The Silk Hat Toppers

Those who have already purchased Tesseracts 22 will have noticed that my story, "If There's a Goal," is dedicated to the memory of the Silk Hat Toppers hockey team of the early 1950s. Here they are:

Photo from a family collection; photographer unknown. For that matter, the date is unknown as well: early 1950s?

There are a couple of things to note about this outfit, one pretty obvious and the other perhaps less so. First, though they wear consistent jerseys, the rest of their uniforms are, well, hardly uniform. The pants and stockings come from the various local athletic organizations the members previously played for. (See below.)

The second is that everyone in the photo is a Skeet. This team consisted entirely of my father and his seven brothers; the team sponsor (at the far left) was their father, my grandfather. Those were the days, when a family of ten children (my dad had two sisters in addition to all those brothers) wasn't unusual.

They were also the days when it was easy and affordable for any Fine Upstanding Canadian Boy to play hockey. My grandparents were far from well off, but somehow their sons all managed to play hockey, in both ad hoc and organized fashion. Contrast with today, when families are literally taking out loans in order to put their kids into some form of organized hockey (ad hoc being pretty much nonexistent any longer).

The Silk Hat was a restaurant my grandfather operated just south of downtown Calgary. Dates aren't known for certain anymore: Grandpa Sid was a sort of serial restaurateur in the years between 1946 (when he was discharged from the Canadian Army) and 1960; the Silk Hat was in the middle of the period, so likely ca. 1949-1953. Below is an earlier photo of my father and his brothers. They are standing on the frozen Elbow River, on the bank of which the family house was built.

More Skeet family hockey: again, photographer is unknown but could be Sidney Skeet.

This photo, the existence of which came as a surprise to me about a week ago, was probably taken in the winter of 1946-47 (or possibly 1947-48). The "winter" part is obvious: they're standing on a frozen river, duh. The year is a bit more of a guess: my father thinks he was about 14 years old at the time (he's fourth from the left, above), and he turned 14 in the summer of 1947. But his eldest brother is absent, which argues the winter of '46-47, when Lionel was still in the army. Four of the brothers are wearing the jerseys of the Calgary Buffaloes Hockey Association, which operated boys' teams at a number of levels (former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed was an alumnus, as were a number of NHL players).

Seeing these photos makes me regret not having made a greater effort to gather the memories of my father's generation while they were still fresh. Of the young gentlemen in the photos above, only three are still alive.

High Risk 7.5

Previous    First

[Concluding chapter seven]

Lily Cross had lived in an actress’s boarding house near the intersection of Taft and Franklin. If it had ever been a good neighborhood, it wasn’t anymore. But the house was apparently well-suited for would-be actresses: it was, Desiree informed Casey, about a half-hour’s walk from the Gower-Sunset area, the heart of Hollywood’s Poverty Row.

The house’s owner, Mrs. Elaine Carpenter, was by her accent yet another mid-westerner. Casey was beginning to wonder if anyone in Hollywood didn’t come from Iowa or Kansas. Mrs. Carpenter greeted Casey and Desiree at her front door with the suspicious expression that seemed to automatically come with the role of landlady; Casey remembered Mrs. Decker in Santa Monica wearing pretty much the same expression.

High Risk 7.4

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter seven]

“I can let you look at that,” the clerk said. “But I can’t let you take it away. Mr. Neal says he’s going to need it again.”

“We wouldn’t dream of interfering with Mr. Neal,” Desiree said. “In fact, we’re trying to help him.”

“I’m sure,” the clerk said. Damn, thought Casey. Everyone in this city is a cynic.

Casey and Desiree sat down at a table as far from the clerk as they could get. Casey couldn’t suppress a sigh of disappointment: Lily Cross’s file was not going to be of much use if its size was any indication. The number of documents it contained was pathetically small: her contract, dated October 18, 1929; a filled-in biographical form, to which was appended a small sheet of preliminary notes from someone in the publicity department, itemizing things to change or suppress; a collection of photos, showing a beautiful young woman with pale-colored hair styled in a wave that made her look sophisticated and much older than eighteen; and a series of reports. Casey remembered the laughing young woman who’d briefly blessed Conrad Hart’s little party.

High Risk 7.3

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter seven]

With no other flying on the schedule, and little that could be shifted into the gap left by the broken valve, Casey ended up spending the rest of the day working as an overpaid mechanic. He helped Mitch drain the petrol and oil from the Tommy—a job that made him more than a little nervous, pilots having a healthy respect for even a potential fire. His sore ribs wouldn’t let him push the Tommy back into the hangar, or remove the damaged rotary from its mounting—Tillman and Hamilton were dragooned into doing that—but Hogan charged him with helping Mitch go over the wreckage of the other Tommy, analyzing the engine and their chances of either repairing or getting a working valve from it.

