Flattened at Clearwater! (Part 2)

After returning our rented tools and grabbing a handheld breakfast, we found ourselves on the road to Kamloops, where we had been informed that the local Kal Tire had a half-dozen of the 13-inch trailer tire we needed to replace the flat on Bride of Frankentrailer.

Highway 5 is a lovely drive, up and down the hills and mountains alongside the North Thompson River for about 90 minutes. It gets progressively dryer and more barren as you get further south, so by the time you reach the city, it’s almost desert-like. There is still a fair amount of vegetation but it is largely scrub, sage and prairie grasses, with very few of the enormous pine and spruce trees up in Wells Gray, where we still hoped to camp eventually.

As in Clearwater, the staff at Kal Tire in Kamloops were a delight to deal with, and had our tire fixed and mounted in maybe 45 minutes. I think the most time was spent finding it. We even toyed with getting an extra spare when Keegan discovered the right-sized wheel in their inventory, but it turned out to have only four holes, not the five we needed, so the spare spare notion was abandoned.

With a fresh new trailer tire loaded in the back of the Lander, we only had two more stops to make in Kamloops and the first was at Princess Auto.

My satisfaction at this experience bordered on the spiritual.

First, it was deliciously air conditioned, in direct contrast to the heat outside which I recall as being around 36 degrees.

Their immense inventory, even the fiddly bits like the individual socket I required, were all clearly labelled and neatly organized.

And once again, friendly, helpful staff were easy deal with and were only too willing to let me open a saddle adapter to see if it fit the 2-ton bottle jack I was contemplating (it did not).

It did not take us too long to get sorted, and within perhaps 15 minutes we left with the aforementioned hydraulic jack, which I figured might work better in the close quarters under our trailer, as well as an 18” breaker bar, a 3/4” inch socket for the trailer’s lug nuts, a 6” extender for that socket, and some “Screwloose” penetrating spray for loosening the nuts.

Our second stop was at the T’Kemlups Petro-Can for some more ice for our beleaguered cooler as well as some enormous slushy drinks. I swear I have never enjoyed one of these more; it was just so hot.

Before we even returned to the Country Inn RV Park, we knew we wouldn’t have enough time to strike camp and make it to Mahood Lake, especially using the route taking us an hour south to avoid as much of the notorious F.S.R. as possible. So we heated up some chicken chili, packed up what we could before bedding down, and slept with hopes of an early departure.

Packing up went pretty well the next day, and to save time we again grabbed some breakfast sandwiches (and still more ice) and headed out once more the Hwy 5 south.

And not ten minutes south of Clearwater, the other trailer tire blew out.

It signaled its departure from this mortal coil with an immense POP, followed by the slapping of shredded rubber against the asphalt. It was the starboard-side tire this time, so I was able to pull over safely to the side of the highway, and after a few moments of reflection as to whether we were cursed by the Almighty or had angered some powerful folk-magician in our travels, I got out to take a look.

And yes, looking at my second trailer flat in less than 24 hours, I experienced my share of disappointment and despair, especially when looking at the inexplicable two inches of additional fairing on the this side of the trailer (see picture), which would make this extraction even more difficult than the first one.

But I was also heartened, because this time, thanks to advice, experience, and our loyal Princess of Autos, I was prepared!

I quickly unpackaged the bottle jack, marveling at is tidiness and realized something I hadn’t noticed when checking it for the adapter I had considered: there was no handle in the box.

There should have been a two-part jack handle, but there wasn’t even one. Blessedly though, the socket for the jack could also accommodate a long-handled screwdriver or even the extender I had bought for the breaker bar.

I quickly tested my hypothesis, but remembered before getting too far that I must loosen the nuts before lifting the wheel. I got the breaker bar out, moved the extender from the jack to the socket and put the whole works together. Only a bit of the spray was needed to loosen them and that didn’t take nearly as long as the first time around.

And when I got the bottle jack to an appropriate spot on the frame, it lifted up easily enough even using my improvised handle, and there was just enough room to work off the spare and squeeze it under the lip of the trailer.

But when I tried to put the fully inflated spare into place, it became very apparent that so long as it was full of air and a larger diameter than the flat, there was absolutely no way I could even force it into position.

Despite the bottle jack’s ease of use while crouched under a listing tent trailer, its maximum lift of 7&¼” meant that there was not a single place under the trailer where it could elevate it to a sufficient degree. Standing the jack on the block we used for the nose of the trailer would potentially raise it an extra 4” but put it above the frame and metal pieces of the trailer, and there was no way the aged wood of our 1974 Bonair would support the weight on the jack surface that perhaps an inch across.

It was about this time that I felt burning pinch on my right wrist, and jerked my arm up to discover a red ant with its mandibles sunk into my flesh. After brushing it off and noticing more ants upon my person, I rolled over and discovered I had indeed situated myself directly upon an anthill. I mean, why not? At this point the circumstantial evidence supporting an angry witch was becoming overwhelming anyways.

Once again, I began to despair, and once again, Audrey came to the rescue. “What about the scissor jack from the Lander?”

I shook my head in frustration. “Even with more lift, it starts out too flat to give the trailer enough clearance.”

”Yeah, but it would fit better on the block, wouldn’t it?”

I blinked and squinted at the shadows under the trailer. She was, of course, completely correct; the additional 4” from the trailer block made it a simple matter to fit the scissor jack under the frame, and also gave more room to put the windlass-like jack handle to work. There was soon more than enough room to fit on the spare, finger tighten the nuts, lower the jack and tighten everything back up.

 It did take us long enough that a friendly driver stopped to make sure we were okay, having passed us on his way out of town and seeing us in the same spot upon his return, and another compassionate soul asked if we needed help as well.

But we were able to return ourselves to the road all by ourselves and were soon headed back to Kamloops for the second time in 24 hours.

We weren’t going to make it to Mahood Lake by nightfall again, but when I called the reservation line, they confirmed my suspicion - after our being a no-show, our entire 4-night reservation had been cancelled anyways.

There was enough coverage along Hwy 5 for me to use Audrey’s data and book us a site at Blue River, maybe an hour north of Clearwater and as far as we could get along our homeward route and still cook dinner.

When I walked into the Kamloops Kal Tire with the flat, one of the techs from the day before gawked his eyes and said, “There is no way that blew already!”

I agreed and informed him it was the other, and as he took it back to get replaced, he assured us we should be good to go in 15-20 minutes.

As they worked on it, I reflected on the rotten luck of a second flat so soon after the first and realized it probably wasn’t luck after all - there was no chance that the starboard tire didn’t take some degree of damage during our initial highball run up the FSR. In retrospect, we were probably lucky to have gotten as far as we did! And I still could not recall wronging any houngans or brujas or warlocks at any rate.

Once the tire was fixed, our tech not only mounted it onto the spare bracket for us, he also retorqued the tire I had just replaced. We had many miles yet to go before nightfall.

Next stop was at Princess Auto to swap out the handle-less bottle jack for a dedicated scissor jack that would live in the Bride of Frankentrailer so that our next flat wouldn’t requiring unpacking so much of the Lander, since that one is stowed under the cargo area.

And once again, the heat of the day required slushy drinks to progress, so we stopped once more at T’Kemlups Petro Can and this time got some hot chicken for lunch, which, for gas station chicken? Was pretty decent.

We also drove around the area a little bit and found an immense and beautiful powwow centre, as well as Canada’s most notorious residential school, where they first discovered 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous students - a heady reflection on vacation, but we both think we will return for a tour at some point in the future.

The rest of the drive passed without incident, thank heavens! At one point, while we were driving up the side of a mountain perhaps two or three hundred feet higher than the river, Audrey spotted a bald eagle flying alongside us. When I turned my head, I didn’t even have to look up - the enormous avian was at eye level, thirty feet away from my window and perhaps 20 feet from the cliff side, gently flapping alongside us as we drew past him at 70 km/h. Amazing!

The private campground at Blue River was closer to the highway and train crossing than we might like, but was very well kept and tidy. After a Wednesday night dinner of grilled pork chops and cacio e pepe pasta (from ramen style cups), we were finally beginning to relax for the very first time since leaving on Monday.

After two flats, two tire replacements, being stranded in remote areas, spending six hours on the road between Clearwater and Kamloops without actually getting anywhere, nibbled by ants, and enduring a diet one meal short of being exclusively fast food and road snax, we finally, actually felt like we were on vacation.

