Day's Slacks

There is so much going on in the tag for Day's slacks. Yes, they're "slim," and maybe "bold," but you have to be slim to wear them, and if you're not, then a "bold" statement to be sure. As for "active," just putting on a pair of Day's slacks makes everyday a day at the drop zone.

The Modernia-esque "stencil" font is nice. So too are the desert boots. I'm guessing the car is a '64 Chevy Impala Super Sport, which is red like the grass and sits nicely before the golden sunset. What happens after that sun goes down is up to the imagination, but for the lonely Moose Jaw accountant who struggles with the truth of his imagination, not my business.

Here's another tag from Day's (also from Woo's latest haul of deadstock). This one I'm calling "No Hands Pissing":

Mac on Main

The red mac was well-received by Natalie (above), proprietor of Woo Vintage Clothing. Later, she sent pictures of her last days of winter "70s/80s Canadiana" window display.

"Fresh up" indeed, though I've always found 7up too sweet.

School Rules! (2021)

School Rules! is a picture book (ages 3-8) written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by David Whamond. It tells the story of Cassandra, a real-life person who wrote to Munsch as a child and told him the most interesting thing about herself is that she loves going to school.

Of course not all that happens at school is blissful (a "slightly scary principal," a tattooed janitor, etc) which I guess is the point of Munsch's book: to convince children who don't like -- or are afraid of -- school to think of it as good medicine (but not a vaccine, or a place where masks are worn).

When I checked the School Rules! publication date I saw that it came out in July 2021, a couple months before the 2021-2022 school year. This would be Year Three of the pandemic, when some kids still had no idea of what school was -- at least not as we knew it.

School for me was a highly regulated affair, where we pretty much learned by rote and routine. Today's Grade Three student has thus far had nothing but irregularities and improvisation, which is great for those who have adapted to it, because the super heroes of the future are more likely to be McGyvers than Batman, Xena or the Black Panther.

Red Mac

I never had much luck at Value Village because I never went enough. Like a lot of things in life, the more we show up, the greater the likelihood. 

Earlier this week I was at the Victoria Drive Value Village and found a barely-worn, red M-sized Champion brand "Mac" jacket marked $10.49. Madly, I snapped it up, held it to my breast, never checking to see if it fit until I got home, where I found that it didn't (too tight in the shoulders, too short in the sleeves). Oh well. Someone will love it. I took a look online and my god if these jackets aren't fetching a princely sum.

For those interested I will consign the garment at Woo on Main Street, where I will leave the pricing to professionals. Whatever I make from this sale I will spend on poetry.

Iron Goddess of Mercy (2021)

The British Columbia Review is the new name of the Ormsby Review, an online site whose focus is B.C. books, a determination based on B.C. authors or authors who spent time here, who published their books with a B.C.-based publisher and/or make B.C their setting.

"Ormsby" stood for Margaret Ormsby (1909-1996), a historian considered by some to be the first to write a comprehensive (if not ethnocentric) history of the province. But "British Columbia" is a double sin given that the British were a colonizing force when her ships dropped anchor in what is now called Burrard Inlet in the 1790s -- just as the Genoan Christopher Columbus entered Caribbean waters 300 years before that, when he claimed to have "discovered" America.

How long this new title will last will likely depend on how it is responded to. In the meantime, we still have a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award despite the ex-Brit's own ethnocentrism, most notably in his provincial travelogue Ravens and Prophets (1952); and an Ethel Wilson B.C. Book Prize for Fiction, despite the South African-born author's own ghastly depictions of non-white British Columbians in the opening pages of her best-known novel Swamp Angel (1953).

With that said, my review of Larissa Lai's Iron Goddess of Mercy (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) is now up on what is for now known as the British Columbia Review. 

No War on Main Street

No one wants war. Not even warring nations like Russia, whose Putin expected everyone to back down, like the USSR backed down during the October, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. No one backed down and Russian soldiers were ordered to plow ahead -- invading Ukraine, destroying its civic buildings, killing its citizens. What was said to be a liberation of two southern breakaway republics of Russian-speakers was suddenly an attack on the capitol. 

An invasion is not a war, nor is an attack. Ukrainians are defending themselves from invasion, attacks. When is war? Does it begin with a declaration? The Korean War was not a war -- not officially -- and as of this minute there is no formal declaration that it is over. Nor was the Vietnam War a war (or the American War, as the Vietnamese call it). To refer to what's happening in Ukraine right now as a war absolves the Russians from starting it.

I appreciate businesses daring to express their beliefs, particularly when these beliefs are unpopular. Such a gesture tells me that what one believes in is more important than money. But what is this sign saying? NO WAR, yes, but then Ukraine's flag, as if it is Ukraine we are saying "NO" to? And if I went inside this bar and asked for a Stoli rocks? How about if I went inside and offered them $100 to pour the bottle down the sink? Just how far are people willing to go to get it right? 

Apostrophes

The closure of the Army, Navy, Air Force Veterans (ANAF Vets) Legion Unit #298 (aka the Taurus Club) at 23rd & Main in 2019 preceded the pandemic. It had nothing to do with poor sales and everything to do with the inevitable accumulation of licensing improprieties that plague businesses run by people concerned less with profit than with living life in the moment.

Opened in the early-1950s, the Legion was both a pub for vets and for those in the neighbourhood who enjoyed an inexpensive draft without having to order food to do so (Vancouver liquor laws being what they were until the 1980s). The Legion also had a gorgeous shuffle board that the Galloway-Chong-Henderson Salon was partial to, a salon that met every Thursday night until the Henderson part moved to Victoria and the Galloway part learned the hard way that nothing good ever comes from drinking with your students.

A couple months ago I noticed the legion had reopened as a private business, and then a couple week's ago the name: Hero's Walk. Okay, so that's the new name. But is it really? Surely the owners don't mean "hero" in the singular; not when so many of us are exploring/celebrating our relational links to ancestry, identity, political economy, aesthetics, etc. Unless the apostrophe is less a possessive or a contraction than a stand-in for the letter "e" in "heroes". Is that it? Like the "and" in rock 'n' roll is an "'n'"? Heroes Welcome is a better name.

Oddly enough, just south of Hero's Welcome, a sign for an upcoming show whose title plays on its subject, the musical explorer Frank Zappa, who in 1974 put out a album called Apostrophe.