When Desiree turned up at the hangar in late afternoon, Mitch rolled his eyes and groaned. “First Eve Adams,” he said to Casey. “Now Desiree Farrell. What have you got that I haven’t got?”

“The answer to that question,” Desiree said, “would take more time than remains before Judgment Day. Come on, Casey. Clean yourself up and let’s get going.”

High Risk 7.2

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter seven]

“How are your ribs this morning?” Hogan asked. He, Casey, and Mitch stood on the port side of the second of the disposable Tommies. A murmur of voices, punctuated by occasional shouts and the odd screech from Jerry Straebo, told Casey that the actors and crew were already at work.

“You want the truth? Still a bit sore.” Casey nudged the tire nearest him. “I think I can do this, though.” I hope I can.

High Risk 7.1

Previous    First

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Is it morning yet?” Casey had only found the diner because Desiree had sent a cab to pick him up at the hotel and bring him here.

“Technically, yes,” Desiree said, waving him to the both she occupied. She gestured to the counterman. “Another ham and eggs here. And coffee. A bucket of it, by his look.”

“Didn’t sleep too well,” Casey said as he approached. “Must be because I’m not used to decent beds.”

“You’ll love my place, then.” For the first time Casey realized that Desiree wasn’t alone in the booth. Then her companion turned to face him.

“Cunningham?” Casey said. “You’re Desiree’s friend?”

“I know, I know. It’s a penance,” Cunningham said. “Somehow, though, I still manage to be able to show my face at the Writer’s Club.”

“And where is it written that I can’t be friends with a writer?” Desiree grinned. “Oh, right. It’s in my contract. In fact, it’s boilerplate in every actor’s contract. No hobnobbing with the lower classes. Oh, well. What Jerry doesn’t know about my personal life won’t hurt him.”

“Speaking of personal lives and Jerry, “ Casey said, “do you think he’s the violent type, Cunningham?”

“He sure has a temper,” Cunningham said.

“I once saw him take a swing at a newspaperman,” Desiree said. “But that’s pretty much a rite of passage for men in this town.”

“So he’s not normally the sort to react violently. Yet last night he charged me like a bull, just because I joked that he’d be a better suspect in this murder than me.”

“I have to admit,” said Desiree, “that I was surprised by that.”

“You don’t really think that he did it, do you?” Cunningham asked.

“I’m just starting to ask questions,” Casey said. “I’m not ready to start thinking yet.”

“You should be a studio head,” Desiree said. “They never start thinking.”

“That’d be the life, all right,” said Cunningham. “Instead of which I have to go back to the studio and chain myself to a typewriter. Jerry’s been screaming for more scenes. I have to say, Casey, that stuff you gave me Saturday night is just swell.”

Casey groaned, but Desiree interrupted. “And we have to get out to Glendale Airport. Jerry lost a whole day yesterday, so he’s going to work us to death today, at least as long as there’s light. What are you doing today, Casey?”

“Nothing much,” he said. “Crashing a plane is pretty much it.”

“You’re kidding,” Cunningham said. “I’d love to see that. Maybe I can get away after all. What time?”

“We’re going to take the whole morning getting ready,” Casey said. “It’ll be noon at least before we do it.”

“How does this crash compare with the one you did Saturday” Desiree asked.

“It looks much worse. But I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to do it, and Mitch assures me that I might even survive. If I’m lucky.”

“It’s good that you can joke about it,” she said.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Shut up and let’s get going. Jeff, if you don’t come out to Glendale, I’ll see that what’s left of Casey gets dropped off at your place when we finish up tonight.” Desiree put some coins on the counter, and Casey followed her out to her roadster for another break-neck drive through the countryside around Hollywood.

Next     Prologue    Chapter One    Chapter Two    Chapter Three    Chapter Four    Chapter Five
Chapter Six

Mother of God! Is This the End of Sucrophile?

Well, yeah. Pretty much so. For the time being, anyway.

There are two reasons for this (well, perhaps two and a half). First: I've run out of old reviews to re-post. This feature was set up in the first place because some friends wanted me to publish the kiddyrot cereal reviews I wrote back in the early '90s, when I was trying to persuade CBC Radio that there was something passably amusing in the concept of cereal reviews.

