HURRY, HURRY, WHILE BEG LASTS
Today
is the last day of my February appeal for
funds.
Serendipitous, as this is Shrove Tuesday. Feeling
extravagant? Send some money my way. (See the PayPal
button at the top left or access my account directly at
kevin_grace@hotmail.com). You can repent on the morrow.
I've decided to go the PBS route, as best I understand it.
Twice-yearly, unbearably long beg-athons, contrasted with
weekly appeals every three months in between. Thanks to
all those who have contributed. As always, I'm rather
astonished at your generosity. What a good lot you
are.
Kevin Michael Grace,
10.00 pm, 28 February
2006►
DEATH DISCO
An eternity ago I solicited entries for a musical game
called Memento
Mori: "If you could choose one
piece of music to be played at your funeral, what would it
be?" The results haven't appeared previously because
my computer broke, and then I lost interest. The usual
rubbish. But now I'm engaged as all get out, and here they
are.
A week after my original post appeared Nigel
Farndale reported in the Sunday
Telegraph, "It is sobering
news that "Angels"
by Robbie Williams is now the most popular tune to play at
a [British] funeral." Sick-making, more like. I had
assured prospective entrants that "I make no moral
judgements" with regard to their choices, but after
reading Farndale I feared being compelled to make the most
stringent moral judgements against any of my
correspondents who chose
anything as naff as this: "Annd through iiiit awll,
she offers me protection, a lotta love and
affection…"
I needn't have worried, however, if only because there
were no Britons among my 28 players. (Save one, and he
left Britain in 1965.) I was pleased with the response,
with a few disappointments. Nothing from dear old Katie
Hawthorne and nothing from Dawn
Eden, despite me pressing
her on the matter and even though I wrote a very nice
piece about her last year for the National Catholic
Register.
I was somewhat surprised that so few chose religious
music for their obsequies. Almost everyone chose rock
music, although there was a smattering of enthusiasm for
classical, a couple of jazzbos and even a
shitkicker or two. I was neither surprised nor put out
that most everyone broke the one-selection rule. Let a
hundred corsages wilt, I always say. So now, with no
further ado...
Tom Bethell, The Ambler's favourite American
journalist, author of The
Politically Incorrect Guide To Science,
wrote:
You could
put in for me: George Lewis (New Orleans clarinetist)
playing "Burgundy
Street Blues" (recorded 1945).
Jerry
Brito, lawyer, editor of Brainwash,
member of the GMU/IHS/Mercatus gang, wrote:
That's
easy. "There's
A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends"
by Morrissey. It's a got a perfect funeral beat to it, too:
There
is a place
reserved
for me and my friends
and when we go
we all will go
so you see
I'm never alone
there is a place
with a bit more time
and a few more
gentler words
and looking back
we do forgive
(we had no choice
we always did)
all that we hope
is that when we go
our skin
and our blood
and our bones
don't get in your way
making you ill
the way they did
when we lived
There is a place
a place in hell
reserved
for me and my friends
and if ever I
wanted to cry
then I will
because I can
Paul Bunner, journalist and former boss, wrote:
One
of my favourite rockers of all time is David Wilcox, who I
first saw in a Yonge Street tavern in the '70s when his
band was the Hot Teddy Bears, and he sported a Salvador
Dali moustache. In the early 80s I caught him an outdoor
music festival at Redberry Lake west of Saskatoon. Though
he had only a three-piece band, and he got roaring drunk on
Jack Daniels, they blew everybody away. Their performance
of "Hypnotizin' Boogie" was especially
brilliant. A couple years later I was talking to long-time
Delta blues aficionado Ken Hamm, and he rather
contemptuously dismissed Wilcox as a wastrel (Ken was a
bit of a granola elitist from Salt Spring Island) who was
squandering his talent and would no doubt soon be dead of
excess. I'm happy to say Wilcox has proven Hamm wrong and
is still a working musician.
Anyway,
the first time I heard Wilcox's song "Cheap
Beer Joint" I thought I'd like it for
my funeral. I wouldn't insist. Funerals are for the
survivors, after all. But it's delightfully slow, dreamy
piece that never fails to make me nostalgic for the smoky
haunts of my youth:
Gimme
a cheap beer joint
On the wrong side of town
And all you good time people gather round
Give me a toke out back
With a bouncer named Jack
And then roll me on in and sit right down
Blood on the door
Broken dreams on the floor
Ah the people ain't always quiet and serene
But if you got the blues tonight
You can make everything all right
Just take me back
And let me drift away
And
on the day I die
When old man death says, "Hi... David do you have any
last requests?"
