There needs to be a new dictionary entry under 'A'...

Greetings from the wrong side of the tracks on the information superhighway:

   Please excuse the 'retro' appearance of the font in this posting. This remnant of the teletype era is all we have to work with for the time being. Like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mr. Cousins' computer responded to a quite reasonable request to start up this morning with a laconic "I'm sorry, Dave...I can't do that". It offered a similar response to the information that no-one domiciled at this address goes by the name of 'Dave'. We're doing our best to stay out of our host's way, as he waits for a house call from the computer doctor. 'Disconsolate' would not be an inaccurate or hyperbolic description of his current state of mind. Like most busy, trusting, and non-technically-oriented souls, he neglected to back up his data. (Those of you who pride yourselves on your conscientiousness in this regard would do well to keep your schadenfreude and "I told you so"s to yourselves, at least until our host has gotten over the idea that a fitting solution to all of life's contretemps--including smug retroactive advice--involves the selective and repeated application of a two-by-four, or some such similar blunt instrument.)

   This situation in no way alters my own personal view of computers, which is that they combine all the salient features of hyperactive toddlers and nonagenarians in advanced stages of dementia. It's all 'go go go' with them until the day comes when they can't remember what day it is. Meanwhile, they've done the digital equivalent of taking all your perishables out of the fridge, and squirreling them away in an inaccessible crawlspace. Mr. Cousins' views on the subject at present are, needless to say, somewhat less measured and level-headed than mine.

   And this is why he feels that a new word needs to be inserted in the dictionary, using force majeure and a crowbar if necessary. There is an expression that sums up the flood of rage, despair, panic, helplessness, and hopelessness, all combined with a rueful sense that this has happened far too many times before, and will happen far too many times again, which pours over the human psyche at times like this. It's commonly spelled "AAAAAAUUUGGGGHHHH". When Charles Schulz first put this word into Charlie Brown's speech balloon, he hit the nail right on the head. No profanity--possibly in any language, ever--serves the dual purpose of venting unbearable frustration and releasing emotional tension quite as well as this piece of comic-strip-inspired keening.

  More on this, and other subjects, later...I see a trickle of tears making its way slowly down the hallway from the Cousins family office. For now, then, I'll sign off, and see if Sparky and I can ease our good friend's grief with a diverting game of three-card monte.

  'Til technology makes it easier to express myself in style again, I remain yours,

Uncle Fun

 

I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille…or maybe for some extra starch…

   A pleasant day to one and all, and our most heartfelt apologies for being so tardy with our latest posting. The residents of Chez Cousins have played host to a touring artiste (Kurt Fitzpatrick, an award-winner at the just-completed Piggyback Fringe Festival) for the past week, so all of us have been well and truly occupied with revelry, merrymaking, and their inevitable effects on free time and sleep patterns. To ease our creative burden, another guest blogger has agreed to step into the breach—or breeches, as the case may be. What on earth does THAT mean? Read on…

Uncle Fun

P.S. Please excuse the intrusion of a trio of footnotes. They’re for the benefit of the 99.5% of the world’s population that doesn’t live in Canada, and won’t get the references.

   I may have done my last day of work on television. This is a cruel business. You get a little old, a little wrinkled, start to sag in places, and they start losing interest in you. Lose a button, and you’re through.

   You thought I was talking about actors, didn’t you? Don’t kid yourself. Except for the lucky few who have lines of dialogue, they’re interchangeable. The vast majority of faces that you see on screen aren’t faces, they’re indistinguishable blurs deep in the background, mere delivery systems for their wardrobe. We’re what’s important to the camera, not the people who wear us.

   Not that I should complain. I’ve gotten a lot more work than most shirts as old as I am, or as frayed around the cuffs and collar. I get brought along to film and TV shoots as a comfortable last resort, when other shirts don’t strike the proper balance between ‘casual’, ‘corporate’, and ‘corporate casual’ that the wardrobe department’s looking for. I’m a compromise candidate, the Michael Dukakis of shirts, and have enjoyed every bit as much success and lasting fame as that comparison implies. Even so, it’s good to still feel useful. Considering that I’m older than my owner, a hand-me-down from an older brother, I guess that means I have a sort of timeless quality that only improves with age, like a George C. Scott with seams. It sure beats being used to wax somebody’s car.

   Today’s shoot was for a CBC¹ series, which made the whole affair Old Home Week, in a sense. I first appeared on the CBC in Reach For The Top², never mind how many years ago. Not that you likely would have seen me. My owner was so short during his high school years that only his eyebrows appeared above the podium. It was like a cross between Jeopardy and “Kilroy Was Here”. With the passage of time, both shirt and owner have acquired a rumpled, lived-in look, which keeps us both in demand for work as what is known as ‘background’, in this city’s semi-regular schedule of low-and-medium-budget productions. It’s probably because both of us have the good fortune to be unobtrusively bland. This makes it easy to obey a director’s instructions to background extras, which can be summed up in the simple phrase “stand there, and don’t stand out”.

   Once again today, we both performed flawlessly just by being ourselves—neutral-coloured and without a recognizable pattern. There was a moment, though, which told me that the end may soon be near. Just before the cameras rolled, the wardrobe mistress made a final check and discovered that a couple of my buttons were undone. Not to worry: the product of hasty dressing in a washroom stall standing in for the dressing room that no-one has; easily remedied.

