More Great Opening Lines

We do not mean "Do you come here often?" or "Let me guess your sign" or "Have many people told you how much you resemble Rachel McAdams?" These are not pick-up lines, except in the sense they make you pick up a book. Try these:

"This is a story to be read in bed in an old house on a rainy night." -- John Cheever, "Oh What a Paradise It Seems."

"I still haven't figured out my accident." -- Elia Kazan, "The Arrangement."

"He sent her a music box which played an aria from Trovatore while simultaneously emitting Chanel's wonderful new scent." -- Richard Condon, "An Infinity of Mirrors."

"They threw me off the hay truck about noon." -- James M. Cain, "The Postman always Rings Twice."

And one we'll hear often this December: "Marley was dead to begin with."

You know whose line that is.

Happy Birthday to Hawk

He was probably the only musician to play with Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds in 1913 and with Art Pepper in 1977. He was Coleman Hawkins, dubbed "Hawk" and "Bean," and he was born November 28, 1904, in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Coleman Hawkins might not have invented the tenor saxophone, but he was the first to show how it could be played. His 1940 recording of "Body and Soul," a largely ad lib rendition, remains one of the seminal jazz performances. Out of Hawkins came Ben Webster, Buddy Tate, Lucky Thompson, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Chu Berry, and two generations of muscular, big-toned  saxophonists, through to Sonny Rollins, Ernie Watts and John Coltrane.

Rollins said that he and other children would sit on the front steps of their Harlem homes and watch for Hawkins coming down the street, always nattily dressed, always wearing a snapbrim fedora. They looked on him with awe, the way Montreal children would have looked at Maurice Richard.

One of the remarkable things about Hawkins was his ability to move with the music, from the rough blues of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey through 1940s swing and Jazz at the Philharmonic tours to the bop and post-bop era of Coltrane and Rollins and Thelonious Monk.

A tip of our fedora to Coleman Hawkins, as we exit now to listen again to his "Body and Soul."

In the Beginning...

"You must begin well and end well." This was a dictum pronounced by Maurice Chevalier, quoted often by Stephane Grappelli.

We thought of it when reading "Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein," the wonderful new book by Linda Bailey, which has a perfect beginning.

And then we thought of other memorable opening lines, remembering that maybe you can't tell a book by its cover, but you can tell a lot by its first paragraph.

Here are a few:

"It was the morning of my hundredth birthday." Len Deighton, "Billion Dollar Brain."

"Willis Wayde, before he went to sleep, could shut his eyes and see every detail of the Harcourt place." John P. Marquand, "Sincerely, Willis Wayde."

"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte." Dashiell Hammett, "Red Harvest."

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since." F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."

Probably the most famous opening line, apart from "Once upon a time" and "It was a dark and stormy night" is "Call me Ishmael" from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." But almost as famous, and, we think, much better, is "For a long time I used to go to bed early," the beginning of Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past."

That might be our favorite. Although to our cluttered, dusty bookshelf mind, it is hard to top the first sentence of Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," which is like a jazz solo that ignores the opening melody and goes straight to the improvisation: "Then there was the bad weather."

And Ms. Bailey's fine opening to "Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein"? "Here is Mary. She's a dreamer. The kind of girl who wanders alone, who stares at clouds, who imagines things that never were."

It's a book intended for young readers. Never mind. After that opening, this reader is hooked.

Grey Cup and other football memories

November 24, 2019: the 107th Grey Cup game. By the time this is read, it may be over. No late bets allowed.

Not the first time the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Hamilton Tiger-Cats have met in the CFL championship game. They went against each other in the memorable Fog Bowl of 1962, when the fog rolled in from Lake Ontario over the Toronto stadium and the game was halted, to be resumed the next day. The Bombers won that year: 28 to 27 over the Ti-Cats.

One hundred and seven games have been played for the silver cup given by Governor General Earl Grey. Game #1 was between the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and the Parkdale Canoe Club. Blues took it, 26-6.

Winningest teams over the decades: Toronto Argonauts, 17 wins; Edmonton Eskimos, 11.

Longtime fans remember watching the game outdoors in frigid weather, or listening to the radio in pre-TV times, leaping up and down when Jackie Parker scooped up a fumble on his team's 11-yard line and ran the ball 93 yards for a touchdown against the Montreal Alouettes. Final score: Eskimos 26, Alouettes 25. You wanta talk cliffhangers?

Numerous great names in the game, but the Big Daddy of all may have been Annis Stukus, a player on two Grey Cup winners, later coach and general manager of the newly minted Edmonton Eskimos and BC Lions. We knew Stuke late in his career, when he wrote on sports for the Vancouver Courier, but he had enjoyed a long run in radio and print before that. Most off-beat assignment: Sent to Taiwan by the Vancouver Sun to cover a conflict between China and Formosa, he interviewed Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and sent back a story headlined "No New Normie Kwongs in Formosa."

Denny Boyd, whom we miss every day, talked about Grey Cup games in his cookbook, "Man On the Range." He wrote, "Having been a jock writer for some 20 years, I have had my allotment of Grey Cup weeks. Been to some parties we could have been sent to jail for. Played all the popular Grey Cup Week games, like Naked in the Elevator, Mattress Out the Window and Chug-a-Lug-a-Jug." For those recovering from the celebrations, Denny offered a remedy: pot roast cooked in coffee.