I'll say, "I know a little spot, where the music's
hot, and, and I just wanna play my last respects."
Kevin Carson, blogger and mutualist, wrote:
That's a
stumper. After considerable pondering, I can't think of
anything that really fits. I guess I'll go with a couple
by the Grateful Dead: either "Brokedown Palace"
or "Wharf Rat."
The first and last time Jerry Garcia will grace this
page
Paul
Cella, blogger and traditionalist,
wrote:
Alright,
here you go:
In
my more solemn moods, I would like to know that at my
funeral my family and friends would be singing some of the
great Christian hymns. Older ones like "Be Thou My
Vision" and newer ones like "O For A Thousand
Tongues To Sing" or "Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God
Almighty." It occurs to me that this may seem a bit
facile (or too "appropriate," as you put it in
your post): "oh sure, Christian hymns, how
original" -- but damn it, I love those hymns.
More
whimsically, I'll go with a song like "Blue
Sky" by the Allman Brothers. I can't
help but associate such a tune with a more authentic
American patriotism. Not the patriotism of supremacy we
see so often these days but a patriotism of simple
affection and human attachment: the patriotism of truck
drivers not intellectuals.
Dickie Betts: American patriot
Meaghan
Champion-Williams, blogger, scourge of Kate McMillian
and DIAND, wrote:
"Oh
Siem" -- the traditional Hul'quiminum lament/farewell
song will be sung and I will be burried in Coast Salish
tradition of the Big House or Long House.
But
as for my non-native friends and family -- I made these
three requests for my non-native wake "Ride
Forever" by Paul Gross for non-native family and
friends -- with full Mounty Chorus Accompaniment -- (if it
could be arranged). For my son -- "If" by
Rudyard Kipling -- as sung by Roger
Whittaker. And for my
husband -- "Into My Arms" by Nick Cave and the
Bad Seeds
Colby Cosh, the Sage of Bon Accord, wrote:
I'll take
the Fairport Convention live version (1970) of
"Battle of the Somme."
Music speaks louder than his words
Jay Currie, blogger and
entrepreneur, wrote:
[My] musical choice is
"Jerusalem."
(I
presume he meant Sir Hubert Parry's setting, as opposed to
competing versions by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the Fall,
Bruce Dickinson, the KLF or Fat Les. But Currie's a dark
horse, so one can never quite tell.)
Michael
Brendan Dougherty, blogger, aesthete, urban knight,
wrote:
Like
a lot of people my initial response is either Mozart's
Requiem or something ridiculous
-- like this Ben Folds Five song One
Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces -- which
ends with an appropriate "Kiss my ass, goodbye."
But
my first legitimate guess without much thought put into
it is a recent song by a
Mister Ryan Adams called "Magnolia Mountain"
-- very Grateful Dead-esque.
Rebecca
Grace, daughter, Goth, Buddhist, wrote:
It would have to be
Evanescence's "Understanding."
Lorne Gunter, journalist and blogger, wrote:
I
know it's a cliché, but I want "Amazing Grace"
sung at my funeral. (No bagpipes, though, please, unless
your goal that day is to wake me.)
The
words of the final stanza, "When we've been there ten
thousand years/Bright shining as the sun/We've no less
days to sing God's praise/Than when we'd first
begun," are the most hopeful I have ever sung.
Imagine
that, after experiencing the joy of singing God's glory
for 10,000 years, we will still be no nearer to exhausting
that pleasure than on the day we started.
(The first of two to select "Amazing Grace,"
a hymn I've always found rather lugubrious. See below for
more on this. Lorne doesn't specify a version, so I'll
suggest Jonathan
Richman's.)
Rick Hiebert, former colleague and man of
enthusiasms arcane and various, wrote:
I've
always been fond of "Amazing Grace," even after
I learned that I was not actually descended from John
Newton, the slaveholder-turned hymn writer, who wrote the
song. The message of the lyrics is very poignant, and true
in my case.