Flattened at Clearwater! (Part 1)

Gentle readers: all gravel roads are not created equal.

Lord knows this blog has never been intended to serve as any sort of educational endeavour, beyond the trivial or the overshared, but if you learn naught else, I beseech and implore you to realize this one fact: Forestry Service Roads are different.

Thanks to visits to my wife's old stomping grounds around High River, I am completely inured at this point to driving or being a passenger on gravel roads while travelling at speeds in excess of 90 or even 100 km/h. Heck, many of these roads have posted speeds of 80 km/h, suggesting that slightly higher speeds are by no means beyond the pale.

But as we made our way out of the town of Clearwater B.C. on our way to our reserved campsite at Mahood Lake in Wells Gray Provincial Park, Google Maps informed us we would be traveling 63 km over a Forestry Service Road (FSR) for over an hour and a half.

While hardly ideal, we had come out here to camp and get dirty after all, so with Audrey at the wheel we got stuck in. The posted speed limit was 50 km/h, up a steep incline and with multiple segments of washboard or areas strewn with holes ranging in depth from two to six inches, so we were rarely at that speed, and towing the Bride of Frankentrailer to boot. I don't think we saw another vehicle while we were under way either.

It was intermittently scenic, with mountain vistas and dense evergreen forests, and we spotted perhaps two dozen tiny bunnies eating something off the gravel before passing the 23 km marker, which was when we heard the portside trailer tire blow out completely.

Now, what we did not know at that point is that the gravel on FSRs is not the smooth, rounded specimen of your traditional rural routes. Heavens no, these are  jagged and pointy bits of weaponized mineral so spiteful that experienced offroaders will often 'air down' their tires to 20 or even 15 psi before traversing FSRs. And there we were, dodging what my Mum called chuckholes at 50-60 km/h while towing a trailer whose tires were lovingly inflated by Audrey the previous day to the recommended 80 psi.

Honestly, it is a wonder we made it as far as we did.

But there we were, with a shredded tire, 1/3 of the way to our destination. With no other recourse, we unloaded the Lander to access the jack and tire iron, and Audrey got the spare off the back of the trailer while I got the scissor jack situated. Laying down in the dusty gravel while Audrey brushed increasingly large and aggressive horseflies off my back, I painstakingly twisted the scissor jack to a point where it at least met the frame of the trailer, which was no mean feat, given how much lower everything was when compared to, say, a car.

It has probably been a decade since I changed a tire, and the lift points on a 50-year old tent trailer are not nearly as clearly marked (i.e. not discernible at all) as those on the Corolla (or the Lander, presumably). I make no apologies for my ignorance, why have an AMA membership if you aren't going to use it, after all?

I will apologize for forgetting that the lug nuts must be loosened before lifting the vehicle, or the wheel will simply spin as you fruitlessly lean on your tire iron. But after lowering the jack, I realized the fairing or wheelguard or whatever you want to call it made accessing the nuts even more difficult than usual. But this was not the biggest problem. 

The tire iron for the Lander did not fit the lug nuts on the trailer. 

In retrospect, this was predictable, but up until that fateful moment, lug nuts had existed, in my mind, as a universal constant. Somehow I had forgotten the ubiquitous cross bar tire iron of my youth, with its four distinct sizes. 

It quickly became clear that none of our tools were going to fit the bill, and I had already dismissed two helpful loggers in their pickups, so there was naught else to do but to disconnect the trailer and make our way back to Clearwater.

Audrey drove so that once we were back in cellular range I could use data to find the phone number for a towing company to come change the tire for us as I was hot, sweaty, exhausted and running out of daylight. But when I reached them, I learned in rapid succession that 1) no one could get up there before late tomorrow morning and 2) the hourly rate (including travel time) and surcharge for a callout to an FSR meant the last one had cost the forestry company $750. "It's blowout after blowout up there," he told me, "especially after they grade it."

Since this was more than the cost of the trailer itself, I was crestfallen, After some discussion as to the tools I would need in order to get the tire off, and the realization that even if local stores had what I needed, they had all closed over an hour ago, he suggested he could rent me what I needed, and in a strange mixture of hope and desperation, I agreed. 

