Here Comes the Sun

Scene: The great Press Club in the Sky. A group of onetime Vancouver Sun staffers has gathered to review the "new" Vancouver Sun.

Webster: Flipping unreadable! The Glasgow Daily Sketch was a better paper in 1939!

Wasserman: New graphics.

Webster: But same bad writing.

Boyd: Except for the sports page.

Beddoes: The sportswriters always were the class of the paper.

Weir: I beg your pardon!

Beddoes: Sorry, Harold. The Op-Ed guys were okay, too.

Webster: Until Mather and Philpott went into politics, a treacherous swamp into which no self-respecting journalist should venture.

Boyd: Maybe it's a gag, like the ones Hughie Watson used to pull on Erwin. Remember the nonexistent Howe Sound Basketball League?

Beddoes: Hughie Watson--a man of infinite jest.

Wasserman: Look, they're not running the names in the gossip column in bold face! How can you drop names without bold face?

Weir: Obviously a desperation move by these PostMedia people. The benefit of filling the paper with Toronto columnists is that we no longer have to purchase the National Post to be offended.

Boyd: I wonder if the new people will try any of the wacko ideas Cromie had, like sending Marie Moreau to interview Castro.

Beddoes: And Stukus to meet Chiang Kai-shek. How was that, Stuke?

Stukus: It was okay, but I really wanted to get to know Madame Chiang.

Boyd: Who wouldn't?

Webster: What's that mournful thing you're humming, Jacko?

Wasserman: "St. Louis Blues." You know--"I hate to see that evenin' sun go down."

Weir: Most appropriate.

Stukus: At least we're still getting morning delivery.

Webster: Right. Someone should tip that angel.

Wasserman: And ask him to start bringing the New York Times.