(Family
scuttlebutt aside, it turns out that I have an Anglican
minister amongst my mother's ancestors. The same
the-truth-will-out process happened regarding my
grandfather whom, it turns out, did not play for the
Glasgow Celtic youth team. Rather, he suited up for a
British Army team in post World War One Iraq.)
A
modern worship song that I quite like is "I Could
Sing Of His Love Forever" by delirious? Those would
be my real choices.
But,
I think that Kevin might have fun suggesting a song for
me. I invite him to go ahead and do so, should he feel
inclined.
The
problem with a lot of secular music, when playing a game
of this kind, is that the lyrics don't match the sort of
statements that one would want to make about one's life.
(Although there is occasionally an eerie coincidence.
Buddy Holly had just released "It Doesn't Matter
Anymore" shortly before his death.)
That
said, I have a suggestion for someone with a dry sense of
humour and more sang froid than I have. I know what
song I would not dare to pick to be played at my own
memorial service. It comes from a Joe Meek compilation
that I recently bought. (Joe Meek, you may recall, was the
very quirkily brilliant British musical producer of the
1960s. You have probably heard of "Telstar," the
famous instrumental that he wrote and produced. Aside from
his music, I find Meek's own story -- for one, Meek was
convinced that the late Buddy Holly was giving him hints
from the afterlife for good songs via a ouija board -- to
be amusingly intriguing.)
The
song, which for some reason failed to enter the British
charts in 1961, is "Til the Following Night" by
the "classic British loon" Screaming Lord Sutch.
It
opens with unearthly moans and screams, rattling chains
and creaking doors. Lord Sutch then sings these lyrics to
a thumping beat:
When
the shades of night are falling
And the moon is shining bright
In the center of the graveyard
In the middle of the night
I get out of my big black coffin 'til the following night
No,
don't play that at your funeral. It wouldn't go over well
:)
(Joe Meek produced one of my all-time
faves, "Have I The Right" by the Honeycombs. The
circumstances of his life -- and especially his death --
were rather more lugubrious than "Amazing
Grace.")
Meek: Nothing in his appearance
suggested a lunatic homosexual
Michael Jenkinson, journalist,
former colleague, expert on "whupass" and
suchlike, wrote:
"Who
Am I" by Casting Crowns.
Sarah Eve Kelly,
student and soon-to-be historical novelist, wrote:
What
fun!
I suppose the manner of my death would play into
this, but I'll try to keep it simple.
I
think there's an instinct in most people to try to make
their deaths (before the fact) something jaunty and
irreverent, and some families/loved ones will cooperate
with that, but mine wouldn't. In the "jaunty"
respect, then, my choice would probably be "All You
Pretty Girls" by XTC (a song that speaks deeply to
me) or "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by the
Smiths. I also like "Tower of Song" by Leonard
Cohen -- but none of these, I don't think, reflect the
kind of life I've lived (so far, anyway).
"Suzanne"
or "Hallelujah" (the Rufus version with the
extra verses -- Shrek aside, I first heard this
song on a highway when I was five years old) would be my
choices. I know they're not "death" songs, but
they are songs that people associate with me, and I think
the first priority of a good funeral is to conjure an
essence of the person who's died. For my grandmother they
played "Keep
On The Sunny Side," and I think both of those songs would invoke me in
a similar way (I HOPE so, anyway. Sometimes the people who
love me can be a little daft that way -- !).
Also
-- "Puff the Magic Dragon."
I
really did love your "actor"
game, by the way,
and although I first thought of Oliver Platt for Colby, I
see some wisdom in your choice of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
I had always hoped that I had a short-Kate Winslet sort of
appeal, but most people don't seem to see that. They look
at me and see Janeane Garofalo.
(But Janeane Garofalo is quite an
attractive woman.)
Boleyn (Holbein): Forever a tart, regardless of what
she says
Ian
King, journalist and urbanist, wrote:
After
a little rumination, I've settled on the seemingly
superficially appropriate, yet representative "Rags
and Bones" by Nomeansno. In my earlier deadly serious
about everything phase, it would've been "The
Tower" from the same LP.
James Howard
Kunstler, novelist, social critic, author of the
hugely influential The Long Emergency, wrote:
My
exit music?? "Love is
Everything" by Jane Siberry.
Jeremy Lott, journalist, champion of hypocrisy,
man of few words, wrote:
"You R Loved"
by Victoria Williams from the album Loose.
