Ill-Met in Novgorod

Been some time since I've posted here on my own blog, but I have a great excuse (I hope). I've just finished my first book, Ill-Met in Novgorod. It is the true tale of a few daring men (and myself) and our plan to infiltrate the caustic and cancerous Neo-Nazi cells in Eastern Russia. I hope you get a chance to check it out! Here's an excerpt.

IV. Protest Too Much

      It is dusk, June 15th, 2011. Belsen pulls up to the lobby in a shit-bagged Toyota. He's right on time, as usual. I slide into the back seat he says, "Hello Antony". Its one word for him and it is expressionless. Belsen and I have travelled together twice before and I still can't read this man. He can be no more than twenty but there are a hundred thousand miles on his face. Yugoslavia is the only place I've heard him speak of with a note of pride in his voice, and that was just a quiet croak during a televised soccer match in the early nineties. "Yugoslaviaaaaaaaaa...". He's the type who only smiles at jokes. I am the type that can't help but wonder if he thinks I'm an idiot. His eyes say "Jokes in this world, with all I've seen". 
    
     I've seen the violence in the street from six stories up, and I'm in no mood to be here at street level for any longer than we need to be. This type of smoke and fire are best experienced from a distance, and the city has been ready to burn for hours now. Primed. Belsen's freshly shaven jaw juts forward and his slash of a mouth gives no hint of his mood. There is a dead stare in his grey eyes that seem as cold as the stone streets of St. Petersburg. The road south is filled with  a mob that harbors only menace. Belsen's head swivels from left to right as calmly as a hawk's might as we wend slowly through streets. If the bands and clutches of angry young people roaming this town are affecting our (his) plan of escape he doesn't show it. A merchant's window smashes off to the left. A crowd roars. Belsen, his voice steady, mutters something to the driver. 


    Something heavy hits the passenger door and without hesitation the driver guns the engine. It whines and we're braking left, gear-jamming between a coffee shop and a falafel place. We go blind as the car dives into an alley washed in fog or smoke or both. I look out the sloped rear windshield and see the mist envelop a crowd forming behind us. The driver accelerates blindly as dumpsters and electricity poles picket fence by us through the mist at my too immediate right. I romanticize this situation, like all dreamers do. The city is closing in on us. Belsen and the driver now share a loud yet strangely even conversation. It is as if two track announcers are sharing a horse race in some forgotten Slavic tongue. We burst forth from the alley, squealing to the right. The Renault complains. I steal a glance out of the back as the mist clears and see a missile hurtling towards us. I am relieved as the bottle dances off the glass and have that relief turn to horror as it evaporates on a young man walking on the sidewalk to my left. I hear it smash and the scream before my head turns to see and I make the connection. I look ahead (away). The fat, sorrow-less tears build. I'm not sad. I get them when I think about the ghost I saw once or when I panic. They cloud my vision(DON'TBLINK) as what can only be another bottle explodes across the front windshield. Tears are now ribboning off of my cheeks. The shame and embarrassment of scrunching my eyes up and hiding my face behind my clawed hands is made exponential by the sight of Belsen looking back at me saying coolly, "The city wants blood." And it does.


       I'm sure birds above see, walleyed, a massive, breathing beast with red pustules below. A Colossus consuming. Carrion wheel above with all the time in the world. Sirens blare. It is impossible to tell from where, so assume they're from everywhere. 


      We speed down south to quickly cobbled streets and pass cars on fire. A hunger for violence has gripped the crowds and I wonder, when a city burns, just how much goes unreported?
Can a riot be a living thing? Are there subtle nuances on its periphery? Lesser violence, quiet rape. You are responsible for you, for better or for worse. What are you going to do (How many selfish and secret 'Thank God"'s had been muttered When The Towers Fell because you were cheating on your wife or you'd been stealing from the company or for Christ's Sake Kid, You Don't Have Your Homework Done)? We whip past lots and alleys and dodge dumpsters on this night where snapshots of the unspeakable are taken by the brain, forgotten, only to be remembered months or years later in that moment just before deep sleep when your eyes slam open at the memory and you say "Fuck". You get up and step out onto the balcony in your gonch, and you light a cigarette.


