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"I Think, Therefore I Ant."
February 8
The Big One
My heart is pounding like a drum
and my arm is numb. Jesus Christ. My doctor warned me that I was a prime
candidate but did I listen? I just went on boozing it up and smoking three
packs a day and now my chest is tight and my heart feels like it’s been torn
to pieces. I’m dizzy and sweaty. It’s the big one. The old ticker’s
finally given in. Aggh! I’m in love! I’m
in love with a hot babe. For the first time in my life I’m having a love
attack and I feel like death. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. The birds smell
and the flowers sing. Oh the unbearable pain! If love doesn’t kill me,
I’ll be so happy.
February 7
CLAUDE: A ONE ARMED MIME
A
Novella
By Michael Erskine-Kellie
11 pp.
Toronto:
Gutter Presses
Review by Michael Erskine-Kellie
The most appealing aspect of, “Claude: A One Armed Mime” Mr.
Erskine-Kellie’s (that’s me!) new
novella, is that at eleven pages, the pain of reading it all is over very
quickly. A ‘humourist,’ by
trade Mr. Erskine-Kellie would do
well to turn in his computer and consider a new career; perhaps in the fast
and dynamic world of keeping his putrid little thoughts to himself. The story,
such as it is, tells the sad tale of Claude, a one armed mime who speaks in
half sentences during his performances to compensate for his physical
deficiencies. It’s a low concept
and a long eleven pages later that Mr. Erskine-Kellie (that’s me!) runs this
sad joke to its existential grave. And
what a depressing and meandering voyage it is.
We open with Claude, his face painted white, drinking himself stupid in
a squalid bistro and performing s suggestive pantomime routine to a bored
hooker. The only good thing that
can be said at this point is that we're now only ten and a half pages from
ending this mess...
Stupidity
and drunkenness seem to be the common themes of this turgid and puny tome; in
fact it should come as no surprise to anyone who reads the book to discover
that the author (blame me) does not only posses a single or original thought but
that he was drunk when he
conceived and wrote the story (blame the bottle).
My advice to ‘little boots,’ as his mother affectionately calls
him, is that he should seek professional help,
although, knowing him as well as I do, something tells me that’s not going
to happen.
In
many ways Claude’s disabilities as a mime parallel Mr. Erskine-Kellie’s as
a writer. Try as they might,
neither one has the proper tools to make his art work successfully.
For Claude the mime, it’s his missing appendage.
For Mr. Erskine-Kellie the writer, it’s his missing voice.
The novella is bereft of plot, action and any type of literary
cohesion. Throughout, the book is
marred with dangling participles, atrocious grammar, terrible spelling and
clunky sentences, forever ending in prepositions that seem to go on and on.
All the while leading us nowhere. They
refuse to end, but instead, tiresomely continue, unfathomable coma after coma,
word after word, and just when you hope and pray the author has a point to
make, the babble continues, along with the commas resulting in an endless pond of
meandering idiocies, a babbling brook of boredom, a river of repetitive
metaphors, a stream of similes guaranteed to make you crazy like the fox.
Take this gem for instance. “Claude
was angry, he was also drunk, he was drunk and he was also angry.
He wasn’t sure if he was more drunk than he was angry, or more angry
that he was drunk. It was hard to
say, he was so angry, and he was so drunk. ‘Maybe
I’m both,’ he thought to himself in drunken anger.”
Yikes!
Someone call in the thought mechanics, this guy’s literary ponderings
are in dire need of a serious tune up. The question left to the reader is, how
bad can it get? Well take a peek
at this piece of memory work that comes to Claude, once again lost in drunken
anger, after, “accidentally,” losing his arm as a teenage chainsaw
juggler. “The chainsaw had
cut off his arm. Claude’s beret
remained atop his head. His arm
lay on the floor; I mean the ground, because he was outside...
Blood spurted from where it had once been -- somewhere around the
shoulder. Claude looked at his arm lying on the floor and the beret on his
head and wondered how long it would take to grow a new one.”
