Holy Mackerel

Of course, it's not good to post while intoxicated, but, of course, well, I am going to.

There's a joy to fishing. There's a spot. Silent. Clean. Untainted.
It's a bay. There are trees. Few homes on it, despite its short distance from Oceantown. And silence. Pristine.
The spot is under a bridge. There are two rocks. One is for one person. One is for the other. They both sit above the tide line. There's a chance you'll catch weeds at both. Be diligent. Reel quickly.
Cast away from the bridge. The mackerel will be there.
I switched spots for a while. There's a government dock. There are rednecks. They speak loudly. Every other word is fuck. They disrespect the fish. They scare the fish away.
I went back to the bridge.
Nature smiled.
Peace returned. Nobody believes it, but I cast. The mackerel, they understood. As the hook hit the water on the first cast, the mackerel struck. There is no interlude between the end of the cast and the bite on the bait. No interlude. With the connection of water with lure, the fish welcome my return. They strike. There is no fight as I reel in. The mackerel land gently on the rocks near where I reel. It surrenders easily.
Mercury.
Poisoning.
Eating from the ocean, I understand.
Contaminants.
Illness.
The toxicity of the fish takes me from a peaceful place to an ugly realization. There isn't a fish for everyone. There isn't a clean spot for everyone to fish. The 200 years of unfettered, unregulated, indifferent fishing has left me with nothing to catch. What there is to catch is toxic.
An oil bottle floats by. A carefully labelled medical bag follows. I reel in a clump of toilet paper. I move back to the spot under the bridge.
At least, looking away for the bridge, I can believe that there are still clean fish, healthy fish, good fish to catch. They agree. I catch the biggest mackerel ever with my last cast. I stop fishing after I cast.
It's not polite to ask more of the ocean at this point. It's not fair to ask more of it.
It has just given all there is to give.

Treadmills!

This music video for Ok Go's "Here It Goes Again" came up today at what people who get up in the morning call "brunch," but what folks who get up at noon like me call "pre-breakfast," with Leah and Iris, who had stopped over in Toronto for a few hours en route to J school in Boston. While the song is nothing to get horny about, the choreography, as you can see, is awesome. And homemade, apparently. Anyhow, check out that roller-rink glide!

And good luck in Boston, Iris!



UPDATE: Apparently these guys are known for their choreographic abilities. Here's a "never-intended-for-release" video the band made in one of their member's backyards last year, which stormed YouTube last year. It even spawned a dance contest, which has accumulated some pretty good copycat numbers by bored teenagers across the world.

Dancing!

Saved by the Buoyancy of Citrus

That’s a line from a bit by late comedian Mitch Hedberg, who OD’d last year in a New Jersey hotel room. Like Belushi and Farley before him, he self-medicated, but unlike those guys, he never made it big before clocking out. Apparently this is because his scatter-shot style of non-sequitur one-liners didn’t lend itself well to sit-coms or movies (although he did appear in Almost Famous and Lords of Dogtown). If he’d stuck around he might have been called the next Steven Wright, although that’s not actually very accurate. Hedberg’s style is completely unique; his delivery was more stoner than deadpan, his observations were more unexpected in their pay-offs than Wright’s, and his the success of his gags rested much more on the inflections he used in their delivery. The way he uneasily shuffled around stage, eyes closed behind retro bangs and tinted shades, mades it seem like he’d gonna break into hysteria at any moment. He wasn’t one of those guys you’d look at and say, “Whaaa? Drugs? Him? Nooooo… .”

Anyhow, long story short: he’s one of the funniest live performers you’ve never heard of. I’m not a big stand-up junkie or anything, but this week I was given a DVD of Just for Laughs: Stand Up, Vol. 2 - On the Edge, which features a bunch of comedians, including The Daily Show’s Angry Man Lewis Black, Just for Laughs Mascot Harlan Williams and, of course, Hedberg – and Hedberg won me over from the first joke. I spent a good chunk of this evening watching him on YouTube. He released two albums, and aside from the bits on the Edge DVD, I don’t think there are any other of his performances released. Click here for more on limes-as-life-preservers and a bunch of other off-the wall, hard drug-fuelled weirdness.