    The car whines like I hope its supposed to, we hammer 'round a corner to the right and are met by a wall of armoured officers. A phalanx that must be twenty deep, twenty feet in front of us. Its smoke, but what looks like a collective breath rises above them. I like to think they are as surprised as we are but thats just the way I'll remember it. The driver slams the car to a stop. I am airborne but for my shoulder belt. Time stops. Tires squeal. I slam back into my seat and listen to the to the engine gurgle and thrum. I am reminded of the choke on my fathers lawn mower all the way back in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Police/Army/Whoever don't move. They stand there a wall of armour and I stare. The memory of the grass is cut short as John William's Imperial March sneaks into my brain. I smile and my vision is filled with the face of the driver. "FUCKING MOVE!" were his first and only english words to me. One can find this expression used in all corners of the globe (I blame American Imperialism... There's that song again). He reverses the car, hits the gas, and methinks the engine doth protest too much WINWINWINWINWNWNWNW and just before I think we'll have to run through the mob in the street on foot, the weight of the car shifts, we stop. I wheeze. The driver sets his gaze on a ruined street ahead and I see what he sees now, the bridge that will lead us to the town with the airstrip in it. Belsen puts his hands on the dash. The soldiers are still just east of us, unmoving. Awaiting orders. There's no way they're the only guys dressed like that tonight. Gas. We rocket south, a city burns in our rear view. My guide and my driver speak a russian dialect and I miss what is said. The driver sees my confusion in the rear view, laughs and gestures to my guide. Belsen, in english says, "Its boring here..." he turns and looks right through me "...Is that why you're all alcoholics?" He smiles and settles in. All is silent but for the overwrought engine of a Toyota Cressida.


     An hour and twenty minutes later jet engines whine as we taxi on the tarmac. We leave Vancouver and the what would come to be known as "The Stanley Cup Riots" behind. Toronto, then Moscow. From there, Novgorod. 

DVD Review - HARRY BROWN - Crime Drama

Harry Brown (2009)

Dir. Daniel Barber

 

Few movies have excited me the way HARRY BROWN has. This is a tale of sadness and loss set against a backdrop of shocking violence sure to please any moviegoer with a yen for good story, great acting and disturbing violence. Veteran character actor Michael Caine is the titular Brown, a pensioner living in a bleak London housing estate. It is an area under siege by brutal thugs, perpetually wired and keen to kill. Daily hospital visits to his ailing wife, (whom he’d met during service as a Marine during the Troubles in Belfast) a love spanning some 50 years, are cut short by her quiet death. We also learn of his earlier loss of their young daughter in the directors scatter gun edit of her violent death early in the film, one that redefines the term “senseless”. The years of silent pain and loss are etched into Harry Brown’s face. Chess games with an old friend and a pint at the pub are all of Harry’s comings and goings. It is when these last bits of the life he knows are taken from him that Harry kicks back at the chaos around him. In committing an act of violence that surprises even himself, our man finds more than a few reasons to carry on amidst the savagery that is happening at point blank range in his tiny pocket of the world.

There have been more than a few films of late about revenge with a character falling back on the talents he swore he’d never uncork again. TAKEN comes to mind, as does the BOURNE TRILOGY, but HARRY BROWN balances on a different fulcrum. We aren’t given splashy edits and jump-cuts of his actions, Christ, he’s a septuagenarian! The tension rests on Harry in situations where he is so completely out of his element that either violent death or a failing heart have equal dominion. A nightmarish scene in a drug den rivals any event I’ve seen in a film for the tension alone. Had me absolutely riveted. The action in HARRY BROWN is sharp and bloody, while the scenes of dialogue have an honesty that only a veteran of well over 100 films can deliver

I don’t believe that in and amongst the DVD covers on the shelf right now, a picture of Michael Caine in a pea-coat looking dour, gun in hand will get many second glances but I urge fans of acting, action and dramatic anxiety to give it a shot. Besides, who the hell do I have to “do some business with” to gedda drink around here?

