Monthly Archives: October 2020

Moe Gorman – Malcolm’s Goose is Cooked

Malcolm McKearney owes me a goose.

I’ll get to that.

If you don’t know Malcolm, he’s the one what’s always going on about being smarter than everyone he knows. And most that he don’t know.  Trouble is with Malcolm, it’s easy to prove him wrong, right. At least, it’s easy to prove him wrong to others. But Malcolm’s belief in his knowledge is stubborn. You can’t convince Malcolm of anything if he’s got his mind looking in any other direction.

Anyways, I see him there sitting in the corner there of the Seal Club and Sandbar Lounge. This is, what, about 9 months ago or so. Just before the latest incident with the shit socks at the Seal Club. The one that shut them down for them couple of months.  I see him there. Usually he’s with his boys, Arnold McCutcheon, DeBlois DeBlois, and Earle Stanley, but that night he’s sitting there all by himself.

He looks bored so I figure I’d take a trip over and gab a bit about this and that. You know, spill some time before heading back home. So I goes over and he looks up and nods.

“She’s some wet, what?” I go.

“Seventy-two millimetres since Sunday” he goes. Malcolm is all about the weather. He’s got all the amometers and measuring stuff that they got at the weather center in Charlottetown or wherever it is. He’s right into it, and it’s always a good way to start off a conversation with him by bringing it up. A sure-fire “in” if you know what I mean.

So I sit down and he brightens up and goes off on a long trail about the climate and his thoughts on all that. Me, I listen and nod every so often and take occasional swigs from the beer I brought to the table. He’s spouting off statistics and numbers and prognostications and whatnot, all about the weather. Honestly it was boring as shit, but I go along with the listening to it, just to pass time more than anything.

So that wraps up without much incident and then he goes off on another drive about stuff. Things he’s reading, ideas he has about things that should be invented if he had the time. You know, bullshit stuff.

Anyways, he goes “This May’s been the wettest May in the Northern Hemisphere since May 1912 when the Titanic sunk.”

And I’m thinking “Wrong!” Now I can let his wrong-headed opinions go because you can’t argue opinion, but I will always argue facts. And I know for a fact the Titanic sunk on April 14, 1912. Because April 14th 1925 is my Aunt Sadie’s birthday and they always talk about how it was her claim to fame that she was born on the same day as the Titanic sunk. Not the exact same date but the same day. So I know for a fact he’s wrong.

“Titanic sunk in April” I go. “Not May.”

“No, it sunk in May” he says. “Fact.”

“Not a fact” I go.  He can’t go calling something that’s wrong a fact. “Titanic sunk in April. April 14th 1912. I’m sure of it”

Anyways, we go back and forth, both claiming to be right about which month the Titanic sunk.

Finally, I have enough.  “Betcha double or nothing on one of your Christmas geese that you’re wrong and that the Titanic sunk April 14th.”

Malcolm is well-revered for raising top-quality geese. Geese ain’t as popular these days as they was back in the day, but enough people still like them for Easter or Christmas or Thanksgiving or any big celebration dinner over turkey.  Enough for Malcolm to keep at it, raising and selling geese to those that want them.

“You’re on” he goes and slams his hand down onto the table and laughs. “Easy money! Pay up!”

“Hold on” I go. “You can’t prove the Titanic sunk in May ‘cause it didn’t. It sunk in April, and I can prove it.”

“You can’t prove it because it sunk in May” he goes. Stubborn to the core.

So I pull out my phone and ask Google. “Okay Google, what month did the Titanic sink?”

Quicker than a flash the phone goes “The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean.”

“Yow owe me a goose” I go.

“That don’t prove nothing” he goes. 

“Whattyamean” I go. “Proves everything. Proves you owe me a goose!”

“You can’t prove that machine is right” he goes.

I go “It’s Google. Of course it’s right.”

“Still” he says, “that’s not proof”.

“You owe me a goose” I go.

“I owe you nothing” he goes. “Titanic sunk in May.”

“You owe me a fucking goose” I go. I’m starting to get right agitated. He senses my irritations and goes even harder into his belief that the Titanic sunk in May.

“Sunk April 14th 1912. Same day as my Aunt Sadie was born, only thirteen years earlier.

“Wrong” he goes. “You owe me double a goose. And you don’t get the goose.”

I ask Google again and it says the same thing. “The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean.”

“Aha” he goes. “You ARE wrong! Even if your Google thing is right, you said the Titanic sunk on April 14th.  Google said it sunk April 15th. YOU ARE WRONG” he yells.

I ask Google again. Sure enough “The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean.”  My Aunt Sadie’s claim to fame was based on a lie.

I think for a minute and go “Well, it started sinking on the 14th probably. Probably took the better part of an evening to sink, and the actual sinking ended in the early morning of April 15th”.

“Either way, you said it sunk April 14th. Your Google says April 15th so you’re wrong. You’re both wrong, because it sunk in May anyway.”

And that was that.  I tried a bunch more to get him to admit he was wrong but in his mind he wasn’t wrong.  I went home furious and vowing to prove him wrong.

Month later I come into his shop – he’s an auto mechanic in the day, the goose stuff at night or whatever – with a picture of an old newspaper front page headline my nephew Donald got from provincial archives that states the Titanic sunk on April 15th.

