R.I.P., Alexander The Great

Greetings from my office overlooking a searing hot Elgin Street on a hot summer’s day in Ottawa, Canada. Something about tight miniskirts and bicycles that go oh so well together. Sigh.

Where was I? This morning I took a cramped Westjet flight from Toronto to Ottawa, just in time to be late for a morning meeting. The flight was miserable. I was stuck between two people. The enormously fat dude to my left kept trying to flirt with the moderately less obese dudette to my right. He, however, smelled of dried vomit and stale coffee. Worse yet, he was scared of flying, so his knee kept bobbing up and down nervously, like some sort of adipose jackhammer. I felt like I was being dry-humped by a hippo.

But I made it.

Today, my droogies, is the 2331st anniversary of the death of Alexander The Great. As some of you are aware, I have a fairly unhealthy fascination with the dead Macedonian, even making him a central character in my novel, Divine Elemental. (Pluggy pluggy plug plug.) Something about tragic figures and hubris always makes for a good story….

…Which brings us to…. Jean Claude Van Damme. Yes, that Jean Claude Can Damme. One of the things I learned in Paris was that there’s a biopic about the life of the “Muscles from Brussels” called J.C.V.D. (See, in French, “JCVD” rhymes, so that’s what they call him over there.)

The amazing thing is that J.C.V.D. is getting rave reviews. Maybe “Claude” is not so ridiculous when he’s speaking his version of French, and not rambling along in weird English? I say “his version of French” because the man apparently has a reputation for mixing French and English into a kind of “franglais” or “fringlish” that just sounds strange.

Anyway, here’s a taste of the film, J.C.V.D. Can’t wait till it comes to a bittorrent near me: