Republic of Doyle long trailer

I get a lot of traffic coming through the blog these days searching for "Republic of Doyle". I guess that's a good sign for the CBC, although they went and killed the video trailer on their website for some reason shortly after I linked to it. Stupid, but there's the CBC for you.

Anyway, Robert found two new YouTube links for the show (plus an interesting idea for a travel show that's just under the trailer for "The Republic of Doyle - a show about finding the best places in the world to go skinny dipping). So thank you, Robert. I will now shamelessly steal one of those YouTube videos and put up here.

This is the longer of the two and contains pretty much all the information in the first one. The shorter one is just a touch snappier. Regardless, it looks fun. And honestly, if you can make Gordan Pinsent a reoccurring character, I'm going to be following you for quite some time. The best thing about "Due South" was always Pinsent's appearances.

Here's hoping this is as fun as it looks. Although I do find all the gunfire amusing. I suspect there are more bullets fired in this trailer than in an entire year in St. John's.



Last Five
1. Don't give up (live) - Peter Gabriel*
2. Night watch - Tegan and Sara
3. Science fiction double feature show - Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies
4. There is (live) - Alison Crowe
5. I want it all - Queen

Air Canada comes to town

So in a shocking turn of events Air Canada announced it's going to start flying to Iqaluit starting March 2010. They're using a Bombardier CRJ-705 jet. This is something I've been wanting to happen for some time, so this should make me quite happy, right?

Oddly enough, I'm kind of underwhelmed by the news. It looks good at first blush, but when you dig a little deeper it's a disappointing launch by Air Canada.

First of all, in a very rare instance of the message boards on a news story being useful, several commentators mentioned Air Canada has been having all kinds of problems with their flights out of Yellowknife when the temperatures dip below -35C. If that's the case, Air Canada is only going to be able to run from March until November anyway. And even then they're going to have problems on some days.

Let me tell you, they're going to have a customer service nightmare up here if there are people standing up in the airport waiting for the flight to leave and being told its too cold while friends hop on a First Air and Canadian North flights and head south. I wouldn't want to be a customer service rep while that's happening.

Secondly, their flights are arriving and leaving at the Iqaluit airport at the same time as Canadian North and First Air. Yes, Air Canada is going to be taking away passengers from the other two airlines. But at peak times it's going to be madness in that airport. Three airplanes loading passengers and luggage at the same time. It can get crazy with just two planes. Three is going to be extra special fun, I can tell right now.

But the final thing that does little for me is the price. After you throw in fees and taxes the cost of the ticket will be about $1,500. With the other two airlines charging about $1,900 for a return ticket to Ottawa, it might seem like a great deal. Except, there are seat sales around that price a couple of times a year. And both the Nunavut Employees Union and the teachers' union offer up codes that give discounts that large. So it's not that hard with a bit of digging to get a ticket for around $1,500.

So if you're not saving that much money, then Air Canada isn't as big a deal. The service is going to be better on Canadian North and First Air. Plus you get a 70 pound per bag allowance with those two airlines and I'm assuming Air Canada is going to stick with their usual 50 pound limit. That's a big deal, especially when coming up from Ottawa.

I think Air Canada is going to be disappointed with the response to their coming to Iqaluit if that's the best price they have to offer. They're going to need to drop their ticket prices another $300, at least, before they're going to seriously catch the attention of people up here.

Last Five
1. Firewalker - Liz Phair
2. Carolina drama - The Racounteurs
3. Rag & bone - The White Stripes*
4. The frog prince - Keane
5. Life in the D - Brendan Benson

A change is comin'

For those of you wondering how things are going with the house, well, we're currently in lawyer limbo. I've emailed and asked if there is anything else I should be doing, but I've been told this is just the process and it's now hurry up and wait. I would bug more, but I have the sneaking suspicion I'm being charged $100 every time she reads an email and probably another $100 if she needs to answer it.

I would say more disparaging things about lawyers, but I have four good friends who are lawyers. Once is the nicest guy in the world. The other three are among the most terrifying women I know and I try my best not to cross them if at all possible. And yet, I have tremendous affection for all three of them. Yes, I'm odd that way.