   Good thing no-one noticed the hole behind one of the buttons.

   Wear and tear has worn and torn a hole where the button has clung steadfastly, stubbornly, to the spot on the shirt where it was originally sewn, lo these many decades ago. You don’t get workmanship like that anymore. Like a centuries-old sequoia hit by a windstorm, the button has held fast, rooted in the only place it has ever called home, as an abyss forms around its refusal to give way to time and circumstance. The hole, witness to yet another respect in which shirt and owner resemble one another, was camouflaged by a tie, and can be mended, but probably signals the effective end of my show business career.

   Then again, maybe it doesn’t. If I know my owner, he’ll probably drag me to many a film shoot after this, unmended, in the hopes of subversively creating a compelling back-story for some nameless figure who appears, then disappears from view in half a blink. Some day in the near future, I may adorn the torso of Slouchy Loser in the Fourth Cubicle from Where the Dialogue Is Happening, Who Hasn’t Done His Laundry in Six Weeks, or Disillusioned, Unambitious Partner of the Lead Detective on the Elite Sleep-Deprived Slob Squad. It’s these little touches that make an actor’s craft a thing of wonder, and liven up many an otherwise routine cinematic effort.

   So maybe I do have a future after all, and can look forward to many more years of brief cameos, as my owner dodders from middle-aged obscurity into obscure senescence. Perhaps I’ll even manage to survive long enough to ease into the mature, weighty roles that culminate a long and distinguished career, such as Former Dress Shirt Worn by Old Man While Gardening, or Shirt Some Poor Stiff Gets Buried In. Until then, as long as I can avoid the rag-bag or a trip to Value Village³, I’ll be happy.

NOTES

1. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a publicly-funded radio and television service whose principal function is to remind Canadians when hockey season is.

2. A competition which pits teams of too-clever-by-half adolescents against one another to test their ability to recall reams of arcane and pointless trivia. Roughly equivalent to Top of the Form in the U.K., College Bowl in the U.S., or the General Assembly of the United Nations.

3. A chain of second-hand stores whose inventory consists of charitable donations from the general public. Just slightly more upscale than a Salvation Army Thrift Shop, and just slightly less upscale than a K-Mart.

No schmooze is good schmooze…



   Salutations, aficionados of the thespian muse:

   While Sparky is out obtaining competing bids on what he’s convinced is an first edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but which I’m pretty sure is a mildewed high school Latin textbook, and which he claimed by the ancient salvage law of found-in-plain-sight under a pile of other books in the Cousins apartment, I thought it à propos to share with you a few more of our sometimes-willing host’s musings on life in the arts. You may insert my standard disclaimers and disavowals as to content into what you read below.

Uncle Fun

 As an alleged entertainer, I am often asked by non-performers whether I ever suffer from stage fright. I tell them yes, but only on two occasions—whenever I talk to other people in show business, and whenever they talk to me. Although people in ‘the biz’ (as people in ‘the biz’ like to call ‘the biz’) seem outwardly approachable and eminently gregarious, the truth is that what seem like casual chats among show folk are in reality minefields strewn with hidden perils. A silent, unspoken, unwritten (or written, but badly in need of a rewrite) code of discourse governs all verbal transactions conducted between those who put on shows, from the most elaborate Hollywood blockbuster to the humblest Sunday-school Christmas pageant. Dollar signs and zeroes are all that distinguish the content of what Brad and Angelina say to their peers and what one six-year-old in a bathrobe, holding a shepherd’s crook lashed together from a hockey stick and a coat hanger, says to another.

   This means that, no matter how small the scope of your entertainment ambitions, you must always be on your guard. Show business protocol dictates that there are three things you must never say to another showbiz person: 1. that you are currently out of work; 2. that you have no prospects for work once your current work is finished; and 3. that you absolutely, positively, and beyond all shadow of a doubt, hate the guts of the person you’re speaking to. The likelihood that at least two of the three conditions just mentioned will be true at any given time makes conversation difficult, if not utterly impossible. To get around the prospect of unending silence whenever two or three are gathered together in the name of Showbiz, entertainment tradition has woven a sophisticated latticework of euphemisms around each of these potential conversation-stoppers. Using any of the phrases listed below in place of what you really mean will maintain the flow of dialogue long enough for a more suitable, and neutral, topic of conversation to crop up.

   So, for “I’M NOT WORKING RIGHT NOW”, you can safely substitute the following:

“I HAVE A COUPLE OF PROJECTS ON THE GO.”

It’s always important to have a couple of imaginary projects ‘on the go’ in the world of showbiz discourse. Show people all know that if you have only one project, it will fall through. Multiple projects can all fall through as well, of course, but at least it makes it look like you’re trying to beat the odds.

“I’M TAKING A BREAK TO RECHARGE MY BATTERIES. MY LAST FEW PROJECTS TOOK A LOT OUT OF ME.”

This one has the added plus of making it sound like you may just have been in rehab, which, while a career-ender in most other professions, may be just the thing to jump-start a flagging career in show business.

“I’VE BEEN TRYING TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH MY FAMILY.”

