Smells Like Yukon Flog

Have you recently discovered that your bank’s ATM has a laugh track? Did your credit card burst into flames at the Country House cash register? Are you obligated to purchase a gift for someone you don’t care for all that much? Under any of these unfortunate circumstances, it’s only natural that you would turn to Smells Like Yukon for a quick and easy solution to your shopping woes.

The obvious place to start would be with some official Smells Like Yukon “Swag.” Of course, if a good mugging isn’t your idea of a wholesome Christmas tradition, or you prefer your SPAM in a tin, you might find the pickings a little slim–even if the price is right. We’ve been meaning to beef up our selection of Smells Like Yukon merchandise ever since we launched the website almost a year ago, but we just haven’t found the time. Maybe next year.

Fortunately, you also have the option of giving the gift of membership in the Smells Like Yukon Members Club. Yes, it’s totally free, so you’d still run the risk of seeming like a cheapskate. And, yes, it also involves the provision of an e-mail address, which could be construed by your friends and loved ones as a gross invasion of their personal privacy. So, on second thought, it’s kind of a crappy gift to give someone for Christmas.

But speaking of crappy Christmas gifts, you’re bound to wind up with a few of those yourself–and what better consolation than your very own membership in the Smells Like Yukon Members Club? Don’t let the little mousetrap image fool you. Membership is a completely painless and un-trap-like way to enjoy (or not) over an hour of audio-rich Yukon entertainment that more than 32,000 Yukoners can’t be bothered to listen to a second time. And as an added bonus, we’ll send you an e-mail reminder the day before the next Smells Like Yukon radio segment is scheduled to air on CBC, thereby eliminating the need for you to actually take advantage of the Members Club’s only real benefit.

You might call this circular reasoning. We call it a Christmas bargain.

Yesterday, Mark came back to the office pretty buzzed from a rare caffeinated coffee at the Main Street Backerei. By the time he emerged from the stacks of the Smells Like Yukon audio library, he’d found five new outtakes / deleted sounds from the “Hip Check” segment. In case your memory needs refreshing, that was the segment where Mark and Jesse enlisted Brent Bambury and the staff of Go! to help evaluate the alleged hipness of the Yukon’s capital.

When Jesse and Mark were interviewing Brent Bambury et al last June, they had an opportunity to ask a question that CBC listeners across the country have been dying to have answered: What would happen if Go! was merged with a certain other CBC program? But that’s not all. They also got some choice commentary on a number of other pressing issues of the day, including the hipness (or lack thereof) of the following: the White Stripes, the City of Toronto, and those two dudes who flog weenies in front of the Shoppers Drug Mart on Whitehorse’s Main Street during the summer. You might be surprised by what you hear.

As an nod to Bakerei co-owner and Whitehorse architect Tony Zedda, who was taken out of context in the “Hip Check” segment, we’ve also included his entire interview among the new clips posted to the site.

If you missed this segment, and would like to hear it before delving into the outtakes, all you have to do is send an e-mail to the Smells Like Yukon Members Club. Before you’ve even had a chance to exchange your crappy Christmas presents at Wal-Mart, we’ll set you up with access not just to “Hip Check,” but to another dozen or so Smells Like Yukon segments.

Thanks to yesterday’s prolonged and intermittent Internet outage, Mark suddenly found himself in a position to be even less productive than he normally is. He spent part of the day going through the audio archives from segments past and selected a couple of new outtakes and deleted sounds from the “Designer Guise” segment that kicked off the current season of Smells Like Yukon. In case you’re not keeping track, the newly added outtakes are “Flat Screen & Bug Dope” and “Long Sweet Clip.”

This weekend, we’ll be adding some new outtakes from our second segment of the season “Hip Check.” You can look forward to some never-before-heard comments from Go! host Brent Bambury and his production team.

Finally, the current online poll has been updated with yet another new option. We’re now up to 13. Please remember not to vote.

First of all, let’s be clear about one thing: Smells Like Yukon has NOT initiated coverage of the local mud wrestling circuit. Rather, we’re heralding the update of our current online poll about the alleged laziness of Yukoners with a requisite reference to Yukon MP Larry Bagnell. We’re also informing those of you who voted (against our explicit instructions, we might add) that the Andrew Robulack option was running away with the lead on both occasions before we went in and ruthlessly reset the votes back to 0. Given Larry’s power at the polling booth,we think you can now look forward to a close race between him and Andrew. We’re betting on a dead heat–something along the lines of 0-0.

