Curtain Call for the Old Guard

It’s a cold Tuesday night, November 4^th, 2008 in Hamilton, Ontario. I’ve been glued to the election coverage from the U.S all night - afraid to so much as go to the washroom unless they’re on commercial break.

Over the last couple of hours, more and more states have been coming in blue - and not just the given ones, like New England, or the North Eastern States. But question mark states peppered across the Midwest and into the South. States that twice over spelled impending doom for the opponents of the George W. Bush camp.

I step out onto the balcony for a quick cigarette, and that’s when I hear it - “California has just been called, and we’re projecting at this time, that Barrack Obama is the President Elect. Our projection at this time, Barrack Obama has been elected the 44^th President of the United States of America”.Or something to that effect anyways.

A tense night watching election results slowly trickle in was put to a swift and history-making end by the sudden blue colorization of the Golden Coast on the projected states map. One checkmark in the blue, and for the first time in my life as a voter, and as a politically aware North American in general, I’m proud and envious of the outcome of an American election. Canada has seen two unnecessary elections in the space of one term, and our most recent was only two weeks before the American vote - and this time, I wish I could cast a ballot for parts South instead of our insane circus here at home.

After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney doctrine, 8 years of cowboy foreign policy and Good Book ideology, the Americans have finally decided to step out of the dark ages and bring someone in to try and get this sinking ship back on the crest of the high waves where it belongs.

It’s a grim state of affairs for North America and much of the Western World as a whole. Two hopeless wars spiralling out of control in the middle of the desert. An economy that’s starting to bare an eerie and doomed resemblance to the days of Woody Guthrie. And an entire fundamentalist base peppered across the globe that sees blood and brandishes a scimitar at every mention of the word ’America’.

The last decade has been marred by events that my generation will never forget. Much like my parents generation can remember where they were on that fateful day when JFK was murdered in Dallas, or my grandparents can recall when the first reports of the Pearl Harbor attack and the declaration of another World War came spilling over the airwaves (although for us in Canada, we were already overseas).

For me, I will never forget that morning when the twin towers of the World Trade Centre were levelled one at a time by two hijacked passenger jets. I especially will never forger that moment when the second plane hit - and I was seeing it happen LIVE, at the same time as everyone on the planet, from lower Manhattan to the Arab World - and we knew then that it was no accident.

When it first happened, we all knew in our minds that war was imminent - and perhaps even NECESSARY. For a rare and fleeting moment, the Bush administration had the full and unflinching support of many at home and abroad, not just from those who elected him, but even the most ardent leftists. A great, and incomprehensible wrong had be done, and there had to be retribution.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan, Canada was right in line to join the fight. We felt like our neighbors and friends had been dealt an unacceptable blow, and it was our duty to step in and help. A number of friends of mine enlisted right away in the Canadian Forces, and stepped up to fight the good fight. A President who many felt had stolen an election was now faced with some of the hardest decisions and an assault that hadn’t been seen on American soil since Roosevelt - and, perhaps even, the biggest attack of any kind in North American history.

But the war in Afghanistan was soon used as a catalyst behind an unexplainable invasion into Iraq, and an endless barrage of bad policy and aggressive failures both abroad and at home had Bush’s presidency drawing grim parallels to the dark final days of Richard Nixon. Iraq became the new Vietnam. The name America was becoming synonymous around the globe with the word ’bully’. I had even heard of American students backpacking through Europe and parts East with Canadian flags sown onto their packs instead of the old stars and stripes. After all, we had publicly (and to much scorn from the U.S) refused to join in the Iraq effort. As far as Western powers were concerned, we were deemed the lesser of two evils. Even with a red-blooded Reaganite like Stephan Harper at the helm, we never had the power or the influence to make such a mass-scale mess of things on the world’s stage. We are, after all, just the kid brother of the schoolyard jock.

But this wasn’t enough to have Bush ousted from office. The Democrats put all their eggs into the John Kerry ~ John Edwards basket in 2004, and ran such a directionless, sedated campaign that we were doomed to endure a new millennium version of “4 more years”.

