Craig Davidson

Friday, March 26th

Top Bets

Hello all,

So, some Top Bets. This week's - really, last week's - were again subject to the editorial axe. So it goes. But thankfully I get to post the unadulterated version here.

Bit of a story behind item #5. So we're an alt-urban. We do band reviews. We have to, y'know, REVIEW things and sometimes, well, we aren't over the moon about what we're seeing.

But of course some artists are pretty thin-skinned. I can say that of myself from time to time. Anyway, there's this message board in Saint John where artists and musicians gather. Which in itself is a great thing. But sometimes these places are pretty insular and nasty and predatory, especially when there is something that has antagonized them. Say, a review they find insulting.

So, anyway, this thread was started:

http://www.giraffecycle.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40137

... which, I mean, I don't suggest you read. It's just pretty mean but not really anything else but representative of the sort of stuff that goes on on message boards. But it did piss us at the magazine off, seeing as the reporter in question is a great young reporter and was just being honest and fair. Not to mention which, quite a few of the commenters are ex-freelancers for our publication; we had to let go of a lot of our freelancers when the idea was to hire permanent reporters. So I was particularly PO'd and any chance I get to kick a hornet's nest, I usually do. So, after the jump, you can read the original Top Bets and the one that we went with seeing as perhaps ... well, it was thought that running #5 would be evidence that the message board mob had 'got to us' ... which, to be brutally honest, it did!

Anyway ... the 'bug-eyed twerp with a wine-stained tongue' is this guy who used to be our booze reviewer.
Craig Davidson on 03.26.10 @ 02:49 PM EST [more..]

Thursday, March 18th

Top Bets

Hi All,

Another week, more top bets. Savvy blog readers will see I've plagiarized myself on #3. Nothing else to report.

Weekend's Top Bets Mar 12

1. FREDERICTON. So, like, I took this pottery class and it was groovy like a movie. I dug my hands into the clay, man, working with the flesh of the Earth Mother. I'd roll out of bed at noon and walk to pottery class laughing at the corporate drones working their nine to fives, slaves to the imperialist machine. I made this beautiful big bubble out of clay, with a little bowl on top; I slipped it over my head like a diver's helmet, put a big knot of "Mother Nature's Magic Herb" in the bowl, and took deep nourishing breaths. I wandered onto the street, lit a clove cigarette and laid on the hood of a parked car, drinking up the sun and blowing a few notes on my pan flute. Some squarejohn in a tie tells me it's his car and that I ought to get my raggedy ass off it. "Hey, do you own the water, you crypto-fascist nazi?" I say. "Do you own the SKY? It's for everybody, the birds and the grasshoppers, narc." The guy says he owns the car, yeah, and also the psychedelic tee-shirt shop down the way - and guess what? My business was no longer appreciated. That totally harshed my mellow, man. Where am I gonna buy my tie-dyed bandannas now? Pottery course at Leo Hayes High. March 13 & 14, 1 - 5pm. $135. 468-2030.

2. SAINT JOHN. I was low on scratch and aimed to spin a five-spot into a sawbuck by passing a few hours at the bingo hall. So I dust off my dabber and sit down next to this tortured old fossil in one a them motorized scooters; Treasure Trolls barricade his bingo cards like armed sentry guards. I’m a few dabs shy of a tidy payday but the free gutrot’s pressing at my britches, so I hit the mens - when I get back this old coot’s flappin’ MY card crying, “Bingy! Bingy!” “You sandbaggin’ viper!” I say. Epithets were thrown, accusations tendered ... unfortunately, I’d accrued some ill-will amongst the locals for certain shady doings previously committed. A burlap sack went over my head, things went black, and I woke up in the cattails along the river with Rascal treadmarks crisscrossing my chest. Worst of all: a bright red bingo dab on my chin. The mark of the pariah. I was no longer welcome at that bingo hall. 25-cent bingo at the Millidgeville North End Lions Club. March 13, at noon.