Trailer here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVOSfHFNlcI

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

         One night, years ago, someone saved my life. I was working in a place of ill repute and I stepped on the wrong toes. It happens in my line of work. Christ, do I have to be a diplomat 24-7? You do these things and you work in these places and make these moves and its all free and good and you walk that razor's edge with a wink and a smile but one time... One time you slip and it can all come apart. Not just the job or the friends but the LIFE that you live, the sight in your eyes and the smell of things and the air that you breathe can be in jeopardy in an instant... And it was that night. And while my eyes did not implore to friends and people that I knew, co-workers and security who should have had my back, not for anything so simple as friendship or camaraderie, but because it was your job. Well, you guys weren't there. There are still conflicting reports and stories as to why I left that place, but I tell you all, those of you that I'd known for years and worked with as long... You didn't have my back. One guy said to me one time, "When no-one has your back, its time to move your back..."
        There is a man, who, as I write this, is lying in pain from abuse and afflictions visited on him by the life that he chose. He will either succumb to his injuries or be killed. He is a bad man. He did not only make his environs the seedy underbelly of this city, he was instrumental in making it's underbelly unsuitably seedy. He is the bogeyman, the shadow beyond the trees and the piper one must pay when the tune is played.  To cross him or his "higher-ups" is tantamount to suicide. His ungovernable wrath.
         Yet one night when all of my clever finesse, all the double-speak and jibber-jabber and the ability to speak it that I have been blessed with did NOT stem the blood-dimmed tide that sought to overwhelm me did NOT suffice. Did NOT make 'em laugh, did NOT smooth things over in a situation that had gotten out of control... Until a man who someone like me, with this chip I carry on BOTH shoulders, would have never, EVER expected to have my back, had it. Not for some deep-seated instinct that told him we were brothers in a past life or that he needed to redeem himself or for God's sake be a hero, but because what he saw happening, well he thought it was bullshit.

         Friends and family may argue, but I will tell you this.That night in that place, my ass needed saving. I would not be writing this but for him. He saved my life, and for that I am eternally grateful and will never forget it.
        You made your bed, friend (and I don't call many that), but you enabled me to sleep in mine soundly. Thank you.

Antisocial Networking

    She’s 5’7. Brunette. Shoulder length hair. The face? Higher cheekbones and fantastic lips. Theres a touch of light eyeshadow, minimal mascara and something to accentuate her cheekbones. Its enough make-up that she stands out, but not enough so you won’t recognize her in the morning. She has a small clutch and she’s wearing a black tank top under a white denim half-jacket that serves absolutely no purpose but to make her look sexy, and its working. The jacket leaves the breast size to the imagination, but the cleavage in the tank top tells the jacket to fuck off. Trim waist, light jeans that start at a fantastic ass and go down inside her boots and fit her fucking perfectly. She glides in just past the main bar  and is yammering away on her cell phone. OMG and all that. Gets off the phone, stands there, looks around and then makes another call. “Where are you guys?” Looks up to the second level, waves and stutter-steps left before deciding that a right would make the distance between her and her party much shorter. BOO.
I see all this because when I drink at an establishment, I prefer to sit at the bar. The booze is about 4 feet from me and it makes the distance between me and my party much shorter. It also enables you to see who is walking in and give a quick size up of whether that person is a potential mate for long or short term lovin’. I may never speak to her, but knowing she’s in the room is half the battle. I have won exactly half of that battle.

