The Hiker (or, how to save more old writing)

Years ago, I wrote this thing. I had a dream that turned into this… THING, where I was writing a bunch of things every time I woke up. I’d have this immensely insane dream that began to turn into a recurring one, and I started writing parts down. It’s not finished. It was a sort of multi-purpose story where dreams and reality intersected, and it began to get very strange. I had basically completed it up to the point at which parts of the dreams would happen in a state of being awake, and it never ended up being completed. But, I shall not fear, because I’ve been slowly maneuvering parts of old stories into this big, well novel-like deal I’m going on now. So, hopefully, this big story will be the culmination of years of old things intersecting with new things, so that I can get everything I’ve ever wanted in it. Sounds like a neat idea in my head, but on paper, I’m sure it’ll be impossible. Anyway, here it is..

THE HIKER:

Close-up of hands pressed together as if in prayer, lightly touching someone’s face. Thumbs protrude through a shirt with thumbholes. Red light closed eyes. Shakes himself out of his dizziness and remembers. Leaving the house quickly, with not much to wear for clothes. The door closes and, he arrives to  a pile of snow. Feet walking as fast as possible in deep snow, the sound of a loud breath as they touch ground on a bridge. He sits down on the ground cradling himself to keep warm until he spots a car go by before running off to catch the street.

Shot of thumb out. Walking away at a distance, head shaking.
End

=====
Desperate, blind, walking down a cold street as if the rest of the world didn’t matter. It’s dusk. I think to myself over and over again that there’s got to be something wrong. no one’s picking up, no one’s driving by. A completely empty highway not even birds flying around in circles above me. Every day I make this trek to nowhere. Groceries, life. Living outside so far of town with no vehicle and an empty house to beg wasn’t the life imagined by my mother. Smart kid, hand up, and big teacher smile. Things changed. Grown up, out of school, my brain stopped its doings, and here we are out at the pit of despair. I’m ready to throw things in. I’m ready to give up but something keeps me fragile at the outs. something has me going. It’s a fear of ending at a low, or of never amounting to anything. a fear of never looking someone in the eye with care. Never hearing the sound of heartbreak, never having meaningful conversation.

Just a man alone, walking, waiting to refill my stomach with substance because half ripped books and old newspapers don’t do it anymore. It all went wrong somewhere.

My thumb shunned my walk silent. Kicking the same rocks from the highway, and sitting in the tall grass swatting mosquitoes, watching the night come. I sat for an hour waiting for the sun to disappear in the mounds of trees, and then got up to go again. One ride came my way. A strange man, ghostly beard with chew stains from tobacco, creepy, lonely. Like every weird driver in every weird movie you ever thought you saw. The length of a football field, or two crop layouts was all I could stand him for. Jumping out on a slow turn. And now at the outskirts, the bright lights shining enough to hurt my eyes. Light’s escaped me for three hours since the sunset. I’m scared of the idea of a busy night in this city. It’s nights are evil rabid sores, and I’m the mud an ant builds off of. So I’ve to keep my head up and my ears open. Open eyed sleep. Paper bags with extra rum.

The last of the darkness shifts as I get my first glimpse of Rutger Ave, the first street in town. I point out in my head all the possible areas for docking, resting my head temporarily until I look forward to a day’s worth of walking. A stop for a crop of cash was possible until I saw the layer of filth on the cement walls. This place has gone downhill since the last time I was here. All broken to pieces as if an earthquake riot hit it, vandals, and demolition derby. It’s as if a strong powerful wind came by, left the lights on, and brought everyone out.

Not a sign of life, yet.

Turning corners blankly. An alley is just a bit scarier at times, no one around, dark. Places to rest are dim, low in count, except for an abandoned hall. Boarded windows, graffiti that reads “FUCK SENSATIONALISM”, and “GIVE ME SHELTER”. Seeing these signs of pure nonsense makes me realize that people forget what they’re doing, when it sounds good in their heads. Smart isn’t always pretty. So I tear off a piece. Enough to get in and have hard carpeted floor to sleep on. Good sun-block for the morning.. As soon as i lie down, in shards of glass and dirty carpet, it hits me, sleep. All of a sudden clatter. Like nothing I’d heard before. Resembles a flock of birds flying away from a prey already killed by a beast.

Footsteps, and fear.

The jolt of waking up by noises and a silhouette outside shook me. Flapping of wings loudly from birds threw me for a loop, but the loud womanly scream from nowhere and the shape of a shadow, moving slowly from board to board. I see it pacing outside, and pick up a piece of glass that cuts my hand when I touch it. Tooth grinding and blood drips. The carpet shades itself into a bit of darker red, with the strange shadow. Outside is a monster hiding in the face of a beautiful woman. Eyes like burning incense fueled by a hatred for something I just cannot see.

Somehow, I have to figure out where this comes from. I have to get her to talk to me.

And so I hid. In the depths and cracks underneath where the windowpane used to be. I found a hole to stare out into the dark and look about for a set of eyes that shone not unlike the streetlights. No matter where you are, you should always be able to see a set of eyes.

But then the rush of being watched hit me. No longer the sounds of birds, but only crunching of the glass when I try hard not to move. No disturbance, silence please, for the one sneaking outside. I grab a moment to regain myself and stare out again, not only seeing the person once before, but numerous townsfolk. These people look more like an amazement of ten dirty scum, prancing and dancing down the streets as if they were rulers in a 17th century play, and all the Kings and Knights had been scared off by the plague. But she was moving. She was the only one not dancing. Walking down the middle of the street the only one with purpose. I was full of dirt and piss, and in my head, I could get away with following her just to see what this all was about.

I feel lost. The only thing I really wanted was to find a place for sleep. I’d have slept through the night without a worry, and moved on through this piece of a town, to the next one and on and on until I ended up back where I started. Down the street I go though, through a crowd of slow moving people following an aura. Following someone who’s not almost exactly there but has something left. A piece of brain draws me to her as if it’s all an act for essentials, to be able to get outside from a hiding spot.

There’s a gate ahead. Like the size of a wall, barbed wire across the top, dried blood plastered around it, the top of it as if a war zone is long past. She’s able to get in with ease I assume. But how to follow her in, find this out? I follow her through. She stops at the gate, mumbles incoherently but I can’t hear it, as it gets blown by the wind. With ease she’s into something I just can’t understand. As I sit on the curb and watch the doors close, I take a second to think. What the hell is really going on? I haven’t even taken in the complete idea of what I’m doing. I glance around me, and realize how dark blue everything is. The darkness of the streets, and yet it seems like it’s midday. I haven’t seen the sun since it set last night and it’s 9am. Perfect time for middle of the day heat. But it’s as if the whole city has the same wall with barbed wire. Block the sun from getting in and the darkness that carries half of the woman and the rest of these meandering creatures can roam freely. It makes no sense, in my head.

Maybe the brown bag will help. Maybe if I could find someplace to lay my head or shower, wake up from this strange dream that is half dead.

And then, sudden black comes over me.

Dizzy head. Foggy eyes. There’s a horrible burst of flame inside of my brain telling me to touch the sides. It’s the warmth of a bloodstream falling from the side of my head, crunchy bits in my hair. I sit up in the bed that I don’t ever remember being in and look around, not recognizing a thing, nor being able to stand. Where am I? The walls are brown as if someone had sprinkled brown sugar on them. I stand up briefly and lose all power in my legs. On my way down vision gets blurred like cigarette smoke in the cold and I miss hitting my head on a desk by inches.

