Odds and Sods

Forgive me dear reader, for not updating this blog since April. I thought I was clinically dead for awhile, but it was just a false alarm. I've been on another government contract, which feels like I'm close to death on certain days. Only another 40 years or so to go until retirement to the big waiting room in the sky. I hope the magazines are good.

Everywhere I go, people want to know what I think about CBC losing the rights to the Hockey Song ... Okay, that's a lie. Two people have asked for my opinion.

CBC has misplayed this one. In its rush to modernize and reinvent itself, I think it's gone too far. Plus the old bag who wrote the theme is shrewd. Now the Ceeb is holding a contest to find the next great Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. The Corpse is going to pay the lucky winner $100,000.

A measly $100 grand.

That's rights and all, I imagine.

As someone who has sold the rights away to a few of my own projects, I know what a lousy deal this is. I found out that some of my old comedy bits are airing on AOL radio. How the hell did this happen? Some sap in Kentucky or New Hampshire is listening to a 12 year old bit of mine and chuckling, if not guffawing - all without me receiving a cent. Oh well -- maybe my bit about being raised Catholic is helping some tortured soul somewhere put down the razor blades.

Whoever wins the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song contest is cursed from the get-go.

The comparisons to the old theme will be plentiful and unkind.

Even the best theme will jar audiences for at least a few seasons.

The compensation is an insult. If CBC owns it in perpetuity, the compensation is criminal.

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BONUS FEATURE

Because I am lazy and weary from writing all day, I am posting some deleted material from my first novel. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for the published version. Or it could disappoint you terribly. I am willing to gamble.

Enjoy.

Suzanne Foley's ruminations over her death and burial:

Plus, she hoped her tombstone would be forgotten over time. Cracked, covered in mold, overrun with weeds and neglect, her grave would inspire conjecture. When she lived in Toronto, she’d cut through Mount Pleasant cemetery from Yonge Street to go to a retail job. The only thing that made catering to impeccable North Toronto matrons bearable was the twenty minute walk through rows and rows of graves. The buried disquieted her, the tombstones and tombs mostly decades old. One crypt in particular disturbed her, the tomb of George Lehr, a man important enough to have a crypt, yet not important enough to have a larger maintained crypt. She would tense as she passed George Lehr’s final place of repose; crumbling, the entrance chained, a window yellowed and cracked, pillars slanted from erosion. Who was George Lehr, she’d wonder, pausing to absorb more of the fright. Was he loved? Generous with his time and money? Or was he some would-be robber baron disgraced by a scrubwoman who bled to death aborting the baby she claimed was his? Even when the sun shone, the crypt remained gloomy. She remembered visiting Sir John A. MacDonald’s grave in Kingston and being shocked at its ordinariness. The first Prime Minister of Canada’s resting place forsaken, across the street a Tim Horton’s attracting more honour and respect. At least the Americans knew how to bury people. They went to town.