This is one that politicians often use. As a consequence, everybody sees through this one for the out-and-out lie it is. The only thing that people without jobs do when they spend time with their families is worry where the money’s going to come from to support their families. Avoid this one except in an extreme emergency, such as when you’re talking to another out-of-work showbiz type who won’t shut up about spending time with their family.

   For “I HAVE NOTHING LINED UP AFTER MY CURRENT PROJECT”, you can substitute:

“I HAVE A COUPLE OF PROJECTS I’M CONSIDERING.”

Note the similarity to “I have a couple of projects on the go.” The vital aspect of both is ambiguity. You can’t appear to be actually working on two things at once, or nobody will ever hire you again, for fear that you might bail out on them in the middle of a project due to other commitments. Promising to commit to more than one thing at a time, then bailing on all offers except the most attractive one, however, is a cherished and time-honoured show business tradition. It applies equally well to an entertainer’s work and personal relationships.

“I’M THINKING ABOUT DOING SOME TRAVELLING.”

This is an almost sure-fire subject-changer. Showbiz people love to travel more than any other way of avoiding an honest day’s work. The only trick is to have an answer ready when someone asks you where you’re going. Your best bet is to mention some far-flung part of the world that showbiz people don’t know much about, so they don’t realize that the people there resent lazy, sponging tourists who have nothing better to do than to disrupt everyone else’s honest day’s work every bit as much as the people here do. The entire continent of Africa is fair game, as is much of Asia.

“I’VE GOT SOME GRANT APPLICATIONS THAT I’M WAITING FOR WORD ON.”

The wonderful part of this one is that when your non-existent grants fail to materialize, you can blame the government. That’s a tune that everybody grooves to, showbiz or no showbiz.

   The last one—“I HATE YOUR GUTS”—is a little tricky to find a substitute for. Showbiz conversations contain almost as much thinly-veiled aggression as conversations among academics, or members of church social groups. The challenge is not to provoke an open confrontation, while still making it clear through the meaning embedded in your message, that you consider the other person essentially beneath contempt. A simple “I’M SORRY—I CAN’T REMEMBER YOUR NAME” can keep things from turning into High Noon by making it seem as though the other person isn’t important enough to you to be remembered, much less hated. There is a danger in over-using this one, though, because show business types come into contact with enough other people that they often forget the names of some of the ones they actually like. Three other ways of saying “I hate you” are much more effective:

“SORRY—I FELT A BUZZ—I’M WAITING FOR A CALL FROM MY AGENT. I GOTTA TAKE THIS.”

This is an up-to-date, high-tech, and extremely useful way of dismissing and belittling someone you don’t like. As a brush-off, it has the old-fashioned technique of “looking into the middle distance and pretending to see someone more important that you have to talk to” beat by a mile. Invoking a fictional agent has the added advantage of making it seem as though you’re more worth considering for work than the person you’re talking to.

   A variation on this is the old reliable “OH—HEY—I WAS GOING TO CALL/WRITE/E-MAIL/TEXT YOU, BUT…ONE THING AND ANOTHER…AND, WELL, YOU KNOW, LIFE …” This is best delivered sheepishly, haltingly, with the same tone of voice you’d use to address a priest, rabbi, or other member of the clergy who’s just seen you coming out of a bordello with your fly down. This tactic elicits sympathy, and puts a person you really don’t want to talk to on the defensive long enough for you to run for cover before all hell breaks loose.

   If all else fails, the gold standard for expressing show business hatred is still the tried-and-true “I SAW THAT THING YOU WERE IN.”  Not following that statement with instant, fulsome, glowing praise is a universal showbiz code. It means that the phrase that should be read into the silence is “and it was awful.” A friend will recognize the silence as their cue to reply along the lines of “Oh, God—wasn’t it awful?” while denigrating their own performance, talent, intelligence, sanity, weight, fashion sense, and any other aspects of themselves they deem germane to the subject. This becomes your opportunity to come back with “no, you were great in it” (whether you thought so or not), and pile on the compliments. An enemy in show business, on the other hand, will know you’ve just delivered the verbal equivalent of a rabbit punch using a lead-lined boxing glove with a scarcely-concealed horseshoe in it, and find something else to talk about, unless they feel like trading actual punches with you. The catch is that every now and then you meet someone you really can’t stand who thinks you’re their best friend. My best advice is to go with the flow and compliment them as if they were your friend when they start telling you how awful the project was, and they were for being in it. You might actually find yourself making another friend out of the whole deal.

   If none of the three above conditions (lack of current work, lack of future work, extreme personal hatred) applies to your situation, you may simply wish to terminate your conversation with a show business person (friend or foe) due to sheer boredom. In that case, the ultimate ‘abort’ button for a showbiz conversation is a simple “I’VE BEEN BUSY LATELY WORKING ON MY GRADUATE THESIS.” This doesn’t have to be true, but it sends the message that what you’re about to say involves extremely specialized, probably extremely dull knowledge that will reveal an area of the other person’s ignorance. Show folk don’t mind you reminding them that they’re ignorant, as long as you can entertain them while you’re doing it.