Food sits on this desk, half-eaten, rotting. How long have I been here?

And then she enters. For some reason as I sit on the floor and stare at my feet I don’t even move. This horribly scabbed wooden floor has laid terror on my body when I sit at it but at least it tells me that I still feel alive. She’s standing at the door, holding it open, and not entering anywhere close to me. That same terror/wonderment I saw her with before, the thing that attracted me to her in the first place but I don’t understand something. She looks more frail, her arms solid bone when she reaches in as far as she can without moving close to me to catch on to the food that’s lying on this desk. But she doesn’t get far before I grab for her arm. The plate falls, a look of absolute terror glazes her eyes and I don’t hear anything but the slam of the door, a splinter in my foot, my head on the desk and lines in the deep brown ceiling.

Days pass. And the only way I’m sure it’s been days is that I’ve seen the sun rise and set. My stomach toils with some grumbling and I’ve got nothing comfortable to be on. It’s as if you’re sick with the flu and the bed keeps getting hot and cold again. It seems that there’s really nothing for me to understand; no reason for me to continue. Twice already I’ve tried to take my own life but the idea of cutting parts of yourself with sheared glass or hanging yourself in a room you can touch your toes from the ceiling.. It’s a strange state of affairs. I’m losing faith in her. I’m losing faith in me. And I’m even wondering about the idea of why I decided to follow her in the first place. Nothing should have come from it. Harmless wandering should have never turned into this. It seems like it’s been years. I’ve found a sharp object to inform myself of the past days by counting the sunset. I believe I’ve been here for a total of seventeen days, and I am frail. My body is bone, my once distinctive jaw line full of goatee is now messy, dirty, gross. As if the hell I’ve always dreamt about has finally gotten a hold of me. I must break out; I need to break out, in order to survive.

I remember standing against a wall two days ago wanting to sink into it. Let my eyes fall to the floor, and disappear into an abyss for all eternity, but something keeps me going on. The fact that it’s been more than a week since she has come is now nothing but a memory.

There is nothing else to do but believe in myself.

Cracking away at the floorboard is all I have. Over and over again with a spoon, I continue doing so. And then it happened. She let me out. One day as I was waking up, she was over the bed, staring. I jumped, hiding back against the wall. It was the first time she’d ever let me see her terrifying face. Partial cuts, burns, bruises, lost beauty in a sea of torment. She waved her hand at me, to get me to follow her. I look behind me as I shut the door to a brutal, horrific time. I don’t know what’s ahead.

A piece of paper lies on the floor, scratches in the wall counting the days

In my head I see her, like a fictional character I can see while reading a book. It’s as if she’s laid herself out for me in the pages of one complete chapter, and her words leap off the pages and into my imagination, but only late at night when I lie in bed alone. I’m never sure what sets it off. Sometimes it’s the heat from the register, sometimes it’s that feeling that someone’s there with you, even though you’re lying in bed by yourself hunched to one side. Maybe it was just the idea that there was someone I could be so in tune with, and not touch. I just feel so in tune with this person, even though it’s been a very long time since then. I still don’t know where I am and can’t explain this dream I kept having. Visions of her were so real, it’s as if time stopped all for one moment, just to allow me to be able to dream that someone out there could have completed me.

[Editor’s note: this is where the story switches. the dream like sequence above will counteract with the reality sequences below, that seemingly, were never completed.]

It’s a regular day at work, hiding behind a wall of boredom, tapping my pencil against the desk as if I was busy. Typing brings no solace. Writing in places, words that don’t mean anything, just to see the scripture of the screen. I want this to change. Dreary dead life means nothing to me, if only there was an escape. Something that can tear away at my life and change anything that ever meant a single bit. Tear away at the scripture; turn it into anything but this. Maybe somewhere under a new name and a new life and no more dress clothes to convince my bosses that I’m worthy of their money, a new start could work.

It’s not like it’s always been like this, but for everyone, it never is. Everyone has a part of their lives they’d like to return to. In high school I had more fun being the loner child than I ever wanted to have. It set me up for being whom I am, a drone in a working area where no one really exists outside of the walls. You’re a statistic now, a number on a paper, nothing that really matters. You’ve been switched into sticking in a building with a large community of people who are at the same place: Old people who just don’t care, mid-lifers who’ve given up, young people on their way out. And there’s nothing you can do but switch into a new mode of thinking to keep you on your feet before you drive yourself mad.

[Enter Dream Part One]

Home is where I’m at now. Ready to rest my weary head on pillows filled with last night’s discontents, left staring at the ceiling until the wee hours. I see flashes of light in an otherwise dark context. The idea of my continuous involvement specifically in being alone typifies me into something I’m not sure of. An angst ridden, overbearing lust for something I cannot ever attain. It’s the relationship that drives me mad, the one I see in my head so vividly that I fall to pieces. And what if it was real and all of this wasn’t? What if the idea of waking up and getting into a vehicle to get to a place that completely numbs your brain and slows your process was the part that was the bad dreams you want to forget, but are the only parts you remember?

There must be a truth somewhere that you can live in that space. Having two sets of lives in the prospect of really only concerning yourself with the one that hurts more and that you have less control over just does not seem like the right equation. Everyone has that balance that idea that whatever it is that you’re living is the true prospective of what your life really is. But what if you can change it? What if you could create something for yourself that makes you feel as if you were really living what you wanted?

[Enter Dream Part Two]

Flash forward to a party. A big party in a big house, someone’s parent’s gone for the weekend. There is a pile of young friends from work conversing and dancing to drab music and conversation, respectively. Walking through them to the stairs, I want to find solace in the darkness of the basement. There’s a sound emanating from it. A noise like I’ve never heard, the mixture of someone screaming and grinding their teeth together loudly as if they were falling out. I turn on the light and look around, nothing there. Maybe my imagination, I think to myself. As I walk back to turn the light off and hide in a different room, I hear a muffled noise from the corner.

There’s a frail person lying there, food at the table beside her. I casually walk up to the table, staying at a far distance away from the stranger to catch the food that’s lying there. But I don’t get far before she grabs for my arm. The plate falls, a look of absolute terror glazes her eyes and I don’t hear anything but the slam of the plate against the wall. Lightheaded, I stand up and turn around sensing hundreds of pairs of eyes on me. I sit down on the floor rocking with eyes closed, assuming that my sudden burst of seeing things is something I’ve dreamed up.

My eyes open to complete darkness.

[EnterDream Part Three]

20 Favorite Conan Clips (youtube)

With Conan on his way out this week (I think), and hulu being the main source for Tonight Show clips, I wanted to take my own little trip down memory lane, and post my twenty favorite Conan Late Night clips that were still available on youtube. The time periods are all over the place and it’s in countdown fashion, IE: number one at the bottom is my favorite. Even though the thing about number one is probably the fact that it was a combination of shows, well, that shouldn’t count. It’s the idea of the thing. Anyway, without further ado, here they are. Remember, they’re just my favorites. So, don’t go nuts saying I left something out, because I watched HOURS of youtube videos to remember the things of the past.

20. Peeping Tom – “Mojo”
I remember having a party, and telling everyone that when this came on, we all had to shut up and pay attention. It’s funny that the first video on my list isn’t actually a youtube video.

