I was 13 years-old, hopelessly white and just starting high school. I wanted to be cool but didn’t have the foggiest notion how to go about it. Cool was an undiscovered, mythic country that existed off at some unknowable distance, and I was lost, so very, very lost.

Eventually, I learned that the best passage to this land was through music. At the time, while punk and new wave were exploding around me, Billy Joel was my God, and this was not cool.

I found out that the music I had been listening to was wretched kid’s stuff, as were the lame, middle of the road radio stations I pledged allegiance to. If I wanted to be cool, I had to listen to college radio, CKCU specifically.

Listening to this radio station felt subversive, like receiving secret transmissions from a dangerous and lawless place. Unlike the chipper and inauthentic DJ’s I had previously been listening to, the ones who used sound effects and clearly knew nothing about music, the college DJ’s seemed singularly interested in what they were playing, as if it was their holy mission to bring “good music” to you. It was, I think, my first exposure to what might be thought of as the alternative scene.

It was here where I first heard the voice of Nadine Gelineau. She was a DJ at CKCU, and for whatever reason she struck a chord with me. I loved her. I mean, I was in love with her.

Her voice, so knowledgable, confident and fun, suggested worlds I had never imagined. It was a voice that for a 13 year-old boy in Ottawa, was a path, a path to a world of music and cool and all that lay beyond, a path out of the childhood I had always inhabited and on toward something much grander. Her voice conjured the possibility of thousands of different lives.

She was a legend. Hosting radio shows, spinning discs at the counter-culture clubs, championing music and just generally being Ottawa’s single-combat hero of cool, she was the way we collectively wanted to be seen. She gave us all hope and pride, I think, and now she is gravely ill. I hope that she’s able to get through it and return to herself and the legions of people whom she loves and love her.

The thought of her passing is a kind of cataclysm. Ridiculously, it seems impossible, but time, it just slips away, quietly sliding away into a larger and larger pool now forming beneath and behind us. Who knew that pool would get so big and we would get so old? Who knew the present would so mercilessly raze our beloved past?

I was recently reminded that the last song she played at all the club sets she performed was Enjoy Yourself by The Specials.

At the time it struck me as a drunken party song, but now when I listen to it, there’s a sadness and inevitability to it. It was an appropriate song for Nadine to have played, I think. It’s a funny time, that last song of the night, bittersweet. I never wanted it to end, I wanted it to stretch out infinitely, with more and more people joining in, each one a light in the greater constellation of who we were, each one shining so brightly.

So, thank you Nadine, thank you.

( Photo courtesy of Julie Beun)

Here is one of the columns I just found while cleaning out an old box:

Q: There’s a girl in my Latin class who I’m absolutely nuts about. Should I tell her?

A: NO, THERE IS NO WAY ON EARTH THAT YOU SHOULD TELL HER!! (Is it Marie-France Lapoint? She is CRAZY hot, especially in those green cords!!! Drool!!!)

Look, this girl who may or may not be Marie-France Lapoint, is probably completely out of your league and dating a guy who lives in Europe or goes to university in the States. You should spare yourself the humiliation of rejection and just wait for her to notice you and your totally cool sweater.

It’s not always easy to do this, but it’s ESSENTIAL that you try. Look at her all the time, but pretend like she’s not important to you because you’re popular and your family is rich. Your indifference will make her think there’s something wrong with her, and this insecurity will probably make her try to be nice to you, and when this happens you should still play it really cool, like you would never have a crush on somebody like her but you’ll talk to her in boring, old Latin, and then when she gets really, really hammered at a party you should make your move!! The master has spoken.

Q: My parents want me to take Computer Science but I think it’s a stupid waste of time. What do you think?

A: First of all, parents are useless. They’re completely embarrassing and don’t understand anything! Of course Computer Science is a waste of time!! Fortran and Cobol?

They sound like robot names! Only nerds take that class and they’re not learning anything important or fun. Rest assured, the world is not going to be run by Cobol and Fortran. However, I do think that computers are going to be really important, one day giving us instant access to pictures of naked women (Kim Basinger and Jamie Lee Curtis!!) and sports scores.

