Darrell Vickers – From Here to Infirmity

 

At this moment in really scrunched up time, I am ensconced deep in the bowels of a flying festival of contagion. The tuberculin-ward quality coughing and spewing that surrounds me and verily bathes my corporeal being in multitudinous clouds of thin expectorant mist is an icky, sticky Terry Gilliam film come to life but without the witty dialogue.   A viscid, pestiferous, bilious consommé erupts from the maws of the alarmingly unwell, like pestilential popcorn exploding in a microwave.

How even the most plague resistant of passengers manages to ward off this buffalo stampede of disease will be forever a mystery akin to how Denis Thatcher’s seed managed to find purchase within Maggie’s barb-wired uterus.

And mucho kudos to this criminally unpicky squire in question for even getting into the game in the first place.

Let’s face it, even at her most alluring; Mrs. T. could scare the erection off an ancient Inca statue.

 

And what ghastly surprise must have greeted those unsuspecting sperm, super humanly hardy enough reach The Felopian Catacombs of the Damned.

 

There are far more inviting eggs in an IHOP dumpster.

Yah, Das iss da iHop Dumpstervlagenn

But I Digress

The flight attendants (though, fuck if I know who they’re attending to these days) trudge up and down the sad-faced aisles, peddling remaindered booze at ballpark prices. The motley, polythene-asphyxiated sandwiches and sub-bowery-saloon snacks aren’t even as tasty as the eight-dollar earbuds they also dispense. What these airborne vacuum-packed cash machines really need are hip-flasks of penicillin and hazmat suits.

Air Travel was once-upon-a-time a sophisticated, even desirable form of transportation. Alas, the Mephistophelian Siamese Twins of unbridled capitalism and religious fundamentalists have transmogrified the friendly skies into the Donner Party but without the legroom.

There are now more laughs in a Eugene O’Neal play than on a flight from LAX to Toronto.   Back in the days of yore, the Mile High Club denoted having the rare and pleasurable experience of getting laid on a flight.

Today, it’s harder to get a free pillow on Air Canada than it is to get your rocks off in one of their bathrooms.

Women are blowing strangers just for something to eat that doesn’t cost 25 dollars.

Of course, they didn’t break my nose dragging me out of my seat or knock me insensate with a baby stroller, so I guess I should count myself as one of the lucky few. The random acts of savagery experienced on planes these days are usually only meted out to vacationing teenagers in their underwear.

And truth be told, from October through May, Canada is basically just one giant airplane cabin, filled to the carry-on luggage bins, with unquarantined Typhoid Marys.

My Case in Point.

On this last trip to Jacques Cartier’s “Kingdom of Saguenay”, I got to break bread – well, it was mostly alcohol – with the one and only Bob Segarini. This legendary bibulous jongleur (because he lives in Canada) was as sick as a couple of Max Factor lab rats. Shit, he might have been on my flight home, I should have looked around the plane for him! Despite his crud-infested bronchi, the Minstrel of Malady proceeded to rock the house at the Tranzac Club with a relatively brief but spirited set of tasty musical treats.

I also had the startling experience of having my name called out from the stage and was introduced to the audience by Sir Bob. And startled I was! A TV writer receiving any sort of public acclaim or approbation is about as rare as an un-grabbed pussy at the Mar-a-Lago Resort. And speaking of curious fingers feverishly pummeling the Tenderest of a woman’s Vittles, Mr. Segarini also recounted (credited, of course) a joke my partner and I sold to Joan Rivers in the halcyon days of our youth.  It went thus…

Joan:  “I walked into Melissa’s room and caught her masturbating.  I said, ‘If you don’t stop that, you’ll go blind.’  She said, ‘I’m over here, ma.'”

This merry little divertissement earned us the princely sum of ten dollars (possibly seven) but that vexed us not. For lo, there was much rejoicing in the land. Andrew and I selling bon mots to a major Hollywood comedian, from one of the humblest apartments on Glen Street in Oshawa, was an accomplishment on par with turning water into very cheap wine.

