car, got out and peered over a fence just in time to see a heron the size of a large dog spread its wing and take flight. Other times there would be large black-tailed deer sipping water there.

It was on this same road I snapped the photo of a large owl perched in a tree right off the side of the road. I lived on a 55-acre farm in nearby Parker county for three years in the 1980s and never ever got this close to an owl.

About mid-point down the road there was a very old tree my wife would always make me stop so she could take a photo of it. I never really understood her fascination for this one particular tree, but I always hit the brakes so she could take this photo and now I am so thankful I did. Over the last couple of years I began to get an ominous feeling when we drove down this road and when we drove down it yesterday we saw something that confirmed my gut feelings. Change was coming and it wasn’t pretty.

As we drove past some of the larger homes on the road I noticed a new sign on the side of the road: LARGE TRUCKS CAUSING ROAD DAMAGE- USE CAUTION. “This can’t be good”, I thought to myself. And sure enough as we drove along I noticed the fence lines alongside of the road now had freshly-cut tree stumps on both sides of them. Where there used to be thick forests areas were now cleared out by bulldozers. Ugly gas wells were on both sides of the road. And adding insult to injury we didn’t see one single living animal along the whole way.

Where there used to be pastures where horses and cattle grazed looked like the aftermath of a war zone; entire fields had been bulldozed and leveled, the horses and cattle nowhere to be seen. Bundled stacks of green plastic pipe for what I suppose were for future gas and sewer lines were piled up everywhere and when we came around the curve to where the tree my wife always like to photograph was, the tree was still there but everything around it had been leveled and bulldozed flat; the tree looked like a lost child, out of place amidst the destruction. The tree where I took the photograph of the owl was gone as were all the trees that were formerly around it.

When we got to the end of the road there was a huge sign from some realty company: “ COMING SOON: New homes in the $250s!” I steered the car left towards I30 as both our hearts and stomachs collectively sank. “Progress” was now taking our little getaway road away from us and there was nothing we could do about it. We drove towards I30 in near silence.

Realistically I suppose it’s inevitable; damn near everything from Fort Worth to Granbury is paved over as is almost everything else in north Texas is these days. Five years from now there will probably be a WalMart, a Love’s truck stop and a Buccees on that road along with the McDonalds, Raising Canes fried chicken, Wendy’s, Family Dollar, Dollar General, Dollar Tree and the CVS and Walgreens across the roads from each other etc etc etc and I would be foolish to think there’s anything I could do about it but it doesn’t make it any less of a shame. After all one person can’t stop “Progress”

GOD BLESS AMERICA

I used to go the movies a lot. That’s an understatement to say the least. Back in the 80’s Fort Worth had a small hand-full of drive-in theaters left and I’ve written about them on this site before.

The Cherry Lane, the Southside Twin, the Mansfield. I can’t remember my drivers license number but I can recite their names in my sleep.  Over in nearby Grand Prairie they had the massive four-screen Century and just a few miles to the east the three-screen Astro. All of them are gone now, much like my teenage years. So much ancient history.

The single-screen indoor theaters like the 7^th Street theater and the huge Ridglea struggled and gasped for air for a few brief years after the drive-ins closed but they too fell victims to the changing times.Unless they booked a hit movie like Star Wars that people wanted to pay to see over and over they simply weren’t profitable anymore. The 7^th Street like the drive-in theaters fell victim to wrecking ball and the Ridglea became a live venue for bands I’ve never heard of and couldn’t care less about.

And the movies that played at those theaters back then, they too seem antiquated compared to the slick glistening  polish that CGI has brought to the movies in the multiplex theaters now. Back then movies relied on props, makeup and believable performances by credible actors to create their staged illusions; now almost everything you see on the silver screen is faked through digital means. And as if that wasn’t enough insult to injury they are re-making movies I saw 25 years ago like ROBOCOP as if to prove that Hey We Can Do Better This Time Around.