19. The Yanni letter.
Conan reading a letter someone had sent in, upset about the usage of Yanni in a photo skit.

18. Trucker School.
Seriously. Trucker school?

17. Writer’s strike songs.
Every few days he’d do songs with the band, and damnit if I wouldn’t listen to an album that guy put out!

16. Jim Carrey as Conan.
What a perfectly exact portrayal.

15. Conan helps out during the transit strike.
Seeing him go all over the city of New York randomly asking people if they want rides home is not only fun, but his knack for making people feel awkward is always fun to watch.

14. White Stripes – “Jolene”.
The Friday show, as they were on all week that week. My favorite of all the songs played.

13. Max on Britney.
You know, he’s a real fantastic comedy talent when they actually use him.

12. Broken Social Scene – “(7/4) Shoreline”
This was very difficult to find. It’s not on youtube, but deserves to be on this list because it’s an amazing performance with 34u092483290 people in it.

11. The TV interviews with mouth man
With that dude that puts his mouth in a hole and pretends to be random celebrity people. The screwups are hilarious.

10. The epic Clash of Conan, Colbert, and Stewart.
The brilliance of having it as a continuous thing on three different shows was by far one of the most hilarious things I’ve seen in a long time.

9. SECRETS.
A whole bunch of celebrities did these, but I found some of the Harrison Ford secrets to be the best

8. Max Weinberg PSAs.
He did a whole bunch of these, and they’re all hilarious.

7. Mute Math – “Break the Same”
I remember watching this and not being very excited about how it started, but by the end, I was just completely amazed. This also isn’t a youtube clip. But it won’t hurt your computer!

6. Shooting and drinking with Hunter Thompson.
I wish it was better quality, because I remember it being absolutely hilarious. A lot of yelling and Whooping on Hunter’s part.

5. Old Time Baseball.
I remember hearing that this was Conan’s favorite thing of all time, and I think it’s just a hell of a bunch of fun.

4. Walker Texas Ranger Lever.
The reaction. Oh, the reaction.

3. The Courtney Thorne-Smith interview
Oh, the hilarity that ensues when you have a Norm on your show without a leash.

2. Death from Above 1979 – “Romantic Rights”.
This is not a youtube clip. I had to search for it pretty hard. But it’s worth watching it on myspace. This was a fantastic performance and one of the best ones I can remember on that show.

1. Stackenblocken.
I don’t even remember why I found this hilarious, but over the years, it’s never gotten old. It’s my favorite clip because it’s become a continuous word in my dictionary, which was a first. The strangest part is that not a lot of people remember it, so it’s like the most random reference you could have to a show. Which kind of makes it even better.

Action = reaction / counteraction

Another blog I’d found from eons ago had a few fantastic updates in it.  Soon I’ll be posting some others that relate to Hunter Thompson from that blog, and I plan to work on them a bit to update the info, making one big entry about his death (I had originally posted three blogs regarding his death within the following days. This one was written four years ago:

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The thing I don’t understand about people is the effect that another person has on them. I’m almost twenty six and I haven’t really even figured out how interactions between people really work. There’s some situations that I walk away from and think to myself what just happened? I’d like to take a year off of work and study reactions and counter-reactions in people, if only to wonder why everyone continuously messes up everyone else in a large and or small scale. Wars, Fights, Confusion, Firings, Molestation, Talking, Women, everything.

Everything revolves around a reaction and a counter-reaction in conversation form, or even glances, depending on the situation. I’m more prone to think that the popularity of someone is more dependant upon their reactions to things than what they look like, or who they’re friends with (consequently, a bevvy of good reactions to someone else could constitute why people are friends).

So how would people figure out to right wrongs? How would reactions get into a fixed state where there are no misunderstandings? It wouldn’t happen. People are too fixated on things that they like and dislike, which is where conversation starts, and reactions become the basis on how the conversation goes. I like this, you hate it. We both hate this, you like that. This food sucks, that girl’s cute.

I won’t even enter the area of religion, politics, or racism, mostly because the whole idea of those three being the brunt of everything that’s bad about reactions that counter-turns itself into something much larger kind of makes me say “Huh?”

Maybe, of course I’m thinking about this way too much, which is probably a reaction to the caffeine I’ve been inhaling today. In this case, writing this is the counter-reaction, and I haven’t even gotten into the science of Nuclear Reactions et al. Hm.

For Grandpa

I found this in an old online journal. The original date on it was July 18, 2004. He passed away a few years after that, which seemingly makes this resonate a bit more.  I’m putting it up here so that if that journal disappears, it’ll always be somewhere.

Grandfather, your truck has seen better days, and so have you. You are much like this vehicle. Everyone just assumes because it looks old that it’s ready to crack and fall apart, but it doesn’t. My grandmother told me a story once, about how even though you don’t start it all through the winter and it gets buried in about four feet of snow, when you go out mid-summer to start it to drive far enough to pick up essentials for a bit of building, it revs and starts as if it were 20 years ago and you drove it every day. And though you tell me about the rust stains that seep through the floorboard, and the visible ones on the outsides, you, like it still have alot of heart left.

I love you, and you’ll never see this.

2000 – 2009: A decade of music favorites.

Every time a 0 is involved with the turning year, people tend to go crazy over “the best _____ of the decade”. Lists come out about music and movies and tv shows and whatever. Well, I decided to do that. Because I’m a dork. What I ended up doing is a list of things for every year since the year 2000. I will talk about some of them and leave links to others that I think are fantastical and that I belive you (whoever you are) might enjoy. So. Here we go. Expect to see some bands that repeat, and some that you know I like, if you like me:

2000
Does anyone remember how fantastically catchy ‘Bohemian Like You’ was? The silly video with the karaoke-thing, etcetera? There was a lot of decent music coming out around this time, and I remember being consistently barraged by good albums. This wouldn’t continue through the rest of the decade. Californication would be the last time I would enjoy RHCP as a band.

Dandy Warhols (song – Bohemian Like You); Red Hot Chili Peppers (album – Californication); Smashing Pumpkins/Foo Fighters/A Perfect Circle(show – Summersault – Winnipeg Stadium); Nine Inch Nails (video – Into the Void)

2001
In 2001 I succumbed to sexy pop for a favorite song. Seriously. That song is awesome. Frusciante’s album was magical, and I think my video of the year is really the only choice.

Kylie Minogue (song – Can’t get you out of my head); John Frusciante (album – To Record only Water for Ten Days); Tragically Hip (show – Winnipeg Arena); Fatboy Slim (video – Weapon of Choice)

2002
Dave Grohl makes the list twice as a drummer in this year, and probably would have taken the album too, but from out of nowhere came what would change my mind about Canadian music in that I ended up following almost every project that Broken Social Scene had outside of it’s main band after hearing the album and seeing them live.

Queens Of The Stone Age (song – Go With the Flow); Broken Social Scene (album – You Forgot it in people); Broken Social Scene – (show – Pyramid Cabaret); Tenacious D (video – Tribute)

2003
I remember the moment I fell in love with Sit down Stand up. It was on the eve of the album coming out, and Radiohead played a live show that was broadcasted to Silver City theatres in Canada. When that song reached the crescendo into the fast ‘raindrops’ part, I was almost on the edge of my seat. Which I could also say about the Metric show. They were second on a bill of three that featured Hot Hot Heat as the main act, and were still relatively new, but downright sexy and exciting to watch. I’ve since seen them six more times.

