Tag Archives: death

Anybody home?

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The house was dark, which made Helen worry all the more. As long as she could remember, her neighbours kept at least one light on in the house.

“You never know when someone will show up for a visit,” Jackie would explain. “Would hate for them to think they’re not welcome.”

The funny thing was, Helen never saw any visitors at the Jarrols. Maybe that’s why the house always seemed to drip in melancholy.

Helen took the first step on to the porch, making sure not to lean on the railing that more than once abandoned poor Ned to the garden below. Jackie finally planted decorative cabbage just to cushion the blow.

Each step felt spongier than the next as Helen ascended. She wasn’t sure if it was the wood or her trepidation, the silence of the house growing more oppressive the closer she got.

Helen didn’t bother with the doorbell, it never worked, but instead rapped heavily on the door before turning the handle.

“It’s just Helen,” she called into the darkness, the weak light of blinded windows helping her make out the living room. “Jackie? Ned?”

Her words hung in the air, the warmth of her breath buoyant in a house unnaturally cold.

Helen hesitated at the door, afraid to proceed but worried about her neighbours. She really wished Sarah was with her right now, but she wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. Helen was on her own.

“Hello,” Jackie’s voice called from the kitchen.

“Jackie, it’s—“

“We’re not home right now, but if you leave a message, Neddy and I will get right back to you.”

Ned had long ago turned off the phone ringer because it always startled Jackie, who had a weak heart. Helen actually thought it was because Ned hated talking on the phone.

Helen searched the main floor, but the Jarrols were nowhere to be found. Upstairs it was.

As though pulling off a bandage, Helen vaulted the stairs to the second floor, but her hand froze as it came to rest on the bedroom door handle.

Knocking would have been respectful, but Helen just turned the knob and pushed. The door showed no resistance.

Jackie and Ned lay next to each other on the bed, eyes closed. Jackie was under the covers, hair bound in that all-too-familiar brown kerchief, while Ned was atop the covers.

Helen didn’t call out. She didn’t even check them. It was just like Ned to turn the heat off first. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt the potential resale value of the house.

Alas, Mel Smith

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Today, I would like to commemorate the legendary comic genius that was Mel Smith, who passed away this past week.

And he was a legend…in the sense that his story offers a scintilla of fact ham-fisted into a pasty-white pasty shell of human dung perpetuated by self-immolating vivisectionists with personal hygiene problems and a fetish for peat moss.

For those of you who didn’t know him, Mel Smith was a kind, gentle, giving man who would go out of his way to help the less fortunate.

For those of us who did, however, know him, Mel Smith was a fucking asshole. Wouldn’t give a toss about anyone even if they offered to wank the bugger themselves. As nasty a piece of shit as Britain has ever produced, and remember, these include the Thatcher years.

Mel Smith was born in West London on December 3, 1952, presumably from the uterus of a woman who had shagged a large black ram during some pagan ritual the previous March. No one is quite sure why he chose this day, but some have tried to link his birth to the great smog that swept over London the very next day, killing upward of 12,000 people.

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A right bloody bastard he was.

Over the next several years, Mel Smith attended a variety of schools where he was considered a bright pupil. Unfortunately, the ability to shoot light from your eyes is not one of the criteria to succeed in A-levels and Smith’s general lack of intellectual acuity—it is rumoured he had the IQ of retarded tapioca—meant he was only able to attend Oxford.*

It was while attending Oxford that Mel Smith learned he had a knack for convincing himself he was funny, and through sheer perseverance—and a gun—he caught the eye of director John Lloyd. Lloyd, who was fond of both of his eyes, immediately gave Smith a role on the hit comedy television series Not the Nine O’clock News.

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BBC audiences, however, quickly concluded that this was also Not the Funny Comedy Program.

Blaming everyone but himself for the demise of the careers of people like Rowan “Who” Atkinson, Smith beat up the little Welsh kid on the show—Griff Rhys Jones (talk about your Dumbledork)—and started a hard new series that took a satirical look at Islam called Allah’s Smith and Jones.