While I’m sure the author is referring to the recently hacked off arm, as
opposed to growing a new chapeau, (or head, for that matter) I still can’t
help but wonder how Claude manages to actually look at the beret.
This is such tawdry work, and so god awful it begs the question, what
on earth was I thinking?
Mr.
Erskine-Kellie’s (me again) descriptions of Paris are even more laughable,
while I happen to know for a fact that Mr. Erskine-Kellie has visited the city
of light – I was there after all – one can’t help but think that he went
through gay Paree with either a blindfold on or in a complete state of
inebriation. My guess is the
latter.
“Paris,” says Claude, (me again) “was a really big
city. There was all kinds of
bourgeois stuff and all sorts of neat-o art, not to mention The Eiffel Tower.”
Wow, it’s like I’m right there.
Near
the end of this whole dreary mess, Claude has resorted to combining the
ancient method of pantomime with already
long forgotten ,1980’s style, sophomoric dick jokes. “Don’t tell me to
shut up,” he roars at a heckling crowd of Parisian citizens who are taking in his show, “I may not have two arms, but have I
mentioned my cock?”
Is this supposed to be funny? Has Mr. Erskine-Kellie decided that when all
else fails talk about your phallus and it’s laughs guaranteed?
Granted, he has little else to work with here, Claude is a particularly
loathsome fellow who masturbates to pictures of Marcel Marceau (it is at these
times, more than any other, that he desperately misses his right arm), and is
forever berating his brother Jean, a blind knife thrower, opium fiend and
lover of all animals small and furry. That
Claude beats Jean to death with an opium pipe is no surprise; half a page
spent with his myopic, knife wielding, weasel cuddling brother certainly
brought out my murderous side. The
only downside is that Claude doesn’t follow through on his suicidal
contemplations after committing fratricide, and we, the unfortunate readers
are stuck with him as he wanders, “the really big, art filled streets of
Paris.” (Not to mention The Eiffel Tower? --ed. {me}).
If I hadn’t read it, hell if I hadn’t written it, I wouldn’t believe
such garbage was in print.
And
what about the author’s annoying style of ending Claude’s insight and
questions about life with three question marks???
Are we to assume that Claude’s queries into the sociological
relevance of pantomime and the penis are just the beginning of bigger
questions??? Well??? Or is this some sort of Trinity reference???
(Honestly, it seemed funny at the time, anyway who the hell are you to
judge? Just get off my back, okay???)
AND
DON’T GET ME STARTED ON HIS HABIT OF SUDDENLY, AND FOR NO APPARENT
REASON DECIDING TO PRINT PARTS OF THE STORY IN UPPER CASE LETTERS. IS THIS
MEANT TO BE PROVOCATIVE??? WHAT IS THE AUTHOR TRYING TO CONVEY??? MY ONLY
GUESS IS THAT HE’S TRYING TO WAKE US FROM THE STUPOR HE HAS PUT US INTO.
When
Claude finally decides to hack off his groin and crazy glue it to where his
missing arm once was (all the while quoting Camus, for goodness sake!),
readers can be forgiven for wondering what on earth propelled them to shell
out $49.95 (that’s almost five dollars a page) for this poorly constructed
piece of self aggrandizing, pseudo intellectual filth.
Mr.
Erskine-Kellie apparently has gained a somewhat minor reputation as a funny
guy. Legend has it that he was turfed unceremoniously out of The Albany Club,
when The Prime Minister discovered him shooting up in the bathroom.
According to those in the know, the
final insult was when he offered to share needles with the appalled PM.
Another story that still gets told is that when he was in university,
apparently he killed a man, in, get this, a drunken rage. His brother John,
swears that these are rumours, and under the white light of scrutiny will
confess that it was he who started them for the simple reason that he thought
it was hilarious that anyone would actually believe them.
