Get Smart is coming to DVD!

I received an email that one of the greatest TV series of all time (and one of the funniest) is being released on DVD in November! A lot of kids today would be cocking their heads like stunned cocker spaniels asking, "What's Get Smart?"

Unfairly lumped together with all those "gimick" sitcoms from the 60s (nostalgic crap like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, My Favourite Martian, Gilligan's Island, etc.), Get Smart was a sly, witty comedy from the minds of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry (the guys who gave the world The Producers and The Graduate). It parodied the spy craze of the early 60s and satirized American politics and culture in an underhanded style that never insulted even the most clueless TV viewer. Every week Maxwell Smart, an inept secret agent and his beautiful, intelligent partner, Agent 99, fight to save the world from the clutches of KAOS, the International Organization of Evil (a Delaware Corporation for tax purposes). Most spy shows didn't deal with union issues or budget cutbacks or fashionable evening wear for today's female spies. Or have episodes titled "Tequila Mockingbird".

And don't get me started on the Cone of Silence, Hymie the Robot, Fang, Max's asthmatic canine partner, Siegfried or cherry-flavoured suicide pills ("Go ahead, they're not habit-forming.").

Fuck Austin Powers, Maxwell Smart is the original 60s spy with mucho mojo!

I should have reread some of my earlier posts: my how I've crucified Calgary lately! Okay, I've packed away the vitriol with a label that reads, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL DOOMSDAY (trivia note: guess which classic 60s TV series I stole that from?), so now I can focus on positive aspects in my life.

Like my writing. I've been fortunate to have had articles, interviews and reviews published in print and online, so now I'm going back to my shelved novel manuscript and reaching into the dark to find my narrative voice again. Writing is the one constant in my life that gives me immeasurable joy and utter frustration (often at the same time). I've spent the summer eating bad foods (like chicken wings at the Regal Beagle and those amazing hot dogs at Tubby Dog!), viewing popcorn films at the downtown multiplex and reading Batman and Superman comic books, so I'm dying for the intellectual challenges involved in creating a novel. Okay, smart guy, you've trashed other books in reviews in the past, so let's see you do better. Gulp. I hope I at least fail spectuacularly in my attempts to create a literary work people would actually want to read, let alone buy from a bookstore (even from Chapters).

So it's time for me to crack open some Herman Melville, Donald Barthelme and maybe some Kevin Canty to see how superior writers tackle prose fiction. But only after I finish the final season of Arrested Development...

When does a home cease becoming a home? That's a question I ask myself on a daily basis. I should clarify that it's not my actual apartment that distresses me (especially since the new curtains we bought at Urban Barn really brighten our living room), but the city I live in. I feel the love for Calgary is definitely gone. I could rant about escalating housing costs and rents, soulless condo towers replacing heritage buildings, the blind devotion to the provincial Conservatives, a lousy theatre scene (though One Yellow Rabbit is a standout), the tiresome "Fuck Edmonton because _______", but it's much more than that.

I'm tired of Calgary. There are good people, some swell, hip folks, good local music, an abundance of arthouse theatres, plenty of outdoor activities, but it's time for a change. I've grown up as a nomad, living in exotic locales such as Saskatoon, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Calgary, earning the "Has Lived in Every Prairie Province" award (I'd rather have the cash). I don't know what it's like to have lifelong friends or to have attended a high school reunion (I spent the last excruciating semester of Grade 12 in Calgary), but I have bumped into too many ex-girlfriends in downtown Calgary (always at my favourite drinking establishments, sigh). So many friends have fled Calgary in the late Nineties and my best friend left for Vancouver for law school two years ago (and never contacted me again--was it something I said?), so I'm thinking it's my time for an exodus.

Maybe I'll drink a six-pack of Pil and listen to Sebadoh in the dark...