While the drive-ins and single-screen theaters were falling victim to cable television and the advent of the VCR I used to load up my pickup with the ice-chest, the lawn chair and the portable radio and sit under the starry Texas skies and watch films almost nightly. Movies were my escape back then from the deadly dull reality of my humdrum everyday life. The people who ran the ticket booth at the drive-ins got to know me so well sometimes they would just wave me through at the box office instead of charging me admission. Ah … the Good Old Days…

Now going to the movies is almost an ordeal for me. People yakking on cell-phones or theaters packed with unsupervised kids don’t make for an enjoyable film-going experience, not to mention that movies these days are just plain awful. Oh the “special effects” make seem slicker these days and CGI does give film-makers the capability to present more grandeur in their story-telling but movies just seem to have lost their soul. They don’t make you laugh. They don’t make you cry. They pull money from your wallet and present movies that are remakes, sequels no one wanted to see or worse yet movies based on old TV shows or even video games. The last movie I went to see was THE SIMPSONS movie and that was what? Five years ago? Hell the theater I saw that at is closed now. So yeah I’ve pretty much quit going to the movies. So imagine my shock when I watched a movie tonight I actually enjoyed for the first time in years.

I picked up a DVD copy of GOD BLESS AMERICA this morning. Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait who I’ve been a fan of for years, it’s a low-budget story about a disillusioned loner named Frank who is divorced from a family who doesn’t love him, loses his job and finds out he is dying from a tumor. He stops short of killing himself when he realizes that he isn’t the problem. He pulls the gun from his mouth and goes on a killing spree across the country in a stolen car (along with a troubled teen-age girl) which to him isn’t just a killing spree; it’s a crusade to eliminate people he sees as being too much a part of all that offends him. The duo execute a Glenn Beck-clone political commentator, members of a Westboro Baptist Church-type group and people at a Tea Party rally. Their safari finally culminates at a “AMERICAN SUPERSTARZ” broadcast where after executing the judges and several audience members Frank and his teenage accomplice are gunned down onstage and on-camera by the cops.

Along the way Frank shoots the stars of a reality show, some rowdy teenagers in a theater, a guy parking across two parking spaces and a lecherous man who mistakes Frank for a pimp. Despite her mild come-ons Frank refuses to have sex with his teenage accomplice ( he slams a bathroom door closed when he can see her undressing for a shower) and they have several lengthy discussions about all that Frank sees wrong with America and society as a whole. (“What’s the use of having a civilization if we aren’t going to act civilized?” he asks a co-worker) Frank is basically a nice guy despite his penchant for killing people and much of the film works on that I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore attitude that made NETWORK or FALLING DOWN so popular although I feel it’s a superior movie to those.  It’s more like OFFICE SPACE meets TAXI DRIVER.

Make no mistake it’s a brutal film; there are several violent fantasy sequences including one at the beginning where Frank fantasizes about killing his loud, noisy next door neighbors (including their baby who cries all night long) or his co-workers at the office. But Frank is very discriminating about picking his victims; he only kills people he feels deserve to die simply because they aren’t nice people.

Just before he is gunned down onstage at the television studio he makes a very eloquent plea for people to think about how America celebrates all that is vile and mean-spirited. And like Kong falling off the Empire State Building his death seems more tragic and yet inevitable than that of the people he shoots just moments before.

It’s violent, it’s bloody and in some ways a sadistic film and yet I got caught up in it for the entire length of the movie. When Frank and his teenage accomplice run over the Fred Phelps-type leader of a protesting church they are shown laughing with glee in their car as his body bounces over the hood and roof and I have to admit I laughed too. Bobcat Goldthwait makes a very good case for people to be a little nicer, a little bit more considerate and to accept just a little responsibility for their actions as well as a very good movie. During the two-hour course of the film I not only laughed but felt the pain of Franks character and that is no small accomplishment of the director. Will people watch this movie and think about their actions? Not holding my breath here but I do recommend buying or renting GOD BLESS AMERICA. Just think of it as HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER with a message. And remember: one car, one parking space please…

File23 Recommends

I opened my mailbox the other day with the usual Fear and Loathing; were there any bills inside? Lo and behold instead there was a package from one of my personal guitar gods, Davie Allan containing signed copies of his latest three releases RETROPHONIC 1, 2 and 3.