Bush went back to work in the Oval Office, and the mishaps continued to mount. From hurricane Katrina (well, specifically the aftermath of the storm - try as you might, you can’t blame natural disasters on an elected official) to the growing tab of human loss and overspending on the Iraq War, the Americans were starting to lose their appetite over their choice in the last election. The economy was starting to tank, and the critics were coming out of the woodwork.

With all this in mind, its hard to see how the Republicans could have ever pulled off a win in the 2008 election, no matter who they chose to carry the torch. Even if it were Mike Huckabee, with all the insane rhetoric and backwater logic of the Christian Right at his side, would have had a Hell of an uphill battle. They were in many ways doomed from the get-go. Bush had badly de-tusked and tranquilized the once-stampeding Republican elephant that he had ridden into office twice-over. In some strange way, we may not have even seen Obama elected tonight, if it hadn’t been for the last 4 declining years of Team Bush~Cheney.

Don't get me wrong, there were a few moments when it did look like the McCain campaign might rise up and triumph after all, and they were tense moments indeed. McCain stunned even his own people with the seemingly inspired choice of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate - capitalizing on the far-right vote that he wasn’t quite scripture-quoting enough to guarantee, and securing a big chunk of the 18-45 female vote that were just pissed enough at losing Hillary Clinton to make the cross-over.

But things started to go sour on old John-boy the moment Palin started dabbling in the public speaking portion of the gig. She was one-part Religious Zealot and two-parts self-described “Hockey Mom”. The kind of lady who might invite you over for an Alaskan style dinner of moose steaks and Bud Lite, and spend the better part of the evening trying to tell you the Earth was flat, and that gay people are doomed to eternity in some vicious catacomb of Hell called “super Hell”.

To this day every time I hear the word ’maverick’ uttered, I slip into a depressed comatose state, find a small space to hide, and eat handfuls of Tylenol 3 until all around me goes dark and quiet.

But now, here we are, November 4^th at long last, and within hours Barrack Obama will be standing on a stage at Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois, addressing the world audience and about 6 million screaming Chicagoans, as the 44^th President. The impossible odds have played to beat the house. This is as real as it gets.

And yes, it is important to state that he is also the first black president in American history. A fact that I was sometimes skeptical I would see even in my own lifetime - but America has tonight put aside all of its contradictions and age-old biases, and made the choice for who seems in every way, the quintessentially RIGHT man for the job.

But if I had the chance to cast a vote for Obama, it wouldn’t be because he’s African American, it would be because of his ideology, his youth, and the fact that he seems to be in tune on a profoundly human level with the very pulse of not just America, but the world of RIGHT NOW as a whole. He has a determination, a drive and a sense of honesty that you don’t just admire - you’re absorbed by.

I cant think of another politician in my life that could energize people with a message quite like Barrack Obama. The man’s speeches actually give you goose bumps. His charisma hits you square across the jaw at 90 miles an hour, like being speed-bagged by the entire line-up of the UFC.

On a night like this, I’ve never felt so proud or comforted to have the United States as a next door neighbor. And I never thought I’d say it, but I wish OUR politics were this good.

Dean Young
Hamilton, ON
November 4^th, 2008

HELL RAINS ON HOGTOWN

6:58 pm on a Saturday, and I’m watching out my window as the second round of a savage Mongrol blizzard beats the Greater Toronto area and other parts South into bloody submission for the 48^th consecutive hour. This sub-Arctic hurricane has been cutting a swath of deadlock destruction through every major city from New York to Chicago, grounding planes at Kennedy, LaGuardia, Pearson and O’Hare, and putting a grinding halt on all holiday commuter traffic during one of the most chaotic travel weekends of the year. There’s nowhere to go, and nothing to be done – just keep your glass filled and wait it out.

This was not what I expected when I made the trek South. Part of the deal in moving from the Midwest and leaving all familiarity behind was that I would be trading the savage, 10-month winters for a balmy December cakewalk which I could use to routinely harass and mock the good people of Great Harbor. But today, this is not the case.

