Okay. It's Canada's birthday. Happy birthday, big guy! The birth of a Nation and so forth. Politicians love to toast this birthday. It makes for predictable sound bytes on the news and easy photo-ops. Easily produced pieces of Canadiana pap. Hot dogs, poutine and free pony rides, and if you are fortunate enough to be employed, Canada's birthday means a day off with pay for many workers. Now, as a country with a history that only dates back less than 200 years, you could say that we are celebrating the birth of a country that is still in its infancy. If Canada were a homo-erectus, the country would still be wearing diapers and drooling and making very little sense, in linguistic terms anyway. Babbling and such. Not very tolerant of others and somewhat unreasonable. But lets not forget that the Natives were here long before Canada would call itself a proper country. Chippewa. Algonquin. The Hurons. The Plains Indians (and more, I just forget the rest). As far as Europeans however, it was the lovable Vikings who came here first. The French and the Brits did manage to make their way across the Atlantic. It was a Wednesday, shortly after lunch. If the Natives had known they were coming, I'm sure they would have baked a cake. As it turns out, everyone who did come brought guns, axes and the odd virus, ready to take some serious surveying measurements. The rest, as they say is Canadian history. Happy birthday Canada. I was going to bake you a cake but got caught up with FIFA World Cup.
Okay, let's begin, shall we. Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky. Back in high school during the early eighties, while a gangly teen with poker straight hair and truly volcanic zits I reluctantly learned how to play the saxophone, or as Homer Simpson refers to it - the "saxamaphone". I would have rather learned how to blow that sweet, sweet tuba just because it looks like it could be used to crush someone, but like every high school music class, the tuba was reserved for the smallest kid for whatever reason. I chose the saxamaphone because I had to choose something. The electric guitar was taken, so was the Fender Precision bass, and the holy grail of high school instruments, the drums. Even the triangle was taken. Literally. Someone took it, bent the hell out of it before throwing it off the bridge into the Mattawa River. This was the year before I would walk the hallowed halls of F.J. McElligott in beautiful downtown Mattawa - or 'the places where the rivers meet'. Canada was a few years younger then.
I hated that damned sax. I hated blowing into it. I hated the colour. I hated the taste of a soggy reed, and the hideous, murderous squawks I spat out of it. I hated the contorted faces and painful grimaces I was forced to make. It's hard to look cool when your face is the hue of a baboon's mocking shiny red ass. I hated the way I had to sit to accommodate the thing - up straight in a red plastic chair with the thing dangling between my legs. You can't slouch playing the saxamaphone. It was just a dismal relationship. Now, this was of course, before I discovered beatnik fifties jazz, and how extraordinary the sax can be in the mouth of a seasoned heroin addict. But at the tender age of fourteen? No. I could not relate to the thing. Jimi Hendrix didn't play sax which worked out well for Jimi as it would have been hard to set a sax on fire like he did at Monterey. The sax was brass of course, and man, brass for me, was not cool in the eighties. David Bowie - the Alladin Sane himself, played sax but he never looked cool tooting it in his high-waisted pastel suits. The Lizard King, Jim Morrison was about sex, not sax. Jimmy Page never played sax, nor did Johnny Cash. Bob Dylan blew harp, singing long convoluted songs about Isis and ghosts of electricity howling through the bones of some woman's face. I could go on and on. But that's enough about the saxamaphone, so let's move on to horns in general as the horn is a hot topic these days.Up until last week, I always thought the word 'vuvuzela' was some type of venereal disease (i.e, "Stay away from Mississippi Gary, he's back from Malaysia with a bad case of the hoo-doo voo-doo vuvuzela"). But no. It's not a disease, although many do see the vuvuzela as a scourge. The vuvuzela has been causing a bit of a controversy at this year's FIFA World Cup. This is the only sport I commit any time to due to the violent undercurrents of the sport. Where else can a coach simply 'disappear' after a losing match, or a blown call by a referee resulting in his exile? Now that's a true sport. The first televised game I watched was between Germany and I don't remember. Football riots are outstanding. Televised hooliganism has drawn a lot of attention to the simple act of kicking a ball around a massive field.
So, after shoving the two schnauzers off the couch, propping up my feet, and getting comfortably slouched deep into my ass-groove, I settled into what I had hoped to be a nice, relaxing, low-scoring match. But listening in all I could hear was this atonal buzz. What the hell? I checked the audio settings on the stereo but couldn't isolate the buzz. I tried another CBC affiliate. Still there. Shit. ESPN. Still there. It sounded like a billion unseen bees just waiting off-camera to swarm in on the massive crowd of spectators. The bees never did come. Too bad. That would have made for great television as well.
I barked at my daughter Dali: "Hit the web chickie to find out what the hell is up with this buzz." And now the world knows what a vuvuzela is. It's a horn. Not a saxamaphone, but a really crazy long horn favoured by the home country of South Africa. Yikes. It's not new and I don't know how I never noticed it before - in terms of ambient noise. Maybe it has something to do with microphones and such. But, man, that's a lot of blowing as the tone is a continual drone. That's some serious wailing daddio! Football fans are annoyed. Television crews are annoyed. The players are pissed off, some even blaming their embarrassing losses on the evil drone and its disorienting effects. For me, immediately after discovering that the buzz was not emanating from my stereo, but from a whole bunch of jubilant people just blowing a horn, I began to feel much better. As a result I have come to love the vuvuzela and all it represents - a simple tool manufactured for the singular purpose of pissing people off (probably not the original intention) I immediately went down deep into the bunker, ripped down a decent section of ventilation shaft, then proceeded to bang away and bend the tin to my will. It only took a few minutes to finish it off after which I got my son Lurch to spray paint it jet black. The thing was kick-ass. And since it is historically used to celebrate and cheer people on, I figured how better to show my love for soccer than by blowing it in the supermarket. Yeah. Dig. I blew it and it really did annoy quite a few people, especially in the produce department. I tooted it directly at this one man - inches from his ear. He was was caressing an cantaloupe, taking his sweet time while looking for that perfect one. (Sidebar - in proofing this column, I found that I had originally typed that the man was caressing an 'antelope', which is way funnier than 'cantaloupe', but after some hesitation, I corrected it because I am a professional dammit!) I took in a deep breath, puckered, snuck in another topper of air, tweaked my pucker, held it deep in my lungs until I began to see stars and become light-headed, then with gusto, blew my homemade vuvuzela long and hard. I can attest to the fact that it certainly frightened the man. I could tell because he began clutching at his chest and took on an ashen hue. I shouted: "Choose your melon and get on with your life!!" before running away giggling like a bandit.
Now, before forging my own horn, I seldom tooted my own horn as I never had my own horn to toot but now the only way I will stop tooting my own horn is when they pry it from my hands. Yet, while I'm on the topic of tooting my own horn, I figure it only proper to fess up to the things that I suck at. I mean, I can't just toot my own horn all day. So, sure, I am a terrible pilot and an inadequate fur harvester. I cannot play the harpsichord nor bluff my way through a hand of poker. In high school I impaled someone (strangely enough the same small kid who played tuba) after my first clumsy attempt at the javelin (while in the change room). The kid I impaled recovered fully I am grateful to report, and he now lives in Ottawa and runs 6 km a day according to his Tweets. I also choke if I try to eat too many hot dogs at once, and cannot repair anything at all. I am, however an amazing vuvuzela player or is that just me tooting my own horn again.
Posts
