{"id":251,"date":"2012-02-08T06:07:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T06:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=251"},"modified":"2012-02-08T06:07:23","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T06:07:23","slug":"someplace-on-sussex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2012\/02\/someplace-on-sussex\/","title":{"rendered":"Someplace on Sussex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">(in Memory of Pierre Elliot Trudeau)<br \/>\n<em>by Gord Sellar<\/em><\/p>\n<p>was where he lived, I guess I was supposed to know<br \/>\nwhere, but I could never remember the number, you see.<br \/>\nI\u2019m also dreadfully bad with birthdays. But I<\/p>\n<p>remember a screen, it seemed wide at the time,<br \/>\nacross the red shag of the carpet, and thereupon<br \/>\nthis alien face looking out at me, demanding something.<\/p>\n<p>Great man? Powerful statesman? Fascist monster?<br \/>\nI was too young to say. But I know one thing: his speeches<br \/>\nalways seemed to be timed to pre-empt the Disney show.<\/p>\n<p>In retrospect, I appreciate the interruption of American TV \u2013<br \/>\non Canadian business, after all \u2013 but back then it enraged<br \/>\nme to no end. Why not instead interrupt <em>The Beachcombers<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>So that my sisters and I, with all the impotent rage<br \/>\nof a long-wronged proletariat, fervently scowled,<br \/>\nand our hidden transcript bubbled out into the open:<\/p>\n<p>an epithet. That was our eventual action of protest:<br \/>\nWe called him Mister Bignose Crow-face Bottle-head Man.<br \/>\nIf you look closely, you\u2019ll see it makes sense, I swear.<\/p>\n<p>It was just that, well, he was everywhere extremely pointy,<br \/>\nand somewhat red. With strange hair. A sort of<br \/>\nKandinsky-ish clown; some kind of angular bozo.<\/p>\n<p>I mistakenly imagined him on out on dates in Quebec,<br \/>\nwith my homelier aunts, treading on their feet while they danced;<br \/>\nthe desperate apologies, the revulsion. How far off I was.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose I should show respect, now that he\u2019s dead:<br \/>\nCan something good be said of Mister Crowface Bottle-head?<br \/>\nA brain in the crow is worth two of a Bush. Better a clown than a fool.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><em>&#8212; 30 Sept. 2000<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(in Memory of Pierre Elliot Trudeau) by Gord Sellar was where he lived, I guess I was supposed to know where, but I could never remember the number, you see. I\u2019m also dreadfully bad with birthdays. But I remember a screen, it seemed wide at the time, across the red shag of the carpet, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-canada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-43","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}