Every hamlet and over-populated mega-suburb along the 401 is in a state of confused panic – they have no idea how to cope with this volume of snow, and the only solution at the moment is to shut down completely. Huddle in the corner, rosary beads clutched tightly in hand, murmuring insane Old Testament adages to no one in particular until this ugly weather recedes.

Now here I am, blockaded in front of the television as the Godless white powder continues to form an ugly, sub-zero levy around the doorways. I’ve spent the better part of the day trying to sort through an endless pile of Christmas deadlines for this feverish final week before the holiday, and as I look out the window the only thing on my mind is my Wednesday morning flight out of Toronto. What if this weather persists? How will I react if I’m faced with a long, sleepless night at Pearson Airport, doomed to spend Christmas Eve with about 2,000 other ill-tempered stranded passengers? What then? These are horrible scenarios that my mind refuses to allow me to process.

This weather won’t do – that’s as simple as it gets. I’ve always been in full favor of a ‘white Christmas’, but this kind of weather makes it seem abundantly possible that Mother Nature is just some sort of cruel and vindictive harlot with Daddy issues. She’s laughing it up from somewhere deep and dark in the bowels of Earth, as our every plan is ground to a slamming halt purely on her whim.

I can only hope that my flight leaves on time, and if there is a delay, let it be short and let them cut the bar prices in half for the length of the afternoon. If not, they’ll be faced with a severe backlog of angry, over-stressed travelers at the height of the most expensive and panic-inducing time of the year.

Only time will tell. But just to be sure, I’ll be bringing a fat wad of small bills to the airport. I’ve been stranded before, but never on Christmas – and something tells me, it’s no time to stay dry.

More Wisdom from the Good Reverend

Saturday afternoon in July, and Great Harbor is drifting slow and easy in the afternoon sun. The lake shimmers past the old dock at a lazy hangover pace, distant smoke and the sweet smell of burning meat fans through the sycamore branches over the sticky July air. The beers are going down cold and easy and all is right with the world.

It’s a Saturday afternoon like every other in Great Harbor. The usual weekend crowd has convalesced at the remote shores of Wolf Lake – a crystal clear inland lagoon ringed by the sharp-crested foothills of the Canadian Shield, and the thick pine jungle of the Canadian North.

Everyone comes here for a good time – to get away from it all, as the saying goes. They bring enough booze to feed a Manchester football riot for 6 straight hours. High-grade grass from Kelowna, BC, and over-the-counter painkillers by the handful. Wild roughnecks stripping down to their boxers and shooting each other in the ribs with paintball guns. Naked teenaged girls riding big, loud 4-wheeled machines through waste-deep mud, shrieking and cackling and spraying each other with whiskey. This is the reckless Summer spirit of the North – it’s Carpe Diem for the young, horny and drunk.

It’s a fairly secluded spot, with a handful of tents and truck toppers parked for as long as the weather will allow. The only permanent residence is the next bay over – a silver bullet 1955 Airstream that’s home to a man named The Reverend, Jack Straydog. He’s about 2 decades older than the rest of us, but he’s a Hell of a host. Wolf Lake’s unofficial mayor, full-time holy man, and a backwater answer to Hugh Hefner. The party always gravitates to Reverend Jack’s.

He has a makeshift TV antenna – an old bicycle rim hanging from the top of a Spruce tree and connected to a big screen Toshiba via speaker wire. He throws parties on the deck to watch any sporting event the home-brewed device can sporadically pick up – from UFC fight re-caps to World Cup Soccer. During Blue Jays games the good Reverend keeps our mason jars stocked with homemade wine, enough to keep our minds off the fact that the poor franchise will probably never again pull off a back-to-back upset like the glory days of ’92 and ’93.