3. MONCTON. Heartiest felicitations and hark! I didst awake to discover, to my great chagrin, that my royal castle was under siege by cunning knaves, scoundrels, and rank highwaymen. They didst rudely eject me from my lodgings, keeping for themselves my darling queen, Esmerelda, and my loyal fool, Digby Duggans. They forced me to wander the plains - once a mighty King, now a penniless cuckold! My humors were in wretched disarray, bile and phlegm co-mingled. I didst come upon a vast fortress, an ‘arena’ they are called; inside was a Home Show. I approached the nearest vendor and said: “You there, commoner! Build me a castle with parapets, minarets, and a moat and drawbridge to keep out the dragon of Dinesh.” The blaggard said: “How much can you spend?” I turned out my pockets; a few sad ingots pinged off the floor tiles. “But I am your sovereign,” I said. “I work for folding money,” he said. Oh, thou puling worm! Thou pitiable, louse-ridden, donkey-dumb, fart-in-a-windstorm and truly most damnable fiend! Home Show. All weekend at the Moncton Coliseum. 506.852-3377.

4. FREDERICTON. My blushing beauty Handsome Maggie says to me, she says: “Hey, there’s a Family Arts workshop. Let’s go.” I didn’t know if this was her sly hint that she was in a ‘family way,’ but we went to the gallery and each sat behind an easel. The instructor said to paint each other’s portrait. So, okay, I make sure to capture Maggie’s nice puffy frizz of hair, her high proud forehead, the way her upper canine pokes out’n her mouth over her bottom lip like a cutesy vampire. Well, then Maggie shows me her portrait: my smile’s all droopy-arse and my teeth like rotten bits a corn, my nose lookin’ like a busted-off carrot stuffed into a snowman’s face! Then she flicks her Zippo, sets fire to the canvas, kicks the easel over and runs away laughing fit to bust. That woman’s got a funny way of expressing her affection. Family Arts workshop at the Beaverbrook museum. 2 - 4pm. $5 per person. 703 Queen Street. 458-2032.

5. SAINT JOHN. Handsome Maggie cast a scrutinous eye at my loyal Alabama tickhound, Mudds LaRue, and said: “You ought to get that mutt cleaned up.” Ole Mudds had danced some kinda inter-species mating dance with a skunk out behind the garbage bins t’other night, so I admit he smelled a bit hummy. I took him to the groomer, a German fellow; he eyeballs poor Mudds, says: “Oh, vhat a horrid sing, is zis dug. Ee schtinks unt ees fur looks like somesink zat clogs up zee drain.” But he purses his lips and flutters his eyelashes and goes: “I lof zee challenge.” He disappears with Mudds behind a curtain. I hear clipping noises, running water, Mudds whining a little. Next I see him, Mudds has got fey purple ribbons tying back the hair over his eyes and his toenails been painted - pink! “Ees a hundsome doggie now,” says the scourge who done it. He gives me a rhinestone-encrusted leash what to walk ole Mudds with. My poor dog stares at me with a piteous expression, like to say: ‘What I ever done to you that I deserve this treatment?’ When we’re walking out the door he gnaws on the back of my ankle and runs down the road, slipping and sliding on account of his freshly-painted toenails. Come back, dear Mudds! I’ll always love ya! Good Guys Pet Supplies Grooming Seminar. $200. March 13. Starts at 9:30am. More info: www.goodguyspetsupplies.com

-30-
Craig Davidson on 03.18.10 @ 12:23 PM EST [link]

Friday, March 12th

Josh, Kevin, and Erin. The Daveys.

Hi All,

Whoever has followed this blog for the last few years likely knows that last year I drove a bus. A school bus. A yellow school bus. Well, I started with a yellow one but halfway through the year, in the bone-snap depths of a Calgary winter, the bus company essentially repossessed my lovely bus, darling unit 3077, a real honey of a unit, and sent it up to Fort McMurray where apparently the need for busses was keen. They stuck me with an awful unit, 2047, which was white and red and hideous. 3077 had been a wheelchair-accessible unit, with a ramp at the back and these lovely self-tightening Q-Straint straps. 2047 was a wheelchair unit, sure, but with an atrocious Flinstones-era ramp and these old outdated rachet straps that tested my patience in, as previously stated, that chilly winter.