(The half-reason is that while I have an enormous archive of old kiddyrot cereal boxes I have no memory at all of what the products themselves were like. Buzz Lightyear Cereal? A complete mystery. I could make shit up, I suppose, but that's not what we're like here at the Institute.)

The second reason is that eating this stuff just isn't good for you. I'm having enough trouble persuading friends to take the boxes of new product I've reviewed this year as it is, and that's just four boxes. Were I mad enough to try to continue doing this once a week, I'd likely be condemning my social circle to an early, grotesquely sugary, grave.

Don't despair, though, cereal fans. There are enough people out there who want to encourage me in my folly that Sucrophile may well make the occasional appearance even if it no longer shows up in your grocery aisle on a weekly basis.

High Risk 6.5

Previous    First

[Concluding chapter six]

As she poured the drink, Casey stopped by a book-shelf. The library was full of volumes, and there were more here. It had been a long time since he’d had the luxury of reading good books. He picked up Xenophon’s The Anabasis, but the pages were still uncut. He checked some of the other books on the shelf. They were in the same condition. Why have books if you’re not going to read them? he asked himself. He thought about McMahon, and wondered what kind of a life the man had led that would make him want to build up this façade to suggest a different sort of person. Was everyone in Hollywood like that?

Was Desiree Farrell?

“Is Desiree Farrell your real name?” he asked her.

High Risk 6.4

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter six]

“This probably hasn’t been a good day for you,” Desiree said as she poured a generous slug of something amber into a glass.

“That would qualify as an understatement,” Casey said. “If I thought that Hollywood was capable of understatement.”

“Which we aren’t.” She disappeared behind the living-room bar for a second, emerging with a siphon. Casey nodded, and she spritzed some soda into his glass.

The Scotch was magnificent, rich and smooth and with just a hint of smoke from a peat fire. It had been over a decade since he’d tasted anything this good: For a moment, Casey was back in the 85 Squadron mess, arguing with Bishop and Springs and the others about the best way to sneak up on a Hun. Then the memory of Lily Cross’s battered body jolted across his mind, like a shot inserted into some Soviet director’s montage.

High Risk 6.3

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter six]

The interior of Straebo’s Packard smelled of soaped leather and Turkish tobacco, with hints here and there of various perfumes. From the outside world, Casey caught an occasional hint of oranges. The hills were bathed in shades of purple as the light faded into evening; from time to time he saw lights indicating another mansion. Beverly Hills was only a few miles, but a universe away, from Hollywood.

Benjamin McMahon’s house wasn’t the biggest in the hills, but it was big enough. It could probably give Pickfair the running, and Pickfair was Hollywood’s Windsor Castle.

High Risk 6.2

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter six]

He’d been right about the flying. Casey continued to stew about Clark and the dead girl until he was strapped into the Bristol, but by the time Mitch had walked him through the start-up procedure and he was ready to make the first takeoff, Casey found his mind cleared of all thoughts but those required to get the big two-seater off the ground.

Flying a Bristol was markedly different from flying a Tommy or Camel. It was even different from the SE-5a in which he’d done most of his wartime flying. The feeling of power he got from the big Rolls-Royce engine was almost unnerving, and he had no trouble understanding why this was the one model of all the war’s combat types that was still being used by air forces more than a decade after the Armistice. On top of everything else, the Bristol handled beautifully, and by the time he’d circled and touched down for the second time Casey knew that it was going to take a superhuman effort on his part to keep from stunting the kite.

High Risk 6.1

Previous    First

A mob converged on Casey as he stepped down from the Monarch Pictures truck. “So this is what it’s like to be famous,” he said to the driver. “And to think that all I had to do was get myself arrested for murder.”

“If I wanted to be famous,” said the driver as Casey closed the door, “I’d sit on a flagpole.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Casey asked himself. Instead of which, all I’m going to be able to think about for the rest of my life is the way that woman looked when I found her. He had once convinced himself that after life in a front-line squadron he was beyond the ability to be horrified by anything. Now he knew that he’d been kidding himself.

Chicken and Waffles
Who the hell puts marjoram and sage into a breakfast cereal? We repeat: A BREAKFAST CEREAL.

Overall Rating: 59
This doesn't deserve to be as interesting as it turns out to be. However intriguing the flavour profile out of the box, the spiciness doesn't compensate for the bitter cynicism of the very concept, to say nothing of its execution.