By the lake is a big brick bonfire pit, and a small hand-built stage where the Reverend puts on a glowing all-night set every Saturday with his bar band – Reverend Jack and the Saturday Cowboys. Two base guitars, a keyboard, drums, and an old feedback-spewing distortion machine that the band has taken to calling ‘Lightning Larry’. They mostly do covers at taverns around town, and the occasional gig down in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. The Band, the Eagles, Blue Rodeo – any material that the crowds will know and that the whole band can have a turn at singing. They’re a party band, entertainment for hire, and they make no attempts at straying from the mold. Although on occasion, if the mood is right and the crowd is warm, the Reverend will belt out one or two of his own standards. The Reverend isn’t big on Fire and Brimstone – his own songs are usually focused on bittersweet topics – forlorn ballads about love lost and wasted time. Nostalgic thoughts on growing old and looking back, like the oddball “Once Was New (Jessica Tandy’s Saggy Candy)” and the molasses-slow Blues anthem “Sunset in Baton Rouge”. Reverend Jack’s shows get better and better every weekend – the art is perfected with time, just like his homemade wine. In his element, among friends, the man is unstoppable.

Wolf Lake is a strange piece of paradise – one of the last unconquered stretches of the Plastic Continent where freaks and loose wires can convene for some good music, unhindered scenery, and raw camaraderie. And as long as the Summer lights burn, when it comes time for the words of Reverend Jack Straydog, we are all believers.

Dean Young
Wolf Lake, ON

Greetings from Steeltown

As most of you may not already know, your favorite wandering scribe has picked up his stakes and settled into the throbbing, beating, sewage-seeping industrial heart of the Greater Toronto Area. From now on, I will be coming to you live from the smog-laden inner sanctum of Steel City – where I will be peddling my bent viewpoints and booze-laden literary wares to an entirely new throng of eager readers and listeners. The past few days have been occupied by my scrambling to get down here and get my proverbial ‘ducks’ in order, and the days on the road have been laced with midnight kicks and barroom observations fit only for the penmanship of yours truly.

I spent my last night in Great Harbor at an old haunt that I hadn’t ventured into since my college days, the Corner Avenue Hotel – a neighborhood karaoke bar where the dance floor is usually populated by under-aged college girls admitted in the order of their escalating sex appeal, and the bar is usually lined with tired mill workers lubing up to venture home and tolerate their wives after the long day, and neighborhood sharks in dime-store Fonzie jackets selling joints and prescription pills in the parking lot. I tossed back a few St. Patrick’s Day-style rounds with some old friends – one last leaving town black-out drunk with a handful of guys I’d known since shortly after I switched from breast milk to juice boxes. I snuck out a bit early, avoiding the customary after-bar throw-down, and making sure I was at least cognizant enough to pack the last of my things the next morning. In Great Harbor, a night at the bar is usually precluded by 3 or 4 hours of ‘pre drinking’ and another 4 hours of wind-down time, and I had no room on my schedule for a 13-hour binge (*a rare and fleeting moment of self-control for your favorite writer).

I sucked back a few cigarettes and shot the breeze in the parking lot with some local drunks while I waited for my cab to pull up. And when it did, the cabby failed to notice a hotdog vendor selling 2-dollar Polish sausages parked directly behind him. There was a loud crash, about two-dozen ballparks scattered across the pavement, and a roar of laughter from the outside crowd. A fight broke out over the dented hotdog cart, and I thought it was the most appropriate possible end to my tenure in Great Harbor – a sublime departing scene surely sent from on-high. I woke up at the crack of Noon the next day, and it was time to head South, where the trees and rivers of the Great Lakes belt give way to the theme parks and textile plants of the booming Ontario South.

On the first night on the road we pulled into a small port city on the St. Lawrence shipping route called the Twin City Canals. We unloaded for the night at a small dive motel on the Michigan boarder, with a half-burnt-out neon sign which a few decades of rough nights ago had once read “The Stay Inn”. We ambled down the street towards the nearest bar in search of a decent jukebox, a club sandwich, and multitudes of cold beer.

We made our way to a 50’s-styled Rock ‘N Roll joint called the ‘Shimmy Shimmy Lounge’ which was tucked away behind a foreclosed laminate warehouse about a block and a half away.

We watched in awe, sucking back 200 dollars worth of draft beers and vodka Caesars, while a pair of local roughneck boys picked up a crippled woman in a wheel-chair, and her anorexic sister – both of whom had about 30 years on these sprats. Shit, why the Hell not, we figured – if it feels good and seems good at the time, who’s to say it’s bad? That’s always been my motto, and it’s worked for me. I’ve always thought regrets are a fairy tale as long as you treat everyone else around you right – and it was clear to me that this crowd followed the same mantra.