I went to Austin to see him a few years ago at a half-filled Continental Club and I gotta tell you I hadn’t had that much fun at a rock show in years. Davie Allan is along with Dick Dale and the late great Link Wray one of my very favorite guitar players. Wayne Kramer of the MC5 has said that performing rock and roll is becoming a lost art but it sure isn’t lost on Davie Allan. He and his Fender Jazzmaster set that stage at the Continental Club on fire the night I saw him.

All three of these are home demos of songs spanning a time period from the 60s to more recent years and while some of the tracks display the grungy “fuzz” sound he is famous for, other tracks show a maturing and display a variety of styles. Now I love Dick Dale so don’t get me wrong when I say this but a lot of his songs kind of sound the same. There are numerous styles attempted in the RETROPHONIC trilogy; a little something to please everyone here.

RETROPHONIC (the first disc) leans heavily on the fuzz sound that made Davie Allan the “go-to” guy for performing the soundtrack to every drive-in biker picture of the 1960s. RETROPHONIC 2 displays a softer sound and RETROPHONIC 3 puts him back in the chopper seat for the first few tracks ( I LOVE his cover of APACHE) and then drifts into a softer sound for the final tracks. One of the bonus tracks “Los Cabos” even has slide guitars and a female vocal; it could pass for a country song and was a pleasant surprise to my ears.

I know times are tough but look up his website and order these. He will even sign each and every one he sells through his site. I also can’t recommend his FUZZ FEST and LIVE RUN CDs enough. And they’re only $10 each. You may have to get them on Ebay but the CDs he recorded with the Phantom Surfers SKATERHATER and THE RAMONETURES (instrumental versions of Ramones tunes!) are both well worth looking for as well.

So come on; you still sitting there? Go do it!

http://www.davieallan.com

An Open Letter To Lewis Black

I was in attendance at your performance Friday night in downtown Fort Worth at the opulent Bass Hall. We met briefly in the lobby when you did your meet-and-greet; I stood patiently in a long line, got you to autograph your book “Nothing Sacred” as well as one of your DVDs and more than a little star-struck all I could spit out were the words: “Thank You Sir”.

We shook hands, I gathered my autographed swag and moved along towards the hall’s exit. You looked tired and exhausted after your performance and there was a long line of other people waiting behind me, so saying anything else to you seemed selfish at the time.

Ever had someone insult you and then later after it didn’t matter you thought of the perfect come-back? I’m sort of having that feeling now.

How does a man say “I love you” to another man without coming off as gay? But I do love you.

Under the guise of being a stand-up comedian, you stand up on stage night after night and speak more unabridged TRUTH than any politician could ever lie about speaking. Your words slice through the hypocrisy, lies and utter bullshit the rest of us shrug off daily. Too bad YOU aren’t a candidate for President; I would love to see you on that debate stage yelling: “FUCK YOU” and “Are you kidding me?” at those clowns.
I know you are a busy man; you have little or no time for Twitter, Facebook or reading insignificant pathetic little blogs such as my own and you will in all likelihood never read these words but I want to put them Out There anyway. Someday the world will view you with the same esteem as the late great George Carlin or Mark Twain, but until that day arrives and at the risk of repeating myself I just want to say once again:

Thank You Sir

Two Months Later

Two months ago I was packing a suitcase and getting ready to leave town for nineteen days. Over eight months of planning had gone into making those nineteen days happen. For nineteen days I tossed my usual life aside and lived like a whole different person. I walked into restaurants wearing a tie, stayed in four-star bed-and-breakfast resorts, sailed on the open seas amongst Orcas big enough to take a bite out of the boat I was in. For nineteen days I left my cares behind lived a much simpler life; breaking my routine once in a while is much more than a good thing, it’s a great thing.

Eight months of planning, nineteen days and nights and then I went from driving roads carved into snow-capped mountains back to Texas overnight. The differences between the US and Canada hit me hard from the nineteen days of not talking to or having anything else to do with one solitary policeman in Canada to being hassled by the LAPD in the LAX airport for the heinous crime of taking photos. LA- a city with a multi-billion dollar porn industry where warthogs like Ron Jeremy can become millionaires for doing it with 18-year-old girls wearing braces but if I pull out my Canon at the airport I’M causing problems? Screw you LA: I’ll be back to spend my precious tourist dollars there real soon.

