Three Things podcast -- Episode 137: small world, licence plates, destinations

The Canadas are conducting test flights, friends. It’s September-time in Edmonton. Here are three other things that left behind signs  of happiness and gratitude last week. 

Three Things podcast, episode 137:

 

                          

1. Small world 

I saw two Fringe plays this time around. God is a Scottish Drag Queen played to big laughs at the Garneau. Okay, Come On, Where Do We Know Each Other From? played to a smaller but engaged audience at Sugared & Spiced Baked Goods, the wonderful bakery in the alley in Old Strathcona. Okay, Come On, Where Do We Know Each Other From? is a mystery. The version that I attended starred Shelagh and Patti, both customers at the bakery that morning. It played out as they looked at each other, realized that their paths had crossed somewhere, sometime. Their lines were familiar. How do I know you? and, I know, right? You look so familiar? With Jeff the owner in a supporting role behind the counter, the two tried to figure it out—live. Was it Folk Fest? No. Do you work for the government? Shelagh asked. Patti revealed she’s a librarian at the University of Alberta. That trail went cold. The possible wheres then switched to the possible whos. Kim from ATB, do you know her? No. The author Wendy McGrath? Patti had heard of her, but didn’t know her. 

Shelagh then remembered being in a conversation with Patti…somewhere…along with others. She recalled how they had talked about the kind of week they had at work. Shelagh had a Twizzler and a glass of wine at the time. The memory was foggy. Who else was with them? Where did they talk? This was like dial-up search.

Then it clicked. They had met and talked at the concession at the Varscona Theatre a few months before. Aimée was there. It was their friend Aimée who they had in common. Aimée was the link with high connectivity. Aimée was the flight attendant between their separate nodes of existence. 

Jeff said Shelagh-Aimée-Patti-style improv happens routinely at Sugared & Spiced. Knowing glances turn into puzzled back-and-forth questions and riddles become reunions.

 
“All the time,” Jeff said. “I get lots of people who are setting up a show or who are in a show and they’ll come by regularly for a short period, for a couple of weeks. And they’ll find people who, they come in and, oh, I was your drama teacher in high school, or those kinds of things will happen. I’ll introduce people who I think know each other.”

It’s a great place, Sugared & Spiced. Great cakes, great baking, a deep commitment to craft—including stagecraft. 
“It is a stage,” Jeff said. “This is where I perform.” 

2.  Licence plates  

I am searching for a name for the game I play when I have to drive around out there, which means, of late, the game I play sitting in gridlock out there. LRT construction in the west end has stopped automobile traffic in its tracks in some places, setting the stage for the spelling game I’ve devised to keep the boredom away. It’s pretty simple. From the three alphabet letters on the standard Alberta licence plates of the cars and trucks stopped next to me, I try to quickly hammer out a word that contains those letters in the order they appear on the plates. Points depend on word length. So, for CPV, “captive” is worth seven points, “captivate” nine and “counterproductive” 17. “Unproductiveness” feels like a jackpot, but, with its C, P and V in the wrong order, it would be disqualified. I don’t yet know what the points can be redeemed for, and I haven’t figured out what to do with the digits in the licence plates. (I married into the McAnallys, I don’t compute like them.) It’s letters for now.

So, what’s the name for this game that throws back to the BVG era? The innocent time before video games? Should we call it Serving of Plates? Plate Techtonics? Plate Tech-phonics? Or maybe the name of the game is a play off the letters LRT? Folkart? Clarity? When we were kids, and bored, my mom would routinely say, well, play a game or make up a game. That was her blueprint. 

Hey, wait, blueprint: L, R, T. That’s nine points!

3. Destinations 

There’s no TV screen at the new Happy & Olive restaurant in Crestwood and no video monitors showing the menu, but there is a neat display board on the wall that turns heads and triggers murmurs of “look at that, that’s cool” when it does its noisy work. 

The sign is a miniature homage to the grand railway schedule boards in old cities that have railways and railway stations and mechanical train schedule boards. I once stood in awe in the Gare de Nord in Paris as its board, like a giant slot machine, spun out the names of the destinations and the times of departure. It was like reading Dante. It’s why still I stand still in front of arrivals and departures screens in airports and read the names of the places that pilgrims are going to. Sure, it’s a thin version of the experience of the old-fashioned railway boards. Gone is the sound of the letter flaps clicking into position as noise subsides and semantics are revealed. But a trace is still a way back. 

The board by the bar at Happy & Olive is a digitally fed, word-display board that preserves bits of the experience of the lovely sound of the old-time railway station boards. 

During a visit for a meal to mark the arrival last week of Shelagh’s 60th birthday, I sat transfixed as the letters in the headline of a New York Times story about Hurricane Idalia near Florida dissolved—clickity-clack-clack-clickety—into the particulars of late summer, 29-degree Edmonton weather. 

The Happy Burger was also very good. 

Thanks for being out there, friends.