We drove to the shop where he helped me load up a three-ton floor jack, an 18" breaker bar (a non-ratcheting, long handled socket wrench with a swivel in the middle so you can flip the wrench 180 degrees while keeping it on the nut), a full set of up-scaled sockets and some penetrating spray to loosen the nuts themselves.

We made our way back to marker 23 at a much more reasonable rate of speed, but not before discovering that there were no rooms to be had in town but the Clear Water Country Inn had space for our trailer so we booked a spot. We also grabbed a Subway on our way out of town and my lovely wife fed me as I cautiously navigated the FSR once more.

Once reunited with our stranded Bride, I still struggled to get the breaker bar around the fairing. I got the 3/4" socket seated on one lug and managed to loosen it but with the bar trapped underneath the trailer itself, it was going to be a tedious process as I could only move it a couple of inches before hitting either the trailer or the road. 

Audrey pointed at the tray of sockets, indicating one with some kind of swivel; "would that help you get a better angle on it maybe?"

I looked and shook my head in frustration. "No, it just changes the direction, when what I need is some kind of exten- hello, what's this?"

Very close to the swivel attachment was an extension that added perhaps 6" to the socked itself, already perhaps 5" long...which was enough to clear the fairing!

It was still a laborious endeavour getting all the nuts loosened, but with generous applications of the penetrating spray and an appropriate transfer of furious mass and desperate grip to the breaker bar, we were soon in business.

Audrey got the somewhat enormous jack under the trailer frame and with three large pumps, I had enough space to get the wheel off and the spare back on. We had to lower it, raise it, spin the wheel and lower it once more in order to get all the nuts tightened properly, but we sorted that out pretty quickly with the big jack. 

Dusty, sweaty, exhausted but triumphant, we made our way to the RV park and set up camp. The site was nothing to speak of but it did feature free showers, and I have never been so grateful for an amenity in my entire life. Unfortunately our campsite, in addition to being very close to Hwy 5, was also  situated right next a a 24-hr gas station that had semis rolling in and out all night long, but it was also close to Kal Tire, which we would need the next morning.

The following day, we wasted no time after waking up from a sleep best decribed as restless and headed straight over to Kal Tire where the incredibly helpful and empathetic Dagan explained he could indeed get the tire I needed but not before Friday noon. When I told him I might be back after searching around (as it was only Tuesday), he checked other nearby locations and told me the Kal Tire in Kamloops (90 min away) had six of them in stock.

And so, with bacon & eggers from the local A&W in hand, Audrey and I set out for Kamloops...

(CONTINUED IN PART 2)

The Cup: Half-Empty

Lionel Messi, at 39, played an astonishing 120 minutes of football in the World Cup final tonight. In addition to losing the game 1-0, as team captain he led his Argentinian team and maybe his nation into ignominy.

In an absolutely brutal display, his team was not only outplayed to an embarrassing degree by the Spanish side, but earned the disrespect of much of the global audience by playing in a completely undisciplined and thuggish manner that was not only unsporting but also dangerous.

If you look up the play that earned Enzo Fernández his second yellow card and ejection from the game in the 93rd minute, you will see a man take out another player in a way that suggests that if the rumours of preferential treatment by officials are not true, that at least he believed them.

Brutal fouling, dirty play, and cheap shots that the Argentinian fans describe as ‘passionate’, ‘spirited’, or ‘part of the (South American) game have followed La Albicelestes throughout this tournament, despite having one of the easier pools and even paths to the final, particularly in their match against Egypt.

Even worse, after the final whistle, ARG player Nahuel Molina took a swing at .Spanish captain Rodri as he trotted past to celebrate with his teammates, and I think he connected. Rodri turned around to confront Molina, there were words, then shoves, a scrum formed and then Leandro Paredes jumped in, shoving, throat punching, throwing a second Spanish player down to the ground and got the game’s second red card for his troubles. (Fun fact: if the six red cards doled out at World Cup finals over a near-century, three of them belong to Argentina…)

And then, during the trophy ceremony, the Argentines appeared to turn their backs on Spain as they hoisted the trophy - truly classless.