Anyway, it's not uncommon for drivers to really come to like, even love (although that perhaps seems a little weird) their kids. Students, yes, but you come to call them your kids. I mean, some drivers have a really antagonistic relationship with their kids. Some drivers establish a brusque sort of relationship, which is easiest and the least fraught. Me, I got involved with my kids. I think that was sort of the place I was in in my life - I was a little lonely, forlorn, a little outside of myself on a lot of days - so those three hours in the bus with the kids was really something I valued.

The student I became closest with was Josh. Josh is 18 now, 16 when I met him. There are those people who, the first time you meet them something just clicks, almost audibly, and you know you're going to be friends. That's rare for me, certainly, and I assume it's a rare thing peroid. But we met and spoke and before too long we were laughing at ... well, at nothing, most days. Which I think is something emblematic of good friends. You can hang out for hours and when you replay the line of conversation in your head it seemed to have no particular focus, no great agenda, just a lot of fun and a lot of laughs. And we did laugh, even though if somebody happened to be eavesdropping on our conversation I image they would have come away thinking that we were two patients on the lam from the funny farm. We pretty much spoke in codes, Josh and I, a language cobbled together out of shared arcane references and words and events we'd made up that nobody else knew about. And I came to believe that was also a sign of good friends: they speak their own language that nobody else can understand.

So we hung out quite a bit. Away from the bus. Out for lunches, movies. Sometimes I thought it was a little odd, a 16-year old and a 33-year-old hanging out together. But then I figured we liked each other and perhaps, in the year I drove that bus, we sort of ... well, needed each other a little. It's not as if Josh didn't have his support system, a loving family, and not that I didn't have the same. But still, it was just a time in our life when, if I'm correct in my assumption, we benefitted from each others' company.

I don't think I want to get too deeply into what happened that might make the Davey family, Josh and Kevin (Josh's father) and Erin, Josh's sister ... what drew that family and I together. And certainly I wasn't the only person drawn to them; they are all great people, and they have a great many friends. I will say that I met Josh about four months after the accident. And I guess, knowing what I knew then, I wondered - I was in all honesty quite fearful - about this teenager I would meet. How would it all have affected him? I think if it was me, well, I don't know ... I would have been torn in two, mentally and emotionally, and not good for anything. As Kevin said of his son: "If what happened to him had happened to you or I? We'd be gone." But Josh is made of sterner stuff. He really is.

One thing I will always remember about Josh and Kevin is ... they had a very strong father-son bond. I mean, it was fiery, but it was strong as steel. And in the early months of my knowing them, things were still so very hard. Hard emotionally, hard financially, hard in ways that actually existed outside any frame of reference I'd ever known. But in the morning once I'd gotten Josh's chair strapped in Kevin would hop on board and he would gently take the back of Josh's head and he would press their foreheads together and say: "Positive. Let's stay postive."

Then he might kiss Josh's forehead and Josh would groan because we were buddies and maybe it was a little weird having your father kiss your forehead in front of your buddy.

And so today my father emails me this article in the Calgary Herald. And I read it and don't know what to think. I talked to Kevin and Josh at Christmas, we went out for lunch with some of Josh's friends, and Kevin said that - I remember this, him saying it over lunch - that no time would be enough. That nothing could switch around what happened, so the years or the sentencing were immaterial. And though I know that's true, I still ... I look at that sentence and I just don't get it. I mean maybe I get it in a legal sense, but having spent as much time with Josh as I have, and having seen that family cope as they have ... it doesn't seem fair.

Which is so much of what I thought that year - not always in relation to Josh, either, but the other kids on the bus sometimes, and their families, too. But I've come to realize that if I made one mistake that year (and I made many, but if I had to single one out) it was that I probably spent too much time thinking about fairness, and fate, and whatever forces are operating out there that cause what one cannot help but perceive as huge injustices. And I think this was a mistake not because it's not natural and human to think about those things, and not because Kevin and Josh didn't think about them, too, but because there's nothing to be done for it and no real good or value can come of exerting too much mental force on those elements of existence that are inflexible.