    My issue is these other poor saps in here who have no idea what this doll looks like! Not because they aren’t paying any attention, but because they never had a chance. Why not? That damn cell phone. They don’t even know she’s there! They’re cuttin’ up an cracking shitty jokes and they are doing so at their peril. The cell phone has robbed them of any chance of speaking with this fine lady and also the ability to behave like gentlemen in her presence. Its efficiency is also putting a damper on that amazing entrance she could have made. But that's her thing.

    Gone are the days of walking into a joint and wandering aimlessly to find your squad, thereby familiarizing yourself with other patrons, albeit fleetingly. There is a confidence that one should have when walking into any socially awkward situation and a cell phone at your ear or fingertips isn’t helping it. I am immediately put off by the dude or chick who sits at the bar and is glued to the keyboard “socially interacting” via text with someone who isn’t there. Get real. I think its an Alexander Keith’s commercial that states something like, and I’m paraphrasing, “...and the friends that you wanna talk to are in the bar with you...” I know of a regular at a bar that I frequent who will laugh gaily at the text messages coming inward from God knows where and God knows who, yet she always walks in AND out of the bar alone (save for once, when a young suitor was making time and she behaved as though she was the belle of the ball). I get it, you’re popular, but you can’t seem to network socially with the people who are AT THE BAR RIGHT NOW! That is what a BAR IS FOR. THAT IS WHY WE GO. TO NETWORK SOCIALLY! WITH BOOZE! The only parallel to that would be Chatroulette! (I can’t pull my cock out at a bar... Or can I???)

    At the risk of sounding like a Gary (Oldman), I’ll restrain myself by saying, “...back in my day...”, but next time you roll into one of these joints and you don’t immediately see one of your gang, I dare you to holster that cell phone and browse the crowd. See what happens. Stroll in with confidence and a stride that makes people wonder what the fuck THEY are even doing there. It will work wonders for your confidence and you may run into an old friend or an new one. Look for me, I’ll be at the bar. No need for the celly, the platoon of baboons I hang out with can be heard from the front entrance...
   
     Now, what no-account social misfit’s crackberry do I have to smash into splinters to gedda drink around here?


       

AVATAR or... I'm a big baby.

         I’m a big baby because I cry sometimes. I go to the movies once a week. Rain or fucking shine. I’ve always gone to the movies, the theatre. The theatre is where the sound is big, the floor is sticky and if you look to your left or right, you’ll see like-minded patrons staring open-mouthed at the big screen.  If something looks good, preview-wise, I don’t care what size flatscreen you have at home, nothing beats the theatre. The first movie I ever saw there was Close Encounters of the Third Kind and I must have been 5 years old because it came out in 1977.  I recently purchased the Blu-Ray Close Encounters. I Still love that timeless film,  it just doesn’t matter. Even  if that movie is on TV, commercials and all, I’ll watch it. It introduced me to a brand new world. Fantastic lights, sounds and strange beings! That was just the theatre lobby, to say nothing of the movie itself. I was born again, feeling or understanding that, not only was there a world beyond our atmosphere, but one beyond my front door and back yard. Spielberg’s ability, proven twenty times over, to transport us to another time, place or world, enabled my heart to sing in the theatre. My belief in fantastic realms was born and has gone unabated since.

      Over the years I have come close to that original magic place where Close Encounters took me. Star Wars, natch. I saw Christopher Reeve in Superman and I did believe a man could fly. My adolescence was fraught with acne and blown chances with girls at dances because I spent most of my time reading Frank Miller’s multi-industry changing four-issue Batman series “The Dark Knight Returns” over and over and over again. High School and bummer grades ensued with the futility of trying to fit into a strange world. New heroes arrived in the form of John McClane and Martin Riggs. These were Lone Wolves with a chips on both shoulders and I could identify with them, minus the taking-on-the-world-and-winning part. Ten years later Luc Besson showed me a sense of style with Nikita, then Leon in The Professional. I became older and more cynical. Pulp Fiction staccattoed its way across my consciousness and drove me down a wet, gray side-street straight into Sin City. Hello again, Frank Miller.