Radiohead (song – Sit Down, Stand Up); Mars Volta (album – De-Loused in the Comatorium); Metric (show – Pyramid Cabaret); Buck 65 (video – Wicked and Weird)

2004
The second time a John Frusciante album makes my favorite albums. This album is widely regarded as his most ‘mainstream’ and is a fantastic, great-amazing thing, just like the Bowie concert, which was the last concert I ever saw at the ol’ Winnipeg arena.

Secret Machines (song – Nowhere Again); John Frusciante (album – Shadows Collide with People); David Bowie (show – Winnipeg Arena); DFA 1979 (video – Black History Month)

2005
I’ll never forget how many phone calls I got when Nine Inch Nails annouced that they’d be coming here. It was the first time I was going to see them, after being a fan since 1994. My phone rang off the hook, and for one song during that show, so did my emotions. I kinda quietly, completely lost it, and felt like a dummy. Ha! By the way, that Esthero video’s freakin’ hot, and I agree with every sentiment in it.

Sufjan Stevens (song – Come On! Feel the Illinoise!); Fantomas (album – Suspended Animation); Nine Inch Nails (show – MTS Centre) Esthero (video – We R in Need of a Musical Revolution)

2006
I saw Wintersleep by myself in front of about 30 people, and skipped work to get there. When I talked to the singer about this, he dedicated a song to me. How nice. As far as Nausea goes, I don’t know what it is about that song, but something in it drives me nuts. It’s way too good and it doesn’t even realize it.

Beck (song – Nausea); Regina Spektor (album – Begin To Hope); Wintersleep (show – The Collective); Eagles of Death Metal (video – Boy’s Bad News)

2007
National Anthem of Nowhere has become my most listened to track on last.fm, and I think the Wintersleep album has since become one of my most listened to albums. They will both continue to rise in numbers. If I did a song by song and album by album breakdown, these two would make somewhere within the top three. And it’s pretty cool that I got to see Mike Patton in any of his 34i83902439024 bands, but Peeping Tom blew me away.

Apostle of Hustle (song – National Anthem of nowhere); Wintersleep (album – Welcome to the Night Sky); Peeping Tom (show – Trocadero); Feist (video – 1234)

2008
God, In Rainbows is great. And Secret Machines live, that’s something so completely underrated, I don’t even know how to describe it to you. The power that they have to get an audience going, is a sight to behold and yet there were so few people there that I was kind of disappointed in the turnout. Oh, and yes, I realize that Feist gets the video 2 years running for the same album, but they’re both great videos.

Kaki King (song – Montreal); Radiohead (album – In Rainbows); Secret Machines (show – Pyramid); Feist (video – I feel it all)

2009
I know, it hasn’t been that long, but Them Crooked Vultures was exactly the album I wanted it to be. So there.  And as far as Spookey’s song goes, this is the second time I’ve talked about it in my blog. Previously appeared in my “songs you won’t see in Guitar Hero or Rock band“, and it’s just something to behold. Metric’s video was perfect, it was the video that I wanted them to have. Something sweet and cute instead of overtly dorky like all of their other videos. As far as Leonard Cohen’s concert goes, I hadn’t been a huge fan beforehand, but was introduced, and BECAME a large fan because of how amazing that concert was. Everything he did was perfect. The singing, the sounds, the engagement with the audience was fantastic. Top five concerts in my life, that one.

Spookey Ruben (song – Mechanical Royalty); Them Crooked Vultures (album – Them Crooked Vultures); Leonard Cohen (show – MTS Centre); Metric (video – Gimme Sympathy)

Shows that needed one more season: Quantum Leap

Last night, I was watching an episode of ‘Sit Down, Shut Up’, and was partially enjoying the idea that one of the teachers created a Meth Lab instead of a Math Lab. The character’s voice was done by Will Forte, who also did the voice of Abe Lincoln in Clone High. That got me to thinking about something. A lot of television shows get canceled too fast. A lot of really good ones. Some of them come back (Okay, just Family Guy), some of them go to other channels, and some are just forgotten in this day and age of insane amounts of reality television. Fox is especially bad for this one (insert Family Guy link to Peter naming all of the shows it had cancelled), but whatever. I’m not going to pick on networks or what-have-you, I’m going to say why I think it would have been great to have one more season

We begin with:

 

QUANTUM LEAP

 

Yes, that is a spelling mistake. No, I didn’t make that up. That’s a screenshot of the end of the series. Originally, it was to be the end of season five, all cliffhanger-like, but it was canceled for the second time (also cut after season three, but a letter-petition had it renewed for season four). There are several hints throughout the episode that this leap might have all been in Sam’s imagination, but it never really pans out, and having it end with a happy ending still doesn’t make much sense. For those that don’t remember, here’s what happened (a true wiki reference. how odd!):

In the series’ final episode, Sam encounters a mysterious bartender who insinuates detailed knowledge of Sam’s “mission” and his true identity. Sam comes to believe the bartender might actually be that higher power, though the man neither confirms nor explicitly denies this. The bartender helps Sam remember that he built Project Quantum Leap because he wanted to put right what once went wrong, and makes him realize that he himself has control over his leaps. He then asks Sam where he wishes to leap to next. Sam replies by saying he wishes to return home, but he cannot as he still has a wrong to put right for Al, by letting his first wife Beth know that Al is still alive. Sam then promptly leaps out and does so. The show’s epilogue states that Sam never returned home, after showing a picture on the mantle of Al, turning into one of Al, Beth, and their daughters.

I actually had to edit that wikipedia paragraph because it was poorly written, and parts were roundabout. That’s wikipedia for you. Anyway, the point of it is all to hack-job for me. This show was a rather consistently fantastic one, in that it never got terrible, it had great character development, and in it’s final season, had a bit of fun with it’s (so they call it) “kisses with history”. But it was terminated before it could ever have a climax, or an actual ending that someone could remember fondly. I didn’t get into the show until it had already been cancelled for some time. Around 2001, I had lost my job and was moping around the house and ended up catching every episode in a row on Space reruns, and almost got excruciatingly mad at my television when I saw the ending that was put together. I felt like I had put so much time into a show that I adored, and to have it’s lasting legacy one of anger, well, that kind of sucks. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see it on television when it aired originally. It could almost compare to the horror I felt when I watched the American “Life On Mars” finale, which, well, I don’t know. There was nothing redeeming about that.

Anyway, there’s a lot of un-resolved issues in Quantum Leap. Rumors were abound for a while that there was to be another show based on Sam Beckett’s daughter going to find him (he had a daughter in a three-episode arc in season four, probably some of the best episodes), which seems like it would have been kind of short, but at least it would have been resolved. People don’t like to be cheated at the end of movies or television shows, especially if it’s done in a sub-par way, and I feel that the ending to this not only leaves much to the imagination, but for a show that’s still watched in rerun form, and still talked about enough, it’s hard to determine why there aren’t a lot more people who talk about how upsetting it is. Sure, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just got too attached to the show and I should hide out somewhere on the internerds to talk about it with other super-fans. But I really feel that a show that was so consistent with it’s writing should have had one final go at it.

This is a good time to mention that somebody out there made A fanfic movie. It’s about Sam Beckett being ordered by the President to have something to do with Princess Di’s death. Which doesn’t make sense, considering the fact that we never did find out how Sam was leaping into people; was it “God”? Was Sam doing it himself? We’ll never know, because some douche decided to end it too soon. Anger stoppage alert. Onward!

