Early Christmas: punk, puppies, and - Wonder Woman?

Awake at 6am here, with surgery on Thursday. I've remembered to turn my phone on for a nurse to call with pre-surgery instructions, all of which I probably remember from September - there's a soap to wash in, a need to fast, etc - but it will be good to go over again. Erika is asleep, prior to what for her is a work day - and so here I am on the computer again. We just returned from a fast, early Christmas with her parents (and their PUPPIES), because there's some strong likelihood that I'll still be in the hospital on Dec. 25th - tracheotomy in the throat, feeding tube up the nose, muscle grafts removed from parts of me and attached to my tongue, neck dissected to steal some lymph nodes for biopsy... I'll be opiated into a stupour and probably unable to speak or really properly taste the foods that I am able to take in (the muscle from my arm will have no living nerves in it, it seems, let alone taste buds... really not sure how I'm gonna train it to speak if I can't feel it...). Just like my 2017 cancer moved our wedding up by some months, my 2021 cancer has us playin' fast and loose with Christmas (I am hoping Erika will still have SOME sort of family Christmas on the 25th, rather than fretting about me in the hospital, but...).

...But any excuse is a good excuse to exchange gifts and eat turkey. I gave photo albums I'd assembled, based on past family trips, to Erika's parents and her brother and his family, and also varied books among them (Unreconciled, Thinking Fast and Slow, 100 Things We Have Lost to the Internet, The Evil Garden, Factotum) and received on my end copies of Channel 3's Fear of Life (thanks to a well-placed hint with the Full Bug records, my favourite new record store, with the best selection of used punk anywhere in the lower mainland that *I've* seen, unexpectedly located in Duncan!) about my affection for California hardcore and the many holes in my collection... I dropped hints with Matt, the owner, about things I didn't have, like Articles of Faith or Code of Honor, but Erika's parents (who were horrified by the cover and VERY skeptical about giving such a thing to a cancer patient) really knocked it out of the park with the Channel 3 one, since I only have the British version of the album (I've Got a Gun), which is lacking "Manzanar," their most essential song and one of the greatest punk protest songs of the 20th century, in my estimate.... Erika, for her part, got me a deluxe (so-called) White Album with the Esher Demos; I only have the original on CD (in stereo and mono mixes, mind you), but it is the Beatles album I have the deepest affection for and the one that seems most egregiously missing from my collection (I might have to grab Abbey Road on my own). Hadn't known until a couple of weeks ago that that "not when he looked so fierce" line in "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" was actually delivered by Yoko!

...though most of my gifts to Erika are still wrapped over by the TV, and she has other things for me, too. We discussed the idea of holding off on the exchange until Christmas, but of course, the little worst-case scenario that flickers in my mind is that I am gonna die of some sort of error or infection or my body simply going "fuck you" to me at the indignities it's gonna experience later this week... and who knows if I'll be able to keep my chin up through it all; I might also simply be miserable or distraught at my new Frankentongue and the challenges it poses (because, you know, really, I thought I had speaking and eating down to an art, but...). So we'll have more gifts to exchange before I go into hospital. She got one gift from me to open with her other family presents, and I tapped right back into her childhood love of Wonder Woman, the old Lynda Carter series... we watched the pilot as soon as we got home, which was unexpectedly quite delightful, holding up vastly better than she or I had dreamed, which surprised the hell out of me, since I haven't really been able to get into MY childhood favourite TV shows from back then; both Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Star Trek have aged poorly, not doing any sort of justice to how much I loved them as a kid. But Wonder Woman is quite charming, and even the hokey aspects are a lot of fun, like her invisible plane, which kind of tops the list of delightful things not included in the recent feature films... whyever not...

...plus I see that I've got plenty of treats as a film buff in store with the supporting cast, which includes all sorts of 70's actors I enjoy - like Henry Gibson, last night, whose presence completely sent me down the wrong track when I later read that Carter had been married to someone named Robert Altman.... My head spun a little for awhile, trying to put that together, but it was just a different Robert Altman! 

I see that tonight's episode will feature Bradford Dillman, of my much-loved 70's fave Bug... and that Roddy McDowall appears a couple of times! 

Anyhow, it was a fine early Christmas, though I got a bit distracted during my brief survey of the town's thrift and record stores by an extremely rare Toxic Reasons single, which I assumed (at $100) was overpriced at the store I saw it at, but which in fact turned out to have been underpriced... spawned some lively social media exchanges, as I kinda feel obliged to let friends know about stuff I find in Duncan, since I kind of serve as a bridge between music communities (for the record, neither that Toxic Reasons single, which was at Soulful Memories, nor the Chris Houston or Jerry Jerry albums from the Full Bug seen below, are available to purchase any more, thanks to me... though you might end up seeing that Toxic Reasons at the Full Bug at some point!). I've also grabbed, in the past, a Dead Boys album at the Full Bug for Billy Hopeless and a couple of things I never expected to see, like that final, posthumous Screaming Trees record... The Full Bug is a great experience for people with my sorta tastes in music... Soulful Memories is a bit more haphazard in their selection, and more likely to overprice than underprice, but it's the standard stuff (oh, look, another used copy of Dark Side of the Moon for $50) that they tend to price high, and the weirdo stuff (like that Gunfight At Carnegie Hall that I paid, what, $15 for?) that they tend to price a bit low, so I'm actually equally excited to shop there - since I'm happy to spot a deal, and frequently DO find things that I didn't expect there (they had the Replacements' Boink! around for awhile, a few months ago, priced fairly, in fact, at $60 or so, tho' it seemed to have sold somewhere in there).  

Anyhow, it's now down to finishing a couple of writing projects (in the chute: Zander Schloss, EXTC/ XTC, and Rob Nesbitt) and figuring out my to-do list. Mail some money to Alex Cox... mail some movies to Michelle... pack for the hospital... sort my finances... what else? 

I should stop writing, because the nurse could call at any moment (Erika pauses in drying her hair to check in: "Hey, babe - you have your ringer on, right?" "Yeah, I do." "Okay." ...resume hairdryer). 

Merry Christmas, I guess, folks! (A couple more music articles coming soon - and check the December issue of Montecristo for my article on my history with record collecting in Vancouver, as a teenager... that one may be print only...).