A story came to mind today about the heyday of the Boston Bruins. Actually, it takes place in immediate pre-heyday Bruin history.

Of course, when I say ‘heyday’ I don’t mean the era in which Don Cherry was the coach. I mean the period before that, when Harry Sindon was coach, when Bobby Orr reigned at the blueline, when Esposito crashed in on net from the left wing, one hand on the stick, the other outstretched, shielding the puck.

In the mid-Sixties, the Bruins drafted a scrappy young player named Derek Sanderson. He actually assisted on Orr’s electrifying give-and-go overtime winner against the St. Louis Blues in the 1970 Stanley Cup final. He was the ‘give’ to Orr’s ‘go.’

Anyway, when Sanderson arrived in Boston for his first training camp, he was knocked headlong by legendary tough guy defenseman Ted Green. On the next shift, Sanderson went back at Green.

“Listen kid,” said an unamused Green to Sanderson. “Here’s how things work here: I hit you. You don’t hit me.”

This story came to mind after watching Boston native Paul Celluci, the U.S. Ambassador to Ottawa, fire off his “we’re upset and dissapointed” speerch about Canada’s Iraq war decision.

This country has taken a giant middle finger from the Bush adminstration ever since Dubya got into office. And when any attempt at assertiveness is made, we are basically told “we hit you, you don’t hit us.”

Having said that, I’m not particulary sold on Chretien’s foreign policy, not that I can figure out what the hell it is. It’s just the Ambassador’s failure to recognize his own country’s contribution to the current diplomatic cold spell that irks me. (Not to mention his typical American ignorance of our contribution in past conflicts, including both World Wars, but I’ll leave that for another time.)

What is doubly tiresome is the reaction by the Canadian media to the Ambassador’s rant.

“We’re in trouble,” fussed one ‘Globe and Mail’ scribe, coming across like a kid about to wet his pants. And speaking of piss, our Premier’s brother did his usual urinating from the pages of the Vancouver Sun.

The ‘National Post’ went into hysterics. At least I think they did. They spend so much time stewing in their own red, white and blue juices that it’s hard to know when they’re really upset about something. I actually rather like the ‘Post,’ as it employs many good writers. I just can’t figure out why they insist on living in a country they clearly hate.

I like the U.S.A. I grow tired of gratuitous anti-American sentiments. But why does any alternative to that kind of thinking have to involve crapping on my own country?


______________________________________________________________________________________


My feelings are largely summed up by his article I found in the ‘Toronto Star.’

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1035779954917

I can’t quite recall exactly when, but some time ago I was sitting at a table in the Cottage Bistro with JR McClelland, Lord and Lady Mule, and M’s sister Barbara. It was during a Roadbed show. At one point, someone asked what everyone’s favorite movie was. I remember I said ‘Apocolypse Now.’

That was the wrong answer.

I don’t exactly remember what everyone else said. I do recall that Barbara said she liked ‘Point Break,’ which is a much better answer, because it’s more honest. It’s exactly the kind of film one would adopt as a favorite (and I must say I liked it in spite of myself when I caught it on television one night).

As for me, what I should have said was ‘Withnail and I.’

‘Withnail and I’ was released in the late 1980s, and I saw it in the theatre with, of all people, JR. Since then I’ve seen it a number of times. Over the past two or three years alone I must have watched it about five or six times. Everytime I see it I laugh at a different line, or a different situation. It always makes me laugh out loud.

For those who don’t know, its storyline is simple. It is late September, 1969. Two thirtyish, out-of-work actors living in London decide they need to get away for a weekend in the country. One of them, Withnail (we never learn his first name), has a rich uncle (Monty) who owns a rustic cottage in the north of England. The other, ‘I’ (we never learn his first or last name), suggests they get the key to the cottage off Uncle Monty and head north.

And that’s it.

Well, not quite. They’re a heavily-boozing pair who get into one fix after another, each of which is blown into suitably theatrical proportions, all underscored by the fact that they, as ‘I’ puts it, “have drifted into the arena of the unwell, making an enemy of our own futures.”

Not long ago JR informed me that he purchased the DVD version of the film. He watched it, and found that it depressed him. Well, it never depresses me, and not because I think I’m somehow better off than its two lead characters. On the contrary, my personality is a combination of the worse traits of each of them. I’ve matched the paranoid, overly worried demeanor of ‘I’ with the self-absorbed, bitter frustration of Withnail, with less time to spare than either. And I have the housekeeping skills of both.

If anyone has drifted into the arena of the fucking unwell and made an enemy of his future, it’s me, and yet in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I love the film more all the time.

There are a few elements of the movie that keep me coming back to it. One is the dialogue, both the writing and the delivery. I think this is where you either get the film or you don’t (and many don’t). To me, even the most innocuous line is a masterpiece. In many films, much of the dialogue is simply an exchange of banalities, meant to further the plot. In some of the best comedies, the dialogue is constantly sparkling and witty. I don’t think the dialogue of ‘W&I’ fits quite into either category. The lines work because they suggest something in the characters’ personalities that you can relate to, or which at least makes them believable.