    I still thumb through that old comic book but the new fantasy was sharp dressed gunslingers with snappy patter and a tragic flaws. Haven’t we seen this before? I mean haven’t our parents? The graphics are better now and we are a generation raised on comic books and A Team reruns. Fuck the A-Team, gimme Reservoir Dogs! It was good to see someone die for a change. Continental Op planting a drop piece. Cary Grant as the rapist. Sam Spade with a drug habit, seventies soul on the 8-track and a multi-hued background ripping by.

    Our brains, however, as we grow older, want for more fantasy but sadly can accept less and less. We’ve seen the strings at the puppet show or the sleight of hand on the street corner. The headlines become bloodier and our ability to interpret or believe in the fantastic is trampled underhoof by runaway headlines of real rape and real torture and real rape-torture! Reality encroaches as we age and our grasp on the belief in beings from outer space or the stalwart champions who always do the right thing and get the girl slips with every marble-chinned matinee idol who hides the cuffs under a suit-jacket on the way to county, doesn’t it, Sugar Tits.

    Fantasy has returned in the form of Avatar. James Cameron's immersive and entertaining feast for the senses has the power to bring those of us who had lost faith and hope in a system that puts faith and hope in Scary Movies  and Adam Sandler. Fans of comedy and drama have turned to HBO and Showtime for decent writing and acting because at this point we’ll settle for writing and acting that is at best, decent. A reformed drug addict wrote that the whole god damned time he was snorting coke or banging heroin he was looking for transcendence. While I am not addicted to the movies, I go to them in the hopes that they take me somewhere and for the first time since 1977 I had a feeling. One that has been waxing and waning and skirting the edges and flirting with taking me somewhere. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I wept as a boy when little Barry stutter-stepped out of the craft, searching for the source of his mother’s voice. I wept when Roy Neary was chosen to step aboard that same craft. I wept at a theatre for the first time in thirty years not for a particular scene or a sad turn of phrase. Not because a hero died or lived or a man was lost at sea. Not for a Notebook or unrequited love. I did not cry for a hooker or a vampire or a misbegotten son. I think now, a week after seeing the movie Avatar, I cried because in thirty years I have never felt so good, so transported, so transcendentalized sitting in the seat of a theatre. The type of experience I had was the reason I go to movies. If its all been dreck for you in the last 5, 10, 15, whatever years for you, well, someone finally gave enough of a fuck to make a movie that will reward you for being a fan of movies. Go see it. Just don't cry, you big baby.

Sheldon Brin, Ol' Shel, DJ SHELSHOK

 
 I know its been a long time comin’ guys. It’s hard to find the words to say about this guy so its taken a while and I still don’t know if I have it right. I met Shel on Shaughnessy street about 95 or 96. We were both sales guys from different companies. We hit it off instantly and although we’d lost touch early on in our relationship a few times, we’d been fast friends for years. His death, like many has inspired me to reach out to friends and family I’ve lost touch with over the years, reconnect and, despite our differences, appreciate what brought us together in the first place. I love Shel because he wasn’t anybody but Shel. You always got the straight shot from him with no bullshit which can be rare. I am going to miss him dearly but I know he’s still with us all. When I look for him or think about him or even talk to him now, I don’t look up, I look around. I urge you to share your tales of Sheldon Brin, Ol' Shel or DJ SHELSHOK here or anywhere else. I also urge you to reconnect with those who we’ve lost touch with or had a falling out with. There are people in this world who enrich your life and Sheldon Brin was one of the best. I still don’t know if I've used the right words here, but these words make me think of him and what he’s up to now... Love ya Shel!

Leaves are falling all around, It's time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, I'm much obliged for such a pleasant stay.
But now it's time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it's headed my way.
Sometimes I grow so tired, but I know I've got one thing I got to do...

Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 

                                                                                                    Led Zeppelin - Ramble On 

Your Girlfriend is a Pain in the Ass Drink

 Anthony Vermeulen is a dangerous man. According to some reports it is entirely believable that, should your boyfriend spend any time whatsoever with him, it is likely he will cheat on you while doing drugs just before you drink yourself into a stupor and ruin your life.