Left the grocery store the other day without my safety belt on and got about two blocks out of the parking lot when here came the red and blue flashing lights accompanied by a siren. And don’t even get me started on those damn red light cameras; I didn’t miss seeing those things one little bit. But the differences between the US and Canada hardly end there.

There’s the trash everywhere here; that one’s really getting to me since I came back. When I go for a walk around my neighborhood I can fill up a plastic grocery sack with aluminum cans in mere minutes. Mind you it’s not like I would eat off the streets of Vancouver but when I go for a walk here I am utterly appalled at how people here fling beer, energy drink and soft drink cans around like it’s their God-given right. And those at least I can sell by the pound; what really disgusts me are the tons of plastic bottles, and other litter I see all over the place. Despite any criticism I have of America it’s still my home and I take more pride in it than to drive down the street tossing trash out the window; is locating a trash can or open dumpster THAT difficult? What little trash I saw on the sides of the road in Canada I would wager was tossed there by tourists and not the people who live there.
And it would be really nice to walk through a parking lot without seeing a used diaper wadded up into a stinky ball and left for someone else to pick up, especially if its within visual sight of a trash can or dumpster (which they usually are) I didn’t see that sort of thing once the entire nineteen days I was in Canada.

When I left Texas August 19th the state was in the grip of a record-breaking heat wave. While I was gone 90% of the state was in flames; wild-fires were burning out of control and being fought by volunteer fire departments (as if they had nothing else to do) Meanwhile our Governor was flying around the country campaigning for President.

When asked about what he was doing about the fires his response was: “Texas can burn without me” All he had to do to make the yokels forget about that arrogant remark was crack a stupid joke about gun control and using both hands (“Hyuk!”) Gawd forbid our Governor should put together some kind of socialist state fire department but then again they paint those fire engines red for a reason…
If your typical Texas wasn’t such a slack-jawed, slope-browed knuckle-dragging Troglodyte they would have been organized a recall campaign and gotten rid of this useless, self-serving piece of office furniture; this is just another reason I don’t want to live here anymore.

The night I flew back in a fierce wind was blowing from the south; my yard was full of trash and dead leaves, and both of my cats were visibly pregnant. But no one had broken in and cleaned out my house for me while I was gone so things could have been worse. I had ONE day to relax then it was back to my menial job. The next day I had to cough up my rent as well as the cash for four utility bills.
When I am standing in front of one of my machines at work, I daydream and hard. I think of sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean and drinking a cup of tea. I think of watching a whale breach the surface of the ocean, or watching a bald eagle fly over me. I think about sinking my teeth into a Tim Hortons BLT breakfast bagel. I think about waking up next to Someone Special and putting my arm around her. And I’m working over-time so I can make these things happen again.

Two months ago today I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get ready to leave the country for two weeks. Packing and re-packing my suitcase, rounding up my passport, shoving books into a back-pack etc. It was a hundred degrees in the shade, I was running the air conditioning non-stop. Two months later the trip has been taken and I am right back in the same rut I was before I left.
Get up, brew coffee, make a sandwich, go to work…get off work, cash my check, pay the bills, eat dinner, go to bed. God what a routine.

The only difference between now and two months ago is the temperature has gone down a bit and it’s rained a couple of times.  Sometimes my life seems like those repeating backgrounds in old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.  I just want the background behind me to turn into Canada and keep it that way….

For All My Friends

It took mere minutes Back At the Job to recall why I needed a vacation.

That irritating public address system: “Bob Basshole, line one…Steve Assface, line two…Mike Dicknose, line three…”

Having to listen to north Texas worst radio stations all day long.

The toilets in the restroom that don’t flush properly.

The first time I sliced a finger on something sharp for the first time in nineteen days.

That horrible commute on I-35.

Yeah this is what I was flying away from alright….why did I come back?  But I did bring back a souvenir. Something I can enjoy every day before I leave for work.   The video below is good for two minutes of peace and tranquility; take as needed….

Return To Canada Part Two

 

August 19^th …9:30am…

 Feel thrust back into the seat as the jet lurches forward on the runway; the scenery outside the window turns into a blur. The airport and its acres of parking grow smaller and smaller beneath me. Then I can see the homes with the airport, each with a swimming pool in the backyard. Oh now there’s a selling point for the realtors: “Hey you listen to jets taking off and landing 24/7 but you got a pool!”