   And here we stop, since Mr. Cousins has yet to defend the thesis in question (which has something to do with how someone who once met Peter Sellers invented the modern world by proxy, or some such). Common sense prohibits us from leaving ammunition lying around in a public place for his examiners to use to blast holes in his monograph at a later date. Those of you who wish to collar him and beg a brief précis of the current state of his research can catch up with him a couple of months hence after one or other of his performances of The Best Audience Ever at the IndyFringe Festival  in Indianapolis. Find your way to the Cook Theater in the Indiana Landmarks Center at any of the following dates and times, and all will be revealed:

Saturday, August 20, 4:30 p.m.

Sunday, August 21, 3:00 p.m.

Wednesday, August 24, 9:00 p.m.

Thursday, August 25, 6:00 p.m.

Friday, August 26, 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, August 28, l0:30 p.m.

   I’ll be there…apparently, I’m in the show. Sparky is as well, so I guess it’s time I had another look to see which mound of paper the first drafts of our dialogue may be poking out of.

   I leave you then, with the traditional entertainment industry valediction, “may your residual cheques arrive in time to pay for your funeral.”

Uncle Fun

A mind is a terrible thing to mind...

Happy Father’s Day, but that’s beside the point:

   Our friend Cousins has been otherwise occupied, not to say preoccupied, recently. While going through his goods and chattels for items with potential resale value, Sparky and I stumbled upon an illuminating text (this is as opposed to an illuminated text, which is a medieval manuscript with lavishly-coloured illustrations, but that’s also beside the point). What you read below will, I hope, furnish valuable insights into the workings of the mind Sparky and I (among others) use as a pied-à-terre. At least now you’ll have some idea of what we have to put up with on a daily basis.

Uncle Fun

   Participating in a theatre festival, where you’re expected to rub elbows until they chafe down to the bone, is a good reminder (as if I needed one) that I am not at all at ease in large social gatherings. As well as possessing all the ebullient affability of a particularly taciturn cinder block, I have a natural disposition for sensory overload, which kicks in whenever two distinct conversations are going on within a block or two of me. The buzz of a chatting crowd effectively paralyzes some section of my cerebral cortex, mesmerizing me into a stream of free-associations which come from somewhere just north-east of the low-rent district of my subconscious. If you’re at a party, and see me gazing blankly off towards a horizon no-one else can see, I’m not being anti-social. I’ve just zoned out, and am doing my best Houdini-style escape act from a Gordian knot of thoughts that I’ve become entangled in against my will. While doing so, I may be simultaneously:

-Trying to piece together a single song out of the only fragments I can remember of several songs I’ve heard while driving with my wife when she was listening to her favourite country music station on the car radio.

-Mulling over the prospects for unsaleable TV pilots I occasionally come up with, such as:

Cole’s Law: about a deli owner who moonlights as a private detective (“He’s dishing up a side order of justice”)

Boyle’s Law: about a chemist who specialized in gas-spectrum chromatography before becoming a district attorney (“He’ll turn the heat up on hostile witnesses, and put the pressure on the criminals”)

A quiz show called Are You Really That Stupid?, hosted by Don Rickles.

Celebrity Pie-in-the-Face: people who just won’t get out of the public eye get a kisser full of custard cream, as voted on by you, the viewing audience. (There will be a weekly appearance by at least one person named Kardashian.)

-Wondering if there’s a version of jiu-jitsu for the goyim called Gentile Jitsu.

-Wondering how badly the B’nai Brith and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League will want to have me skinned alive for wondering that.

-Thinking about how the Atlanta Braves are really the Cincinnati Reds, since the original Cincinnati Red Stockings (the world’s first professional baseball team) moved lock, stock, and barrel to Boston, where they later became one of the charter members of the National League. They stayed there until 1953, when they moved to Milwaukee, then moved in 1966 to Atlanta.

-Wondering if anyone else in the world cares about this.

-Thinking about all the gadgets Wile E. Coyote used that weren’t from Acme, like the Ace Electric Motor, the power source for this contraption:

- (A related thought) Wondering why ‘Fleet-Foot’ brand Jet-Propelled Tennis Shoes never caught on.

-Trying to decide whether I really like or really hate the uniforms the California Golden Seals wore from 1974 to 1976, which look like the UCLA football Bruins had a yard sale after a bad experience with a dry cleaner (this internal debate has been going on for well over 35 years, with little sign of a resolution in sight).

-Wondering why Episcopalians, Anglicans, and C. of E.’s don’t have their own version of the Borscht Belt, a proving ground and hotbed for aspiring professional comedians.

-Remembering all the Episcopalians, Anglicans, and C. of E.’s I’ve ever met, and forgetting all about it.

   Experience has taught me to keep my counsel when the moviola inside my head starts spinning out of control like this. Otherwise, disastrous faux pas are liable to occur:

PARTYGOER: Oh, hi there, buddy. So what’s new with you?

ME: ‘Fleet-Foot’ brand Jet-Propelled Tennis Shoes. Why did they never catch on? Would white skates have made the California Golden Seals’ aqua-coloured uniforms better, or worse? Episcopalian Borscht Belt.

PARTYGOER: Uh…yeah.  Hey—isn’t that Whatshername over there? See ya.

   So that’s why I try to stay unobtrusively in the background when I have to go to parties. It’s not that I’m difficult, or find other people difficult to deal with. It’s just that there’s a lot going on inside of me that no-one should have to deal with—me included.