But I Digress… again

According to reports, Bob managed to infect half of Cabbagetown that magical musical eve, but I was fortunately spared his racking respiratory wrath. Others in my company (Pat Blythe, Pat Blythe, Pat Blythe) were not so lucky. But since, after my last northerly trek, I spent three entire weeks hacking up lung balls the size of baby flamingoes, I feel I have more than paid my misery dues. Additionally, the fact that I was gifted that pleuritic poleaxing by two raging phlegm storms (Pat Blythe, Pat Blythe, Pat Blythe and Roxanne Tellier) has alleviated my “me no sick” guilt quite remarkably.

They say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” What they should say is, “What almost kills you every winter makes you a Canadian.”

Canadian wedding vows should read, “Will you take this woman, in sickness and in summer…”

On Christmas Eve, Santa would have his choice from about 23,000,000 red-nosed Canucks to guide his sleigh.

I’m surprised Donald Trump hasn’t tried to charge Fort Erie to erect a 35 foot sneeze-guard over Buffalo.

If it were legal to burn your used Kleenex, the average Canadian family of four could cut their heating bill by 38%.

Little known historical fact: Christopher Columbus was actually on course to land in Halifax but the local Indians sneezed his ships down to the West Indies.

If Dale Carnegie had been a Canadian, his book title would have been, “How to Make Friends and Influenza People.”

I kid the second largest country in the world but I love ’em!  Mostly because, it’s the world’s third largest country that has the real health crisis. While a head cold or even a toilet-filling flu is over in 2 to 3 weeks, a sickness of the soul can last decades or far longer. With the election of a dictator-loving, white-supremacist mental patient, the ever-shrinking pasty-faced majority has turned the world’s melting pot into a miasmic toxic stew.

And it’s not just Blacks and Hispanics and Muslims caught in the crosshairs of the collective American stink-eye. Jews are under siege again. Strong totalitarian arms are straining mightily to turn back the clock on gay rights and marijuana. The poor and disabled are now straining to hear the last few wan beats of America’s gangrenous heart. Yes, the fossilized misanthropic albinos or the South and Mid West are not going to go down without a fight. (Unless it’s Larry Craig in an airport men’s room.)

The Madness of King Gorge-A-Lot

Nary a universe has been turned upside down by the Republican aristocracy gladly leaping off their self-righteous podium of unwavering patriotism to French Kiss the rectal cavity of a Russian despot in order to cling to power. That was always a given. But the Religious Right turning their back on God – that’s far more newsworthy. That these supposed stalwart keepers of the faith would eschew the teachings of that Jesus guy to worship a thrice married, lying, vain, foul-mouthed, non-church-going, adulterous, sexual predator is simply delicious. If you glued all the seven deadly sins together and put a clown’s fright-wig on top, you’d get Donald Trump. It lays bare any pretense of adherence to Christian teachings by this pongy midden of sanctimonious fuckwads. Just which of President Pee-Pee’s families do you value, you hypocritical, silk-suited shit-stains?

And I’ll guarantee you this sulfuric pudding of a man has paid for some comely secretary of his to have a quickie abortion. If there was a God, he’d take that Bible you proudly wave around and he’d jam it so far up your ass you’d have to floss the Book of Hosea out from between your teeth.

The Happy Ending

So cough and splutter away my Canadian friends, for one day you will get better, but your neighbors to the south are in the early stages of a creeping malignant cancer that will eventually swallow them whole.

If I stop typing now, I can have one more $35 dollar glass of wine, before landing, so…..

=DV=

Darrell Vickers appears here whenever he damn well feels like it

Contact us at dbawis@rogers.co

Darrell Vickers started out as one half of Toronto area band, Nobby Clegg.  CFNY fans may remember the cheery song “Me Dad” which still gets airplay.  From there, he valiantly ventured to L.A. and eventually became head writer for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Since then, he’s created numerous sitcoms and animation shows in Canada and the U.S.  He still writes music and has an internet band called Death of the Author Brigade (members in Croatia, Canada and the U.S.)   Mr. Vickers also had a private music mailing-list where he features new and pre-loved music.  Anyone who would like to be added to his daily mailing list, just write him at Radiovickers1@gmail.com