The hot humid Texas air and bright sunlight gives way to distant foggy cotton-candy fluffs of clouds as my ears begin to pop. The engines roar as we rise upwards and the jet shakes.

 An hour or so later I look out of the window to see clouds between the sun and their shadows down below on what looked like really rough mountainsides un-marked by any apparent roads or highways on them. Colorado maybe? This is a four and a half hour flight too; good thing I brought a lot of books with me. Reach into my back pack for a my newly acquired copy of…

And THIS is about as far as I can get when most Everyone Back Home interrupts me and asks:

 “So what did you DO in Canada, anyhow…?”

 That’s the question my friends, family and co-workers all ask the most. My favorite way of giving them a direct answer is to whip out my photos and SHOW them.

It’s hard to explain to them that sometimes DOING something isn’t always DOING something. Sometimes just experiencing a different state of being in a different place is Doing Something for some of us.

 

(click photos to enlarge)

For a lifelong city boy like myself, just standing in a rain forest oozing with greenery dripping over trees thousands of years old growing entangled with trees older than them is as surreal as any mescal-tinged “other-world, separate-reality experience” that Carlos Castaneda ever wrote of. Walking through lush rain forests that look like some strange collaboration of Roger Dean and HG Giger where tree roots drip like candle wax over fallen dead trees and mid-morning sunlight struggled to peer through to the narrow path I was hiking on. My eyes focusing on a pool of water under a cliff; why I could see every rock, stone and pebble on the bottom through the clear green water. Also that trio of some kind of bones…what the hell?

 

Climbing over spotted, striped multi-colored rocks in a red-tinged pre-dawn light to reach a beach where rabbits, deer, crabs, and seagulls,ravens herons, ducks, geese, hawks and eagles pay you no heed as they scavenge the beach is as unreal and dream-like to this city slicker as any of Hunter Thompson’ s drug-induced Las Vegas misadventures. An early morning hike almost anywhere on this island could make you feel like Dr.Doolittle.

 

Finding a beached purple jellyfish the size of a basketball on the beach ranks right up there with any monster or creature on either TWILIGHT ZONE or THE OUTER LIMITS two shows that both fascinated and terrified me as a child.

 

When people flip through my photos one question they ask a lot is “Why So Many Sunrise/Sunset photos?” And to borrow the punchline to the joke about the dog licking himself: because I could. Taking beautiful photos there was easy. Point the camera almost anywhere and shoot. Hey… look…breath-taking photo! Sunrises and sunsets up there are lush, gorgeous colorful and daily affairs.

 

No one sees me ignoring barriers and hanging over cliffs to get that shot of that lighthouse. They don’t see (or feel) the rocking boat I was on when I shot those pics of that deer on that cliff, that eagle in its nest or that submerging whale. People aren’t throwing up around them while they look at my whale-watching photos too I might add the way my fellow passengers were while I was taking photos. They didn’t have to climb down a twenty-foot-tall rock wall off a highway to get that stunning shot of that waterfall and then have to figure how to get back up to where I was parked again…

 

Standing on a beach and watching the sun rise on the eastern horizon on the other side of an ocean inlet over mountains and through clouds. Watching as the beach and everything on it changes colors bathed in red, orange, yellow, purple hues of sunlight.

On more than one morning there I felt as if I had stepped into that psychedelic cover photo of that Pink Floyd “More” soundtrack. The entire particular island I was on had a otherworldly OZ-like quality to it that my best photos fail to do justice.

 

“Yeah but what did you do?”

Now as far as answering THAT question goes:

They seem to understand whale- watching especially if I can squeeze off just one or two good photos.

 

When I show them photos of the sweet little“suite” at the bed and breakfast with the spectacular view of the Pacific I got for the “room” price ( about a $180 difference) due to a reservation mix-up I get approving nods and comments like: “Nice…”

 

But when I try telling them I spent entire afternoons hiking on nature trails that led to cliffs overlooking the Pacific or walked up on trios of horned buck deer just walking to Tim Hortons for breakfast or past eagles nesting in nearby trees they look at me almost painfully as if they are waiting for me to get to some distant punchline.