Anyway, I'm hoping to hear from the lawyer this week who will give us good news that things are progressing smoothly and that it looks like we will get the house on December 1. As Cathy noted today, it's only 22 days until closing. Time is flying like a fruit, as it were.

Although we have have made some progress on the furniture front. We had been planning a fairly massive furniture shopping spree in Ottawa over Easter break because we don't have much in the way of furnishings. Plus, it didn't look like the current home owners were going to part with much of their furniture. However, after getting an estimate from a moving company on how much it would cost to ship it out (let's just say a lot) they agreed to sell some of it to us.

So we've picked up a leather couch and love seat, a dining room table and chairs, a 5-piece bedroom set, including the box spring and mattress, a tall dresser and a book shelf for quite a reasonable sum of money. So that's good. At least we won't be living in a spartan house. Also, depending on how the furniture works out, maybe it means we don't need to go on a massive furniture shopping spree anymore. Although I suspect Cathy will manage to find her way to an Ikea at some point.

Oh, and Cathy spent part of the weekend packing. Just the way she works. The whole idea of waiting until the week before we go to start this isn't possible. I think her mind would explode if she waited that long.

I get the feeling this is just the quiet before the storm. It's less than two weeks until I head to Toronto, there's a house we are theoretically moving into in barely three weeks. Plus, I've applied for several jobs and the way things work, with all that going on, one of them is going to hit, I can just feel it.

A big change is coming in the next couple of weeks. That much is obvious. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how big.

Last Five
1. The long day is over - Norah Jones
2. I only want to be with you - Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies
3. On your wings - Iron and Wine
4. Say it isn't so - Hall and Oates*
5. Purple rain - Prince

Shot

So I was a good boy on Friday and got my H1N1 shot at the middle school. Overall, a pretty smooth process. I showed up about 15 minutes after the doors opened and I was already #85 in line. All told I only spent an hour at the school, and 15 minutes of that was spent sitting after I had the shot making sure I didn't have a bad reaction.

So how am I doing? Just fine for the most part. Yes, both of my arms feel like someone has been punching them for several hours, but it's nothing too bad and a couple of extra strength Advil takes care of much of that. I was actually feeling a touch woozy this evening, but I don't know if that's from the shot or the fact I spent nearly three hours at the curling club this afternoon. I figure I probably threw 50 or more stones during practice and then we spent some time working on the ice. So that might have been pushing things a bit.

Oh, and according to the Curling News, I am now a "Nunavut curling insider". I have no idea why that amuses me so much, but there you go.

So anyway, the world did not end when I got the shot. I have not turned into a zombie or now have a sudden craving for blood. Although I will say that reading The Strain - a book about a vampire viral outbreak in New York City - was perhaps not the smartest reading material to bring with me while waiting. I've had smarter ideas.

The people who said to go and get the shot were right. It's a minor discomfort and given how bad things are back in Newfoundland and that I'm going to be heading to Toronto in a couple of weeks it was the smart thing to do. And kudos to Nunavut health people. I haven't heard a single complaint about how they're run these inoculations. Trust me, if there was even a single mistake being made, I would have heard. People love to complain about the health department, but everyone is giving them high marks on how they've handled this so far. So good for them.

Last Five
1. Ol' 55 (live) - Tom Waits*
2. Missionary man - The Eurythmics
3. Tears, tears and more tears - Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint
4. Victory lap - Sean Panting
5. Must get out - Maroon 5

Criminal masterminds of Iqaluit

When Bruce Wayne mused that "criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot" he also forgot to mention "deeply stupid." Now, not all criminals are deeply stupid, of course. But for every criminal mastermind you're dealing with a lot of real idiots. I don't have the exact ratio, but I suspect if you picked one mastermind for every 1,000 criminal idiots, you would likely be conservative on the idiot side of the ledger.

After all, you're not too bright if a guy in tights and a cape with a habit of wearing his underwear on the outside is something that makes you piss your pants in fear.

So with that mind, I present to you two people not likely to make the shortlist if there is ever a reality program called "Iqaluit's Next Criminal Mastermind." It would be the men who robbed a Snack delivery driver last night.