Throughout the show, Al was a womanizingly hilarious jerk, who at one point even thought a woman Sam leapt into was hot. His womary knew no bounds, until a scene in season Two, where Sam has leapt into a man who is somewhere near Al’s first wife. His attitude completely changes, and you can see that the womanizing bastardry has been put on solely to make up for what he lost. If the end of season four is any indication, and if Back-to-The-Future-movie-ethics serves correct, we would have a completely different Al Calavicci, right? I mean, he’s still married to the woman he loves. He’s no longer dating random chicks with random names. Isn’t that a complete change of four years of character development? And if Sam never does come home, well then, how close does he get? The series continually reminded us that sometimes his brain has the “swiss cheese” effect, in that he can’t remember specific things from his regular life, so who’s to say he even knows that he has a daughter? If she found him, how would she get him back to the “waiting room”, and out of his leaps? The only time I’d ever seen two people leap at once was because of a lightning strike (when there was some “evil leaper” people putting wrong what once went right). There are so many fantastic possibilites that could even be put together in a two hour movie, or one final season that would have Sam leaping into places that he would remember from points in his life again, so that he would begin to remember people, with the climax of the final episode showing his removal from the leaping place. All this can be done. It’s simple. Heck, maybe I’ll sit down and write it and pitch it to Donald P. Bellisario. I have ideas. But for now, when I sit and watch this show, and it’s continued fantastic writing, even by today’s standards, I’m sad knowing that somewhere out there, Sam continues to leap until his eventual death. Something’s unsettling about that.

I’ll let Dean Stockwell close this post for me:

If it ever were to come together, what would you want to see for Sam and Al in a movie version?
I think everyone would want Sam to make it back in time, and (I’d like to see) the story of how that is brought about. That would fulfill Al as well, bringing Sam back (home). He tried to do it for four and a half years.

The world needs another accident.

And I’m not talking about another 9-11, or another Vietnam, or WWIII. I’m talking about pop. Say it again, pop. The world needs another complete accident, freakshow, because we essentially haven’t had one since about, oh, say 1991.

What happened then? Some of you might be too young to remember and some of you have probably heard it so many times that it makes you want to vomit. When something goes stale and gets re-processed (or shall we say faceless?), when companies decide what’s best for the masses, we get what we have right now, or also what was happening in the late 80s early 90s with the big haired arena metal/rock (if you can even call it metal, I’d call it Glam on an off day), and then along came someone who didn’t want to be there, a bunch of kids who didn’t fit in, and accidentally took charge and never really wanted it. Sure, bands nowadays mention that they’re not concerned about record sales, yadda yadda, but to be honest, the singer of this band really didn’t. He wasn’t into that, but got thrust there anyway. He brought out the kids who agreed with him from underneath the bleachers and somehow started a trend of clothing (?) that was spoofed successfully on Monty Python years before (when they work all night and sleep all day). So what am I getting at? When you look at the top forty of pop, it’s all the same: Rap, Rap/Rock, Rock, Rock-Rap, Pop, etc. All names don’t mean anything, because we’re back under that facade of if you cover someone’s song or have one hit you’ll be fine and people will love you. That’s why mashups are, cough, “all the rage”.

To find the real heartfelt music you have to stop staring at Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, Tiger Bop, Bippidy Doo, etc. You have to search. And for some of us (hi), it’s common ground that when people are looking through your cds/ipod they don’t know half of what’s there. But I digress:

We need another of these Nirvana types to wipe this stale, boring pop out. I know, there’s always exceptions to the rule, but I really do think that it’s time for the whole music industry to get a swift kick in the crotch. Remember all of the one hit wonders of the eighties? Notice that that’s sort of happening again? The reason? People aren’t listening to albums for sentimental value anymore, like when music had hit it’s complete peak (or so i think) in the late 60s, early 70s when storytellers were standing up for things and writing some of the most memorable, beautiful things in existence. It can happen again! I believe it can! But there’s a lot of work that needs to be involved.

We need to completely wipe out the charts right now and start over. I can’t even listen to the radio anymore because everything sounds the same, either a hyper-extension of a band that once was, or a recreation of someone else’s songs. That’s how Creed got to be popular, no? Come on, people who missed basic Pearl Jam and liked a little Jesus with their rock ran straight to the easy answer.

And what’s with covering old songs that don’t need to be redone? Jesus Christ. Sure, every thing’s been done before, I get it. The bases have been covered, all topics have been done, etc. I’m all for re-workings, if they work. If they bring something to a song that you see differently, like Cash’s “Hurt”. It adds a different kind of feeling to the song, without wavering. And it’s a good cover. It’s something that the original artist is proud of, and is not a carbon copy of the original. That’s what I hate. Why cover something if you’re not going to bring something new to it? Sure, it might end up like P. Diddy’s shit “Roxanne” rework, but at least he tried to change something to it. He is another story though. I’m still surprised that he could get even semi popular by just adding vocals and new parts onto old songs, and just having it looped as if he was doing his own mashups. That’s not fuckin’ cool. I could do that.

Anyway, where were we? Right. Here we go: in every shape and form, I have to ask: when did music get so faceless? Why does everything equal everything? We need something to come along to ensure that 2+2=5 again, that people digging in the trenches for good things and challenging their minds with good music can believe that music can make you feel, because it’s doing it for a lot of people less and less.

At the same time, I do have other issues with it as well, you see, sometimes I blame myself and everyone else for the state of the music industry. It’s my fault that I listen to those things. Heck, it’s mostly your fault because you do it more than me but I’ll agree that sometimes I get trapped. I like finding my way out of the trap more, you know. Even some artists who find that they’re trapped do new things. Some people try to develop their own trends, like the whole “Radiohead says you decide what to pay and you pay them direct” thing, or the “Trent Reznor gives away his new album because he hates labels” deal. Which is fine. But that’s not going to shift anything insane in any direction. It’ll become easier for people to find the crazy music because of torrents and itunes and freebies. But it’s something. It’s putting the power back into the hands of the artist. It’ll take a lot to keep it going, but they’re trying.

And yet, the mass exodus of people don’t really give a shit. They just want their carbon copy radio stations with two guys and a girl in the morning (alas, no pizza place) who lay out mediocre jokes and even more mediocrier (I made up a word) music. So what do we do? We keep doing what we feel good about doing. The stuff we think is real is probably real. The fake stuff, you should be able to see that. Everybody can see that. They would just rather choose to put on their blinders and leave it screaming out of their car stereos at 3am, because they’d rather use what short time they have on one song and be done with it, instead of investing an hour and listening to the whole album.

The end result is that there’s someone out there now, just learning an instrument, or toiling in the fucking bottom barrel in backwood towns in front of 20 people on a stage at a bar that seems empty. But that’s where it’ll start.  That band, or singer  will come along sometime in the next few years and make music exciting again. Right now, I’m going to hide my head in the sand.

Five songs you won’t see in Rock Band or Guitar Hero

I was walking home today from somewhere and was listening to a song on my ipod and thought to myself, “man that’d be fun to play on a video game thing”. And then I realized that logically speaking, it probably couldn’t be done. That song is on this list by the way. I rocked to it all the way home because it was quite long, and walked right into trying to find 5 awesome songs that probably won’t show up in Rock band or Guitar Hero.