“Yeah but what did you DO?” they keep asking.

Sometimes I think they expect to see photos of me whipping a team of dogs on a sled through a blizzard over the frozen tundra. Maybe they expect to see pictures of me in a snow-suit in front of an igloo. Fishing through a hole cut in a frozen lake wearing those hip-high rubber boots. Walking past windmills wearing wooden shoes I think they would even buy. Seriously.

 Maybe I should have taken photos of the Dairy Queen, the A&W, the McDonald’s, the Subway or the Quiznos. You know; just to show them it’s not all that strange, different or alien than America. Handed the Kodak to some stranger and had them snap me in front of the Starbucks holding up one of their terribly overpriced iced drinks while grinning and waving to the camera with my free hand. (“Hi!”) Posed in my black shorts and sleeveless camouflage “wife-beater” t-shirt in front of their Staples Office Supply. Or maybe not…

 Don’t think they really want to hear that Canada isn’t really that different from here; not sure if there’s any point in trying to explain it to them anymore even if it is true. Just like us, the Canucks are big on ice cream; every place I saw that had “ice cream” on their sign seemed to have a line in front of it. The burgers at the fast food places look pretty much like ours. They dip their grilled cheese sandwiches in ketchup and put beef gravy and cheese on their French Fries and call them “poutines” but besides learning the correct lingo to ordering at Tim Horton’s

(“double-double..one sugar, one creamer…, two BLT combos…plain bagels.”) eating at their restaurants and fast-food places wasn’t that different.

Just like us in America they enjoy movies, surfing, skateboarding, muscle cars, rock and roll, watching the sun go down and a good old fashioned fireworks show on the beach…

 

“Yeah man but what did you DO?”

Damn it that the ONLY question those knuckleheads can ask?

 No one wants to hear about the train ride to or from the bus stop. No variation of how I explain their one and two-dollar coins (“Loonies and Two-nies”) confused me into paying too much fare more than once is as funny or amusing to anyone else as it is to myself and “K”.

 

No one wants to hear about the bus ride to or from the ferry, which I’ll admit was pretty uneventful but I was nose-to-the-window both ways taking in the scenery nonetheless.

 

No one even wants to hear about the two hour ferry ride to or from the island even though the ferry is a magnificent ship with almost every accommodation you could possibly want: a restaurant, washrooms, wi-fi, comfortable seats, a coffee shop, a gift shop etc. When the weather permits they have an outdoor “sun deck” that gives you a “captains-eye” view of the horizon and if you love being on a boat as much as I do…I mean weather permitting this is where I spend most of the trip. Leaning on the rail and taking in the scenery. Past little islands with lighthouses. Past large bunches of logs lashed together with cables.

So what if I saw pods of black-and-white orcas swimming alongside of the ferry coming back last year? Like you see those every day back home. That’s just not exciting enough for some people I suppose. They act like I’m holding out on them somehow when I tell them about these things.

 The only question they seem to know how to ask is:(yeah you guessed it)“Yeah but what did you DO?”

 

I did so much more than just DO things ( as if taking pictures of skittish horned deer at personal risk wasn’t doing anything) I saw things I couldn’t see back home. For two weeks I breathed air free of toxins and carcinogens. I tasted farm-fresh vegetables free of chemicals. Heard ferries and and a freighter blowing their horns loudly as we sailed head-on into six-foot white-cap waves on Pacific inlets. Felt the loving touch of a woman’s hands as I got a foot massage (sorry you perverts; but that’s all I’m giving you on my Manson family-friendly site)

 Besides doing MOST things costs money so I was forced to re-define “doing things.”

Back to people asking: “Why so many sunrise/ sunset photos?”

I can’t even take a decent sunrise photo HERE not that we don’t have nice ones but I’ve got to drive for miles to get away from the trees and development that blocks the view. On The Island it was point and shoot to take nice postcard-quality pics of the sunrises and sunsets.

 

Despite their extensive mining and logging industries we drove past mountainsides covered with pine and cedar trees as far as the eye could see.

