WHAT PASSES FOR PATRIOTISM AROUND HERE IF YOU'RE NOT WEARING A KILT
It turns out that Tony Canadeo, a star halfback with the Green Bay Packers in the 1940s and 1950s and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died Saturday at the age of 84. I'd been predicting this ever since 1994, when he turned 75. Really, after then you're pretty much getting all your laundry quarters from the Reaper's pocket. Inhuman supermodel Esther CaDZadas* is still 26 and not yet dead from potassium deficiency and complications from squint. Character actor Ron Canada, as powerful as professional wrestlers but compact like a Mini Cooper, will not get any more cancer this year than he deserves. Famed actor Canada Lee, who made his debut in 1939's Keep Punching, buried his body deep in the flinty center of the twentieth century.WHEN CHRISTIANS RAVEOn Friday I went to that Christian rave. I took a lot of portentous-sounding notes, scribbling away into a black notebook until an overly tanned guy with the robust air of a camp counsellor noticed me and asked jokingly if I was doing homework. In any other scenario this would be the prelude to a really filthy come-on, but this was a Christian event, and the come-ons ignore the body altogether in favour of the soul, that strangest splinter of the erotic imagination. I figured that sooner or later the grim-faced guys with stocky builds and goatees who'd been hanging out at the back of the crowd all night would take an interest in my interest. Youth events always attract a predatory school of older men; in this case, the predators had organized the event for their own needs. At best it was spiritual husbandry, but those men at the back, leaning their butts on a table and watching the children dance, seemed more like lampreys, fixed passively to the energy generated by the dancers, dead-eyed and satiated. More later.*When I first heard of Esther CaDZadas I was very excited at the possibility of there being more than one Canada, one with lots of storage space, but then I found out about the tilde, and my horizons narrowed a little, and the junk kept piling up.