Image from the confusing Institute collection

Appearance
This is the second of a pair of joke cereals released by Post earlier this year in "honour" of something called National Cereal Day in the U.S. I'll give the marketing weasels at Post credit for this much: you can actually see a resemblance, in some of these cereal pieces, to their real-world namesakes. Some of the pieces look like cartoon chicken drumsticks; others are rectangles with a sort of waffle pattern in them. Mind you, the weird flaccid flakes we mentioned in last week's review are in this product as well, for no good reason. But at least this joke stays funny for long enough to get the box open.

We feel confident those who test this particular product are going to be drawn to the list of ingredients, because the smell (to say nothing of the taste, which we'll deal with next paragraph) is so astonishing. The hint of savoury (the sensation, not the herb) is strong the instant the bag is opened—a hint that is explained when one realizes that amongst the ingredients are onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, thyme, and the aforementioned marjoram and sage. Those are not normally considered part of a balanced breakfast.*

Taste and Texture, Dry
The initial taste impact of the chicken-like pieces is horrifying. The herbs are weirdly bitter, making this seem to be the sort of cereal you give to Bad Children. But a curious thing happens after a couple of chews: the spiciness begins to combine with the otherwise-cloying sweetness (that would be your honey, barley malt, corn syrup and cinnamon) in a way that is intriguing if not entirely satisfying for those who are sweet of tooth. There is sufficient black pepper in the spice mix that there is a bite, the merest hint of heat, on the finish. And it's possible to lift a lot of this product from the box without having one's fingers glue themselves together. Just be careful, though: the distance between enough of this stuff out of the box and too much of it is very small indeed.

Taste and Texture, with Milk
Again, this is something that absolutely should not work and yet somehow does. Mind, the window of pleasure for this product is very small indeed, and closes not so much with a bang as with a sodden deliquescent whuffle. But for a few tantalizing seconds a bowl of this product with cow-juice produces a peculiar deliciousness that is, in its own highly artificial way, reminiscent of the mixture of sweet and savoury that one finds in some Moroccan dishes. Sucrophiles are warned, though: don't dawdle through your snack, because when this stuff stops being fun it becomes quite nasty indeed.

Conclusion
Remember the movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? The TV series "Sealab 2020"? There is something more than a little nauseating about a consumer product deliberately designed to mimic what others created in earnest. Ineptitude, yes, but earnest, serious ineptitude. Post's recent assault on boomer nostalgia and post-millennial irony is a breakfast equivalent of these cheap jokes. You might find yourself laughing, but the laughter turns bitter all too soon. [June 2019]

*The fact that the author of this piece regularly consumes soup for breakfast, and so is familiar indeed with these spices as a matutinal pleasure, is beside the point here. 

High Risk 5.5

Previous    First

[Concluding chapter five]

Casey awoke suddenly, shaking, his ribs aching with an intensity totally unjustified by the extent of his injury. A nightmare, he thought. From the hangar, just a few feet away from his bed-roll, he smelled castor oil, remembered what it was that he was supposed to do later today, and suddenly knew just what it was that his nightmare had been about.

High Risk 5.4

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter five]

He spent much more time in downtown Los Angeles and Beverley Hills than he did in Hollywood. Downtown, he window-shopped clothes in the hope that the coming week would give him enough free time to actually buy something decent to wear. He wanted a proper hat, too, something snappier than the old cloth cap that was all he had right now. In Beverley Hills he mostly fantasized about the houses—which was, he supposed, a form of window-shopping too. If he could make a go of it this time, as a stunt flyer—or even a contract player for Monarch, if it came to that—maybe one day he'd be able to afford a house of his own. No more rented rooms; no more cold suppers from a tin by the light of a single bare bulb. How would that feel?

High Risk 5.3

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter five]

It took maybe ten minutes, and when she’d finished Casey couldn’t really see much difference. He could feel it, of course: his face seemed wet, sticky, as if he was wearing a too-tight mask. But Susan gave him another appraising look, then nodded. “Good,” she said. She grabbed a hat from the rack by the door, tossed it to him. “Let’s go.”

High Risk 5.2

Previous    First

[Continuing chapter five]

“You’re on time,” Straebo said, emerging from the gloom. “Good habit to get into.”

“Good morning,” Casey said. Jerry Straebo looked like several of the inner circles of Hell. His face was puffy, and below each eye was a wrinkled arc of bruised flesh that suggested a deflated tire tube. The director’s eyes had the glittering, unfocused look of someone who’d been forced to use stimulants just to get his heart pumping today. I wonder if Eve Adams caught up with him? Casey thought. Sure looks as if someone did. “I don’t suppose a man could get a cup of coffee,” he said.