We first noticed something was up when we got home last night. Cathy had a jewelry making class and I was at curling. But since we live next to the Snack we noticed the RCMP presence, with lots of photos being taken. So we wondered what was up. Lo and behold, both the CBC and Nunatsiaq News provide the information. A female delivery driver was robbed at rifle point by two men wearing masks. They got away with less than $100, which is the maximum amount drivers are allowed to carry.

So, can we count the ways in which they guys were idiots? Let's see:
1. I was originally going to say that the rifle, which they abandoned, probably cost more than a $100. But having looked at it, I don't think so. Plus, as Cathy pointed out to me, they probably stole it.
2. Even I know that Snack drivers don't carry much cash on them. You have to be an idiot to not know that.
3. They committed a $50 crime for a $1 profit, essentially. Go figure, the police don't like the idea of robberies occurring at gunpoint by masked men. I suspect catching these guys just became a priority. They're already saying it's a minimum four years in jail for this kind of crime. Four years for $100. Dead brilliant, that is.
4. If they're stupid enough to think this was a clever idea, they're stupid enough to get caught. Ten bucks says the RCMP already have a good idea who did this.

So, to sum up, the got a less than $100 in their clever scheme, but then threw away clothes and a rifle. That certainly cut into the already slim profit margin. And remember, that $100 gets split two ways. The police have the gun and clothes and are making it a priority to catch you and are already saying it's four years in jail for this piece of detailed planning.

We'll see, of course. All kinds of stupid ass crime happen around town that goes unpunished. But I do think the combination of rifles and masks does not bode well for our criminal masterminds.

Last Five
1. Lighthouse - Ron Hynes
2. Madame Geneva's - Mark Knopfler*
3. Fake tales of San Francisco - Arctic Monkeys
4. The trouble with normal (live) - Bruce Cockburn
5. Odette - Matthew Good

More murder mysteries

Oh God, I hate my brain sometimes.

So I make a casual comment about, perhaps, wishing some physical harm to happen to some people at the curling club. It was a passing thing, vented in a moment of frustration. I'm sure people at the club have had similar thoughts about me from time to time.

Then a friend suggests I should write a murder mystery at a curling club. And immediately my brain makes the leap that the victim should be found in the house, with his head bashed in by a curling stone.

"Hah, that's kind of funny," I thought. "It's a start."

And then I pushed it away, because I already have a book that I'm struggling to finish. The last thing I need to do is start a new one. Besides, if I ever do finish this one, I have notes on three other books I'd like to try and do. And I know squat about murder mysteries.

Except now the guy dead in the house is named Mike and he was the best curler in this club, and the most hated. He once curled lead on a team that made it to the world junior championships and has lorded it over everyone at the club for years. So there's no shortage of suspects.

And while I was in the shower, this scene came out. I'm writing this just to get it down more than anything else right now, because I don't want it to slip away. But understand, I want to punch my brain to make it go back on the right track and finish the other book instead of playing with this idea. Stupid brain.

----
"Oh dear Jesus, what happened here?"

John turned around, annoyed that there was another person out in the curling area. It was bad enough he had gawkers looking through the glass at the body, now he had someone actually trying to get out onto the ice. He grabbed him before he could step out on the ice. The last thing he needed was the crime scene contaminated.

"There's been a murder, Ken. Someone murdered Mike," Peter said. John noted that Peter didn't seem all that upset when he broke the news. For that matter, glancing back through the glass, he didn't notice many of the gawkers looked all that upset either. Mike didn't appear to be all that beloved by his fellow curlers.

And then Ken confirmed that.

"Oh, the bastard. He was a pain in the ass in life and now he's gone and ruined my bloody ice. We have a bonspiel in two days and the ice is completely screwed up. You son of a bitch!" Ken yelled, pointing his finger at the corpse.

The RCMP constable was having a hard time believing his eyes. There was a man lying out in the middle of a sheet of ice. His head had clearly been bashed in with one of the curling stones. There was brains and blood all over the place. And he was watching a man have a mental breakdown not over the corpse, but what the corpse was doing to the ice.

