Pssst! Pssst! Hey, over here! Shhh… keep your voice down, will you, not too loud. Yes, I’m wearing a moustache. Just stay calm and act normally. Calm. No, get your mind out of the gutter, man — I said calm. C-A-L-M. Pretend I’m talking to you, like a friend. And how’s the wife and kids? Doing anything for the weekend? (Here it comes!) Going out to the lake, are you? Well, just make sure you wear a lot of sunscreen and don’t start any f…
OK — it’s gone! Whew! That was close. What was it? Heavens, how can I explain? It’s like that movie The Blob — yeah, gelatinous and goopy and takes on any shape, and, yeah, those were the partially decomposed remains of whoever it was that got in its way. A fatberg? Yeah, I guess that’s one way to put it. Wet wipes and diapers and tampons and condoms and congealed grease and cooking oil, all rolled into one like an impacted bowel. Is it alive? Heavens, I hope not. You’re right — it is strange, it is unreal, it is unsettling and unfettering. Like Indiana Jones running away from the boulder. But at least he got the golden idol, eh? All I have is this damn moustache. It’s fallen off, hasn’t it?
Imagine what it would feel like to be run over by it? And the stench? I’m sure you got a good whiff of it as it passed. Cat vomit and urine and feces in a hot car? Yeah, that’s a good description of it.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