R Emmett
McAuliffe, entertainment lawyer, St Louis talker,
wrote:
"September
Gurls" by Big Star and "Girlfren" by
Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (more specifically
the lead-guitar solo of each song).
(A man after my
own heart.)
Big Star: The best band you've never heard of
Ilana
Mercer, libertarian controversialist, wrote:
However,
à la Freud’s free association, I’ll mention
the first sounds that came to my mind: Johann Sebastian
Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No 1 in C major, BWV 846,
played by Glenn
Gould, because that’s the performance I
know and love.
The
piece is precise, beautiful, clean, serene, powerful,
intense, and oh-so emotional, precisely because it’s so
bare and unfussy. Too many superlatives for something so
perfect...
Terry
O'Neill, journalist, broadcaster, former boss, hepcat,
wrote:
Make
mine "You Make Me Feel So Young," the Frank
Sinatra version from Songs for
Swingin' Lovers!
Gary
Parker, sportsman, devotee of "dingbat"
nomenclature, wrote,
I have 5 pieces I
would like played:
Ensemble Modern:
"G-Spot Tornado" conducted by FZ.
Frank Zappa:
"In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky." I like the
multi-layered responses folks would have to this. There is
the Iron Butterfly rhythm section with Zappa playing
Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" over top, plus
some folks will be thinking about the Simpsons
episode when Bart passes out the hymn "In-The-Garden-Of-Eden."
Cracker: "Can I
Take My Gun To Heaven?" This is only if I
predecease my best friend from college, if he dies first I
would like the next song played instead: Bonzo Dog Band,
"Big Shot."
Eric Dolphy: "God
Bless The Child," bass clarinet solo piece.
Frank Zappa:
"Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus"
There you are. There
are so many pieces that I like that are far too long for
use at a memorial. If I had a copy I would like the Young
Canadians "Hawaii" played as well.
The first and last time Frank Zappa will grace this
page
Tom
Piatak, lawyer, journalist, member of the Church
Militant, wrote:
I
am torn between Mozart's Requiem and
"
Entrance of the Gods Into Valhalla."
Kevin
Steel, Renaissance Man, wrote:
For
the service: Beethoven's Concerto for Violin in D
major, second movement (David Oistrakh). To
kick off the wake: "Monkey Gone
To Heaven," the
Pixies.
Oistrakh, Monkey: Yin, yang, apparently
RJ Stove, scholar, composer,
journalist, wrote:
A
request like yours confirms me in my long-standing
conviction that -- since I seem to get on reasonably well
with various people who detest each other -- I should aim
at several memorial services rather than the "big
tent" approach of just a solitary one. With several
such services, my fellow traditional Catholics can attend
#1, my totally roughneck pagan acquaintances can attend
#2, my unreconstructed neocon holy-rolling God-botherer
acquaintances can attend #3, and so forth. There would be
of course no reason why the services could not be held
simultaneously.
So
I hope I may be excused for making three choices:
1.
For the traditional Catholics and, indeed, my other
civilized friends: César Franck's Prière for
organ. (You can, if you wish, hear the first bit of it
here on track 14:)
2. For the roughneck
pagans: I originally considered AC/DC's anthem "You
Shook Me All Night Long," but most roughneck pagans are so full
of Prozac that they simple lack the spittle supply needed
to join in to this masterpiece. Fortunately another
appropriate choice exists from around the same period.
Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" is surely
suitably maudlin. Also, experts assure me that it makes an
ideal rhythmic accompaniment to the process of crushing
beer-cans on one's forehead. I have never tried this
myself, but who am I to doubt such connoisseurs? Et voilà
(track 5):
3.
Neocons are a bit
harder to satisfy, but given their desire to remake the
whole Middle East, I'd suggest "America" from West
Side Story. It's on track 13 of this:
Postscript:
Have just thought of a
ditty much more appropriate to the neocon mindset than
"America" has ever been. It is -- well, you probably guessed
...
Yep,
that's right, Warren Zevon's "Excitable
Boy." The anthem for
an entire Abu Ghraib generation, what with lines like:
He
took in the four am show at the Clark
(Excitable boy, they all said)
And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark
(Excitable boy, they all said)
Well, he's just an excitable boy.
Surely
the perfect Rumsfeld campaign song?