It’s a sad way to end Messi’s legacy as the dominant player of the last decade and some, but I have no sympathy for the man. On top of him personally riding Jude Bellingham out on the sidelines in a headlock worthy of a steer wrestler at the Calgary Stampede during the semifinal against England, he tried to get Spanish player Marc Cucurella sent off under FIFA’s new rule prohibiting mouth covering during confrontations (a way to punish players trying to conceal racist attacks on opponents).

The video makes it abundantly clear that Cucurella was only pointing to his lips, not covering his mouth, but Messi’s hand shot up in a callous attempt to turn the situation to his advantage, which, blessedly, didn’t work.

Gracias to Spain for playing a great match and restoring some faith in football, if not FIFA.

Messi can cry himself to sleep on a pillow filled with money, and you know what? I kind of hope he does.

The Cup, Half-Full (2026)

My enjoyment of this year's World Cup, like most of the sporting events I bother to follow, is a mass of contradictions.

I hated watching Canada lose to Morocco, a solid, solid team.

I loved Canada not only making it out of group but into the Round of 16 for the first time! 
And playing the best 45 minutes in the history of the CANMNT for the first 45 minutes. This will not be our last World Cup!

I hated watching Canadian mid-fielder, Ismail Koné, get his leg broken after a flawed tackle attempt by a player from Qatar. 

I loved seeing that same player, bereft at the consequences of his action, being consoled by a Canadian player before being eject from the game. (The Qatari player, Qassim Madibo, not only visited the Candian locker room to apologize immediately after the game, but visited Koné in the hospital the following day.)

I hate having 48 teams in the round robin (with the possibility to expand the tournament to 64 teams by 2030).

I loved having Cabo Verde, a tiny group of islands off the coast of Africa with half a million souls and a 40-year-old goalkeeper, make it out of group undefeated and hold the reigning champs, Argentina to only a 3-2 victory in the round of 16.

I hate the corruption of international organized sport, which seems so endemic, being made so blatantly visible by Trump's demand that a red-carded American player be allowed to compete, and FIFA capitulating.

I love that Belgium, a weaker team on paper and not having a great tournament up to that point, beat the USA in a great match, and that the red-carded player made a point of shaking hands with the Belgian coach.

I hate knowing that, of his own free will, English captain Harry Kane played a round of golf with Donald Trump.

I loved seeing Jude Bellingham score a brace of goals in Estadio Azteca, perhaps the most intmidating staidum in the world for a visiting team, leading ENG to a thrilling  victory (seriously, the match to beat for years to come in my eyes). 

(Even better, after the Congo game Bellingham stopped to speak to a disabled reporter from Venezuela that almost everyone else in the tunnel ignored, and in Spanish, sent well wishes to the people there struggling after an earthquake.)

And despite his Norwegian side losing to England yesterday, I loved learning that Erling Haaland exists. 

My Instagram and Threads feeds are filled with this enormous lug, this Shrek-adjacent behemoth who, as near as I can tell, is winning the hearts of millions simply by being a hard-playing, decent human who appears to be one of the few millionaires playing professional football to actually be enjoying himself while respecting others.

And as long as we are talking about Norway, let's give it up for their brilliant team kit, unequalled team photos, and most importantly, their Viking row, hands down the best fan movement since the Mexican wave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5WUEqEkQZU

In the end, bringing the four corners of the globe together in sport will always be problematic - there is too much money, too many problematic personalities, too much greed for it to be otherwise. But despite this, the positive moments and quality individuals continue to make it a worthwhile endeavour, at least for me.

Still More Monsters of the Manual

Even without comparing it to subsequent editions, the very first Monster Manual for what was then called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was simply not a very good book. There are some typos and formatting issues and such, but the biggest reason is the art. 

Much of it is just not very good, drawn by seemingly whomever TSR could get to sketch something up by the deadline for the first-ever hardcover D&D book. There are exceptions (nearly everything by David Trampier, for instance), and a lot of entries have no art whatsoever, which is probably (?) worse.

But how many nerds like me did that 1977 book draw in and then never let go? Many of those images are still conjured up behind my eyes by the mere mention of the names of these esoteric creations, regardless of their quality.

And over the four decades I've played D&D, I have always sought to fill in the corners with some of the more iconic monsters and some other personal favourites, many times just because of the evocative memories of the art that accompanied them.