I LIKE that…no-one shood otta hafta deal with me an' Uncle Fun an’ Moose an’ all? That’s rich. Why’ncha have a lissen’a the rest’a whut’s goin’ on inside this straitjacket-bait’s hollow crayneeum what WE hafta try an' avoid:

An old radio sketch by Cousins and Faught, entitled (for no immediately discernible reason) "Sock Fumes"

So now ya know why ya don’t wanna talk ta him at parties, er mebbe anywhere at all.

Sparky







The Hockey Snooze (or, Ain’t It Over YET?)

Hello, hockey fans, including fans of the defunct Atlanta Thrashers:

   This posting is one of those none-too-rare occasions when Sparky feels the need to vent. I have no vested interest in the subject matter of his little jeremiad. As far as the Stanley Cup finals are concerned, I am strictly neutral, neither Boston nor Vancouver having been given long enough pre-season odds to win the Cup for a judicious wager placed with borrowed money to have been worth the while of any sporting gentleman of merit. As such, I dissociate and distance myself from any comments he may make that may be construed as inflammatory, libelous, or even true. There is, after all, more to life than spectator sports. For one thing, there’s collecting the receipts from them.

   Yours as an amateur of professional handicapping,

Uncle Fun

P.S. Those of you who are Vancouver Canuck fans may be interested to know that I have a line on authenticated locks of Richard Brodeur’s hair. For those of you who may prefer the Boston Bruins, I’m under negotiations to acquire the rights to a share of Derek Sanderson’s last authenticated sideburns.

Nevur mind all that. I jus’ gots one thing ta say about all’a theez Stanley Cupped finuls we’ve bin havin’ lately what where one team gets th’ other on th’ ropes an’ can’t put ‘em away an’ it goes seven games an’ it could go seventy-seven if they let it ‘cuz ya know it’s only gonna go back an’ forth without one team lookin’ any bettr’n the other…er any other team what izzent there, fer that mattur.

It ain’t drama. It’s jus’ dumb.

Winnin’s s’posed ta be on account’a how yer better’n th’ other guy, not on account’a luck. If ya win th’ first two games of a best’a seven, ya should have th’ other team’s goose cook’d like a well-cook’d goose already. Ditto if ya get ta three wins b’fore they do. If ya don’t, ya prolly jus’ won all yer games by luck, an’ don’ deserve ta win at anythin’ other’n scratch-an’-win maybe.

So what I perpose ta fix what’s bin broken with th’ hockey playoffs this entire milenniyum is one er both’a two things:

One: Game Seven means sticks in th’ centre. Choose two teams at random frum th’ players what cooden get it done proper-like b’fore, an’ play a one-game-winnur-take-all. 60 minnuts—no stop time. No sense purlongin’ th’ agony. No overtime er nuthin’, neither. Tie game means th’ end fer everyone. Boo hoo, too bad so sad, bettur luck next time, here’s a copy of our home game an’ a year’s supply’a Rice-a-Roni, go away, an’ don’ come back.

Two: ya still gotta win four games ta win th’ Cup, but ya also gotta win by two, jus’ like in ping-pong. If two teams keep ping-pongin’ like that without neither of them gettin’ up by two b’fore trainin’ camps open in th’ fall, there ain’t no Stanley Cup ta hand out in that year. Simple as that. If this happens maybe th’ next six, seven years conseckutively in a row, maybe th’Nobel Prize-winnin’ brain trust what runs th’ N.H. of L. theez days’ll begin ta git th’ message.

If not, then, maybe what they otta do is ta hand th’ Stanley Cup outright ta th’ Montreal Maroons. There’s no way a buncha actually dead guys’d make th’ sport look any worse’n th’ live stiffs they gots playin’ it right now.

Anyway, that’s jus’ my humble opinion. I ain’t no hockey expurt what’s never had no valuable experience an’ expurteeze, like ya git frum losin’ a playoff series ‘cuz ya don’t know what th’ diffuruntz b’tween six an’ seven looks like.

The Great Hockey Guru and his moment of glory

Sparky

P.S. An’ while we’re on th’ subject of Tim Thomust (an’ I am now), pardun my French, but what’s th’ big deal? Google some videos sometime’a this guy name’a ‘Gump Worsley’. He wuz two-foot-six-inches high, built like a watermellun, older’n dirt what’s had ta go to a old-age home fer old dirt, his equipment alone weighted 3 times what Tim Thomust weights with his equipment on, an’ he looks like a ballareena compar’t ta Thomust. Oh yeah—an’ th’ fat ol’ gardun gnome could stop th’ puck without losin’ track’a where his net is (I hear that’s th’ importantest part’a th’ rink ta keep tabs on if yer a goalie.) Ta sum up: Tim Thomust + better techneek an’ lots more talunt  = tubby outta shape stumpy li’l ol’ grandpa, only not so good. That’s all I gotta say, other than I’ll give you he’s as good as goalies get theez days, so they really all otta be bettur.

Mes amis,

   I have my own two cents’ worth to put in. I wouldn’t put as much as two cents on it, but my money’s on Vancouver to win Game Seven, for one simple reason. I’ve seen both Vigneault and Julien coach for years in Montreal. Neither of them had a clue how to get the right players on the ice away from home without the last change on a faceoff. Perhaps a neutral-site game with no home team, played under pre-World War I rules, with no substitutions except in case of fatal injury, is in order to settle this farce of a final once and for all.

