Alright the original version of this post clocked in somewhere in the range of 2200 words. It was grotesquely long, but necessarily so. However, I decided to let my Brother, who is quite possibly the most underrated intellectual of all time. After a long debate, which I daresay he walloped my educated ass in, I decided that a little self censorship is most definitely necessary. All I will say is that the original story involved, some criminal acts in the 1950's (which i have tried unsuccessfully to confirm or refute) of a serious nature. So heres the condensed version of the greatest story ever told... but don't worry I left in all the best....
Of course it was inevitable. It’s impossible to sleep on the bus when you really need to. No sooner had I slipped on my headphones to spend some quality listening time with what was probably the Golden State soundtrack, I get tapped on the forehead. I do actually mean right smack dab in the centre of my forehead with a pudgy, callused finger. Of course it’s inevitable that this ape-esc appendage does not belong to any number of bus skanks or debutant bus-skanks, that are still piling in, but rather to what in my crushed spirits I believed to be a bear hiding under a gray wool fire blanket. Smokey had come for his revenge for all those experiments with matches I had performed as a child. Than again surely one of my bus-people compatriots (no long skanks and scoundrels) would be the descendant of Grizzly Adams himself and would spring forth to rescue me just as the mauling would begin.
Of course by the time I had worked through all this in my head, my elderly companion had already shed his coat, taken seat next me and was halfway through lecturing me about how butterflies are the most accurate way of forecasting everything from natural disaster (with a real knack for earthquakes) to future ailments (its how he knew by the age of 5 he was going to have arthritis.) He followed up this lecture not with an introduction of who the heck he was, but rather by asking me what I knew about Brazilian cuisine. Before I could even begin to piece together an answer in my mind (the answer of course being nothing, but I was going to say something about tilapia fillets anyways), he began his second lecture this one about how to roast any sort of meat with nothing but a sword and some cilantro. Why he would think I would ever be in a position that I would lack all modern conveniences save a tempered steal rapier, I still have no idea. Now what really intrigued me was how much a Brazilian accent reminded me of every James Bond villain I could remember as a child, because locally in my mind at that point only a Brazilian would know their darkest culinary secrets, and would assume butterflies to be of enough interest to another random being. Of course having subjected me already to a pair of 20 minute lectures on topics that were far from relevant, being the kindly soul that he was he claimed that he had clearly disturbed my intention to sleep and that he would bother me no more. I grunted my appreciation for that sentiment and closed my eyes. In hindsight something strikes me about this whole scenario, I believe I may have during the entire 4 hour bus ride have said maybe 8 words, something along the lines of 6 “no’s”, 1 “yes” and my name.
As logic would dictate that the moment I reinserted me headphones and closed my eyes there came that tremendously annoying tapping on the centre of my forehead, just over the place were my battered spirit was nursing itself. This scene by my account was repeated no less that 6 times. When I reopened my eyes, I thought maybe for a second I had developed cataracts (and in that second vowed to never drink tap water from Sudbury again and possibly never use any drug not made of grains ever again.) Of course I had no such luck really, I was going blind which would have been awesome given that I could have than faked being awake with my eyes open while in reality I could be very, very asleep. My cataract slowly retreated out of the macro and became a scar on a beaten leather tarp, which eventually became a forearm. Having removed my headphones for the second time, I was completely lost. Apparently he was already half way through a story about being shot, the particulars of which I had to piece together later since all relevant introductions of plot, characters, and setting had been rattled off in the 30 seconds that I had my headphones. From what I did piece together, he had been shot at about the age of 16 while trying to illegally cross the boarder out of Blank-aria/ania, which he was forced to flee following a failed civil uprising which resulted in his village being burned to the ground. The fire had killed his younger brother who foolishly ran into a burning barn in order to save the beloved family mule. Some how this series of events convinced him that abandoning the rest of his family was the only course of action. So he packed up his burlap sack with 50 pounds of beats and his good shoes, and decided to walk to England. At this point he started a new lecture about why I was so weak-looking, it was because I clearly didn’t eat enough beats and my shoes were designed for comfort and rather than walking from the Balkan’s to an island across the continent.