Most recently I added a displacer beast (mentioned in my 2020 post about iconic monsters in miniature) as well as a pair of perytons - harpy-like stags that not only consume human hearts, but whose shadows reveal the silhouette of a man and not a beast (tragically irreproducible in miniature form).

It's been six years now since that monster post, and I have been filling out the corners of my Monster Manual collection:

There are a number of things preventing me from having a truly comprehensive index of MM miniatures (lack of funds, time, storage space and interest to name but a few), but adding a few classics like these has been pretty rewarding - even for someon who only plays D&D in person perhaps a dozen times a year!

A Warriors Musical Comes Out to Play

By the end of junior high school, there were two pieces of popular culture that made a considerable number of middle-class suburban lads my age think that joining a street gang was a pretty cool idea: S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel The Outsiders (part of the school curriculum for a lot of us!) and the 1979 Walter Hill movie The Warriors. 

And I recently discovered this foundational film of my youth has been adapted into a concept album by none other than Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and could now be headed to Broadway as a full fledged musical.

The Warriors tells the story of a 7-member delegation of the titular NYC gang trying to make their way back to Coney Island following a failed midnight peace summit at Van Cortlandt Park that ends in chaos. Wrongfully blamed for the murder of Cyrus, the visionary leader of the Gramercy Riffs who called the summit, the Warriors have to run, sneak and fight their way across an entire city of enemy territories run by gangs that are united at last...against them. 

Warriors (1979) trailer

The movie is based on a 1965 novel by Sol Yurick, who based it in part on Xenophon's Anabasis, but I am not going to pretend The Warriors is a piece of classic cinema. But it would be just as wrong to categorize it solely a guilty pleasure.

The film was green lit because the studio was desperate for 'youth films.' Walter Hill was intrigued by the classical core of Yurick's novel.  He also appreciated a screenplay that, that unlike every other film depicting street gangs as a scourge to society or a problem to be solved, this screenplay instead treated them as another part of the urban ecosystem to be explored.

Shot at night on the streets of New York with a modest budget, the producers paid actual gang members to be 'security.'  The cinematographer successfully campaigned for a scene with a rainstorm at the beginning of the film, so he could wet the streets for better lighting in the subsequent shots. The review in The Village Voice declared, "Much of the movie looks as if Fritz Lang had directed The Wiz, with occasional contributions from Sergei Eisenstein and Bruce Lee," which is about as apt an encapsulation I have ever read.

Paramount pulled most of the advertising for the film after vandalism and violence (including three killings) were associated with showings on both coasts. As Walter Hill observed 35 years later, "I think the reason why there were some violent incidents is really very simple: The movie was very popular with the street gangs, especially young men, a lot of whom had very strong feelings about each other. And suddenly they all went to the movies together! They looked across the aisle and there were the guys they didn't like, so there were a lot of incidents. And also, the movie itself is rambunctious—I would certainly say that." Like most cult films of that time, The Warriors found its eventual (and incredibly loyal) audience through VHS and television showings.

Sure, the dialogue can be pretty stilted in places, some of the gang costumes are both impractical and outlandish (hey, did you know the beloved Baseball Furies wore war paint to cover up the non-youthful faces of the stuntmen portraying them?), and you might well wonder why they didn't just steal a car to make up time. But I was amazed to discover there was an actual gang meeting in 1971 with 200 delegates from dozens of gangs in attendance - so maybe the story isn't quite as far-fetched as we think?

The Warriors is still a compelling, if straightforward, story of survival that also has some poignant things to say about loyalty, courage and even class struggle. The latter comes most notably near the end of the film when a group of upper class teens in suits and dresses board the same subway car as Swan and the rest of his ragged warband, and it is difficult to determine which side is made more uncomfortable by the contrast.

The movie made quite an impression on me and many of my friends, and apparently Mr. Miranda as well, who claims the film "has been on two stone tablets in his head ever since" after seeing it on VHS at an inappropriate age. He initially dismissed the idea of adapting it when suggested by a friend in 2009, but after Hamilton's opening in 2015, realized he hadn't stopped thinking about it. He suggested a collaboration to Eisa Davis, a playwright and actress (and Pulitzer prize finalist!) who had never seen the film.