5. Kaki King – Playing with Pink noise
She is the kind of artist where it would be rather difficult to find a song from her whole catalog that you could put into a video-music-game. I guess Pull me out alive would probably be the easiest pick. But honestly, this would be the kind of case wherein you’d have to have a person using both sets of buttons on a Rock Band guitar in order to even think of hitting the same amount of things that she’s doing. Don’t even think about doing Close your eyes and burst into flames. I think that’s on a level higher than that Dragonforce song everyone was all happy about seeing at the end of GH3. I wonder if she plays RB/GH. And if so, can she hit the buttons as fast on a plastic guitar as she can play a real one?

4. Led Zeppelin – Bonzo’s Montreux
I imagine it’d be difficult to get the folks at LZ incorporated to agree to put a bunch of songs in RB/GH in the first place, but as a test to how great he was, Bonzo’s Montreux would also be nearly impossible to transcribe into those drum buttons, especially when those crazy effects kick in. Because there’s a drum track with them, how does one play both? Does the singer hit those notes? Do you get two people drumming at the same time? Anyway, it’d be rather rough for anyone to play, seeing as how great the fills are, nevermind the amount of bass drum usage. I like how in the live version, everyone walks off stage. Thats great right there.

3. Spookey Ruben – Mechanical Royalty
In order to hear this song you’re going to have to find it on his myspace because unfortunately, Spookey isn’t as popular as I’d like him to be. But that doesn’t make this song any less of a difficult one to imagine in a video-music-game. It’s fifteen minutes of consistently changing things. The song is broken down into seven different parts, tracks that could essentially be their own and yet work as one large cohesive unit, some of which (especially the parts around 6:40) would be difficult to transcribe into wee little colored buttons. Also, who would play a fifteen minute song in a game and not get tired? Our attention spans are not the way they used to be. Everyone’s insane about Beatles Rock band and I think part of the reason why (besides the obvious) is because 95% of those songs clock in under 4 minutes. Opus-like tracks are probably frowned upon, but shit this would just kick ass to play all the way through. That first riff that invites you to come in, and that salsa-like weird tempo part around 7:30, if that doesn’t make you want to pick up a plastic guitar and rock out, then what the hell is wrong with you?

2. Fantômas – Page 27
I really could have put any Fantômas track here, because the pure logic behind having people play the insanely crazy stuff that they do is well, crazy. People would lose their voices and hands would fall off. Also, because of how short most of the tracks are, they’d most likely have to merge a few songs together, right? Imagine playing six songs where you have absolutely no idea what’s coming next, no matter how many times you play it. Imagine having a friend come over who wants to sing, and have him sing parts that include yelping, and just straight abrasive yelling. What neighbor wants to hear that besides me? I know I’d have a blast trying to find a friend to drum some of those parts too, by the way. As a matter of fact, out of all of the other ones, I’d want a downloadable Fantômas pack the most, just because it’d be freaking hilarious.

1. Focus – Hocus Pocus
Okay, so the actual “recorded song” on that one starts at about 50 seconds. But the point here is that it would not only be hell for most drummers that are pretty decent about hitting the buttons in a game when they practice enough, but this one defies all logic for vocal parts. All. There is no way in the world I can imagine someone singing eight minutes of that over and over again of random…..  How do you describe that? It is however, an extremely fantastic song. The whole put together of it is perfect. I don’t know that that band ever had as big a hit as this, either, by the way. I actually bought this album specifically to hear what the rest of the songs are, and they’re all somewhat crazy like this, so I don’t understand why they weren’t more popular. I guess a lot of people considered them a novelty act, or something. But you can tell how talented they are, right? So where was the problem? Maybe putting this hilariously fantastic song in a game will make them more popular.

This post is about wrestling.

I’ve been trying to determine exactly what kind of blog post I would follow up with, and I’ve been working at it for a few ideas and decided that finally, I wanted to address the fact that I’m still, after all these years, a wrestling fan. Sure, my attention has dipped and swayed in peaks and valleys over the years, but the thing is, it’s been clotheslined into my head so much that it may never go away. I’m still a fan after the Screwjob. I’m still a fan after the Mark Henry “birthing” thing. I’m still a fan after the Fingerpoke of Doom, and the Shockmaster. The Goldberg/Lesnar match, The Wrestlemania Hogan/Savage match, the Austin/Pillman Gun incident, Jeff Jarrett laying down for Hogan, shall I keep going? Maybe a few more. Bastion Booger, David Arquette: WCW champion, okay, okay, you get the idea. I won’t even get to the Gobbledy gooker or Doink the clown. There’s a lot of reasons over the years to give up on wrestling. But with all of the terribly bad ideas, there are a lot of terribly good things. The people below, those are the good things, for me anyway. They’re the reasons I’ve kept watching. So, let’s get into my favorite wrestlers of all time.

6. Owen Hart
Owen wasn’t the most popular guy in the WWE. But he had a work ethic that wouldn’t quit. He was the original high-flying type that’s led to a lot of the smaller, skinnier guys that are in the industry today. You just didn’t see guys doing stuff like this back in the late 80′s/early 90′s. Around that time it was centered a lot around big guys who could talk a decent game, but were boring wrestlers. Hulk Hogan anyone? When Owen found his way to the WWE as a member of the “New Hart Foundation”, it really gave him all the room in the world to showcase his talent, like Bret had before him. Eventually, when it came time to have matches with his older brother, they were really what set me as a fan of that type of wrestling. It was like watching them put on some kind of clinic. The Wrestlemania X match between the two of them will forever be somewhere in my top five matches of all time. And yet, as great as he was in the ring, his characterization of the two time Slammy award winning jerk was the perfect balance to how nice and good his older brother was. People would go nuts for Bret, but when Owen came out, the boo-birds were loud, and it suited him perfectly. I liked how he also used the sharpshooter, by the way. I liked that he seemed to be the ‘bad’ Hart, and Bret was the ‘good’ one. Anyway, People always talk about how sweet he was, and how all he ever wanted to do was provide for his family so that one day he could retire and live the family life. With his tragic end, he was never able to see that through, but what he did leave behind was a legacy of matches and a persona that everyone who has ever been a fan of wrestling will love and remember for all eternity. When I think of Owen Hart, I don’t think of the bad. I think of the fantastic moves, his quick wit, and that no matter how “bad” he got, he was always fun to watch.

5. Kurt Angle
Though I don’t get to see much of Angle in TNA these days (can never find it on!), I have caught him there a few times, and it seems as if he’s still at least doing some of the moves that he had back when he wasn’t as bald, and was on top of the milk-drinking world in the WWE. He was the perfect comedic fodder back then. He could really do anything anyone else could, on the microphone, and was better than most in the ring. His ankle-lock submission and suplex insanity is one thing, but he seemingly could find his way out of any move that he was in, and counter it with something. It didn’t matter if you had him locked into something, Kurt would find a way. He is a FORCE inside of that squared circle. It didn’t matter who he worked with. Somehow, he’d find a way to make it a good match. I’ve heard that in TNA he’s basically the same, only has ramped up his intensity. Going from a somewhat angry, yet somewhat hilarious mama’s boy, to an intense crazy man actually isn’t that much of a stretch for him. It seems like the next logical step for that kind of a character. As if he’d had enough of what he was doing and just wanted to let it all out. Before he seemed like you could walk up to him and give him a hug. Now it looks like you should probably keep your distance. Anyway, Kurt is and has always been a favorite of mine, no matter how lame his WWE period got. I’m sure if I was able to get TNA here I’d watch his matches and would love them just as much, because I’m kinda missing the Angle slam right now.

