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from Labrador
Okay
Let us Begin
(With a broad gesture:)
Labrador!
What does anyone know about …
Labrador!
What does everyone know about Labrador
Well …
It's to the north, and to the east of practically
everywhere
It's physically attached to Quebec
And it's politically and culturally attached to Newfoundland
Newfoundland — that's what anyone
knows about Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador go together by
mental association, they're practically one word: Newfoundland-n-Labrador
Just like Salt & Pepper
Laurel & Hardy
Batman & Robin
Alsace & Lorraine
Newfoundland & Labrador
And that's about it
Really?
Yep
That's all anyone knows
What's the capital city
Is there a capital city
Or is St John's the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador
What are the major cities
A re there any major cities
Are there any cities period
What language is spoken there predominantly, is it English
or French
Or whatever language it is, is it spoken with a Quebec accent
or a Newfoundland accent
What would French spoken with a Newfoundland accent conceivably
sound like
Has anyone famous ever come from there
Has anything famous historically ever happened there
What's the industry
What are the exports
What are the imports
Why would anyone move there
Why would anyone live there
Does anyone live there
What the Hell's it Like?
don't know
And that's okay — that is okay
There's a lot of things like that —
little, simple, everyday things that most people, including
me, don't know
Why is the sky blue
I don't know!
I mean, I'm sure someone knows, I'm sure it's not secret information,
I'm sure it's been researched and documented and written in
a book but I've never read that book
Who is the Head of State of Denmark
What's their title. Is it the premier? The prime minister?
The president? The chancellor? The King?
The Great Dane?
How do mirrors work? You know? I mean,
I know it's reflective glass and everything, but … how
does it do that? The glass in a window doesn't do that —
not quite
What's on the other side of the mirror that makes the one
side reflect perfectly but the other side not be involved
at all — not even exist
Or, if you shine a light in a mirror, does
it make the room twice as bright?
How do they get the ratings for radio stations
No one has ever asked me who I listen to
Do they have a machine that knows who's tuning in to what?
Why do you get the hiccups? It's not from
eating too fast, that's an old wives' tale
I eat fast all the time and don't get them — when I get
the hiccups, they'll just happen — what is that?
If dogs really do have such an acute sense
of smell, then how is it that they can stick their nose right
up another dog's ass and sniff sniff sniff away?
Bread
Who invented bread?
How did they think of that?
Milling wheat into flour — that's a very strange first
step, especially if no one's ever done it before — and
then taking this magical new substance and mixing it with
perfect proportions of water and milk and butter and eggs
and sugar and salt and yeast
and mixing it into dough and then kneading the dough and kneading
and kneading and kneading and kneading …
Kneading
The word 'Kneading' begins with a K
A Silent K
Why
Why have a K if it's gonna be silent?
Why have silent letters period? — the K in Kneading,
the P in Pneumonia, the G in Gnat, the W in answer —
what's the matter with this language
It's like how some people, out there, instead of saying "Schedule"
will actually say "Shhhhhedule"
It's a Schedule, dammit!
A schedule's a very rigid and disciplined thing, it needs
the hard, percussive K, otherwise it's all flabby and impotent,
it's a "shhhhedule"
But getting back to bread — the milling the mixing the
kneading the kneading the kneading
And then baking at a very specific temperature for a very
specific amount of time until it rises and turns golden brown,
which it certainly didn't do the first time someone tried
to bake a loaf
What an obscure process — how'd they come with this in
all these different primitive cultures all over the world
Or there's the elevator
question — you know? The Elevator Question
Let's say you're riding in a normal elevator, minding your
own business and then …
cable snaps, you're plummeting down the shaft, you're going
to die, oh no.
Now — if you time it just right and jump at the last
second — will that save your life?
Will that make any difference at all — because if you're
falling you're going down, but if you're jumping you're going
up — or are you? Are you still falling, just not quite
as fast? Is that fact that your feet aren't connected to the
floor at the moment of impact — does that neutralize
the physics of the equation — I don't know
Or, in a movie — what exactly does
the Executive Producer do
What do any of those people in the credits do — aside
from the obvious ones — why do they show us those hundreds
of names? Do they really think anyone out here cares about
who the Gaffer is? And the Key Grip and the Dolly Grip and
Caterers and the Stunt Men and the Stand-Ins and the Unit
Line Production Manager?
What if everything was like that? What if everything in the
world came with credits
Shirts — You buy a shirt and there's this long list attached
to it of all the names of the people who grew the cotton and
picked it and sewed it in the sweatshop and folded it, trucked
it, shipped it, put on the shelf and sold it to you, right
down to the name of the guy who drew the little circles on
the tag that show you how to wash the thing so it doesn't
shrink
Or acknowledgments in a book
Before the book starts there's a page of acknowledgments
Special Thanks To, it says, and then a list of all these names
Who are these people?
No one I know — no one anyone knows!
The only person who knows who these people are is … the
Author!
Then thank 'em in person, send them flowers
Do you really think anyone in the reading public is going
to stop before they read your book and moon over all these
names and say "I'll bet those people are all just …
swell"
Or TV credits — at the end of a TV
show they screel the names past you so fast you can't possibly
read them
Then why fucking show them?
It's like they're barely complying with a rule they hate—then
why's it a rule?
Or laugh track! That's the craziest one
of all
Why do we have laugh tracks on our sitcoms
That is absolutely going to baffle archaeologists 2000 years
from now
They're going to discover this and present it at a conference
and say
"Look at this: the television
itself seems to be laughing at the jokes"
All of these things — these mysteries
of everyday life — there's a million of 'em
It makes me so glad I don't have a kid because a kid would
be asking about them
and more — weird ones I could never think of in advance
and asking with these great big expectant moon eyes
to me, the omniscient adult
but I wouldn't know
so I'd either have to say that or make something up
and that's the choice between letting the world come crashing
down on this bright, innocent little bundle of humanity now
or letting it come crashing down later
and what kind of a choice
is that
so
I went
To
Labrador
And I thought — at least I'll know
about that one
So I did
I got on a plane and flew from one side
of this country to the other
Off to that obscure corner of Canada
In the winter
And I found out who I am
And I fell in love
With the most beautiful woman in the world
And I got the shit beat out of me
With a shovel
But that comes later
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