Curlers, he was beginning to realize, were deeply weird.

"Ken, perhaps now is not the time to be yelling at the corpse," Peter said, trying to calm the man down. Ken flopped down on a bench next to a wall and just stared at the ice. He looked like he was ready to start crying.

"Sorry about that," Peter said. "Ice makers are very protective over their ice. Ken is one of the best and we do have a major bonspiel this weekend. Curlers coming in from all over the province. So if it's not in top shape, well, he's the one who gets blamed."

John shook his head. "He's not worried about looking like a suspect by cursing on the dead man lying out there."

Peter laughed, not unkindly. "I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, constable, but there's no shortage of suspects in this club. Mike was not exactly beloved by the membership. However, the last person that would kill Mike like this would be an ice maker."

"Why?"

"Because look at this bloody mess!" Ken yelled. "There's blood and brains all over two sheets of ice. So that's got to be cleaned up. And the heat from his body went and melted the ice underneath him, so I'm going to have to do a controlled flood. Then there's the scraping to level things out. The ice will never be right for the rest of the season in that spot. And they're going to blame me for it, just you watch. 'Oh, that Ken. Thinks he's such hot shit, but couldn't even fix the ice after it gets a little blood and brains on it.' Wankers."

"Plus, you got to think that sheet of ice is cursed. No one is going to want to play there now. Not for years," Peter added as an aside. Ken nodded in agreement.

"Cursed?" John asked. He was beginning to wonder if he was being taped at this was all an elaborate prank being played by his boss.

"Constable, a man died on this sheet of ice. What's left of his head was pulped by a curling stone right on the button of the house. Clearly, someone was making a statement. But also, well, curlers are superstitious. No one is going to want to use that rock or be on that sheet of ice for years. A skip died there. That's got to be seen as bad luck."

John could only stare at the two men. This was going to be a deeply weird case.

Last Five
1. Que' onda guero - Beck
2. From the ritz to the rubble - Arctic Monkeys
3. See the sun - Dido
4. Solid - The Dandy Warhols
5. Uptown girl - Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies*

1500

There was another point to things when I was rambling on and on about memory yesterday...which was that I can no longer really remember with accuracy what I've written about on this blog. I vague ideas, but I've resigned myself to the fact I'm going to repeat myself from time to time. I've written a lot on this blog and, frankly, I'm not that creative and my life is a little dull at times. So there is going to be some repetition when you've produced 1,500 blog posts.

Yeah, 1,500. Officially. It only took me more than four years, but I finally manage to churn out 1,500 of these suckers. Never thought I would make it, but here I am. So by around 2013 I should have 3,000 blog posts.

Oh God, kill me now.

So in honour of reaching 1,500 posts here's something I'm not sure I've done on the blog before. I can't find it, so I'm assuming I didn't. I'm going to post the prologue to the book, Paper Trails. It's short enough that I think it will fit. The first four chapters are going in the mail come hell or high water tomorrow and being sent to several Newfoundland publishers. And then we shall see.

At least if it doesn't get picked up I might do something like what Warren Ellis is doing right now. He just put out a collection of his online writings, called Shivering Sands using Lulu, which is an online Print On Demand service.

Now, I'm nowhere near his level of popularity, but I find it interesting he's giving it a try. I'll be buying a copy, but probably not until the new year. It makes no sense to buy a book now and just have to move it in a few weeks.

Anyway, here is the prologue.

Prologue - 1995

When I went to journalism school there was this total bastard of a professor whose class was mandatory. He taught Ethics in Journalism, which was a class that nobody wanted to take and he knew it. And because of that he hated all of us. That’s why classes frequently veered from “what should you do as a reporter if put into this situation” to “why all of you miserable, ungrateful little fuckers are doomed.”

Or worse, doomed to become public relations flacks. Death was a better option in his brain.

So the old bastard would sit there, pitched on the edge of his desk in a sunless concrete bunker in the basement of the administration building. It was not unusual for him to have gone several days without shaving and he was normally twitching from a nicotine fit. It still infuriated him that “those stupid sons of bitches in administration got all PC and took away my God given right to kill myself with tobacco wherever I want.” From that lofty perch he would tell us there was no chance in hell any of us were going to be the next great reporter.