Then it was time to hit the highway once again. We made a straight run the rest of the way down to Steel City, and pulled in at nightfall, when the city looked just the same as any other living, thriving North American city. I was moving into a new stomping ground, one that I had never seen before, and was anxious to see the lay of my new digs. Three hours and ten calls to the Super later, I did just that. I took hold of my new 11^th floor high-rise bachelor just in time to sip my way into knowing the local Irish pubs on the downtown strip. And now, here we are, dear subscribers – from now on the Dean Young Papers will be reported from the thriving rhythms of the Canadian Metroscape. Will it change my views, or my habits? No. It will only change the geography of my usual business. So, as always, kick back, enjoy, and click often.

Semper Fi, Old Genius - Semper Fi

Today I bid a sad and heavy-hearted farewell to a fallen icon - one of my favorite writer's, the Belgian poet Spenderlund Nils Claude, has succumbed to a urinary infection at the tender and golden age of 93. He was a personal hero, and an innovator of such rare bravado and raw, unrelenting truth that I shudder for a world without the benefit of his voice. There will be many who try to retrace the great man's footsteps - but none who will truly walk the walk.

You can't buy any of Spenderlund Nils Claude's work in your local Chapters or even online at Amazon or E-Bay. Nils Claude was solely about the moment - his work was about the act itself, and the impact thereafter. He was a performance poet and his narrative was a simplistic one. There are no Nils Claude anthologies or weighty retrospective tomes that you can spend a night absorbing by the firelight. His work exists solely in the recollections of those who were there to bare witness to the act - and some of these events have, over the last decades of his life, taken on a somewhat mythical proportion. Nils Claude's medium was as natural as one can achieve. He pioneered the DNA Poetry movement - a profound and groundbreaking marriage of protest and poetry that took his subjects by storm.

Spenderlund used his own penis as his pen, his own urine as his ink, and he did so to an effect that the world could never imagine - and for a time, was never ready for. He would show up at important, pinnacle events, whether invited or not, and prepare for his spontaneous performances by ingesting a natural blue dye which would in turn leave his urine distinctly visible on nearly any surface. Only Spenderlund knew the exact ingredients for his dye - such was his genius in preventing others from trying to steal his thunder.

He would then urinate to spell a single provocative word onto a floor or a wall, that was designed to make his unknowing spectators take a hard look at their own life, and the corrupted, high-speed society in which we live today. One such performance took place at a dinner for the European League of Financial Investors, at the luxurious Consort Continental Ballroom in Wales, where a young and hungry Spenderlund splashed the white marble floors with a big, scrawling 'GREED'. Another and more infamous event occurred 6 years later and cemented Spenderlund's notoriety, when he soaked the wall of the American Embassy in Belgium with two simple words that spoke volumes - 'POWER KILLS'.

Spenderlund's final act as an artist came in 1989, when he sprinkled the carpet of a Dutch specialty health clinic with the words, 'STOMP AIDS'.

Sadly, however, in recent years, time took it's tole on Spenderlund Nils Claude - proving that even literary giants are human. At the end of his days, he was barely able to produce a trickle, and even a simple vowel in the privacy of his own study could take him upwards of 3 hours. And now, ironically and tragically, it was his own brush that painted Spenderlund Nils Claude into a corner which he could not escape. After a brief urinary infection and a bout of fever, one of the world's true inspirations has peed his last.

Farewell, Spenderlund Nils Claude - your work won't be forgotten, and your heroism will be missed. If you are listening from some greater place, I hope you find endless streams of blue-dyed water, and a bigger wall than the Earth could ever withstand.