4. Steve Austin
What? Sorry, had to put that in there. I know, I know. You’re thinking to yourself, “Hey, he wasn’t a great wrestler! Not compared to these others!” Well, you would be sort of right. But you would also sort of be wrong. Austin had a lot of great matches, even though he was kind of your basic bread and butter type of wrestler. Sure, so was Hogan and a lot of others, but the thing that separates Austin from the rest of them is his in-match storytelling, probably at it’s greatest height during the I quit match vs Bret Hart (crappy song-montage video alert!). Never in my life do I remember such a good consistent, back and forth match where the guy they boo coming in is cheered for his effort on the way out. That match made Steve Austin more of a fan favorite than he had been. He had already had some fans cheering him here and there, but was still getting a chorus more of boos than cheers. This match was part one in the first real “bad guy cheered by the fans” deal. Part two was an interview at King of the Ring. Any one person in WWE would kill for either of those and yet, Austin was in the right place in the right time and EXPLODED as one of the most popular characters in WWE history. I’ve heard the loud cheers on DVDs of when Hogan was in his prime (7:09), but compare that to this. It’s insane. Even when you look at some of his comebacks in later years, it never dwindled. The vignettes he did outside the ring were all over the place. Funny, weird, insane, or you know, just plain awesome. The fact however, is that no matter how LOUD it got, he could actually put on a decent match. And he was tough as nails, insert Owen Hart accident here. I think I’ve said enough. Everyone knows about him. They just forget that he was actually a pretty decent wrestler, besides all of the other insane stuff he did.

3. Chris Jericho
Maybe it’s because I’m from Winnipeg. Maybe it’s because at one point, I’d call him the most hilarious guy I’ve ever watched. Nobody did stuff like this anywhere else. For a long period of time he could find humor in just about anything. But, again. He is a great technical wrestler. Before I get into that, I just want to say that I remember where I was when Chris Jericho became the Undisputed champion. I was in a pool hall watching the Pay Per View. Everyone who was there stopped what they were doing for his first match. Nobody thought he’d win. We erupted. And then against Austin, again, nobody thought he’d win. We got even louder. It was like watching the home team win the championship. I’ve never been so loud before. Okay, so where was I? Right. Well, throughout his whole career, he was consistent with one thing: He could have a great match with anybody. He had the charisma, and he had the talent. But a lot of times, both in WCW and his early career in WWE, he seemed extremely under-used. Kind of like how Santino Marella is now. Right place, right time for the joke, but not in the ring enough. People loved his stuff with Christian, his big deal with Stephanie, his jabs with the rock. But he didn’t have a lot of major championships to show for it. Heck, it’s great to say that he’s got the most Intercontinental championships in WWE history, but you’re nowhere if you’re not the WWE champ eventually. On his return, he eventually had enough and turned on the fans, right? So now he’s Mr. Evil. But I seem to think that he’s better in his second time around than the first. He’s calmer. His skills are better. He’s sharp on the microphone, and in the ring, he’s not playing the pansy-ish role he’d played in the past, hes serious. That’s what I like about him now. He’s a step ahead of everyone else inside and outside of the ring, and that means he’s going to last a long while.

2. Randy Savage
Where do I start with this guy? He’s near perfection to me, for his complete WWE run. I don’t remember a single bad moment. His wrestling skills, top notch. While Hogan and Andre were blowing half of the people away at Wrestlemania III, Macho Man vs. Ricky Steamboat was for me, just a step higher on the list. That match is a technical wonder. It’s just awe inspiring, and I can see that match doing more for a lot of kids who want to be wrestlers than Hogan slamming Andre. Maybe they’re equal, fifty-fifty. Who knows. But it wasn’t just the wrestling. It was the insane interviews, the awesome interviews, the funny interviews. I’m not going to bring up Elizabeth outside of this sentence because as the first real wrestling diva, she should have her own category. Randy on his own or with crazy women, was a class act in the ring. The one time that I couldn’t bear to watch a match he was in? The tradgedy of Wrestlemania 5. Oh, terrible. He basically had the whole match. He WAS the whole match. Save three moves. One of them a clothesline and another a legdrop. I read somewhere that Savage only ever lost his titles to two people: Hogan and Flair. Which essentially would then I guess put him in third place, but for me, Savage had something those two didn’t. He was technical, which Hogan wasn’t. He didn’t have a limited database of skills inside that ring, like Flair seemed to have. Savage was the whole package for much of his career, and it’s sad to think that there’s something between him and Vince keeping him from being in the Hall of Fame. Randy was the only wrestler on this whole list that had me at the edge of my seat for EVERY MATCH. He was smart. He knew what he was doing, and he was consistently one of the most entertaining people in wrestling history. When I was a kid, I could do the perfect impression. So, I think that’s enough on that.

1. Bret Hart
The closest to wrestling perfection. This match is probably my favorite of all time. All but Kurt Angle on my list have had history with Bret. He could wrestle anyone. From his brother (mentioned before) to Yokozuna. You name it. He has so many fantastic qualities and matches that it’s kind of tedious to list here. Then again, he’s also had enough weird crap to happen to him in his wrestling history that I don’t have to put it here either. Bret’s matches were perfection. When I was a kid I wanted to be two people when I grew up. Bret Hart and Dale Hawerchuk. I’m neither, but damnit if I still can’t put in his DVD and watch five matches in a row. He was a better in-ring storyteller than anyone I’ve ever seen. He’s launched or propelled the careers of more wrestlers that I can name. He’s never injured an opponent. He was loved all over the world, most especially Europe and overseas, even when he was supposed to be a “bad guy” in the US. His feuds to note are numerous. HBK, Steve Austin, Mr. Perfect, Yokozuna, Owen Hart, Roddy Piper, Diesel, The Undertaker. Some wrestlers are lucky to have one or two good feuds in their career. Bret could wrestle a pillow and make it interesting. His match putting over Davey Boy at Summerslam (why the music?) shows that at his best, he could make a not-so-great wrestler look pristine. What more could you ask from a wrestler? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All his tragedies both personal and professional aside, there is not a wrestler in history that can measure up to the perfection that was Bret Hart. Say what you want, I’ll never change my mind.

What Winnipeg means

In my working novel thing, I’ve been able to complete what happens to my person in all of the major cities from Western Canada to Eastern Canada, and the most thorough is what happens in Winnipeg, which makes sense. I’d like to leave the Winnipeg section out here so that you can read it, and um. Yes. Read it, tell me what you think, or something. The basis is a man who is going across the country to find the woman of his dreams. It’s actually a bit more in depth than that, but you know. I don’t want to give it ALL away, anyway. Here is what happens when he arrives in the city.

—————————

I was greeted at the local coffee place by my cousin. I hadn’t seen Christine for about five years. She was the cute teenaged cousin any guy would want, because you could rot her brain with music and movies she’d never heard of. We didn’t stay in contact that much after I’d moved, because Christine thought the internet was either a big waste of time, or something she wanted no part in, and I can’t exactly remember what it was that had spurned her on it, but as far as I knew, she still felt that way. Christine was taller than I remember, sporting a thick, long haircut, a darker shade of red than I’d ever seen. After a good, two minute hug, we sat down, and she gulped at her coffee, waiting for me to tell her everything that’d been going on since I left. I got into the whole trip in little detail. The woman in Saskatchewan, and the ordeal of getting a new car in Calgary after the first rental broke down was about all I had time to cover before she cut me off.
“So, you probably have a bunch more to tell me, but I want to wait, because I need to ask you something,” she spoke as if it were a life and death situation, and yet she casually sipped at her fifth cup of coffee. “I want you to escort me to a party tonight. It’s nothing weird, just a bunch of people that I work with. I’ve told them all about your little escape across the country, and they’re dying to meet you.”