(The
song that comes to mind whenever I think of the neocons is
Black Sabbath's immortal "War Pigs," but then
I'm an optimist.)
Thrasymachus,
pseudoanonymous blogger, wrote:
I
think that I'll have to go with "Whiskey
In The
Jar" -- a traditional version though, not the
Metallica cover.
(Ah,
but what of Thin Lizzy?)
Jesse
Walker, journalist and musical antiquarian, wrote:
I'm
tempted to nominate "Til Death Do Us Part," but
I don't actually care for the song. Might be too morbid a
joke for the mourners, too. So how's this: Merle Haggard's
"Sing Me Back Home."
William
Wleklinski, lawyer and associate director of the John
Marshal Law School library, wrote
As
to WW's funeral music, you need to realize that I know
almost nothing about popular music or rock since 1965.
(The exception is Springsteen, and only because a former
brother-in-law idolized the Boss. I attended a Springsteen
concert in Chicago in 1981; nineteen thousand fans in the
stadium, only one (me) dressed in lawyers' pinstripes.) My
"appropriate" response to your quiz would be
Barber's Adagio for Strings. Otherwise, maybe
Georges Delerue's film music from Contempt.
(You know, if it wasn't for Oliver
Stone, the wonderful Samuel Barber would remain in the
obscurity to which the serialists exiled him.)
Antonia Zerbisias, journalist,
blogger, good-hearted lefty, wrote:
"I
Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty. I totally subscribe to
the lyrics, plus you can dance to it.
The
Ambler's puritan streak is scandalized at
the thought of popular music at a funeral. A bit late for
me to subscribe to the old bourgeois virtues, you might
think, but better late (literally) than never. I should
like to be able to get away with heroic music: the coda to
Mahler's First
or Liszt's Mazeppa, the
Prelude to Die Meistersinger, the final movement of
my favourite symphony, the Sibelius
Fifth -- hell,
why not go whole hog with Ein Heldenleben?
-- but as
anyone who's ever made my acquaintance can attest, there
is nothing of the hero about me.
According
to Nigel
Farndale -- whose published choice is
Elgar's "Nimrod" played on a church organ -- the
"desired effect" of funeral music is to leave
one "feeling miserably wistful and possibly a
little wistfully miserable." (If not lugubrious.) With that in mind, I
considered Hugo Wolf's setting of Eduard Mörike's
"Wo
find' ich Trost" ("Where Shall I
Find Comfort?") which is almost an autobiography. But while I've never subscribed to the notion that
funerals are for the living, the thought occurs that I
don't particularly want to traumatize my final earthly
audience. (It will suffice for the Dies Irae of my
Requiem Mass to terrify it.)
In the end, I came up with a twofer. The first shall be
Wolf's setting of Goethe's "Anakreons
Grab" ("Anacreon's Grave"), which
should satisfy the miserably wistful requirement. The
singer: Count John
McCormack, accompanied by Edwin
Schneider. Yes, McCormack's German was dodgy, but his
Irish keening is irresistable.
And to send my mourners off confident in the hope of
eternal life, I've programmed the most beautiful music
known to me: the second movement of Haydn's Opus 76, No 3
(Hob 77), the Emperor Quartet, as played by the
Amadeus Quartet.
Wolfs Ruh: 'Vor dem Winter hat ihn endlich der Hügel
geschützt'
Kevin Michael Grace,
7.42 pm, 28 February
2006►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (SPECIAL IDENTITY THEFT
EDITION)
Is it possible that she is
smiling again, he thinks; could she be smiling to herself,
retaining humorous reflections to herself? Is she sly and
sophisticated, not mad at all? But it isn't possible, he
thinks; she is like a child, the way she comes out with
everything at this hour of the evening.
She tells him everything that
comes into her head at this hour of the evening and it is
for him to discover whether what she says is true or
whether she has imagined it. But has she decided on this
course, or can't she help it? How false, how true?
-- Muriel Spark, The
Hothouse By The East River
Kevin Michael Grace,
9.34 pm, 27 February
2006►
GREAT MOMENTS IN CINEMATIC SMOKING
(SECOND IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES)
I don't like to speak of tobacco as a drug (same goes
for alcohol and caffeine), but a term invented by Timothy
Leary gives us a great insight into our self-regulation of
their use: set
and setting. He writes:
Set denotes the preparation of
the individual, including his personality structure and
his mood at the time (attitudinal predisposition). Setting
is physical (the situation) -- the weather, the room's
atmosphere; social -- feelings of persons present towards
on another; and cultural ...