“Every one of you thinks you’re going to leave this place and become the next great investigative reporter. You will go and work with a great metropolitan newspaper and bring down devious politicians on a regular basis with your cunning and writing flair.

“But you won’t!” he said, pointing at someone, normally a particularly shy female. The old bastard considered the year a failure if he couldn’t get at least one student to drop out. “And do you know why? Because they are all cleverer than you are. And how do I know they are smarter than you lot?”

When no one answered, he dropped his voice and notch and sneered at all of us. “Because they did not become fucking journalists, that’s how I know they’re smarter than you.”

He would then take a big gulp from his coffee mug, which often smelled of things stronger than coffee, and then slammed it back down on his desk and glared, defying us to prove him logic anything other than completely, infallibly sound.

I have to admit, as much as I hated the old bastard there were two inescapable truths about him. One, he was vastly entertaining. I swear he would have leapt from his desk and strangled me if I had said that to him. He wasn’t there for the amusement of “little fuckers not smart enough to go and do something else.” He was there to bring some sense into our skulls.

But how could you not be entertained by the man. The fact that he looked a good 15 years older than his reported 50. The thin scraps of hair that still clung to his head. The ragged suit with the poorly knotted tie. It was like watching a wax dummy from a journalism museum come to life every day.

How could you not have some affection for something like that? I spotted him in a pub in downtown Halifax once, sitting by himself and tried to buy him a beer. He told me to piss off. There was no ever getting to know the man. I often wondered if there was one specific event that so badly damaged him and what it might have been. But obviously there was never going to be a chance to ask him about it.

The other truth about him? He was the most useful professor at the school. He might have been vile and terrible, but he never lied to you. He never gave you anything less than the truth as he saw it. No sugar coating about your chances of success after school or your abilities. Just brutal honesty.

Oh sure, other might give you more practical knowledge. The best way to frame an interview. How to ask questions. Editing techniques or photography skills.
But those professors all tried to be encouraging and supportive. Yes, it was going to be hard once you graduated from school, but with hard work and perseverance, you can make it was the line most of them said.

“There’s no reason why you can’t work at the Globe and Mail one day, Derek,” one of them told me. “You’re good enough. And people will forget what happened before.”
I have no earthly idea how it got back to the old bastard, but the next day I was singled out for special attention in his class.

“You, Mr. Prescott, will never work for the Globe and Mail, no matter what some of my misguided and delusional colleagues might like you to believe. None of you will,” he said, addressing the rest of the class. “The absolute best most of you are going to be able to do, when you leave this place is go work at some shitty community newspaper in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. You will cover county fairs, and municipal council meetings. You will do stories on how little Suzy’s pet rabbit had a litter of 12 and take photos of her and the cute bunny.

“And you will do this for years. Because this is your punishment for not being smart enough to do something other than fucking journalism. For those lucky few who do not go mad, or kill yourself, or succumb to the siren call of public relations whoredom, you might get a job as a reporter in a daily in some God forsaken place like Saskatchewan. And it is there that you will live out the rest of your days, writing stories about crop yields and interviewing people who don’t think evolution should be taught in school because the Good Lord did not make us out of monkeys.

“None of you will work for the Globe, or the Star or any of the other important papers you dream about working for. You are not Woodword and fucking Bernstein.”

Then he zeroed back in on me. “But you’re especially fucked, aren’t you? I honestly don’t know why you even bothered to come to journalism school, let alone my class on journalism ethics, of all God damned things. Most of these poor doomed bastards didn’t know they were fucked before paying the ridiculous tuition this places charges. I can almost forgive that level of ignorance. But you knew for months before you ever came here that you were doomed. My colleagues are trying to be supportive but they’re lying to you. You are smart enough to realize that, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. I managed to put some strength into my voice, even though he was slowly killing me with every word he said. Killing me with the truth.

“So why bother when you know that you will likely never get a real journalism job or that the best you can aspire to is writing about the tides for the month and what boats are coming into port in some rural backwater in Newfoundland. Why put yourself through this expensive waste of time?”