Kevin would say: "We can't dwell," and it's the truth of it.

And so I guess I would say that I am so happy that there is, if nothing else, some sort of closure and finality to this. And I know that the family is doing well - they've got a lovely new house off on the southernmost edge of Calgary, a bungalow with high ceilings and plenty of room - and I know that, essentially, they are stronger than this. Stronger than tragedy. It may have been a near thing, but yes, stronger.

As for the guy who did it ... I don't know. He should never drive again. Not a go-kart. Not a fucking bicycle. A truck is his instrument of death. He used to work construction, so he might wheedle that he needs it. A tool of his trade. But if a knife is the tool of a chef's trade and that chef goes swinging it about and kills someone, well, that chef doesn't get a knife anymore. That chef finds another job. This guy should never be behind the wheel again. Period.

Josh, Erin, and Kevin. I hope you are well. I know you are. I'm thinking of you. Plenty of people are, always.

The article:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Drunk+driver+gets+five+years+fatal+crash/2669392/story.html

All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 03.12.10 @ 11:50 AM EST [link]

Wednesday, March 10th

Hey, how about some Top Bets?

Hi All,

Well, why not?

Weekend's Top Bets March 5

1. FREDERICTON. The night of the big fight. The Champ sits on a butcher block bench, hands taped, anvil-heavy head bowed. I say, "This guy you're fighting tonight - he's a murderer. He's not anything like the two-bit pitty-patters, tomato cans, or fancy Dan creampuffs you beat to get here. This guy's an executioner. He's got slumber land in either hand. He drinks molten steel and pisses razor blades. He'll crucify you, Champ; he'll plant you in that canvas like a shrub. And I tell you so because you're my friend and, damn it, I love ya." The Champ looks at me stoically, his eyes like chunks of brown ice, and says: "You're right. I can't lick him. Why even try?" Next his trainer stalks over, slaps me hard across the face and throws me out of the locker room. That was the end of my career as a motivational speaker. Boxing classes at the Fredericton Boxing Club. Sunday nights starting at 5:30. 141 School Street. 470-3938.

2. SAINT JOHN. When I retired thirty years ago at the age of sixty-two, I knew the key to a long life was to stay active. The other week I volunteered to read to the tots down the local library. I arrive to a room of toddlers, all cute as buttons; the librarian gives me this book called The Mopey Puppy. Nothing but candy floss for your brain: all sugar, no substance. I cracked open a pamphlet on RRSP savings tips instead. “Don't delay,” I read, “start early. Maximize your foreign market exposure.” These snot-nosed ragamuffins were whining and rolling around on the carpet hugging themselves, drooling and babbling - I may as well not have left the nursing home! “Look alive, you thoughtless stooges!” I said. “This is your future!” After that the librarian gave me an oatmeal cookie and sent me home. Preschool Storytime at the public library. Thursday, March 11. 10:30 - 11:00am.

3. MONCTON. One day, oh, eleven maybe 50 years ago, I was punching cows down on the Flying G with the Harpoon brothers and one of 'em says to me, 'Hey, they's a guy up in Saskatoon running 1,000 head looking for a dab hand with branding.' So I says, 'Hey, Curly, is that right?' And Curly says, 'You betcha.' So I hit him as hard as I could with a big ole heavy steel pole and knocked him cold. I took his boots and I caught a ride up to Saskabush. There I seen this guy sitting on his horse all puffed up like he'd been poisoned and I says, 'Hey you better uncinch that critter, or he's gonna blow.' The guy looked at me like I was nuts and he says, 'OK.' That was '58 - '59? Catch country singer Steve Waylon at The Bass River Fair Hall. $8. March 6, at 9pm.