Fant’homme Sortilège LeRevenant

Forum Ghost (on enforced sabbatical)





O, for an hour of Danny Gallivan again...

Dear Friends and Digital Neighbours,

   Today’s missive is a guest column. A longtime acquaintance of mine requested a small sliver of our chunk of cyberspace to unburden himself, and naturally I acceded to his request.

Uncle Fun

Mes amis,

   They may be handing out the Stanley Cup tonight. This makes me sad.

   It always makes me sad when they hand out the Stanley Cup and I’m not there.  I used to be a regular guest at the ceremony back in the old days. You may have heard tell of the ghosts who intervened in ways beyond human comprehension to deliver championship after championship to the Montreal Canadiens when they played at the old Forum. The Canadiens have fallen on hard times these past fifteen years or so, and a lot of this has to do, mes amis, with the fact that they have fallen from favour with us Forum Ghosts.

   Can you blame us, though? They did move from our mutual home without so much as a by-your-leave from us. All would have been forgiven if they had simply chosen to call their new home ‘The Forum’…‘New Forum’, ‘New and Improved Forum’, ‘Forum Lite’, ‘Forumette’, ‘Forum 2.0’—anything with ‘Forum’ in it, and all would have been forgiven. Instead, they chose to call their new arena ‘The Molson Centre’. Did they honestly expect the Forum Ghosts to move with them? Beer and spirits don’t mix. Besides, my kind is more than just a bit literal-minded. If you’re a Forum Ghost, you’re a Forum Ghost. You can’t be a Molson Centre Ghost. That’s someone else’s job to fill. There’s such a thing as respect within the profession, even in the ethereal realm.

   To make matters worse, they didn’t exactly endear themselves to us by changing the name of the new building yet again…and still not to anything with even the remotest connection to the word ‘Forum’. The Bell Centre? What ghost worth his salt could stand for that? Besides the fact that the word ‘bell’ is a profanity among us—people are always ringing bells in churches and whatnot, in the mistaken belief that it gets rid of ghosts—telephone companies have it in for our kind. Anytime something goes wrong with your call, they say it’s ‘ghosting on the line’. What would a ghost be doing on the telephone? Making a call on a ghost-to-ghost hookup, I suppose? It’s not as if we couldn’t just pop in through a wall whenever we wanted to chat with you. So, naturally we, The Forum Ghosts, have yet to make the move from Atwater and Rue Ste.-Catherine to the new rink by the old Windsor Station.

   So what has become of our beloved home, The Forum? See for yourself:



   It’s a multiplex—a God-forsaken MULTIPLEX—with, to add insult to injury, a bowling alley in it. I can tell you, mes amis, it’s a more than bit of a comedown from guiding a Guy Lafleur slapshot into an unguarded corner of the opponents’ net during the waning moments of a playoff game to helping one of a group of Presbyterian lay readers on a bus tour from New Hampshire convert an easy 4-7 spare for the first time in his 40-some-odd years of recreational play.

   And none of us is exactly thrilled with the new name of this place, either. It’s called ‘The Pepsi Forum’. That’s not a name for a building, mes amis—it’s a name for a soft-drink taste-testing focus group. Still, it’s better than ‘Bell Centre’, which sounds like a toll-free helpline for people with complaints about their cellular reception.

   You think I’m kidding, don’t you? Well, mes amis, the sad truth is that getting the local sporting spirits on your side has a lot to do with the name of the building you play in. Why are the evil Boston Bruins doing so well this year? They’ve engaged in a deliberate campaign of misdirection. ‘TD Garden’ sounds like a football stadium, not an arena.  It’s my opinion that they’re leaching luck away from the New England Patriots.

   So now you know why the Stanley Cup will not only be handed to some team other than Les Canadiens for yet another year, but why that team (regardless of the winner of the finals) will be coached by someone who spent a significant amount of time with the Canadiens, and had nothing resembling a championship to show for it. We could have made either Alain Vigneault or Claude Julien just as lucky as they have been this year when they were coaching the Canadiens, believe you me. We simply had better things to do. And we will continue to have better things to do until the management of the Club de Hockey Canadien realizes that history is important. History is all you’ve got going for you when you’re a ghost. I mean, it’s a secure form of work, but there’s no future in it.

  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make sure that at least some of the audience leaving Kung Fu Panda 2 thinks they got their money’s worth.

   Yours with heartfelt regret,

Fant’homme Sortilège LeRevenant

Forum Ghost (on hiatus)

 

Sound…? Fury…? Like there's a difference…?

Hello, computur-generated audeeyunce:

On b’half’a th’ whole Uncle Fun and Sparky Team (i.e., me an’ Uncle Fun), I’d like ta apologize fer the erratickicityness of our reesunt postin’ skedjull. It’s bin difficult getting’ acksess ta Mister Kuzzens’ computur lately, on account of how he’s bin so busy usin’ it ta dezine sounds an’ other noises fer a real live talking theetur play with words an’ actors and everything. (I kin always tell when he’s doin’ this, becuz th’ swearin’ frum b’hind th’ office door takes on a more despurt an’ angwished tone.)