One thing I only recently noticed about ‘W&I’ is that there are basically no female characters. I like this. Both Withnail and ‘I’ appear to have drifted into a period where they’re spending too much time in male company. Some us have been there.

My dad used to tell me that looking for a job when you’re unemployed is difficult because “no one wants to hire you when you’re not working. They only want you if you already have a job. They always want to steal you off some other bugger.”

When it comes to relationships, women are like employers. They look for gaps in your resume. Our two lead characters are on the verge of being, romantically speaking, chronically unemployable.

(ahem)

The absence of women, and the presence of characters like the doped-up pseudo-philosopher Danny, underscores the fucked-up maleness of this movie. Is this something unique? Well, maybe not, but it’s done very well, and in a world of ‘Sex in the City’ chickfare, it’s as refreshing as a pint of ale and a quadruple whiskey.

The opening scene of ‘Withnail and I’ is set against a version of 'Whiter Shade of Pale,' performed by the late tenor sax guru King Curtis. The background music is one of the best things about the film. Actually, there are long stretches without music at all, and I love that too. But when music does come in, it is to maximum effect.

After the opening number, there is virtually nothing musical until Hendrix’s heavy but wistful ‘All Along the Watchtower’ cuts in as the lads head out of London in their beat-up Jag. Hendrix, in fact, bookends the lads’ excusion to the north country; on the way back we get the crashing intro to ‘Voodoo Chile,’ heralding a once-more-into-the-breach run down the motorway with a pissed Withnail at the wheel. In between, there is a piece of original soundtrack, a sweet, calming melody that hints at melancholy. We hear variations of it troughout the film, evocative and nicely placed.

The setting of Uncle Monty’s litttle northern cottage is perhaps my favorite thing about ‘Withnail & I.’ In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day,’ there is a passage where the main character sets out on a drive across England. He is a serious, repressed butler named Stevens, and at one point, in his travel diary, he notes what he finds most appealing about the English countryside:

“....if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.”

I suppose we are meant to laugh a little at Stevens, but I’ve been all over England, including the north, and I actually think he’s onto something.

For all of 'Withnail & I’s misadventure and melancholy, there is also a calmer, underlying sense of pleasure and beauty. There is good food, there is booze. There is friendship, with all of the peculiarities of individual personalities that come with it. There is the beauty of nature, and the beauty of youth.

I think that’s what I like most about it, more than the angst and hijinx. Just the reminder that there are a few good things in life that are just there for the taking.




**************************************************************************************




There is a developing tradition around the viewing of ‘Withnail and I.’ I don’t think I’m the only one who practices it. That is, you have to have a drink or two while watching it. It’s kind of like getting dressed up to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show (not that I’ve ever seen that film....and do people still get dressed up for it?).

I’d suggest following the Withnail staple of slinging back a strong shot of hard liquor, accompanied by a nice, luxurious pint of some English ale.

And whatever you do, don’t water down your shot of gin or whiskey or rum by mixing it with pop (and no lighter fluid either).

Why?

Because I don’t advise it.



Chin-chin.

“Like all rich people, Keith lived in fear of being exploited.”

Tony Sanchez, “Up and Down with the Rolling Stones.”




The Ganges River originates in the Himalayan foothills in north-central India, and flows roughly south-east for about twelve hundred miles, emptying into the Bay of Bengal near Calcutta and Bangladesh in a massive, hydra-like delta known as ‘The Mouths of the Ganges.’ Along the way, approximately halfway between New Delhi and Calcutta, sits the city of Varanasi.

Varanasi is the holiest city in the Hindu religion. It is roughly to Hinduism what Mecca is to Islam or Jerusalem is to Christianity. It contains, officially, about a million people, but Indian cities always seem to consist of a large number of ‘unofficial’ people. Varanasi’s proximity to the sacred Ganges is what gives it its significance.

I arrived there by train early in the morning, about six or so. The town stretches back from the banks of the Ganges like New Westminster does from the Fraser, except unlike New Westminster the land stays flat. The Ganges is about as wide as the Fraser. The oldest part of the town is near the river, a labyrinthine maze of narrow, twisting streets and exotic, Indiana Jones-like midaeval buildings.

The train station is about a couple of miles from the shore. I had read about a guest house, right down on the shore of the Ganges, that was noted for being reasonable and reliable. I decided to walk. I would have had to haggle for a motor-rickshaw, and the negotiating that seemed to be part of every frigging transaction was wearing me out.

I was also getting the distinct impression that I was something of a walking dollar sign. A few weeks earlier, in the western town of Jaisalmer, I had paid a kid about five rupees after he guided me to a hotel. I saw him the next day, and he recognized me.

“Five rupees to walk down that street,” he said as I wandered down a little alleyway. He ran after me.

