No. 250: ANNUS HORRIBILIS IN REVIEW / Not exactly a best-of.
I'm trying to lower the bar here, but loyal readers can reasonably ask: "Isn't it low enough already?"
For once the planning worked out. I wanted to end 2024 on a nice number, one appropriate for a retrospective, and 250 certainly ranks as such. Ideally, 1001 would have been great—that would be a fitting endpoint and I’ll keep it under consideration.
A ten-best would be asking way too much of the reader—I’d be happy if you went back to just one of these pieces listed for rereading and reconsideration. Oh yeah, I don’t know that on further review I could find ten that qualified as best-worthy or even better than average.
And such selections have been done in this space before, as recently as No. 200: BEST OF / Hitting the double-century mark, a quick look back & ahead, here linked. This of course goes back to the dawn of the SubStack in the fall of 2002, when I was looking to get the word out there about my Audible project that gives this newsletter its name. If you haven’t given it a listen, please do. I’m sure it’s going for a pittance if you’re an Audible subscribers, maybe even gratis. I’m not saying it’s good--I’ll just say it’s as good as I could do and for those who enjoy my miseries at all, it rates as easy listening.
I’ll divide my work into The Material World and The Sandbox, the latter being sport-ish stuff and the former anything otherwise and thus anything of consequence. And from each I’ll offer up three stories that might be worth your time and a simple click of a link will transport you to a story in the vast archive. Oh, and some pieces here unless otherwise noted will require a paid subscription or a comp to access them.
THE MATERIAL WORLD
This is one is still fresh to be available with out a subscription and the title is utterly self-explanatory. No. 240: NORM MACDONALD, TWITTER & ME / We exchanged dozens of dead-of-night messages across two years, but I waited for the right moment before diving into the sensitive stuff.
A legion of reviewers had Percival Everett’s novel James on their lists of the year’s best and I included it right at the stop of my favourite things. I used Everett as a springboard into a story about an outrageous and possible shameful prank I played back in in ‘85, a bogus story that I filed which evoked and anticipated Everett’s novel Erasure and its Oscar-winning adaptation American Fiction.
I’ve taken the paywall down on this one, so you have no excuse to avoid this now. No. 225: BERNARD SHAWON & PERCIVAL EVERETT / An unbelievably true story about a risible con job. Mimesis or simply coincidence, it took four decades to roll out.
This is an odd one—I only sent it out to friends and paid subscribers, but I’ll offer it up here. I had to write a tribute to a friend who once told me a secret. I’ll leave it at that. From March, No. 189: MR. X FROM PARTS UNKNOWN / A strange turn in an obit about a friend
THE SANDBOX
My two reminiscences of a blowhard radio host who has done the war of terrestrial radio was fun to write. The first I managed to include in the memoir I submitted to ECW a few weeks back (prospective publication in fall 2026, working title Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hockey Scribe). Anyway, I rate No. 205: BOB McCOWN I / The Sun King of Toronto Drive Time fed me the perfect set-up. He didn't appreciate the punchline, but seriously, who could resist? as good for a laugh and I’ve taken the paywall down on it. The second one was even more delicious for me but I’ve left the paywall up: No. 206: BOB' McCOWN / For whom a friend in need made good radio and nothing more. It didn’t fit into the memoir alas, because by the time it rolled around I was a young hockey scribe no more.
My private moment with a hockey legend pictured above in his glory days. No. 212: JEAN BÉLIVEAU / They sometimes labelled the Canadiens captain "a class act." Unfair. It was never an act. Paywall is up on this one. Do the honourable thing and take out a subscription—you know Monsieur B would do that if he were still with us.
Also behind the paywall, the story of getting body-slammed and almost suffocated by a pro wrestling legend (in the middle in the photo below). No. 184: BRET HART, STU HART & SHANE GILLIS / They could have counted to 100. Sportswriting's occupational hazards & a one-sided fight story. A version of this makes it into the Audible projects but this goes into even more gruesome and hysterical detail. And yes, the Shane Gillis mentioned here is the guy who hosted Saturday Night Live last season … kind of paypack for the time when Lorne Michaels dropped him from the cast (coincidentally about the time Shane and I talked).
Have a Happy New Year and get home safe.