In a major departure from the film, the album Warriors are all women, which gave me pause but I have to admit works out really, really well for the story overall. It removes the trace homophobia and misogyny that were endemic to pictures of this type at that time, and an all-female crew adds a whole new level of both fear and triumph to surviving the night, a major theme of the album. 

The opening track, Survive the Night, does a fantastic job of recreating the film's opening exposition and montage (honestly a masterclass in tight storytelling) in sound only.

[DJ LYNNE PEN]
Hey boppers
At midnight
There's a gathering after dark
In Van Cortlandt Park

[DJ & CLEON]
Hey boppers
Cyrus needs five boroughs to see this through
This means you

[DJ, CLEON & SWAN]
Hey boppers
The truce is on
No weapons but your fists, she insists
Hey boppers
Keep your radio tuned tight

Rather than showcasing individual gangs, each of the five boroughs gets a shout out courtesy of some legendary names in hip-hop, like Busta Rhymes, Cam'ron, and Mas. My personal favourite is Ghostface Killah and RZA of Wu Tang Clan repping Staten Island with this crisp lamentation:

So how do we make it back home alive
When we gotta leave our crib at 9:45
For a midnight meeting, word up, what a fuckin' pain
Takin' a train to a boat to another train?

Cyrus is also a woman, voiced by the legendary Lauryn Hill, but her song "If You Can Count" maintains a tremendous amount of fidelity to the source material:

Can you count, suckas?
Yeah, right
I said, can you count, suckas
Yeah, right
The future is ours, the future is yours if you can count
Can you dig it?
You've got the Moon Runners right by the Van Cortlandt Rangers
Got the Jones Street Boys by the Turnbull AC's
And nobody's wastin' nobody
And that's a miracle
A miracle
And miracles are
The way things ought to be
Can you dig it?

Gender-swapping the protagonists makes a good character better in the case of Ajax (played by James Remar in the film and Amber Gray on the album). A violent and ambitious, well, a-hole in the movie, musical Ajax is just as rough and loyal, but instead of being lured away following a fight , siren-like, by a pretty lady on a park bench, she instead responds to catcalls from a creepy old man (played by James Remar!) with an entirely different motivation, but similar consequences. The Park At Night is probably my favourite track on the album, despite being less than three minutes long.

The Park At Night lyric video

The rest of the changes are pretty mild, overall, and the timeline is again astonishingly faithful to the movie. There is a great mix of musical styles across the 26 tracks, emerging from its hip hop base to find expressions of salsa, ska and even K-pop and metal-tinged pieces. 

The film's outlandish design, pronounced dystopian elements, bold costume choices and synth-based score give it a sense of enhanced reality and an almost cyberpunk veneer, like it is taking place maybe two weeks into a more troubled future as opposed to a present-day 1979 (even though things were getting pretty dystopian in NYC at that time!). It is hard to tell from listening alone if the album version of The Warriors is a period piece or not, but there are clues: the presences of only a single gun in a story full of violence and hierarchy, as well as a bit of exposition presented by a pay phone call. Most critically, news about the hunt for the Warriors is not shared by social media, but by a radio deejay (Jamaican singer Shenseea).

But this NPR article makes it clear that the project is not only set in but also a hymn of praise to that period. "We were inspired by the concept albums from the '70s that we love," Miranda said, "where you would sit on your living room floor and read the liner notes to your vinyl. And we wanted to create that feeling."

In truth, the product as a whole is probably a bit too musical theatre/ hip-hop for most of my circle, but I am desperately hoping my Hamilton-loving daughters give it a listen before too long. I've streamed the album a few times now since discovering it and enjoy it a lot. There is probably a lot of nostalgia behind my affection, but so what?

If you are the least bit intrigued, my suggestion is to check out this YouTube playlist of official lyric videos, which lets my eyes helps my aging ears to catch some of the more rapid-fire lyrics. Miranda and Davis suggest listening to the whole album at one go (about an 81 minute commitment with no ads) and if you can manage that, more power to you.

The stage adapation of the album is only in its earliest stages yet, with hopes of staging it on Broadway by perhaps next year. It is doubtful I will get to see it there, but if a touring production north of 49 gets anywhere near me, you can pretty much sell me a ticket.

Can you dig it?

a cool artifact from the long departed Coney Island Candy on Whyte Avenue

A Lay for Our Time?

