04/12/2010: "Top Bets - belated!"

Hi All,

So, a few things about this batch. First, while I say these are 'true' stories, there are really only elements of truth to them. Some real, verifiable elements, but, in the interests of journalistic integrity, not totally 100% true. Secondly, I tend to pick on this bar, The Red Lantern, a lot. You likely have a Red Lantern in your city or town, too. But then I went there and filed a piece for our Drink Up! section and actually liked it. So, kudos to the Red Lantern. Even though I'll still make fun of it.

http://herenb.canadaeast.com/food/article/1010423

All best, Craig.

TOP BETS Apr 9-10-11

1. FREDERICTON. I was playing Ms. Pac Man drinking a Tab when my partner, Rick Tubbs, tells me there's a 224 in progress at the Red Lantern bar on the northside. So we haul ass down to the wharf, hop on a sleek cigarette boat and charge across the river with our piano ties flapping at our necks like streamers. We get to the Lantern - a grim scene. Apparently a '224' is radio semaphore for 'a criminally intoxicated white male in his mid-forties wearing a "Where's The Beef?" shirt three sizes too small doing the Truffle Shuffle while Huey Lewis's 'Hip to Be Square' plays on the jukebox.' Some things you see you can't UN-SEE, y'know? Concepts like God and simple human decency become really remote, almost unbelievable. "Doesn't matter how long you work these mean streets," says Rick, his facing going green. "You can never quite wrap your mind around such horrors." 80s Dance Party. $6. April 10, 10pm. Royal Canadian Legion, Minto.

2. SAINT JOHN. I was watching Doctor Phil when this commercial comes on for the Canadian Blood Services. It’s in me to give, apparently. I started feeling real morose and selfish for bogarting all that rich red goodness. My veins were practically swimmin’ with the stuff. So I moseyed down to the clinic. The nurse gives me a long look, then pricks my finger and draws a sample. She examines it and says, “Well, sir, I don’t think we can use it.” I was gobsmacked! “Have I got a disease?” No, she says. “You got too much of my blood type lying around?” No, she says, mine was the most in-demand type. “So what in hell ...?” “Well, sir,” she says, “look at it like siphoning gas out of a rusted-out, broken-down AMC Gremlin. The gas may be fine, but the vehicle it came from ...” She gives me an apologetic shrug. I say: “Damn it ... are you rejecting my blood?” She gives me a cookie. I was stunned and broke-hearted. Rejected at a blood clinic! Jeezly crow! How much lower can a man sink? Blood Donor Clinic. Free! Friday, April 9. 11am - 2:30pm. 405 University Avenue.

3. MONCTON. Here's a true story: as a kid, I bought a crossbow at a yard sale. I was eight, nine. This guy down the block had gone through a bitter divorce and was selling EVERYTHING. An impromptu fire sale: just piles of wares dragged onto the lawn, no prices on anything. The guy was drunk and maudlin and probably deeply depressed, though I was too young to understand that. So I see this crossbow and think it's pretty neat and this piss-eyed divorcee tells me he'll let it go for five bucks. I walked away with a honest-to-God crossbow and a quiver of razor-tipped arrows. I get home and show it to Mom, who LOSES it, has a conniption and marches me back. Well, the guy was so blitzed and so totally cleansed of shame or any real identifiable emotion save caustic self-pity that he just about laughs in Mom's face. Says she ought to monitor her son's purchases more closely. At first he refuses to take it back, but eventually relents and tells us to clear off his goddamn lawn, we're spoiling his day. Seriously, it was some shit out of a Raymond Carver story! Giant Yard and Bake Sale. April 10, starting at 7:30am.. 1455 Rte 133, Grand-Barachois.

4. SAINT JOHN. Here's a story from my childhood. Like a lot of men of his generation, my father collected Playboys. Every man did. No stigma to it. A lot of good, strong think-pieces. Mailer and Nabokov wrote for that august publication. And, sure, a little harmless T&A. When Dad got married the magazines went into a cardboard box. As a family, we moved a lot. In every house there was a pile of moving boxes in the basement; old bowling trophies and chafing dishes, stuff that wasn't quite worthless enough to toss away ... and the box of Playboys. Until my brother and I reached puberty that box held no allure. But when it did - BAM! Man, we TORE that box UP! We'd have friends over, all of us ogling Miss September 1973 Marilyn Cole and reciting jokes from the 'party jokes' section (Dressed as a pirate for Halloween, the small boy knocked on a door and was greeted by a matronly woman. "Aren't you a cute little pirate," she said. "But where are your buccaneers?" To which the little boy replied, "Under my buccan hat!" - hyuk!) After each viewing party we'd put the Playboys back in the box and cover them with packing paper. Mom eventually compels Dad to get rid of the collection. He can't bring himself to toss it, so he takes it to the Flea Market - there's a guy who sells vintage magazines. Dad hands over the box - which he'd never bothered to check, and which to his mind is full of pristine copies - and the guy opens it and sees this torn-up, mangled Playboys, all dog-eared, the centerfolds torn out. Guy says: "Let me guess - you got teenage sons?" Dad gets home just STEAMING. "That was your inheritance, you little perverts!" he shouted at my brother and I. "You just pissed it all away!" Indoor Flea Market. Saturday, August 10. 8am - 2pm. Champlain Heights school.
696-2463.

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