I thot ya otta know some of what he duz b’sides check his change jar ta see if we’ve bin inta it, so I wrote up some notes what I took dicktashun of th’ last time Mr. Kuzz talked in my gen’rul direckshun on th’ subject’a th’ topic’a sound dezine. Uncle Fun insisted that he prufreed it, fer th’ sake of what he calls ‘claritee’, but I don’ think there’d’a bin muchuva problem if we’d’a let it go out as iz. I’m as good a spelur as ya need ta be theez days, pervided ya takes th’ time te reed funeticully.

But, I wuz outvoted, one ta one (plus Moose, present but not voting on account’a she wuz busy keepin’ me in a half-Nelson ‘til th’ votin’ wuz declared offishul), so heer it iz, with reevishuns:

 A SOUND DESIGNER PREPARES

   Sound design is often overlooked, but it can be a vital factor in a theatrical production. It is probably not going too far to say that the success or failure of a play hinges on the effectiveness of a theatre’s sound system in conveying the standard pre-show “please turn off all cell phones, pagers, and texting devices” message audibly.

   With that in mind, what follows is a rough outline of the living hell…I’m sorry—the process—which a sound designer goes through while developing the initial glimmer of an idea into a fully and gloriously executed theatrical soundscape. Experience has taught me that this process can be broken down into a few easy-to-follow (but not so easy to get ahead of) steps. Have you got your pencils and papers ready? Let’s begin with Step 1…

1. The sound designer receives the script from the director, and makes a mental note to read and re-read it, paying close attention for any and all stage directions and lines of dialogue that might indicate possible sound cues.

2. A good deal of time passes, often up to several months.

3. The sound designer looks at a calendar, realizes that there are now only six weeks until opening night, and that the director needs rough sound cues in a week’s time.

4. Four or five days pass.

5. The sound designer looks at the script for the first time…and discovers that there are about 175 sound cues in the thing.

6. The sound designer takes the phone off the hook and works for 36 to 48 consecutive hours assembling rough sound cues, pausing only to make numerous fresh pots of coffee.

7. The sound designer comes to rehearsal with the sound cues. The director says that things are running slow, and that the cast isn’t ready to begin integrating sound into the performance yet.

8. The sound designer returns home that night to find a phone message (or e-mail) from the director, who says that the entire concept of the play has changed, and that this will require a whole new set of sound cues.

9. The sound designer spends a day-and-a-half wondering what this means, since the director can’t possibly have had time to listen to the ‘old’ cues.

10. The sound designer begins work on the new sound cues. This is very much like Step 6, except that the coffee is now supplemented by something from the liquor store. As a result, up to a quarter of the original sound cues are permanently altered or lost when the designer clicks ‘Save’ on a digital editing program at the wrong time.

11. The sound designer goes to a meeting with the director, new sound cues in hand. The concept of the play has been changed back to the original one.

12. A combination of Steps 6 and 10. For the word ‘supplemented’ in Step 10, read the word ‘replaced’.

13. A studio session with one of the actors from the play, to record some lines heard in someone’s mind, or echoing from the past, or some other cheap theatrical device the playwright thinks he or she has just invented. The actor, who has been word-perfect in rehearsals up to this point, can’t get through three syllables without muffing two of them. Takes that come close to being usable are ruined when the actor’s stagey gestures cause hands, feet, and assorted other body parts to come noisily in contact with tables, music stands, chairs, pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac that didn’t even seem to be in the studio when everyone arrived, and, of course, the microphone. The sound of rustling paper, as the actor constantly shuffles the pages of the script, underscores everything, creating a sonic background roughly akin to a distant brush fire. After approximately thirty-seven minutes (twenty-nine of which have been spent getting the actor settled in the studio, listening to four or five of his or her ‘best’ anecdotes, and finding him or her a more comfortable chair) the actor remembers an overdue lunch date, and leaves. His or her last words are usually fairly close to “you can fix all that in editing, right?”

14. The director has decided to try another concept, which is a combination of the old concept and the new concept, with some as-yet-undetermined third element thrown in. In practice, this generally involves taking each of the old sound cues and combining part of it with part of one of the new ones, while making the finished product sound as much as if it had been recorded inside an out-of-phase dryer in a laundromat as possible.

15. Whatever time remains before the final week of technical rehearsals is essentially Step 10, with the following key additions:

a. Without prior notice, theatre management will decree that the theatre’s existing sound system (the unique qualities of which the entire design is based around) be gutted, and immediately replaced with an ‘improved’ (i.e. astronomically expensive) system. This will require advanced degrees in computer programming and electrical engineering (and possibly a commercial pilot’s license) just to turn on properly. When in the hands of a fully-qualified operator (the training for which has the minimum prerequisites of a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a dozen years’ experience in deep-space radio telemetry, and is only offered once a decade at M.I.T.), the system will display the fantastic ability to deliver lush, densely-constructed sound which is every bit the equal of the finished product that could be yielded using two shiny new tin cans and a slightly stretchy piece of string.

b. At least one member of the cast will quit. Most likely, it will be the one who was at the recording session. No recording studio within a fifty-mile radius of the county line will be available for the next eleven-and-a-half months.

c. There will be three more changes to the concept of the play.

d. Management may also impose another complete change of sound system. This is a near-certainty if the play is the last one of the season, and the theatre has several idle months thereafter during which renovations and major changes could be effected without disrupting ongoing productions.

e. In true dramatic fashion, the director’s original concept of the play will win out in the end—and at the last minute.

f. The sound designer will sign a carefully-worded and post-dated suicide note, which has been prepared in draft form for all occasions, with boxes for check marks next to the appropriate contributing factors in the final decision to end it all.