For some of us, football has always been The Game, even in a country where hockey is almost a religion. (Don Cherry: "Whaddya mean, almost?") It's the game played in rain and snow, often on miserable fields that have more dirt and gravel than grass, and at some schools, where players were lucky to find cleats that would fit.

At one of those schools, standing on the sidelines, a kid disc jockey kept ignoring the game to look at a beautiful girl who wore the quarterback's St. John's College pin. The dj had been a flop as a high school guard, but he did, to his continuing amazement, win the girl.

And there were the three brothers--one who planned a career as a coach, but instead, "went for a soldier," and led troops in Germany and Cyprus; another who played for the Lions and Roughriders, but ended as a CBC writer with a specialty in Russian literature and politics; and the youngest, and smallest, who, despite his size and a wailing mother in the stands, played centre.

All these memories flash across the gridiron of the mind.

Everyone's a winner.

--Slap Maxwell.

Homage to St. Cecilia

"At length, divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame."

So wrote Dryden, in homage to Cecilia, patron saint of music, whose feast day is November 22, but whose accomplishments and tradition are with us every day.

Born in Rome in the second century anno Domini, Cecilia is believed to have invented the organ, and is associated also with the harp, flute, violin and harpsichord, and had a voice so beautiful an angel fell in love with her.

In London on her day, the Worshipful Company of Musicians processes to St. Paul's Cathedral for divine service. And surely the day is celebrated by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, an order represented in Vancouver.

And all of us, whatever our musical bent--Bach or Hank Williams, Ravel or the Carter Family, Arvo Part or Stevie Wonder, Cole Porter or Ukulele Ike--may give thanks for Cecilia and her gift.

No Joy in Dobberville

The Eastern and Western CFL Finals ended as most sportswriters had predicted, and as your correspondent would have bet, if he had been a betting man and had any money to bet with.

When the Saskatchewan Roughriders went down at Mosaic Stadium in Regina in front of a sea of green, we thought the mood of the fans must be similar to those in Mudville watching the mighty Casey strike out.

Regina, during the reign of the worshipped quarterback Glenn Dobbs, was dubbed (or dobbed) Dobberville. As the Roughriders fell on Sunday, we thought of the final lines of "Casey at the Bat," and intoned, to anyone who would listen:

"There is no joy in Dobberville/The mighty Riders have struck out."

--Slap Maxwell.

Send in Strev

For the past several seasons, Mike Reilly has been known as the toughest player in the CFL--"tough as a two-dollar steak," as sports page columnists often write.

But now he has a rival for that title: a 24-year-old blonde giant named Chris Streveler.

All this season, Streveler has been the short yardage specialist for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. "Third down and one? Send in Strev!" And when first string quarterback Matt Nichols was knocked out of action, it was Streveler who was put in that spot.

Sunday, when the Bombers met the Calgary Stampeders in the Western Semi-Finals, they had a new QB:  Zach Collaros, whose passing was as accurate as ever. But Streveler was there, too, not only in short yardage situations, but as a companion QB who plays like a running back. An inspired move by Bombers coach Mike O'Shea and offensive coordinator Paul Lapolice.

Back to toughness: Streveler had sat out the last game, because, it was believed, he had a broken foot. But Sunday at McMahon Stadium, he was back on the frozen field, plowing through for yards, then limping back to the huddle, and running again, finally scoring a diving touchdown. It was one of the most memorable performances by an injured player since Eagle Keys played in the 1954 Grey Cup game with a broken knee.

And yes, the Bombers won, eliminating the seemingly invincible Stampeders from the playoffs.

Bombers players piled tributes on Streveler. Drew Wolitarsky called him "a beast." Collaros declared him "the toughest guy in the league."

-- Slap Maxwell.

Movember Moustache Time!

Once again, as apparently it happens every year, November has arrived. And we all know what means. November becomes Mo-vember, and we are encouraged to cultivate hairy upper lips, in support of male health issues, like expanding waistlines and early onset baldness.

As usual, there is a wide range of styles from which to choose, including the dashing Errol Flynn, the folksy Wilford Brimley, the sinister Fu Manchu, and the Groucho Marx charcoal.

For many years, the award for worst moustache went to John Bolton, and while Bolton's is still pretty terrible, his 'stache was knocked out of that position this year by the bizarre handlebar number grown by Kenneth Branagh for "Murder on the Orient Express," a hairy monstrosity that seems about to take over Branagh's head.

If you're seeking a true challenge, gentlemen, you might try to top the record set by Masuriya Din of Uttar Pradash, India. Mr. Din's moustache reached a length of eight feet, six inches. He may have had to pay extra to take it on a bus.

Theme music for the month is, as usual, Woody Herman's recording of "Your Father's Moustache."

It's Movember--grow that 'stache! (Not you, Madam.)

The Time Machine

Some may wonder if there are benefits to turning the clock back one hour each autumn, and we're here to assure you are there.

Remember when you called your cable company and were kept on hold for forty-five minutes? Remember the hour you suffered through your brother-in-law's slides of his trip to Tasmania? Remember the sermon that seemed to go on forever?

You thought you'd never get that time back. But, by turning the clock back, you have!

Its like getting a refund from the income tax people. Time returned. Or, as our pal Proust would have said, returner du temps perdu.