Thus tobacco, alcohol and caffeine are used both as
stimulants and relaxants. We enjoy them at different times
to wind ourselves up and to wind ourselves down. We could
say that Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) in the Coen brothers's Fargo
enjoys cigarettes as a stimulant, but that would be
understating the case. Cigarettes appear to be the only
thing keeping him conscious. It could hardly be more
appropriate to speak of someone "consuming"
tobacco, but as we see, the tobacco appears to be
consuming him as well.
Grimsrud: Smoke doesn't kill people, smokers do
Kevin Michael Grace,
2.03 am, 22 February
2006►
PENSÉE
Madonna Ciccone: The Picture of Dorian Gray in
reverse.
Kevin Michael Grace,
1.10 am, 22 February
2006►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Ever since she was forced to
leave Egypt, Bat
Ye’or has lived in Europe. She does not
intend to leave. She feels old and tired, but she urges
young people to continue resisting dhimmi status. “We
should not ask the moderate Muslims to save us. We have to
change the present situation ourselves. That is our duty
to our children and our ancestors.” Her study have made
her aware that the destruction of Christian societies by
Jihadists has always been brought about by the Christian
leaders and churches themselves. “I think
that we will not be able to act responsibly so long as we
do not understand the dynamics, the spirit, and the
functioning of Eurabia,
a concept that has been conceived in Europe and by
Europeans and has not been imposed upon us from
outside.”
-- Paul
Belien
Kevin Michael Grace,
1.04 am, 22 February
2006►
THE RIGHT THING TO DO, AND THE
TASTY WAY TO DO IT
Official brew of The Ambler
There are many ways we can support our brave
Danish cousins in their (and our) fight against Dhimmitude.
The Muslims have their boycott lists; we have our
anti-boycott lists. (See here,
here,
here
and here
for examples.) My own small contribution to Danish
solvency will remain the same: getting squiffy on their
fine beer.
For years I favoured Tuborg, a fine a beer as you'll
find anywhere. But personal insolvency coincided with a
switch to Faxe
Strong: more bang for the buck. Highly
recommended and not only because it's the only overproof
beer I've tried that doesn't taste like soap. But here's a
more
lyrical endorsement from the the Georgia
Straight:
You can get your Faxe Brewery ($2.22 for 500
millilitres [$2.29 in Victoria -- Editor] in three different coloured cans hereabouts:
white carries the pale ale; brown, the amber; and black,
the strong. And strong that one is at 8.4-percent alcohol,
even though it doesn't look all that strong in the glass.
Then comes a bracing North Sea smell-- fresh North
Sea smell! -- a subtle sweetness, and a decidedly civilized,
non-aggressive taste, the perfect foil for the myriad
flavours of a smørrebrod or duck with red cabbage
or sole with rémoulade, cucumbers in sugar and vinegar,
herring of all denominations. A true dinner beer and, with
an aquavit chaser, lovely for welcoming the autumn rains
ahead.
Autumn rains? Well, this review was written in October.
More disconcerting is that it was written by Jurgen
the Gothe, the DJ whose simpering inanities
drove me from CBC Radio. (No, I don't want to hear about
your sodding cats, thanks, and if I want to know about
"this day in history," I'll buy an almanac.
Shaddup and play the Vivaldi, will you?) But even a busted
clock, etc, etc, or better still (and more charitable): In
cervesia, veritas.
My own experience with akvavit chased with beer
(Tuborg, as it turned out) was singular but not salutary.
Thirty years ago, I took a friend to Joe
Kapp's Peanut Butter Lounge on West
Broadway in Vancouver to Drink the Scandinavian Way. After
an uncertain number of rounds, darkness descended. I awoke
several hours later, in a strange place, convinced I was
blind. My friend had kindly hauled me to a couch in his mother's basement to sleep it off, but I was ignorant of
the antecents as I crashed about in the pitch black for an
eternity before finding an exit. It was five in the
morning, and the summer sun was rising. I was grateful to
be alive. Skål!
Kevin Michael Grace,
12.49 am, 22 February
2006►