“Five rupees to look at that building.”

Things got wose in New Delhi. After being swarmed by shoeshine boys day after day, I finally relented, figuring that once I got my footwear polished they would lay off. The next day a kid came up to me, telling me he’d shine my shoes for two rupees.

“I had them shined yesterday,” I said trumping him. “I don’t need them shined.”

“They don’t look shined,” he said, shaking his head. “I can do a better job.”

“No no no. They’re perfectly fine.”

“They’re still very dirty. I use special polish. I’ll make them look much better.”

This went on for a few exasperating minutes, with the kid running beside me the whole time.

“Look,” I said to him finally. “They’re fine the way they are. I like them the way they are.”

“You like them the way they are?”

“Yes.”

“You like them like that?”

“Yes.”

“You like them dirty?”

“Yes,” I sighed wearily.

“For two rupees,” he said with a smile, “I can make them dirtier.”

Getting right down to the shore of the Ganges may not have been possible by rickshaw in any case. There was a huge crush of people coming back along the main road from the river, even at the early hour. In fact, the early morning is a busy time, as many people bathe in the river at first light. There was also a major Hindu festival going on. I got down there by foot, and found the place I wanted.

That night, I sat on the roof of the guest house with a small cadre of travellers, looking down on the murky silhouette of the Ganges. There was a very beautiful girl from Naples; she had darkish skin but blue eyes, who said that the guesthouse was "verry seeemple but verrry goood.” There were a few standoffish English people. There were two haggard forty-something Austrian guys who spent chemical summers in Khatmandu and relatively non-toxic winters in India (“we come down here to cleanse our systems,” said one of them to me), and a guy from Montreal, happily the only Canadian I met in India, who was carting around an accoustic guitar that he scarcely how to play. He was French, and though he knew a bit of Pink Floyd, he asked me to show him some other songs. I chose 'Come Together,' by the Beatles, intending no significance; it was the only one that came to mind.

And then, as it got very dark, an enchanting event unfolded. Imagine the Illuminaires festival at Trout Lake. Then multiply all the laterns you would see there by ten or twenty or thirty times. Then imagine all of them being placed on tiny rafts or floats, and set adrift on a river in the dark. That’s what happened. They looked like a flowing constellation of stars, some big, some small, making their way past the shadowy shores of a very ancient and exotic city.

In the morning I would get up early. My room was on the ground floor, and it had it’s own shower, which was a bit of a luxury. I would go up to the roof, and hang out until this local kid, apparently known as ‘the boy,’ would show up and take orders for breakfast.

I had been in the country for a while, and knew enough to order ‘black tea,’ as opposed to ‘tea,’ which would in fact get me a cup of chai, the milky, sugary version of tea common in India. I learned that if you wanted toast, you asked for ‘toastbutterjam,’ so that you would get something to put on the toast as well as the toast itself.

I didn’t order omelettes or eggs of any kind, out of a sort of respect for the proprietors, who were clearly vegitarian. They offered omelettes as part of the unofficial menu, but seemed uncomfortable about making them. I decided to be a vegetarian for the time I was in the city, and it seemed, along with the fact that I didn’t smoke pot, to endear me to the owners of the guest house.

I spent a number of days in Varanasi, generally wandering around by the river, through the old town, and simply sitting on the roof, soaking the sun and observing all the activity below me.

Much of it centred around the ghats. A ghat is a series of steps leading right down into the river; the bottom steps are actually under the water. There are bathing ghats and burning ghats. Burning ghats are the sites of cremations. Bodies are burned at the edge of the river and the ashes usually scattered into the Ganges.

The purpose of fire is to cleanse the soul on the way to heaven. The bodies of young children are not burned as they are deemed to be pure already. I took a ride on a little rowboat one day at dawn, and was stunned to see the body of a dead baby boy float past the boat.

In the boat with me were a middle-aged English couple. The man was so complete a caricature of the pompous Englishman that it hardly seemed possible that he even existed. His wife wore tan fatigues and a pith helmet. Back on the banks of the river, we numbly dug into our pockets to pull out a couple of hundred rupees or so for the boatman. I wasn’t sure if we had given him enough.

“We just paid him the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average person in this country,” said the English man protested to me. “Oh, I don’t care,” he then shrugged. “Pay him what you want.”

A day later I was heading out. I figured I’d go to Darjeeling, up in the Himalayan foothills. I asked the owner of the guesthouse how to get to the train station. He gave me directions.

“You’ll have to get a motorickshaw,” he said. I asked him how much I should pay, telling him that Indian motorickshaw drivers seemed to be getting the better of me.

“About ten rupees,” he said. “Maybe twelve at the most. If you want, I can send the boy with you to negotiate.”

I sheepishly told him no thanks. I made my way through the maze of old town streets to a plaza full of taxis and rickshaws, and found one to take me to the station.

I paid twelve rupees, the equivalent of 50 cents. I was pleased with myself that had I paid no more.