After leaving somewhere with 100+ degree temperatures it was strange to see snow-capped mountain peaks in the middle of August. One particular long winding, twisting and unlit two-lane mountain-pass road made me flash on two recently purchased DVDs: the LONG LONG TRAILER ( the scene towards the end when the trailer is over-loaded) and PEE WEES BIG ADVENTURE when he drives by those Tex Avery-ish road signs warning of curves ahead (when Pee Wee is driving Mickey’s car at night) because some of the road signs we drove past weren’t that far removed from those. Just getting to certain destinations was half the adventure. 

“Yeah man but what did you do for two weeks?” 

Think this is about where I tell them they just had to have been there….

My Favorite Movie Soundtracks

 

I’ve always loved films that had a good soundtrack whether it was John Waters using his 45 rpm collection for PINK FLAMINGOS or Ennio Morricone’s grand soundtracks for those wonderful 1960s “spaghetti westerns”.

Instrumental music has always been a love of mine and over the years several soundtracks have piled up in my collection. I enjoy listening to them when I write; someone singing just throws my train of thought for a loop ( another reason I listen to jazz when I write as well)

Dug out a few favorites to share with you; most of these are hopelessly out of print…

 

AMERICAN SPLENDOR – Great low-budget adaptation of the Harvey Pekar comic series although Pekars work is truly worthy of the moniker “graphic novel”; Pekar serves up slices of life as non-judgmentally as a butcher at a deli disguised as a low-brow comic book.

The movie soundtrack is comprised of jazz rarities from Pekars vinyl collection as well as a couple of tracks by Pekar pal R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders. The CD cover also has a eight-page mini-comic which serves as the Pekar-written liner notes. Worth getting just for the Joe Maneri, Jay McShann tracks and Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” which I never get tired of hearing. ‘

 

BLUE VELVET- Dark, wicked, depraved David Lynch movie that still makes me want a shower immediately after watching it even after all these years; I feel like I’ve just gone through a two-hour stroll through a sewer.

The soundtrack begins with sweet strings and an oboe and yet contains the same foreboding mood of the film; I can listen to this and get the feeling something is fixing to go horribly wrong. This music makes me want to look over my shoulder and watch my back.

Worth getting for Roy Orbisons “In Dreams” and also Bill Doggett’s “Honky Tonk”

 

CLOCKWORK ORANGE – Long out of print soundtrack to the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece and an entertaining CD as well, although the William Tell Overture almost never fails to make me jump out of my chair when it starts about halfway through. Bet the whole business of trying to decide whether to write the royalty checks to either Wendy or Walter Carlos still drives their accounting division crazy at Warner Brothers, which could be one reason this is out of print.

 

CRUMB – Not just a merchandising tie-in with the excellent Terry Zwigoff 1995 documentary but a very lovely collection of tunes ( some authentic, some recreated in the studio) from Crumbs extensive 78 rpm collection.

 

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS – Great collection of 60s tunes mixed with choice audio snippets from the film.

 

HATED – From the 1993 documentary about GG Allin, the sickest most depraved punk rocker of all time. All the classics are here: “Die When You Die” “Bite It You Scum” “F*** Authority” “Gypsy Motherf***er” and my personal favorite “I Wanna Kill You” Perfect for office, christmas and childrens birthday parties.

 

NAKED LUNCH – from the 1992 David Cronenberg movie; a nice mix of Ornette Coleman, Howard Shore and the London Phiharmonic Orchestra. Sweet.

 

PULP FICTION – The best-selling soundtrack since American Graffiti and also to thank or blame for making surf music popular for 15 minutes or so in the late 90s.

REPO MAN – One of the most quotable movies ever made and a fun soundtrack to boot. Worth getting just to have the great Iggy Pop theme song, Black Flags “TV Party” and Fear’s “Lets Have a War” all on one disc, also the great “Reel Ten” end music too.

 

TAXI DRIVER – Still one of my favorite Scorcese movies and a great moody soundtrack. This is less than thirty minutes long however; Bernard Herrman died while this film was in production and this would be his last soundtrack after decades of writing great scores for Alfred Hitchcock and many other great directors.

 I know I know; I forgot (fill in the blank) This was not intended to be a definitive list; just a list of titles from my collection. Now I got to be going; I’ve got movies to watch….