Great, I thought. A bunch of people expecting some fantastically popular, muscle toned, well spoken thug. Instead they’ll be getting a bearded, skinny guy who looks like he needs to have a three hour shower. What’s even worse is that it’s a formal party, and Christine was low enough in money that I ended up paying for the rented suit and dress that we were both going to wear to this thing. I made sure to get myself the strangest colour of suit jackets, and so to match, she picked out a dark purple dress. We looked either like brother and sister, or one of those couples that make you want to throw up, with their matching glory. We sat in our hotel room that had been paid for by her company, drank rum with random mixers, and had delightful conversation with people whose names I’d forgotten, but it didn’t matter. After getting through the formal dinner that included food that would have not had any taste to it without alcohol, we made our way back to the hotel room. I had prepared myself by buying a flask and filling it with tequila, just so that if I needed to, I could crash on the bed as quickly as possible, just to dodge some kind of rotten situation with people I didn’t know. What I wasn’t expecting though, was Christine’s happy drunk. She always seemed to be the type to pick up some guy and run off with him, or talk dirty, show skin, and then pass out. Instead, our one-bed hotel room was treated as the designated party house, catering to a swarm of random people I’d never met. Just as I was about to start downing the tequila, someone started yelling in my ear. “I don’t act old,” someone said, “So why do people treat me like I don’t know what I’m talking about?”  He was standing by the window, barking at me.  It was as if I had somehow accidentally found myself in the middle of a life story.  ”Beats me man,” I yelled back at him.  This big white haired story telling-bastard was hugging the weed. As he spoke, it turned slowly into a haze.  The room had roughly fifteen people crammed into it, and yet Christine and I were the only two on the bed.  We sat staring at everyone as if the party was going in hyper-speed, and we were stuck in slow motion. The whole night walked like someone who’d had just a bit too much to drink, and I sat there with the biggest thump of an alone feeling I’ve had in my whole life. I didn’t give a shit about any of these people, but because Christine had put so many stories in their heads, I was told to smile and nod, and to share little details about my life. I gave them stories I’d make up on the spot, because what drunk cares about what a stranger’s telling them anyway?  The last thing I remember before waking up was eating pizza at three in the morning with Christine, watching some random show with nudity on a channel I’d never heard of. We had a knock at the door and were told to quiet down by a bellhop, or cleaner, who had said that we were being too loud, and he left us alone when I offered him a piece of pizza. After that, everything is a haze. I don’t remember falling asleep, or eating the rest of the pizza.

When I woke up in the morning, the room was a horrible mess. Christine and I had made a disaster of the place, but I didn’t want to deal with it. The floor was littered with empty cups, the tables had half finished cigarettes and bottles of alcohol,  a complete disaster. I made it a point to leave a five dollar bill on the nightstand, and wrote “MAID MONEY” on it, because those people are going to have to earn their money on this room. It was seven in the morning when I got up to take a shower, and after disrobing to my underwear, I walked into the equally dirty bathroom that had a sink resembling a makeshift fridge. I pulled the shower curtain back and found a woman lying in the tub with no top on, still clutching a cup with brown liquid. Her hair was in wet clumps, as if someone had tried to wake her up but had failed. I didn’t want to wake Christine, so I closed the bathroom door after finding my clothes and some extra towels. I kneeled at the tub, drying this woman’s face off softly, covering her in towels, not only to warm her, but also to make sure that she didn’t feel like she’d just completely gone nuts with the drink the night before. Five minutes or so later, just after I’d made a pillow and blanket with most of the hotel’s towels, she sat up and looked at me in confusion. It wasn’t until that point that I realized who she was.

Claire stared at me and waited for a minute before she spoke. I don’t remember her being in the room at all last night, which means that I’d either had more to drink than originally thought, or that she’d been hiding in the bathroom.  She looked terrible, but so would anyone after the night she probably had. There were a few things that didn’t make sense to me, like how she’d found out where I was, right down to the hotel room, or why she followed me here, after breaking up with me a few months ago. I hadn’t seen a single solitary second of sadness in her at work, she never seemed to have to put on a brave face like I had, but here she was, lying in a bathtub, missing a shirt and a few extra brain cells. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said, finally sitting up, throwing some of my carefully placed towels onto the bathroom floor. “And you’ve been on this stupid fucking quest for something I don’t understand. Why did you leave me?” She was obviously still drunk, or severely affected by the alcohol to be thinking that she hadn’t left me standing in the rain wondering what the hell I’d done to end up being the dump-ee. “I didn’t leave you,” I replied, washing my face in the makeshift fridge’s clean water, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. “You left me, remember? You told me that I had no feelings, that I was, how did you say it? ‘Like a robot. A robot without the capacity to love’. What are you doing here?” As she listened to me, she stood up shakily, and put her drink on the edge of the tub. She sat down on the toilet and started to sob quietly, but I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t about to comfort her, because I had started this trip partially to spite her, so to have her come at me now with this kind of attitude wasn’t going to break me down. “Listen, I don’t care how you found out that I’m here. I’m going to assume it’s Christine’s doing, but it doesn’t matter now. I’m finishing this quest thing, or whatever you want to call it, because I’ve come too far to turn back now.” She looked at me with eyes that I haven’t seen in a long time. The kind of eyes a loved one has when you’ve said something out of anger and didn’t really mean it, comparable to yelling at a child who doesn’t know any better, but this was the first time I really did have that robotic sensation she’d dumped me for, and I knew what was coming. “Let me come with you. I want to change your mind. I want you back. Let’s fix the mistake.” Instead of leaving her there like I should have, I gave her the spare t-shirt from my suitcase and had to partially carry her out to the car. She was in bad shape, but something told me that having her with me was the right thing to do for now. I don’t know what that something was, but I knew I was going to regret it.

“Wait here,” I said, closing the door and easing the window open a crack. “I have to tell Christine I’m leaving.” She nodded and closed her eyes leaning the seat back as if she was finally going to get some rest. I took my time walking back upstairs, because I didn’t really want to believe that my favourite cousin would do something like this to me. Even if she had, I was going to pretend that it wasn’t true, and completely ignore it. As I opened the door with the room key, she had already been awake and was sort of trying to clean up the terrible mess that had been made of the room. I smiled and took her in my arms for a brief hug. “I’m leaving. I’ve got some things to do before I get back out there, and I just wanted to thank you for the interesting evening.” She apologized to me originally, because she thought I’d been upset, but I was really trying to play down the fact that I wasn’t, if only to leave on good terms. After a few minutes of soft conversation and plan-making for the future, I sort of half forced her out with me so that she wouldn’t clean after the party mess, and we parted ways. As I made my way back to the car, I noticed Claire completely passed out in the front seat, with her mouth wide open, probably snoring. I laughed at the situation as I jumped in and started the car, and turned on some mellow music, to keep me attentive, and hit the gas.