Tesseracts 22 is Now Available

Well, the ebook version is, anyway. You can order it direct from Edge or, presumably, from the usual suspects.

This volume contains my short story, "If There's a Goal"; I am vastly amused to realize that my very first fiction sale, the story "Rain," was to the second volume of the Tesseracts series, long long ago (and long before they began assigning titles to the volumes).

There's a longer announcement of this milestone on the website of SF Canada.

This is my fifth appearance in a Tesseracts anthology. It's strange; I'd thought I'd placed more than five stories with them. Well, my memory has been playing tricks with me lately: I've just come across a reference to a story, allegedly by me, that I have no memory of writing, much less selling.

High Risk 5.1

Previous    First

FIVE

Monarch wasn’t the biggest studio Casey had seen in his brief time in Hollywood. But he’d never been closer to any of the others than the street in front of them; as the studio truck pulled up to Monarch’s gate the collection of buildings loomed larger than any place Casey could think of since his first glimpse of the university back home in Toronto. Even if the gate itself was just a simple arch, with none of the grandeur he’d seen, for example, at the entrance to Paramount’s lot. As he passed under the gate, Casey saw paint peeling away from the word “Monarch”, the letters of which were revealed to be nothing more than crudely carved wood.

Maple Bacon Donuts
Nope. Nope nope nope.

Overall Rating: 27
This doesn't taste anything like bacon. Fortunately it doesn't taste anything like maple either. Failure to satisfy on the donut aspect goes without saying.

Image from the Institute Collection
(and boy do we regret having it)

Appearance
Have you ever found yourself having to explain a joke? As you watch your audience's eyes collectively glaze over, you can feel yourself shrinking in stature along with your joke. Somebody should have warned Post that just because something makes people laugh in the elevator you're not supposed to expect to cause a laugh-riot in the boardroom.

This is one of a pair of joke cereals released by Post earlier this year in "honour" of something called National Cereal Day in the U.S. (We'll deal with the other next week.)  The product consists of two different shapes, one at least of which does resemble a donut (or a bagel or an inner tube); these pieces (made mostly of oat, we suspect) are (artificially) coloured to look sort of like the (artificial) colour of a maple-glazed donut (artificial, we repeat). The other piece is a flake of corn and wheat flour and is supposed to represent... what? The crushed, flattened souls of the marketing weasels responsible for this travesty? Well, in a perfect world that's what would happen to them anyway.

Taste and Texture, Dry
The only positive thing to say about these is that your fingers won't get sticky when you pick the pieces out of the box. Okay, we suppose there's one other potential positive: if you're one of those sad boomers who actually like the taste of those horrid molasses-flavoured Halloween toffee pieces, you'll find something in here to cheer you. There's a disclaimer on the back of the box saying no pigs were harmed in the making of this cereal. O how we did laugh... The disclaimer's not necessary, because nothing in the flavour of this product hints at any sort of exposure to porky goodness. We'd been worried the product would smell and taste of artificial smoke; there's none of that here. Not much of anything else either. We never thought we'd ever find ourselves missing the cloying scent and flavour of artificial maple, but would it have been so hard to at least put a hint of that in here? The closest we came to it was a post-testing belch that might have suggested maybe a touch of artificial maple. No trees were harmed in the making of this mess either.

Taste and Texture, with Milk
If it's not worthy of snacking from the box, is it at least going to justify immersion in dairy liquids? Don't be silly, gentle reader. If this product earns points for anything it's for the amazing speed with which the flakes turn into papier-mache goop. Most of what little flavour this ever possessed seems to evaporate when the milk is poured on; not even that  ghastly Halloween flavour bothers to stick around. All that remains by the time the bowl is empty is a somewhat sour taste of complete and utter failure.

Conclusion
It used to be a lot of fun to pick up kiddyrot cereals and assess them with a degree of seriousness totally unbecoming to what they actually were. This product represents the Marketing Department's sly, sardonic acknowledgement of what kiddyrot cereal fans were getting up to. In the process they're pretty much killed the joke.

We are reminded of what Tom Lehrer said in the mid-seventies: political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. [June 2019]

Temporary Disruption in Service

Please do not adjust your browser. We control the horizontal; we control the—sorry, that's a different post.

Lorna and I are hosting an out-of-town guest this week, so the regularly scheduled updates of Sucrophile and High Risk—to say nothing of anything else that might otherwise have come to mind—will not appear. I'm sure everyone in vacuum-land is horrified at the prospect.

Regular service resumes Sunday afternoon, 9 June. See you then.