My whole class was watching now. Months of rumours and stories about me had been swirling at this point. The head of the department had practically begged some weekly in New Brunswick that owed him a favour to take me for a month long internship. Everyone in the class wanted to know pretty much the same thing the old bastard was asking. Why I had bothered coming to journalism school in the first place given my history.

So I gave them the truth.

“I don’t know how to do anything else,” I said.

In the previous months I had seen the old bastard be enraged, disgusted, impatient and bored. But this is the first time I had ever seen him look sad. He stood up, walked down to where I was sitting and leaned over and whispered in my ear. His breath smelled of cheap coffee and cheaper rum.

“And that’s why you’re as completely fucked as me, son.” Then he walked out of the classroom, the lesson over for the day, apparently.

Most of my classmates, upon realizing he wasn’t coming back, gathered up their stuff and left without looking at me.

I sat there alone in the bunker, gathering my thoughts. I didn’t hate the old bastard. How could you hate someone who was at least honest with you?

Still, it didn’t bring me much comfort. I had the sneaking suspicion I might have just seen my future walk out of the room moments ago. And it was fairly ugly.

Last Five
1. Shut your eyes - Snow Patrol
2. Hey Jude - The Beatles
3. Fated - Matthew Good Band
4. Help! - The Beatles
5. Flying down juniper - Lindsay Buckingham

Memory

I was talking to my friend Dups the other day, who expressed concern at what he views as the staggering loss of memory he's having. He's having difficulty remembering things from his past, but not more recent events. Now, for those of you who know this fine gentleman, you might suspect that the extensive qualities of alcohol he's consumed over the years might be playing a factor. Being a nice guy, I suggested just the sheer volume of life that he's lived might make it more difficult to recall some of the events in his life. Of all my friends, Dups is probably the one least likely to settle for an ordinary life. He's constantly out there taking risks and doing things that most of us consider insane. Like climbing mountains. Or hopping on the Trans-Siberian railway. Or climbing Kilmanjaro. Or quitting a safe job in this economy to launch his own business venture. And so on and so forth.

I kind of admire him, really. And I'm not doubting he's having some problems remembering stuff. However, I've noticed a certain...tendency among my circle of Muse alumni friends to have little mental breakdowns when certain big age numbers pop up. Dups, for example, turned 35 last week. For a man who once said to me with all sincerity he doesn't think he'll make it to 40, I can understand how the clock might be ticking a bit louder now. I had to talk another friend down off the edge a few weeks before he turned 30 because he had not, shockingly enough, completely altered the very foundation of western society already.

And so on, and so forth. I'll be turning 40 in a few months, so I'm almost curious to see what kind of mental breakdown I'm going to have with that. Alas, I can't continue the family tradition of buying an insane car when I turn 40 - father bought a Camero convertible and my uncle bought a Corvette convertible - so I'm going to have to think of something else. I'm not sure if the house really counts in that regard. It's entirely too practical.

Hmmm, all of this was going somewhere......oh right, memory.

Ahem. The point I was going towards that my own memory has always been a touch shaky at the best of times. I have a horrific one for remembering people's names and faces. That made my chosen profession for many years - a journalist - a touch tricky. Not quite so bad now...when I worked in my previous job and forgot someone, people just thought I was being an evil PR flack. Good cover, really.

So I mentioned the curling novel yesterday and attributed the idea to Clare when, in fact, it was Geoff Meeker who offered up the idea, although Clare did come up with that choice piece of dialogue. Sorry about that. For that matter, I've noticed a few other things I've put up on the blog as political fact later got corrected. So clearly my days of just going my memory on things I put up on the blog is coming to a close. Got to be a little bit more careful.

I actually had another point to this blog post, but I think I've rambled enough for now. Maybe I'll put up the thing I was actually going to write about later today.

Last Five
1. A girl called Johnny (live) - The Waterboys
2. Sliver - Nirvana
3. A message - Coldplay
4. Sunday bloody Sunday (live) - U2*
5. Birth (comedy) - Patton Oswalt