Hammertheft and all the world bereft
Of reason and of right overnight
Left between a tyrant's temper mean
And treason and betrayal, cold and stale
Hue and cry, I can't sit idly by
We're hostages to greed, intercede

Even as viking legends go, the Lay of Thrym (Þrymskviða)is pretty wild. 

Thor's legendary hammer Mjölnir (crusher) goes missing, his half-brother Loki investigates the theft. The giant king Thrym brags that he has buried the hammer 8 leagues deep, and will only relinquish it if the goddess Freyja agrees to be his bride. 

Freyja unsurprisingly (and angrily) refuses this offer, so instead a scheme is devised wherein Thor will dress like Freyja and go to Thrym's hall in her place until the hammer can be recovered. Undercover work is not the thunder-god's forte however, leaving Loki to explain that Freyja's devouring multiple whole animals and three casks of mead is because she hasn't eaten in eight days due to travel and excitement. The fiery eyes Thrym sees when he lifts 'her' veil? Well, she hasn't slept either, has she?

By the time Thrym orders Mjölnir brought to the hall to sanctify the marriage, Thor is beyond ready to reveal himself. Grasping the hammer with both hands as it is placed on his lap by the duped jotun, he slays many of them, including the giant king himself (at least in the Danish version).

All you have is illgotten gain
You stand only for your own
Any man may throw you off the throne
Seat will not be set for thee
At the league of free nations

May this mark the end of your reign
Let the lay of Thrym be heard
Leave no tyrant out there undeterred
Thunderstruck theocracy
This theodicy heathen
In the end the giant was slain

My first encounter with this tale was not through my most common channels for Norse mythology: Dungeons & Dragons or the Walt Simonson run on The Mighty Thor comic. No, my exposure came courtesy of a viking metal band called Týr from the Faroe Islands, as both the title and closing track of their 2011 album.

The album itself is intriguing, being a response to the Arab Spring, as told by here by songwriter Heri Joensen:

I was inspired by the events of the Arab Spring. I am a very positive person...well maybe not totally positive, but definitely optimistic. And I was hoping for a better outcome. I found the story about a Tunisian guy who set himself on fire quite moving and it inspired me to write the song ‘Flames Of The Free’. So it’s mostly taken from those events but I drew parallels between mythology and present day events. You have Thor who tries to get his hammer back from the Giant Thrym, symbolising people from contemporary society trying to get their rights back from dictators who took them away from them.

The song came up on my power metal playlist ("The Riddle of Steel") the other day while walking Canéla. I am always drawn in by the slow intro and transition to one of the best horse-gallop drum rhythms I know of (even if, in truth, I suppose they should be goat-gallops), but this time the lyrics really got me thinking about current events and the rise of autocracy.

I mean, in the end, what is less credible: a giant believing the thunder god in drag is actually a winsome goddess, or watching the U.S. President deploy national guard and police around the deflecting reflecting pool in Washington to distract people from both his multiple mentions in the Epstein files as well as paying $300B in reparations for a needless war in Iran?

Hammer home to any despots dome
That tales of tyranny end with me

And it's not like we are particularly better off here in Alberta, where our increasingly despotic premier and her ditchbilly base cheer on the use of the notwithstanding clause to send teachers back to work and watch a needless and expensive referendum on immigration and separation get promoted, all while her party adds a $14 per solar panel "recycling fee" to help prop up her 'former' oil and gas patrons.

Hue and cry, I can't sit idly by
We're hostages to greed, intercede

Sigh.

It can be disheartening, sure. I am grateful that Canadian democracy has been largely spared the ravages of U.S. decisions like Citizens United in 2010 that equated money with speech and corporate limits from corporate campaign donations, but we are still subjected to waves of misinformation from foreign YouTube channels and bot farms.

Even so, more and more people are expressing concern and even anger at this malfeasance and bad faith governing, and I feel that only is a positive change inevitable (at some point!), I know in my heart that when the pendulum swings back the other way, it could end us taking us all somewhere positive for an even longer term. 

The unthinkable alternative is a lifetime spent under the thumb of increasingly authoritarian regimes, but even then I know that nothing endures forever. We have to have hope!

In the end the giant was slain

[Lay of Thrym lyric video]