4. FREDERICTON. The love of my life, Handsome Maggie, thought we ought to sauce things up in the boudoir. She went to one a them ‘Spice Up Your Love Life’ parties - like a Tupperware party, except with bedroom gewgaws - and came home with a pair of furry handcuffs for her 'Prisoner of Love,’ as she’d taken to calling me. So I shuck down to my drawers and Maggie fastens a blindfold round my eyes and handcuffs me to the bedposts. Whoo! Next something warm and sticky is spread on my chest while Maggie coos sweet nothings in my ear. When she takes off the blindfold I see I’m covered in honey. Maggie holds a thrashing burlap sack, which she opens and a hungry ferret leaps out and sets to nipping me about the haunches and brisket! “I’ve hated you since the day I met you,” Maggie hisses, then laughs like a longshoreman. What’s worse, she invited Lenny Drinkwater, the local papparazzo, over to take photos of the whole sordid scene with his Polaroid. They showed up next day in the society pages of the Penny Saver. Well, Mags and I had to take a time out after that one. Want to host a Diva Party? Call Tammy at 455-7677 to set up the Passion Party package. Great fun for single or married women.

5. SAINT JOHN. Regrets? You could say I have a few. One time I was a little down at the heel and - my darling Maggie having run off with a fur trapper named Jean Luc Drapont - short on love, too. I see this ad in the newspaper for Rughookers. Deciding I can spin an easy buck I don my furred pink fedora, white calfskin trenchcoat, and platform shoes, grab my a bejeweled cane and make my way to the SJ Arts Centre. “I’m looking for them hookers I read about in the newspapy,” I tell the security guard, who gives me a look but points the way. So I survey the landscape and, truth told, it was pretty grim pickins. Most of ‘em were sixty if they were a year. All sitting quietly doing arts and crafts. But I persevered. “I don’t know what your pimp’s paying,” I announced, “but it ain’t enough, that’s for dang sure. Prime cuts a beef such as yourselves. You got that matronly quality. Some fellas appreciate that - not me, but some. I can turn you out for top dollar.” Well, it so transpired there had been a misunderstanding, rughooking and hooker-hooking being beasts of entirely different natures. I barely made it out alive. One of those sassy old birds jabbed a darning needle in my ankle! Try Rughooking. March 5, 9:30 - noon. Saint John Arts Centre. 633-4870.

6. MONCTON. I told my husband, Paxton Thriftwhistle III, that I should like to plant sugarsnap peas around our estate grounds. Unfortunately our Nicaraguan gardener had lately run off to join the Sandinista rebels. “Never fear, my pet,” said Paxton. “There is a farmer’s market this weekend. We’ll purchase one there.” Fortified on gin and breath mints, we bundled into the Bentley on a pleasant Sunday morn; Paxton cuffed our chauffeur in the back of his head and we were off. The farmer’s market was earthy and filthy, saturated with oily hippies and sticky-fingered urchins. “A hillbilly slum,” said Paxton. We made haste through the ramshackle stalls as our chauffeur beat back the runny-nosed hordes. I spied a suitable specimen hovering near a table of earthenware jugs, which doubtlessly he considered to be musical instruments. Sinewy and bowlegged, he would do. “How much?” I asked. “How much what?” he said. “How much do you cost?” I said, exasperated. “I’m not for sale, you dizzy old bat.” He laughed, pointing me out to the assembled hicks and rubes. “This ancient ruin thinks she can buy a farmer!” Next these rancid buffoons, these hootenanny-throwers, were laughing - at me! Oh, they should be thrashed within an inch of their inelegant lives, I tell you! Sackville Farmer’s Market. Saturdays, 9 to noon. Bridge St. Café, 8 Bridge St. 536-4428.

-30-
Craig Davidson on 03.10.10 @ 02:43 PM EST [link]

Tuesday, March 9th

Daniel O'Thunder

Hello all,

The final meeting of the Afterword Reading Society - I think I mislabeled it the Gentlemen's Reading Society earlier, which was a lie as one of our panelists, Erin Balse, is most assuredly not a fella - is up right now on the National Post blog, The Afterword.

http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/afterword/archive/2010/03/09/the-afterword-reading-society-of-cinematic-scope.aspx

It was a great book as I've said and as the other panelists have said, with one panelist sort of fence-sitting - but that's pretty decent odds when it comes to a book. I don't know why you're not buying a copy. Really, I do not. Get. It. One. Little. Bit. No.