A Sublime and Godless Funk

Let me start off by relaying to you that I feel like Hell. My throat feels like I was the victim of some sort of crude and baseless frat house prank last night that involved a Clydesdale stud – which is, I’ve decided, what they mean when they say someone has a hoarse voice. I am currently in the cruel and unforgiving depths of a chest cold, which isn’t normally that big of a roadblock to me. But when you top that off with a hangover that William Holden would be proud of, then you have yourself a man of ill humor who’s going to spend the day moaning and wheezing like Fran Drescher and Jean Stapleton going scissor-style in a stag film.

Personally, I blame a deviant little elixir known as Tequila for my current wellness troubles. Normally, I avoid that soulless shit like the plague – to me, a shot of raw Tequila is about as appetizing as a tall, cool glass of Tom Sizemore’s bath water. But on the flip side of it all, I’ve seldom been the kind of guy to vote ‘ney’ on a free buzz. So by the time I had worked my way through a generous portion of Wild Turkey and the Jose Cuervo was making it's rounds, the part of my brain that is SUPPOSED to impart logic and sound decision making, was long out of commission. I singed my capillaries with burning dose after burning dose of the foul Mexican brew, and when I awoke in the morning, not only did I feel like I just spent the night on church steps in Juarez, trying to sleep off some sort of savage gang beating, but I found that my virus had also returned in full force - as if this horrible beverage somehow made it STRONGER!

Now my mouth tastes like a central American urinal, my lungs are filled with a deep and resounding burn like someone just dosed me with mustard gas, and my eyes are a fine, blood red and swollen nearly all the way shut. Today is not designed for strenuous activity, and I've reaffirmed a lesson that I've known all along - alcohol is not designed for the ill of health, and tequila in specific is not fit for human consumption.

Equinox Fever

This is it, my weary brothers and sisters of the Northland - Fall has arrived, and Summer is but a series of faint hangover vignettes playing out in nostalgic September fashion. It is a season that I both love and hate equally, depending on my mood and the strength of the aforementioned hangovers.

To me, Fall is about a fresh start. Granted everything is dying, shriveling slowly and fading into cadaverous irrelevance - but it's also a time when students choose the next path to walk, and holiday retail catalogues twice as thick as the Good Book find their way into the mailbox. And besides, what dies only dies to make room for something to be born anew. I dare you to try and argue that!

There's something rejuvenating and inspiring in that crisp, clear Fall air. There's something invigorating about city streets and parks lined with oaks and sycamores turned to deep blood red, tangerine orange, and golden brown. And in the little living that I've done, I've never found anything more peaceful or forgiving than sitting at the glassy shores of a Northern lake, breathing in the thick grey hickory of campfire smoke as it rises up into the pastel streaked skies of the ending year. (It's called poetry, folks - drink it in, it goes down smoother than a finely aged Scotch). These are a few of the reasons why Fall has always found me bursting with ideas - and every year, it seems that way a little more.

I seem to get some sort of Equinox Fever - like I'm compelled to take on something grandiose, and do it in a way that politely brandishes my very ASS to the world of naysayers. I'm fueled to reinvent myself, and the wheel, all at once. Every Fall I begin work on the great Canadian novel. I begin dreaming up the scenario of at least one or two Independent films destined to make the organizers of Sundance and Cannes and Slamdance and Tribeca and TIFF lick their lips and seethe and paw at their naughty bits with sheer, unhinged anticipation. I pull grandiose schemes to launch the rebirth of the radio melodrama directly from my derriere. And I begin work on at least two hit television series that will make the corporate hipsters of HBO, Showtime and FX wet themselves with delight. And by the time the first snow falls, the spell breaks, and I settle back into my warm and comfortable mundanity.

So, this year, you can expect an influx of sheerly brilliant articles to appear on this page, because I'll be locked into this great annual spell until somewhere around the early snows of December. And besides, even a lobotomized lemur with 4 doses of heroine coursing through his little veins could find the time and energy to write 4 paragraphs or so of pure, unhinged ranting every once in a while. So kick back, click often, and enjoy the heavy, directionless flow of literary filth by Mr. Dean Young, yours daily and partially truly, until your local radio station begins bombarding you with endless streams of timeless Christmas standards by Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, and Jessica Simpson. And then, it's back to the comfortable, familiar pace of a herniated snail. That's just the way it goes.