04/21/2010: "Top Bets"

Hi All,

I think I skipped a week. So here's the entry from a few weeks back.

MONCTON. "Pappy! Pappy!" I would say when only a boy, shaking my father from his slumber. "Shall we fly a kite today?" Pappy would rise stiffly, his body carrying the raw sweet sugar-smell, and say: "Not today, my son. For the sugar calls." And he would heft his pickaxe and walk with the other men to the sugar mine. There they would stand at the pit-head above the sparkling caverns and laugh and touch one another's faces with great tenderness and descend the slope to chip away at that white gold. Pappy would come home stoop-shouldered and weary and would let me lick his shirtsleeves, which were ever so sweet. But he came down with the sugar-lung, as so many did; on his deathbed he coughed, a dry hacking rattle, fine granules of powdered sugar puffing the air about his haggard, sugar-bleached face. His final words were: "Life was sweet. The sweetness killed me." Damn you, sugar! Damn you to hell! (ed note: there is absolutely no historical relevancy to the preceding parable) Sugar Camp. Come see how maple sugar is made. Saturday, April 3. Open at 9. Dewey Road, off Turtle Creek Road.

SAINT JOHN. One afternoon I was sitting on the banks of the big lake they call Gitche Gumme, woolgathering about my time aboard the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald. I'd been that ship's mop-boy, you see, when it set out from Cleveland on a gloomy November morn. I was lamenting out loud - singing my laments, really, stringing my woes into lyrics - and out the corner of my eye I see this longshanked fella with a blonde mustache off in the bushes, writing down my every word on his little notepad. "Hey!" I said. "You're one a them Lightfoots, ain't ya?" The Lightfoots were a passel of rum-running, jack-rolling savages who lived in saltbox shacks upriver. That whole clan would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes. Well, this Lightfoot sonofabitch laughs and tips me an evil nod and off he runs off into the shrubs. Next I see him is on the cover of Billboard magazine, a bigshot folksinger! Now I hear he's a zombie. Gordon Lightfoot in Concert. April 4. 7:00pm at Harbour Station, 99 Station Street. 657-1234.

FREDERICTON. My neuropathologist Shifty Tubman wanted to throw a fancy Italian feast at his shack in the woods. He figured everyone would get a kick out of squid-ink pasta - noodles colored with squid ink, right? So we shotgun a few Faxe tallboys and sway off to the fishmonger's. Who says he don't carry squid ink, cuttlefish ink, or ink of any sort. Now Shifty's in a dilly of a pickle. But he snaps his fingers and goes: "A-ha!" He heads to the stationary shop and buys a twelve-pack of Bic ballpoint pens. I say, "I don't know, Shifts - squid ink and pen ink don't exactly seem a one-to-one conversion." But we boil up a mess of noodles and bust them pens open and squeeze the ink out and sure enough them noodles go DARK. Later Jackknife Flynn and Handsome Maggie and Tarnose Bob are sittin' round Shifty's table, everybody's mouths black from the pasta. Lookin' like a pack of rotten-mouthed zombies. Pasta Night. Sunday, April 4 at Brewbaker's restaurant. 546 King Street. 459.0067.

MONCTON. Listen, can I be honest with you? Can I lay it all on the line? Okay, then, here it is: I hate kids. I know what you're saying: How can you hate kids, seeing as you're the Easter Bunny - the ambassador for springtime, togetherness, and the child in all of us? Yeah, well, screw that noise. I hate kids. There. I said it. They’re so ... NEEDY. Sticky-fingered and vacant-eyed, all up in my grille - "Where’s MY egg?" - grabby-grabbing at me, practically pulling clumps of fur out. What, like I LAY the damn things? The little dummies can’t tell the difference between a chicken and a rabbit! Not to mention, some of them are fat as hell - not for nothing, but we got a real childhood obesity crisis in North America. The very last thing these pudge-asses need is another chocolate egg. Go for a jog, y’know? Do a few burpees. Eat a stalk of celery, you tragic fatties. Lord. Forget it. I’ma go get hammered with the mall Santas. Easter EGGstravaganza at the Magnetic Zoo. Come see the Easter bunny! $5. April 3, 11:00. 125 Magic Mountain Rd.

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 2. 11am - 2:30pm. 405 University Avenue.

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