Due to technical difficulties - my brain stopped working sometime during Chiliwack's numbing display of three-chord nostalgia, if you really need to know - I'm dishing up a rerun this week.
With the dog days of summer finally threatening to descend on Whistler, what better way to celebrate than with three shaggy dog stories.
In the years before I left Toronto, the city underwrote some really cheap concerts each summer at Ontario Place, a boondoggle on the lake left over from a bygone day. One particular summer, the Toronto Symphony performed Beethoven's Ninth, a swashbuckling piece of music if ever there was one. Making the performance even more dramatic was a thunder and lightning storm cruising past on Lake Ontario.
Anyway, there are to this story two important points. In Beethoven's Ninth, there is an inordinately long stretch where there is not a single note written for the bass violins. Nothing for page after page. Bass violinists hate this. They have to just sit there and prop up their instruments and try and remain attentive without grabassing the person in front of them. The second thing that's important is that Ontario Place is licensed. Just outside where the old stage used to be, there was a quasi-pub that served indifferent food and decently cold beer.
Seeing an opportunity not usually offered them, the bass players - having fiddled their parts in the opening of the Ninth - quietly laid down their fiddles and crept to the back of the stage and out to the pub to enjoy the night air and a pint.
Those of you who have sweated your way through an Ontario summer know how refreshing a cold drink can be on a sultry, torpid, summer night. The rest of you can guess. As one beer turned into two and into three because they went down so easily and quickly, the third bass said sheepishly, "Shouldn't we be getting back? It'd be awfully embarrassing, if we were late."
The first bass player, who'd planned this well in advance, quelled his fears, saying, "Don't worry. I figured we might need a little more time so I tied a string around the last few pages of the score. When the boss gets to them, he's gonna have to slow the tempo down while he leads with one hand and deals with the string with the other."
They toasted this wisdom and congratulated each other and particularly the first bass who was not only a better player but obviously a lot smarter than the rest of them. However, creeping back on stage, they found the conductor glaring at them and knew they'd stuck around a beer too long.
Veins bulged from his temples, his face was a crimson maelstrom of anger and he seemed ready to come after them with a ball bat. And why not? By then, it was the bottom of the Ninth, the basses were loaded... and the score was tied. Groan.
Okay, so you don't like musician stories? How about animals.
Where I used to live was a downtown, walking kind of neighbourhood. Lots of little shops, not a chainstore in sight. Among them, an old-fashion butcher shop that was a carnivore's dream.
So late one afternoon the butcher is working away, really busy. He looks up and there's a dog in the shop so he yells at him and shoos him away.
Ten minutes later, the dog is back again.
The butcher wipes his hands on his apron and walks over to the dog to give it a swift kick out the shop. But he notices the dog has a note in his mouth. He unfolds the note and reads it. "I'd like 12 sausages and a leg of lamb, please."
Wrapped inside the note is a 20-dollar bill.
"Why not?" says the butcher to no one in particular. So he wraps the sausages and lamb tightly in butcher paper, folds $1.36 change in another piece of paper, puts it all in a double plastic bag and hands it to the dog who gingerly takes it in his mouth. I think it was a lab - soft mouth.
Impressed beyond description, the butcher closes shop a few minutes early and follows the dog to see what happens.
At the first major intersection, the dog proceeds to drop his bag, jump up against the street light pole, press the crossing button and wait for the light to change. When the light's green, the dog picks up the bag and walks across the road, with the butcher following a few seconds behind.
Half way down the next block, the dog walks into a bus shelter, jumps up and starts looking at the bus schedule. Satisfied with what he sees, he jumps up on the bench, sits down and waits. A bus comes by and the dog gazes intently at the number but doesn't move. Another bus comes and checking the number once again, the dog grabs his bag of meat and climbs on. The butcher, stunned and amazed, follows.
After 20 blocks or so, in an older, formerly suburban neighbourhood, the dog pushes the stop button and gets off when the bus stops. The butcher waits until the driver is about to pull away and then gets off himself.
They walk a couple of blocks, the butcher shadowing the dog by half a block and finally the dog trots up the pathway to a house. He drops the package of meat on the step by the door, walks back down the path, takes a big run, and throws himself full force against the door which doesn't budge. He backs down the path, takes another run, and throws himself against the door again!
Dazed and panting, he waits by the door. After a couple of seconds, a big guy opens the door, walks out and starts wailing on the dog, yelling and screaming at him.
The butcher comes running frantically and pulls the guy off the dog. "What are you doing? This dog's a genius. He's probably smarter than you are for chrissake."
"Smart?" The big guy shouts, having removed himself from the powerful hands of the butcher. "Smart? This is the second time this week he's forgotten his key and had to wake me up!"
I apologized in advance, didn't I?
Finally, there was the three-legged shaggy dog that ambled into the bar one night. The patrons wouldn't have paid much attention, except the dog had a mean look on his face and pistol strapped to his waist.
The bartender looked at him and said, "This is a peaceful establishment. What are you doing with that gun?"
The dog replied, "I'm looking for the man that shot my paw!"
Double groan.
