Wednesday Night #830 Notes in verse by Barry Lazar

28 January 1998

Editor’s Note : Almost ten years later, this delightful take on Wednesday Night by author and film maker, Barry Lazar is all the documentation that remains of that evening. While we recognize David’s plaintive refrain about the number of hits his Website receives versus the Playboy site, the references to Monica Lewinsky and the partition issue, – probably to do with the failed 1997 attempt to launch a referendum in Westmount -, the gentleman from Savannah, along with the reference to Cardinal errors remain a mystery. We do, however, get the reference to the ‘Garylous’ guest of honour, our late friend Gary Gallon, a leading environmentalist (see his Globe & Mail article on the ice storm) and, as Barry notes ‘and by God, was he smart’.
_______________________________________________________________

The night was dark. The room was full. The wine was thick and red. The Commodore rang the gong and this is what he said: Watch that screen, don’t be serene. Life’s Cabaret is dead. The debt’s sky-high. And tell me why, “there’s bimbos all over the web.”

Look at mine,” he pined. “It’s good and cheap and works just like ’twas planned. While M. I. W.’s set us back a hundred and fifty grand. Playboy’s got 50 thousand hits, I tell you this is true.” Hiz Honnor looked up from his glass and said “How many came from you?”

Then the discussion ran from chair to chair on the virtues of e-male and whether the Lewinsky lass had a hand in what entailed.

The wind did shift and the topic came about and we turned to Cardinal errors and a clerical redoubt. A gentleman from Savannah offered for us to hear. “Well, it seems to me that, like the south, there’s a clash of cultures here.”

The party parted on partition, and an authoritative Suit spoke supremely from the back. “The court is going to be moot.” Then a prof proffed this comment, slightly circular. “Some aren’t pleased with the decision, and, well, the others are.”

We digressed to blah and blah and things I cannot quote. (Someone else was taking notes. I know not what he wrote.) There’s something about “what the ice storm did” and a “U.S. bill” to get Hydro on the grid.

Finally the guest of honour spoke to us from his heart. He was Garylous and eloquent and, by God, was he smart. He spoke of climate change and ecology and the benefits of technology and he gave insight to the corporate fight and put it all in a brand new light.

And no one else did talk until the Commodore yelled “shoot the tree huggers” and then no one did stop.

And as the clock struck midnight we heard the siren song. “Blame it on the media. The media is wrong.”

Oh the night was dark. The room was full. The wine was thick and red. There was so much to comment on, so much more left unsaid. So many tales, I cannot tell which ones to believe. We will not know ’till the gong is struck again, next Wednesday eve.