“Could be photoshopped” he goes.  

Fucking asshole. I knew then and there that  I’d never get my goose outta him.

So I wrote this song about him.

Malcolm McKesrney’s Goose Is Sunk

It took an iceberg to sink the Titanic on April 15th 1912

Though probably started sinking the evening before.

But it would take something harder than that berg

To get Malcom McKearney to say he’s wrong.

He says it sunk in May. Don’t matter what Google says

Or the Provincial Archives, his ignorance stays alive.

How do you prove that two plus two is four?

Or that the sun rises high in the sky?

If Malcolm thinks otherwise you can’t.

No matter what he thinks 

Malcom McKearney owes me a goose for Christmas.

Don’t make a bet with Malcolm McKearney even if it’s based on fact.

Malcolm ignores facts in favour of his own stubborn brain.

Don’t make a bet with Malcom McKearny and expect to get his goose.

No matter what he thinks

Malcolm McKearny owes me a goose for Christmas.

Rob Reviews: “Still the Water” (movie)

I recently watched, online as part of FinFestival, “Still the Water”. Written and directed by Susan Rodgers, it’s her debut feature, and here’s my review.

Having been aware, primarily through social media posts made by Susan, of many of the challenges, problems, and difficulties she had in the process of persevering this film into existence, I first want to offer sincere congratulations for creating something that looks so good, and works as a fully complete and bona fide dramatic feature. This is an accomplishment that deserves mighty praise!

Here’s more praise: the cinematography is sharp and sparkles. The acting, very much of a professional quality, is much better than I was expecting. The direction and editing work well in serving the story being told. By that I mean it doesn’t meander or lollygag too much from what needs to be shown and told, and for that I am always grateful.

I just wish I liked the story more.

Here’s a brief story brief: Sacked from another team in the From Away, Jordie MacAulay (Ry Barrett), a semi-professional hockey playing brother comes back to PEI – to his Summerside community – to sort out his troublesome life and work on his anger issues. His first stop is to his brother Nicky (Colin Price) and his young family, and takes up the offer to temporarily stay in a nearby vacated house. Jordie’s presence is troubling for Nicky, who already seems to have plenty of problems of his own – chief among them is his relationship with haunted-by-her-past next door neighbour Abby (Christena McInulty), who sings at the local bar. There’s also Nicky’s emotionally brooding and stoically suffering wife Alice (Sherri Lee Pike); the brothers’ younger, brother Noah (Spencer Graham) whose obnoxiousness is, I guess, supposed to be played for laughs (?); and their formerly-abusive but now tolerated-by-most father.

The movie follows the leads as they attempt to work through live through their individual and familial troubles. The brothers Nicky and Jordie take up playing hockey together, arguing with and resenting each other endlessly, spending a we-all-knew-that-was-coming challenging day lobster fishing, and working in their father’s boat repair (?) shop, where nothing (work or relationships) seems to happen.

As I said, the movie looks more than good enough and the acting is pretty sharp, but unfortunately, it all gets let down a bit too much by a story and script that I just did not care that much about. That said, I can certainly see there being people for whom this story might resonate well. But not me. I didn’t find myself really caring about or for any of the main characters. I did, in one scene, feel bad for that Gentlemen Jim’s server, though, who had to suffer through the inexplicable assholery of Obnoxious Noah. Probably the reason I found myself not caring is because I got a bit bored by the repetitiveness of the same challenges showing themselves again and again to the same characters, without any real advancement. And that, I suppose, falls to the storytelling.

Another issue for me – and maybe this is a matter of direction – is the way almost everyone in the movie seems to have a performative air of depressive inevitability to their character. Like everyone was told to express their characters inner turmoils on their faces and in all their movements. It’s like they didn’t trust the script enough to allow any subtext so they telescoped the issues into their physical performances. In this movie even the smiles are played sad.

While I liked the cinematography for the most part, I could have done with far, far fewer “beauty shots” of PEI. Every scene seemingly started and/or ended with pretty shots of sunsets, sunrises, beaches, etc. And a relatively new pet peeve of mine that this movie employs – I am already tired of seeing, in videos/films/shorts/etc., drone shots of PEI that look like they’re taken out of PEI Tourism commercials. Shot for shot’s sake. In this movie, in particular, I didn’t think the beauty of those Tourism Shots lends itself very well to the darker, brooding moods and emotions the movie is attempting to convey.

Something that surprised me was my reaction to the way the story arc of Nicky’s wife Alice was handled. She ended up not being a character so much as a plot device. And that really bugged me. Without giving away too much as a spoiler, I found I was desperate for Alice to have at least one opportunity to release and vent about her situation, to have it out with someone who was actually negatively impacting her life. Or at the very least, let us know why she is seemingly incapable of doing so. The last fifth of the movie I found myself really bothered that she didn’t have that opportunity. And then the way the final shot/scene unfolded only compounded that bother to the extreme.

I hope Susan Rodgers makes more stuff. The filmmaker’s eye is definitely there, and I expect that with more experience she’ll learn to allow the actors to hint at their emotions and inner-feelings a bit rather than have them blatantly wear them on their sleeves.

Were I to give this movie one of my 7-Word Review reviews, it would be: Competent, good effort but a bit blah.