It was previously suggested that there were no audio outtakes from “The Barstools of Yutopia” because the segment was flawlessly produced. This was not the case, of course. And maybe you figured that much out yourselves–you know, after listening to the piece. From our end, the little white lie was designed to gloss over the fact that we were too lazy (see “Men of Action / Lazy River”) to select and upload some relevant clips.

Fortunately for you, Mark’s appointment for his annual pre-Christmas Brazilian wax at Amberley’s Day Spa (usually followed by a therapeutic beard rolfing from Norm Holler) was cancelled at the request of the vendor. This left him with a couple of free hours, during which he scoured the mini disc to find more outtakes than any reasonable person could be expected to listen to in the midst of the Christmas shopping frenzy.

If you haven’t caught “The Barstools of Yutopia” on CBC radio and you’d like to hear it before not listening to the outtakes, just send an e-mail to the Smells Like Yukon Members Club and we’ll set you up in a jiff.

Oh, you contranian types. Why must you zag when we say “zig”? Did we not specifically tell you to look at, but under no circumstances vote in, our online poll about the laziness of Yukoners? Yes, we did.

And yet, we couldn’t help but notice that our strict instructions had been disobeyed no less than six times, if not by six voters. Can’t you recognize and appreciate the poor optics of having people actually vote in a poll designed to highlight our collective sloth? It’s almost as if you’re trying to make us look bad. In some ways, it even reminds us of Mayor Buckway’s determination to “prove Smells Like Yukon wrong” on the legacy of all those pumpkins that Brooks recycled into outerwear for the Canada Winter Games volunteers.

Fortunately, as we were adding three new disturbing and/or disgusting options, we were able to reset the poll back to 0. Please don’t make us do it again.

Joseph Conrad wrote in Heart of Darkness: “Let the fool gape and shudder. The mans knows–and looks on without a wink.”

With this in mind, we feel compelled to point out what some visitors to the Smells Like Yukon website may have already discovered: from time to time, the Amazon.ca banners that appear on the site may serve a link to an album by Canadian singer-thingie Sarah McLachlan. We only discovered this today, accidentally, and now we’re doing everything we possibly can to prevent this unfortunate situation from happening again.
For the record, Smells Like Yukon would like to offer its sincere and heartfelt apologies to anyone who have may have been unwittingly exposed to Sarah McLachlan as a result of our actions or inactions.

After rooting around in the Smells Like Yukon audio archives, we’re pleased to present three outtakes from the most recent segment “Men of Action.”

Included among these, um, rare gems is an epic four-minute-plus sequence that duplicates and expands upon the audio that you can’t really hear in the featured video on the segment’s Behind the Sounds page. As the clip reveals, Mark and Jesse forgot that the recorder was running for most of the time–yet, amazingly, the clip contains no profanity, unless you’re willing to include the disgusting manner in which Mark decimates an innocent bag of honey-Dijon potato chips.

Those among you who harbour an unhealthy obsession with Jesse and/or Mark may notice that their voices don’t sound quite right. Not sure why. Must be some sort of recording issue that only Jesse could resolve, but he’s rather disinclined to tackle jobs like that at the present time–seeing as how he’s vacationing in Australia. If you’re not sure who’s who when you’re listening to the dialogue, here’s a basic rule of thumb: Jesse has the deep, sultry bedroom voice that drives all the ladies (and select men) wild in a way that we can only assume the CRTC will eventually be forced to regulate. Mark is the one who talks with his mouth full.

Before long, we’ll be adding some new outtakes from previous segments, including some choice bits from Brent Bambury and the CBC Go production staff (“Hip Check”), as well as a Yutopian bartender who didn’t waste his big chance to smack Mark down (“The Barstools of Yutopia.”)

Okay, Google Ads, we admit it: thanks to you, Smells Like Yukon thinks it has finally found the perfect Christmas present for Karsten Heuer….

Holy shit, we’re actually starting to worry about the shipping costs….

Damn.

We asked, and you came through in record time. Hot off the keyboard, a double-whammy for caption contest #11:

“After paying Whitehorse property taxes on his new home, Murray Lundberg is left without even the shirt on his back.”

The only person who could possibly top that, at least according to our nascent point system, would be Murray Lundberg himself.

With another 4% tax hike next year, and 4% the year after that (and God knows how much beyond then), Murray might be thinking about moving back to Carcross. Or, as an alternative, starting to organize a movement for Porter Creek separation. Vive le Porter Creek Libre!

If there’s anything Smells Like Yukon can do to assist in this or any other freedom fight, please let us know.