Computers will be like libraries, only they’ll be small and with you all the time, like on Star Trek, but things are going to move so quickly in the future that studying something like Fortran in 1983 isn’t going to do you any good at all. Ignore your parents and take gym or something cool and remember, don’t hangout with any phonies!

Q: If I want to appear of age in a bar, what drink should I order?

A: A Screwdriver. And wear a Harris Tweed hat.

The master has spoken!

In front of the Shopper’s Drug Mart there was a busker who likely saw Melissa Etheridge when she looked in the mirror. Wearing a beaten, red leather jacket, her hair was a wild scramble, and she sang with a ferocious, biting confidence. She was middle-aged, and all the songs she was playing were classics from the latter part of the 70s, songs that must have recalled the field parties of her youth when everybody passed joints around the bonfire, nodding along as she sang so fully, her future path seeming so clear.

At Sarah’s Shawarma the woman serving me had big, butcher fingers and the look of a farm worker from Eastern Europe. Her eyes were tender and vulnerable, suggesting that all she wanted to do in this world was help other people. And at the only occupied table in the place sat a thin and pale man wearing a Rush sweatshirt. He was finishing the last of his soup with such a dreamy pleasure that I had no choice but to simply stop and watch—as if bearing witness to a pure and holy moment.

When I stepped out onto the street there was a sudden chorus of Happy Birthday. The voices were in tune, harmonizing, and it was lovely, like music you might imagine hearing from across the water, something passing through time, as if light from a star. I looked around and eventually spotted them, five college-aged boys striding happily down the street singing into a cell phone one of them was holding aloft, “Happy birthday dear Rita, happy birthday to you,” and I thought of Rita in 30 years, one day, for no particular reason, remembering the surprise of this message and those beautiful boys.

I do.

In fact, like the great dissolute songstress Whitney Houston, I believe that children are our future. If we treat them well, they will shovel the driveway, or something. They will be like little slaves, which is why I want one. However, unless some sort of dodgy “miracle” takes place, I won’t be having any little slaves in the future. You see, after taking an ill-advised vacation in Cuba, I was rendered, “un hombre con un conteo de espermatozoides diminuto, pequeño,” and without the intervention of science, my wife and I will never be able to have the little slaves we’ve always dreamed about.

Now, we’re poor people, and the only way we can afford the expenses of tinkering with God’s will, is to sell our car, a stunning sex machine of a Honda Accord Sedan LX. This little dreamboat was born in 2006 and has the gentlest 137,700 Km on it you can imagine. It’s like all it’s kilometerage was acquired under doctor’s supervision. It’s sapphire blue, the same colour you always wanted to animate your lover’s eyes. It has a perfect body. A calendar body. You will want to marry this car and make little baby cars with it.

All we are asking is $9,500.That’s practically nothing when it comes to cars that can speak in a British accent.

And remember, by buying this car you are investing in the future, for we will immediately turn the money over to doctors so that they might create for us a test tube slave, I mean baby. Our child might save the life of your child. Think about this.

This car, this beautiful, never-been-smoked-in and obedient car, is an automatic. It has never been crashed into anything, and it has an impressive engine that boasts all the things you want in an engine. The car is goddamn perfect– it was even blessed by a priest! And if you like to party, well, you should know that the stereo has a CD player, 120 watt speakers, power windows and locks, a folding rear seat back and an air conditioner that is so effective, so good at it’s job, that you will want to get close to somebody just to warm up.

Did I mention that the car has 4-wheel ABS, grey fabric interior, has passed all drug tests and is E-tested and certified? I meant to. I also want you to know that beautiful French actress Marion Cottilard rode in this car. She smelled like pumpkin and vanilla.

And that it’s only $9,500.

Goddamn, this is the deal of a lifetime!

Buy our car, the future depends on it!

Reply to: bwgbv-3107894753@sale.craigslist.org