Tour Journal 2005

The highway is just how you'd imagine, a long grey streak forever unbending cutting through a sea of hay bales. Every few minutes the green fields give way to dandelion yellow; huge expanses of uncut canola that catch the breeze and ripple like waves. Watching it move so fluidly from the van I can almost understand how people can live here so far from the ocean I grew up with.

I need a phonecall.

Hotel rooms look the same, airports feel the same. The one in San Diego had locally brewed beer & carded everyone, even the senior couple at the next table. The one in Montreal has a Tim Horton's, but they don't have tea. For the most part they are all white & glass, the planes outside are for the most part all white & glass.

I have slept in the Montreal airport before, though I can't seem to find the room now. I had just arrived on a train from Quebec City and was supposed to be flying to Vancouver. At the airport they told me my ticket was for the next day. I knew no one in Montreal back then so I stayed there in the Montreal airport for 24 hours, eating, shopping, reading, sleeping. This was way before that Tom Hanks movie about living in the airport came out. I think Castaway was his most recent.

When I finally did get to Vancouver it was late at night, 11 or 12 and again I knew no one in the city, so rather than take a bus downtown in the middle of the night I wandered around until I found a quiet area and slept. There was a Mexican family sleeping nearby, and I wondered if they had just arrived too, if they had no one to visit either.

TV 7749

So Jesus, here we are. Maybe an hour outside of London, flightwise. Still high up in the air, out over the Atlantic ocean. We go down now and there’s no fire & brimstone, no fireworks. We’re going to sink, slow & quiet.

In my head, it’s 1AM. 2AM when we land, then. Unfortunately for us, it’ll be 7AM, which means we’ve got four hours to get our act together: get money (pounds?), get books, get to the bookfair. We start work today at 11AM, which to us will be 5 in the morning. No sleep til London.

The only fortification I’ve taken on was a weird vegetarian pasta dish on the airplane & a pint of duty free vodka. Will this be enough? Can this keep me through til we’re settle in London & we can start taking shifts sleeping under the table? Have we brought an evil upon ourselves that even booze cannot exorcise?

Tomorrow (today?) will hold the answer. So far the outlook is grim. Out the window the Briny Deep beckons. Security too/k our toothpaste. I can barely make out a word these wicked shitbats are saying. We have entered the Savage Lands.

On the TV a gang of monkeys are using vines to fashion tools never before thought to make it out of the human realm. My God, these fantastic apes! A four minute YouTube of a chimp on a Segway worms it’s way up from my lizard brain back into my mind & it hits me. Adaptability. Adaptability! If Homo Erectus could make it through 17 ice ages, by God we’ll be able to endure a week of Fish & Chips & haggis…

The answer is simple: We douse our heads in Scotch. Take on only as much food as is deemed necessary & keep the Jimi Hendrix fast & loud. Swallow hard & often, and never, NEVER take the red pills (no pill is red in nature).

BRUCE SPRINGSTZINE NO 1. ON SALE NOW.

Bruce Springstzine 1 takes place in Toronto, on Canzine weekend last October. I flew in from Vancouver, and had exactly 36 hours from touchdown to takeoff again. What follows is a detailed report on that day and a half of self-abuse and small pressery. Sometimes vague and deranged, sometimes lucidly hung over, this is an honest report, complete with hand written field notes, of what happens when a writer and a publisher attempt to stay up for 36 hours, fueled mainly on energy drinks, little orange pills, and pharmaceutical grade tequila.

EXCERPT : 2PM
People are starting to show up so we sit back down behind our makeshift table and start to work our magic. “Look at this lot,” Joey whispers, maybe not to me, “These people are goons. You think I want this goon money?”

Jesus Christ you’re off your rocker,” I say. “Here, I didn’t want to have to pull these out so soon, I was saving them for the plane ride home, but here, you take two now, to ease out. We’re going to pull you right out of this.” I fold two shiny orange pills into his palm, real discrete like, and give him solid eye contact and a head nod.

“What are these things, barbiturates?”

“Downers, calmers. Serious Easers. I’d be surprised if you weren’t giving these ghoulish bastards all back rubs in half an hour’s time.” Joey eats the pills, which are obviously orange Tic Tacs, and washes them down with a big gulp of whole milk, which he’s been buying by the pint at the bar.

“Good. GOOD. Lots of milk, man. Don’t need to be tasting those nasty little bastards.” He finishes gulping and smiles and gives me a thumbs up. “Now we’re in business,” I smile, “Now we’re in fucking business.”

* * *

As dumb as that wigged out bastard is he’s right about one thing. The people pouring in here are seriously off. Goons, yeah. Trolls. Dogmen. Librarians. It looks like a deck of Magic cards came to life in the basement of the Gladstone Hotel and have come upstairs for air.

There is now a healthy number of people milling around, and they’re all stuck in this awful pattern, pay at front, walk into ballroom, look disdainfully at the shit dicks to your left who reek of alcohol, then push into the one way rat maze of tables, up-over-down-over-up-over-down til you’re over by the banana women. God help you if you want to go back a few tables to pick up something you missed or if you’re a speedy peruser. Every once in a while you see one of these poor souls fighting backward through the throngs and your heart can’t help but go out to the bastard, it’s like standing on shore watching a ship bashing against the rocks.

The best part about the whole thing though, is that at the end of every up-over-down every one of these fuckers hits our table again, our half-assed, two side tables mashed together, everything’s-poorly-labeled-and- has-pin-glass-rings-on-it, sketchbag table where they must endure us, even if they don’t look or make eye contact. Our pitch goes mostly like this: “See all these books, don’t buy em. You can read them all online for free. This one, all of it. This one, half. This one two thirds. I’ll tell you how this one ends right now, if you want. The dog dies, like in Marly and Me. It’s like Marley and Me with more gay sex. What? Yeah, all of em. They’re all full of gay sex.” About 20% of the time this would result in the sale of a book, and if it didn’t Joey moved on. “No no, that’s ok, books? Fuck em. I don’t read em either. What I CAN do for you, lady, is I can set you up on a real hot date, that’s right, a swanky night out on the town with uh, a genuine published author.” “a real freak of nature!” I’d add, “a god damned watermelon-headed geek. Take him to KFC and he’ll go to work biting off chicken heads.”

After that exchange they usually moved on, toward the banana women and the bar. If they looked trustworthy I’d usually give them a fiver out of our cash box and tell them to get me a pint of beer.

TO ORDER:
This is a 1/4 sized zine, 48pgs. Price is $3.50, postage paid.