Logic would dictate that this epic trek, which is truly one of the greatest in the history of the modern age, would deserve more than a cursory glance. Just picture it our young valiant hero trekking over the Alps, with his arm in a sling me made out of his only friend (the burlap sack) following being shot while eluding the border police of some totalitarian regime who sought to enslave him. I mean hell; I smell an Oscar if we could some how get James Woods attached to the role of the burlap sack.
Instead of this harrowing tail, he decided to lecture me about how he never wore socks until he met JFK. Apparently JFK was not only a great leader, but also the leading theoretician of sock etiquette. Of course, meeting JFK made my mind start wandering back to Forrest Gump, and how tortuous that film would have been to be watching at that point of exhaustion. Of course he couldn’t tell me the story of his brief encounter with JFK until he told me how he came to be in New York driving a taxi. But of course instead of telling me how he his trek across Europe led him to Canada, he began by telling me that in 1951 he set the all time record in bowling. A hobby-sport that I personally only like because the alleys tend to serve cheap beer and be liberal about checking ID’s, but I can’t say I believed him when he said that from February 1950 to October 1951, he didn’t miss a single pin.
[Edited for TV]
Now holy shit…
I have debated this part of the story with myself many times and have decided I believe it only about as much as the butterfly-arthritis link. In 1951, in the fine Northern Town of Timmins, he had been working as a cabdriver, that’s all well and good. A little less believable that Timmins was the true home of organized crime in Canada during the post WWII era. Now, if you have no idea where Timmins is, googlemaps it. If you find a place labeled thus that appears to be quite literally in the middle of nowhere, than you have found it. Now for some less than logical poor luck (I suppose luck has to be illogical), my traveling Dictaphone, had picked up Canada’s most notorious mobster, who proceeded to coerce him to
[Edited for pg-13 rating]
This precipitated the theft of the cab, which he then drove all the way to New York, via Saskatoon since he had to avoid any chance at being stopped at the boarder. Once in New York he changed the license plates on the Cab and became a freelance Taxi-driver highly favored by the Waldorff. That is how he came to meet JFK, who taught him (who JFK insisted on calling the Great King Holy-Haluu) and in turn (some 40+ years after his death) myself about the how socks make the man.
Well with his life story seemingly complete he decided to rehash the lecture on how to make a sloe-gin fizz the right way, which along with others on the topics of geothermal heating (bad for circulation of blood), a second lecture about beats (gods perfect fruit, may have been the apple Eve ate), the virtues of smoking a pipe (good for the loins as it guarantees sons), burlap (better than cotton), osprey (could swoop down at any second and carry off the bus), Ancient Greeks (actually settled by prehistoric Fins who were responsible for everything good about the western world) and such had speckled the continuity of his story.
With story complete, and with me at the point of exhaustion where my hangover was making my fears of cataracts socially crippling, he asked for my name, which I managed to mumble semi-coherently as he continued to fade from focus. He than apologized for not being able to tell me his own name since he was still on the run from the law and would hate to ever put a friend like me in the position of having to turn in such a close friend as I truly must have felt he was. He than plainly stated he was tired and being 4 a.m. needed some sleep. Less than 30 seconds later I exited the bus, battered spirits, cataracts, fear of growing old, and all.
Now how this relates to the Maxx is a little unclear I’m sure, but I think it has something to do with the idea of manufacturing realities. My sagely elder may well have truly done these things, in which case I have chosen to omit his valid reality in favor of one that doesn’t allow for such fantastic events. If he made it up for the reasons of dementia or out of some sadistic need to keep me from rest than why would I so deny these possibilities in my own faculties? With all that in mind…
2 Ommission and Retractions:
Why is the post gimped out, good post tho.
because ritch appealed to that part of that respects him enough to leave out such things that may or may not forebear on his future
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