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1553654358/ref=s9_simvh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=0E4TXHAXF3XRHY3E89PC&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383531&pf_rd_i=915398

Also, if you're in Toronto, there's a wrap-up party and reading and what-not at Ben Mcnally Books tonight (March 9) with Ian Weir, the man himself, who will be giving a reading. I would be there myself but alas, the notion of hopping a Greyhound for the 24-hour milk run just didn't have any justifiable appeal. But all the other panelists will be there, those hip Torontonians, those movers and shakers, and surely some other literary folks and book-lovers; should be a good time. The Facebook link on the bottom of the Afterword post, so surely you would be welcome ... unless you're a weird stalker type, there to harass and bother Ian or somebody else, in which case still come along but be sure to take your meds beforehand.

All best,
Craig.

Craig Davidson on 03.09.10 @ 02:41 PM EST [link]

Saturday, March 6th

A few little things

Hi All,

My father sent me this link, which is Jacques Audiard speaking on A Prophet, and my name is mentioned so my father's google alert went haywire:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/a-foreign-film-contender/article1491348

Also, there's this:

http://www.amazon.ca/Sarah-Court-Erik-Mohr/dp/1926851005/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267890902&sr=8-1

... in other news, I did turn in my newest manuscript to my agent. I say so because once a week, sometimes twice, I get emails from somebody asking "What's next?" And now I can say, "Well, Sarah Court is next, barring some unforeseen disaster"---which can happen at any time! My editor and I still have to hack out a pretty serious edit on it, but he's a champ and we've worked together and he's got some really positive buzz building around his press so I'm psyched about this book seeing the light of day.

But after that, well, I have no clue. The new manuscript has been out floating around for a month now, I think, depends when my agent started submitting it. I haven't heard anything. Some might say, "Well, no news is good news." Others might say, "You're boned, dude! Totally boned!" Which could be true. I don't imagine I'll broadcast anything here unless there is something of a positive development. But just to let those who every so often write me to ask: yes, I'm still writing. Yes, I'm still giving it the ole college try. At some point, though, it gets out of your hands and you just sort of sit around waiting for come-what-may. So we're sort of in the 'come what may' stage right now, but since I'm earning a steady paycheck doing something I generally enjoy, it's not as fraught as prior instancees, when I got myself cooked into a frothing lather fearing I might end up eating Alpo under a train trestle.

All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 03.06.10 @ 11:07 AM EST [link]

Friday, March 5th

LWOT Panel

Hi all,

I'm doing a lot of panels lately. With the Afterword, the National Post blog, and here with LWOT (Lies With Occasional Truth), run by the esteemed Ryan Ross. Here us panelists are asked, I think, what is the worst thing someone has ever said of your artistic endeavors? Needless to say, oodles of odd and nasty things have been said of mine over time ... well, not that many really, but I suppose there would be more had said works fallen over a larger readership. That notwithstanding, I had a little something to say, as did the other panelists.

As a sidebar: I enjoy participating in panels, generally, but it's no way to make a living. Unless you wish to make a living as a bagman, in which case it's a good start. But no worries, writing and panelist-ing is really only a cover for my true career: deputy editor of a small alterative urban weekly in the Maritimes. Which in itself is a cover for my hobby: an international hitman known only as "The Rapier" who works for several shady cartels and government 'Spook' agencies.

http://lwot.blogspot.com/2010/03/lwot-panel.html

All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 03.05.10 @ 11:44 AM EST [link]

Wednesday, March 3rd

Top Ten, Feb 25 edition

Hi All,

So this week the editorial decision was made to cut #6; it was deemed a little too racy for the paper, which is run, as some know, by a large oil concern. But the interesting thing is that #4 stayed. You have to read that one a little closely, and have some familiarity with Urban Dictionary, to see what's going on in that one. Pretty juvenile, I'll admit. But hey, that's me. I give credit to my friend Rob for introducing me to 'The Manhattan Transfer.' Thanks, Rob. Thanks a lot.

Very best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 03.03.10 @ 10:33 AM EST [more..]