16. Technical rehearsals begin. Absolutely nothing goes right for an entire week.

17. Opening night. Depending on the technical complexity of the play, the results will range from a mistake-free show (probably caused by a power failure half an hour before curtain, resulting in the cancellation of the performance) to something more or less like any given technical rehearsal of the previous week. Regardless of what happens, there will be at least three standing ovations (the power failure will get four, along with bouquets of flowers delivered to the home of the president of the local electric company). First-night reviews will single out the lighting, set, and all other technical aspects of the show for praise, with the notable exception of the sound design, which will not be mentioned at all. The title of the play will be something along the lines of People Hearing Strange Sounds Constantly Coming Out Of Nowhere, While Doing Very Little Else. On those occasions where the title is more along the lines of Everything Happens in an Eerie Silence Where Nobody Hears Anything At All, reviewers will unanimously criticize the sound design for being unimaginative and dull.

   Er, yes, well…there may have been just a hint of hyperbole in our friend Cousins’ recollections. No matter—one of our other friends who is decidedly NOT dull (cue the shameless plug) is Mr. Kurt Fitzpatrick. His multimedia multi-character Kurt-stravaganza entitled The Last Straight Man in Theatre opens a six-performance run at the Montreal Fringe Festival tonight.  I’d call it a one-man show, but since he adopts a score of different guises while performing opposite filmed versions of them, it qualifies as something more than strictly a one-man effort. This is part of a summer tour in which Kurt will be bringing his trilogy of solo works to various festivals around the North American continent…not all to the same one, so if you want to catch his personal Ring Cycle, you’ll have to follow him around. Technically, this won’t qualify as stalking if you cite the information Kurt himself supplies on his peregrinations to the public at large:

Kurt Fitzpatrick's 2011 Touring Schedule

   You can get to know more about Kurt by entering his website through the front lobby:

kurtfitzpatrick.com

    And with that, I bid you all a happy, restful, and pleasant good weekend. Enjoy the good weather if you get it, and if you don’t get any, try to enjoy that, too.

Uncle Fun

A POSTSCRIPT BY MOOSE

   Just for the record, I did NOT put Sparky in a half-Nelson.

   It was a modified hammerlock. And he didn’t seem to mind at the time.

That’s b’side th’ point. You wuz impingin’ on my democratic rights. Th’ state haz no place in th’ breadbaskets’a th’ nation.



How do ya get ta Carnegie Hall…? Funny ya should ask…

Greetin’s, Internet Folks:

T’day, I’m flyin’ th’ blog solo, thru th’ courtesy of me figgerin’ out how ta jam th’ lock on Mr. Kuzzens’ office door so’s Uncle Fun’ can’t jimmy it so easy.

A lotta my fans is continyully askin’ me, “Sparky, if you hadn’t of become such a world-famously unknown cartoon star, what wouldja’ve rather oughta bin?” It oughta come as no surprise ta those as knows me fer th’ gennelmun a’ refinement an’ culture that I am what that my answer iz that I’d have rather oughta have been a famous musical composur.

Th’ answer ta th’ question “Why?” is simpull. Yer actors an’ so forth may get th’ red-carpet treetmunt, an’ a lotta fancy awards…

…but with yer composurs, it’s babes all th’ way.

B’sides, composurs lead such varied an’ interestin’ lives. Fer exampull, Chicken Khachaturian, whose birthday it wuz on Joon th’ 6th, which is why I thot of writin’ this here postin’, invented not only the Italian food dish that bears his name, but also wrote th’ vict’ry dance fer th’Buffalo Sabres.

It’s almost as good as th’ goal-scorin’ song fer th’ old Hartford Whalers, which I don’t know who wrote it, but you kin listen to it, if yer brave enuf:

Hartford Whalers' fight song

Speakin’a whales, th’ composur’a Th’ Magic Fluke an’ Costly Fan Tootsie wuz known in his wild youth as Bikegang Amadeus Mozart.

You’ve also prolly heard’a th’ Russian pharmacist who wrote Th’ Swancracker an’ Nut Lake. He develupped a old home remuddy made with a blend’a Indiyun spices, which is known by his own name as Chai Cough Syrup.

Another famous composur hadda pet schnauzer what helped him write tone poems like The Girl With The Slacks in Th’ Air an’ Mal de Mer. Becuz’a this, he wuz known as Debussy Dawg.

There’s a lot more where this came frum, but I hear th’ door knob rattlin’, so I guess I’d better go. If ya wanna check out th’ work of a real live composer what writes music an’ stuff, you should maybe look up Alex Eddington, who is a lotta neat things besides just bein’ a composer. He’s even let Mr. Kuzzens do a aminated cartoon version’a one of his vocal compusishuns fer voice an’ voices:

Alex Eddington's "Countdown"

‘Til next time, that’s all fer now,

Sparky