    Anthony wanders between drinking establishments all week, gamboling wildly through the streets heedlessly plying his charm on unsuspecting and defenseless nubiles for the sake of his own gratification. He then whiles away the day in the pub relating to all who will listen his tales of sexual derring-do. Forgive me for a bit while I romanticize being single. I do so only to lift the term “single” out of the mire and ooze where it lays bleeding and drunk in the gutter.  There are those who would have me excommunicated from their social circle. I am a pariah, a Flying Dutchman, hell, a bogeyman for I am single. At least, to those who vilify the term. Being a single man amidst your dating friends is akin to being a Vampire at an orphanage. Not the adolescent fair skinned misunderstood high-school Vampire either. I am seen as the Gary Oldman-hanging upside down-composed entirely of plague rats-Vampire. Folks, I like being single. It is some of you who don’t like it. I wonder why that is?

    The people who perpetrate this myth are not entirely to blame however. It is likely that I have helped cultivate this image as a cad, a ne’er do well with a devil-may-care attitude, but for all this, I have also tried to be nice to you ladies. I have hugged you guys and shaken the god damned hands. I have met your sisters and been nice to them for Christ’s sake. I  have listened intently while your boyfriend has heard your blather for weeks, months and God forbid, years. I have been there for your birthday and we exchange niceties and pretend that we’re buddies and we’re really cool with each other and life is good! We both think this dude you’re dating is great but I must tell you... all this time I have been pretending. I don’t particularly care for you. Your conversations are boring and insipid. Your jokes suck. I don’t want to be with, on or around any of your female friends, should you even have any. Your boyfriend and I roll our eyes all the fucking time when you say shit. If I am guilty of one crime in our relationship it is being a phony. I have pretended to like you just so I can hang around with your boyfriend.

    I recently ended a three year relationship. I will spare you the details but suffice it to say that at the end of it all, certain and many people in my life breathed a sigh of relief, some of them audibly(!) and I was shocked. All along  they were biding their time waiting for it to end so they could tell me what they really thought of her. Thank you for the late breaking news friends, but Ol’ Tone is made of more efficient stuff.

    To all who read this I now pledge that I am no longer going to be nice to your chick or your dude in order to hang out with you. Who am I doing a favor for when I am kind to them. You? Hey, I love you and we both know there aren’t wedding bells in the future. Me? Its like pulling teeth listening to her boring anecdotes and her little jabs against you when I’m around. No, your significant other is the only one who benefits from my niceties and in return what? I am still the Vampire. One guy said that “...at the end of the day we are likely to be punished for our kindnesses...” and its true. Ladies, you know that guy who booty calls your BFF when he is pissed and generally treats her like trash (yet she thinks they are dating)? Why are you making it comfortable for him to be around all the time? Gentlemen, your buddy’s chick who insults him in front of you, chides him or stomps around the house and slams cupboard doors when you are over? Why are you trying to placate her? These are clearly the actions of an unreasonable person!

    I refuse to shuck and jive and dance to your bullshit tune. I think it will make my life easier and more fun. I am put on this earth to improve my life as well as the lives of those around me and I think that while shining a light on how I feel about your lover may hurt our relationship for a while, I would rather this than waiting until its inevitable end and muttering, “Thank fucking God”, because where was I when you needed me? You know those long wooden pilings you see jutting up around the dock when you go to the waterfront? Thats me, bro. I may have a few birds sit on me from time to time. I may even get shit on, but I am a constant. When that boat or ship runs aground, that piling is still there, leaning a little to the left. The boat is at the bottom, but I’m still there.

    In closing, it is only fair that I ask you a question that has plagued me since you guys started dating. Who’s weak-ass undermining bullshit do I refuse to put up with just to have a few laughs with you to gedda drink around here?