His wife Susan, seems to be convinced that he’s a comedic genius, but
the fact is she’s biased and doesn’t get out much these days. And while
I’m the first to admit that I’ve laughed over some of his jokes
told over a dinner table, I know for a fact that he doesn’t tell them nearly
as well as he likes to think he does. So we’ll give him points for being
semi amusing over couscous with lemon, but as a writer, he would do well and
good to stop now. In fact, as much as he might like to, I suspect
he can’t at this moment because he still hasn’t finished reviewing
his latest work. Clearly, he is destined to sputter into insignificance,
slowly killed by his own deadening prose. And who knows, he may yet garnish
himself a reputation as this century’s worst writer.
All I can say for certain is that I’ll see him in hell.
Mike
Erskine-Kellie is a self doubting
humourist
, he is currently working on an essay about
this review.
February 6
Lincoln
Bedroom Gets A Makeover
Laura
Bush
says new
bedroom
is
“the
perfect
make-out room”
A
hundred and ninety-eight years after Abraham Lincoln's very messy birth, the
White House's Lincoln Bedroom finally looks like a room the great man would
like to make sexy love in.
Until
recently, Lincoln furniture, a copy of the Gettysburg Address, and some of
Lincoln’s “naughty limericks” (There
once was whore from Washington State/Who could do a strange trick when she
would masturbate…) were displayed against the stained walls, Tom and
Jerry curtains and shag carpet —not the vivid golds and
purples, heavy fabrics and large patterns of Lincoln's era.
One reason for glaring historical fib was to focus attention on the
chamber's historic chamber pots. Another: no one seemed to really give a crap
(except into the chamber pots); as well (and get ready for this), mid-century Americans disdained Victorian décor, which they equated with the
horrific house in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."
So there you have it... It’s all Norman Bates’ fault.
But
now, under First Lady Laura Bush and White House curator Bill Allman, the
bedroom has been impressively restored to, as Laura so eloquently puts it,
“More of a 1970’s funky chicken look.”
Yes,
garish reds, a waterbed, a big honking bong, a tacky bedspread with what
appears to be faux ancient Egyptian symbols, orange pillows, cheap Pier 1
wicker, and other 1970’s fashion
home decoration crimes now fill the
chamber, which, apparently was never Lincoln's bedroom but was his “mole
burning room . “
In its newest incarnation, the Lincoln Bedroom will allow visitors to sense that mystical aura of the Civil War martyr, and all through
the tacky colour choices of decorator/spiritual medium, Laura Bush.
February 5
Take the Avery “Love Test”
With the Stupor Bowl over, the next thing we have to dread is Valentine’s
Day. Yes, we now move from
the world of beer, pizza and cheering for big goons on steroids, to the land
of chocolates, flowers, and bad Hallmark poetry.
Oh, and we’ll also have to face those annoying little tests that suddenly
pop up everywhere that claim to tell you what kind of romantic you are.
Like this one...
The Avery Love Test:
1. When
I think of Valentine’s
Day I want to…
a) kill people
b) drink alone
c) masturbate compulsively
d) do something romantic
That’s
it. Simple, huh?
So here are the results. If
you chose…
a: You’re a psychotic and likely
just recently out of jail once again, thus proving that the courts and penal
system have let society down.
b: You’re a lonely alcoholic.
You’ll do the same thing you did on Stupor Bowl Sunday and last
Christmas – drink alone. Hey,
knock yourself out! (Hint: A good
way is to stagger into a wall.)
c: You’re not so much a romantic
as a sex addict. There’s a
difference, and sorry to tell you this but Hallmark hasn’t invented a card
or day for you yet.
d:
You’re a romantic – or so you claim.
This means you will likely do one of the following: buy flowers; buy
chocolate; buy a card; buy all of the above.
Yeah, how romantic!
Last Christmas is so 2006...
Only 319 Shopping Days Left Until Xmas!
(to
the top)
To read all the other mildly exciting editions of
"Avery's Daily Journal" visit
"Avery's Journal Archives"
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