 First of all, Smells Like Yukon would like to offer an apology to Nunavut. Here you were, Nunavut, all excited to celebrate your 10th anniversary as a territory on April 1—only to find yourself totally overshadowed by the fanfare surrounding the 24th (or 25th, depending on how you look at it) segment of Smells Like Yukon.
Hopefully, you've learned your lesson, Nunavut. The next time you mark a major milestone, you might want to check with Smells Like Yukon beforehand; this might go a long way towards preventing another unfortunate conflict.
Speaking of milestones, you've no doubt asked yourselves why we put all our energy into celebrating the 24th segment (or 25th, depending on how you look at it.) What about all those other important milestones? Rest assured, we did not let them pass unnoticed—we just didn't see the need to share them all with radio listeners.
In case you're interested, here's a quick summary of how Smells Like Yukon celebrated some earlier milestones:
Segment #05 - Jesse and Mark were invited to deliver a Powerpoint presentation about Smells Like Yukon to the French immersion kindergarten class at Whitehorse Elementary. Three kids barfed.
Segment #10 - Jesse's mom made a Batman-shaped cake, hired a clown and invited a bunch of friends to spend an afternoon at the Multiplex with Jesse and Mark. Mark ate too much cake and barfed.
Segment #13 - Mark gave some guy outside of Money Mart $20 to bootleg a bottle of peach schnaps, then he and Jesse settled in for a lovely afternoon on Kishwoot Island. Jesse barfed.
Segment #18 - First, Mark and Jesse exercised their right to vote. Afterwards, Mark used some rudimentary tools to manufacture a couple of phony Yukon driver's licences. Ten minutes later, he and Jesse were doing shooters in every bar in Whitehorse. Inevitably, they decided it would be a good idea to drive to Carmacks. Mark barfed just after Braeburn.
Segment #19 - Jesse and Mark couldn't remember much about #18, so they basically repeated the experience with their real driver's licences. This time, Jesse barfed in Twin Lakes, from east to west.
Segment #20 - Jesse was at home barfing, so Mark went down to the skateboard park alone, where he told all the silly teenagers to pull their pants up.
Segment #21 - Mark and Jesse hit the bar in Skagway. What happened in Skagway stays in Skagway. And that includes the barf.
As for the making of the monumental 24th segment, there's not much to say. As a clip show, it was primarily a writing and sound editing job. Just Mark sitting alone at his computer, doing his best to identify some of the greatest moments from the first two dozen segments of the radio series and edit the clips together. In other words, there was no occasion for entertaining episodes (i.e. blunders on location and in the field) that could be recounted on these pages.
However, we would like to set the record straight about an old controversy reiginited by "24." The story makes reference to the powerful writing in one of Smells Like Yukon's best-loved segments: the one where we documented Mark's emotional return to Selkirk Street Elementary. After that story originally aired, the threat of legal action was the only thing that silenced speculation that parts of the script had been plagiarized from the work of a famous author. And now that "24" has once again drawn attention to this issue, we're going to take a different approach and just come clean.
The truth is, we didn't write the prose in question. We got it from a Jack London anthology.
We're confident, however, that when our audience considers all the crap that we've actually written ourselves, we'll be forgiven this rare instance of intellectual dishonesty.
(Posted April 1, 2009) |