Two days into the fire bombings, a slight change was made to the title of the show, now Alas Smith & Jones. The ampersand saved the day.

Out of the gate, critics were harsh. “Who are these two wankers who do nothing but mumble to each other from 3 inches?” “Kiss, already.”

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But the British public ate it up.

Since the fall of the Empire, they had pretty much been doing the same ruddy thing every night, smugly satisfied in their fetid shanties that they didn’t have to get bloody malaria just to find a decent curry.

When the show finally went off the air—nobody knows exactly when, because to be honest, nobody could stomach more than 20 minutes of that shite—Jones wandered off, never to be heard from again, except as that sad ugly bloke who would masturbate monkeys on Whose Line Is It Anyways?

Smith, however, dragged his bloated carcass to Hollywood, where he was met with rave reviews like “What is that prick doing to my dog?”, “Can human beings really sweat that much?”, and “Did Charles Laughton just take a shit on my lawn?”

On January 7, 2001, Mel Smith’s career was declared dead. His body, however, continued to function until July 19, 2013, when Mel himself passed away from a heart attack. The news sent shock waves through the British comedy community, both of whom expressed surprise that Smith even had a heart.

Smith leaves behind pretty much everybody who didn’t die on or before July 19, 2013.

 

*Ed.’s note: It has since been verified that even retarded tapioca can gain attendance at Cambridge. We thank Hugh Laurie for the correction and apologize for printing the aforementioned rumour.

 

Thanks Mel

 

[Images are property of owners and are used here without permission because that’s what Mel would have wanted…and frankly, I don’t give a toss.]

Forgotten tribute

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Railway 4

A nation born

On the backs

Of men not welcome.

Forgotten thanks

Never remiss,

Never too late.

Humble peace for your

Nation-building sacrifices

[Dedicated to the sacrifices of the Chinese population within Canada as they helped build the railway system that connected the country shore to shore, as commemorated in an art instillation in downtown Toronto]

Building a trestle, the basis of a bridge perhaps

Building a trestle, the basis of a bridge perhaps

A lone man stands in the line of fire should that rope fray

A lone man stands in the line of fire should that rope fray

His safety harness, a lone hand

His safety harness, a lone hand

Rainy night

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Background lights reflect off watery pavement

Watery applause

filters through my window;

an atmospheric

stream of consciousness,

rafting my mind

to memories thought lost,

of friends, of love,

of pain, of loss.

Flushing rivulets

clear out the old

to make space for

sunnier days ahead.

Heavy rains make for sodden cycling

Heavy rains make for sodden cycling

Rain drops in such profusion that ripples annihilate ripples

Rain drops in such profusion that ripples annihilate ripples

Null and void

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The sounds of the city

Echo through my brain,

Filling the void with

Impulses that dissipate

As suddenly as formed.

Photonic reflections

Bombard my eyes and

Yet I see nothing

As I stare into

The darkening distance.

As empty as the bookshelves

That lie to either side,

My mind is a canvas,

Devoid of tint or brushstroke,

The words of yesterday

Replaced by so much silence.

The mind has wandered,

I know not where,

To seek adventure

In environs yet new,

To channel its destiny

In fields not yet furrowed,

Leaving only a husk of humanity,

A shed skin, abandoned shell,

To signal its former home

In the expanding universe.

I cannot know

If it will return,

But remain a sentinel

On constant watch ‘til death.

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission. I don’t recall why.)

Web sights

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Kevlar strands of extruded protein

Home and snare in one

Patterns of neglect woven by time

Forgotten relics of a life now gone

Dusted, drowned and swept away

Urban renewal for insectine lives

Dorothy’s Day

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Aside from my wife and my mother, the most important woman in my life was my grandmother Dorothy, who encouraged and advised me at every turn in my life. I stayed with my grandparents while I attended college and my first apartment was literally two doors down the same apartment hallway. She has always been my friend.

Dorothy passed away last year. When she did, I was given an old family photo album and as I have this nice little scanner, I thought hmmmm.

In honour of Mother’s Day and because my grandmother’s birthday was May 15th, I offer the following retrospective album of Gram as I have known her and as I wish you all could have.

If she were still alive, I am confident she would be worried all to hell about my current artistic adventures and spirit journey, but I also know she would give me all her love and support…and maybe a few hands of cribbage to keep me honest.

I miss you, Gram.

Death by a Thousand Meetings

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Committee (n): 1) a group of individuals specializing in irreversible creativity vivisection; 2) last known location of a good idea. See also: elephant’s graveyard.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing anyone creating art is less the generation of new ideas and more the knowledge that at some point, you will have to release your art to an awaiting world; aka, relinquish control.

Now, we can (and have) discuss the illusion of control at any phase of the creative process, but there is no denying that if you want your art to be appreciated by others, you will have to pass your newborn into someone else’s hands…or worse, someseveral else’s hands.

For writing—my predominant area of interest—that moment can come quite early in the creative process, whereas for other art forms, such as sculpture or painting, it may appear quite a bit later (please correct me, if I under- or misstate things).

You must respect your art. You must protect your art. But you must also realize that if you intend to share your art, and perhaps even make money from it, you must be somewhat flexible with your art. When you bring it to the world, it ceases to be all about you.

A teacher once suggested that upon completing a play, Shakespeare merely became another critic of the work. His opinions on meaning and significance within the play were simply one more voice and held no more sway than those of any other critic. I don’t know that I agree—what self-respecting writer would?—but I see the point.

When I write a screenplay, I need dissenting and diverging voices to ensure that I am not leaving things out or glossing over important plot or character points that are clear in my head. At the same time, I must be sure that my vision is protected, lest I start writing someone else’s screenplay.

I understand, however, that if I want to turn this screenplay into a movie or television episode, I will have to relinquish some of the control to the hands of studio executives, producers, directors, actors, directors of photography, sound teams, and in all likelihood, the third cousin of the guy who runs the craft services table. I have to be comfortable with the idea that each of these people wants to (actually, must) contribute in some way to the final product to give them a sense of ownership. They too are artists.

I am struggling at this stage with several television projects I have been developing. I have a computer filled with TV series concepts and/or pilot scripts, and I am trying to decide with what production companies to share my babies. Like Smeagol, I stroke my precious and have a rampant distrust of everyone.

How do I know the company I choose shares my vision, will protect my baby, isn’t just a group of ravenous Orcs? I don’t. I can’t, ahead of time.

What helps is watching fellow writers who rabidly protect their newborns at a much earlier stage in development. Who in a reading group, spew buckets of foamy spittle while savagely defending the use of the word “vivisection”, or primal scream that their protagonist’s motivations are obvious to anyone with half a brain.

I am doing the same thing with my projects, only at a later stage and mostly in my head (and possibly with just half a brain). Just as they have to learn to let go or at least lighten up, so do I.

In writing this post, I am coming to realize that my art is in the writing of the screenplay, not in the making of movies or television. Thus, when the screenplay is ready to move on, I must let it go and hope it flourishes…even if I am not ready to let it go. The art must grow and breathe, regardless of my personal reluctance and fears.

Committees are still evil…you will never get me to say otherwise…but unless I am willing to do everything on my own, which would not do justice to my babies, committees are a necessary evil and less dangerous to my babies’ successes than on overbearing, overprotective parent.

 

For a humourous take on the evils of meetings, please also see the recent blog post by Ben’s Bitter Blog: Meeting Bitterness.

Life is messy

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Reflections on things we cannot control

(Respectively, photos taken in Toronto; Hope, BC; New York City; China Beach, BC; Chilliwack, BC; Volcan Arenal, Costa Rica; and Montezuma, Costa Rica)