Smells Like Yukon Flog

During our break from Flogging, we didn’t have a chance to check the Smells Like Yukon e-mail account for over a week. As a result, when we returned to the office, we had to deal with the inevitable backlog of incoming messages.

Each and every day, Smells Like Yukon receives, quite literally, a half-dozen, sometimes even a dozen, e-mails from fans and friends all around the world. In between calls to Animal Control to remove the last remnants of Robin Williams from Mark’s house, we’ve been sorting through–and occassionally responding to–all manner of correspondence from this global network. At this point, we’re almost caught up.

We’d be lying if we said that all the e-mails we receive are equally appreciated. For example, we can usually count on our friend Kevin to offer some interesting news or trivia that inevitably finds its way into a Smells Like Yukon segment. But after carefully reading his latest message to determine that it doesn’t involve the husky on the Yukon’s coat of arms or that mummified kitty they found in the Capital Hotel, no one’s sure what we’re supposed to make of Kevin’s announcement that “Dog makes love to cat.”

On the other hand, we do tip our hats to our pal Towiddowson, whose timely promise of “instant results with organ enhancement pills” suggests a Moens-ish inside knowledge of Smells Like Yukon’s future plans. In preparation to pump up the organ in the music tracks of future segments of the Smells Like Yukon radio series, Mark has been spending a lot of time watching The Band’s Chest Fever on YouTube. And while he has so far been enjoying this activity drug-free, he won’t discount the possibility that some chemical assistance might make his research even easier. He’s now looking forward to utilizing the giant package promised by Towiddson.

We’ve got a lot of other interesting correspondence we’d like to share, but it’ll have to wait. Animal Control has just pulled up again….

The film crew has finally vacated the premises, so we’re back on the job, bringing you the smelliest, Yukonest Flog of any editorial board North of 60. Sadly, working conditions have deteriorated in our absence.

When we first heard about his plan to rent the house as a film location, we asked–no, begged–Mark to watch Moscow on the Hudson before signing the contract with the producers. He didn’t listen. As a result, he clearly failed to understand the importance of demanding the inclusion of the industry-standard Robin Williams Body Hair Removal Rider in the legal paperwork. Which means that rather than focusing on producing quality Flog for the Smells Like Yukon community, we now find ourselves fending off wave after wave of attack by a breed of dust bunny we don’t care to describe.

However, we’re hoping some good might eventually come of this mess. If we could just herd enough of little bunnies into something much bigger and fiercer looking, then we could set it loose on the Flying Pisces fish stand and bring our underwhelming Grizzly Project to the triumphant conclusion that everybody’s been waiting for.

Mark has rented the SLY office / house out to the producers of The Bigger Whiter, sequel to the hit film The Big White, which was partially filmed in Whitehorse a few years ago. As a result, the Flog will be out of commission for a week or more.
We don’t have all the plot details, but it’s our understanding that in this film, rather than trying to pull an implausible insurance scam to get the money to help his Tourette’s-afflicted wife leave the snow-bound hell of Alaska, the character played by Robin Williams will take an easier approach and simply try to move several keys of cocaine during one zany summer. Not surprisingly, the script calls for several scenes in a “drug house,” which are suddenly in shorter supply after the recent demolition of 810 Wheeler in Old Town. We’re confident that no drugs are moved let alone consumed from Mark’s house, so we can only assume our HQ was chosen as the drug house location because someone came away with the wrong impression after seeing Mark’s toddler playing in the yard after one too many fruit popsicles.

While the film’s producers were hoping Mark and his family would leave during the upcoming shoot, he’s planning to stick around–apparently, in the hopes that he’ll get a shot at a cameo as the autistic brother of Holly Hunter’s character. He’ll also have his hands full trying to keep the recent squirrel activity in his yard from becoming a problem for the crew. For inspiration, he’s rented Caddyshack and intends to watch it at least once a day until it either ceases to be funny… or he blows up his entire yard.

About a week ago, one of our good online friends, Moens, sent us a lovely e-mail titled “Your tool is set to grow.” Moens has dabbled in fortune-telling for years, but we’ve never found his predictions to be all that accurate.

This time was different. As his message pinged into the SLY mailbox (sandwiched between useless and annoying SPAM), our team was in the process of nailing down some ambitious plans to expand our #1 marketing tool–the Smells Like Yukon Official Website.

You may have noticed the recent addition of the Smellumni page, which makes it easier than ever to search for friends and acquaintances who, in a momentary lapse of judgement, have agreed to be interviewed for a Smells Like Yukon radio segment. In the future, we’ll be enhancing this page by listing upcoming Smellumni events, updating the “status” of Smellumni, and hopefully keeping track of who’s “hooking up” with whom. You’ll have your own hopes, but we’re rooting for a little Thane Phillips / Amos Westropp action. But truthfully, we’d settle for just about anything that involves a guy named Amos.

You may also have noticed that our Contest section is a little light on, well… contests. That’s going to change. Before long, we’ll be launching a couple of new contests that have been designed specifically to discourage anyone from actually entering. That’s just the way we do things around here. We’re not made of fridge magnets, you know.

We don’t want to get into details, but you may see some new content in the Fun Stuff section as well. Who knows, some of it might even be fun.

Finally, it’s come to our attention that the bios of Smells Like Yukon producers Mark Koepke and Jesse Devost have fallen a little out of date, so we’ll be revising those, too–with a special emphasis on Jesse’s overlooked history as junior female snowboarding champion from Bulgaria.

Yesterday morning, Stephane Aucoin, owner of the Flying Pisces fish and chip stand, was seen sprawled out on the pavement under his trailer. At first, we thought he was sneaking a little pull from the used oil reservoir (vegetable, not motor). But then we discovered that he was trying to fix the grey water pipe, which, he said, had been damaged on the trip back from the Atlin Arts & Music Festival.

Suddenly, we told ourselves “The dream is alive.”

Maybe, just maybe, we thought, the weekend’s Grizzly Project efforts weren’t a complete bust after all. Perhaps some intrepid grizzly, realizing that the Pisces had run low on fish in Atlin but would soon be returning to Whitehorse (where huge stocks of fish run wild and free in the freezers of the Wharf on Fourth) had decided to hitch a ride. We all know it’s humanly possible to travel great distances while clinging to the undercarriage of a vehicle; Robert Mitchum, Robert De Niro and Kelsey Grammer all did it in versions of the movie Cape Fear. And we also know that bears are much stronger than humans. So, it doesn’t seem entirely crazy to assume that an ingenious grizzly–whereabouts currently unknown–managed to make the trip back to Whitehorse beneath the trailer. The other option, of course, is that the bruin got bounced off somewhere along the Atlin Road, whose rough condition would then expose the Yukon government to fresh accusations of animal abuse.

At any rate, this experience has taught me never to give up on a dream. We’re now eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Yukon government’s new brochure on “How to Keep Bears Out of Your Yard.” Sure, we’d be a lot more excited if it was a brochure called “How to Keep Bears Away from Your Fish Stand,” but we’ll take what we can get. Assuming this literature arrives in our mailbox as promised, we’ll be reading it very closely–and doing exactly the opposite of everything it recommends for a grizzly-free environment.

We’d planned to publish a lot of titilating posts to the Flog today, but those plans were derailed when we discovered our Voice Mail was full of messages from media outlets researching stories about the Canadian Teachers Federation’s recent calls for the criminalization of cyberbullying, which has really taken off thanks to social networking sites like Facebook.

Naturally, we assumed they wanted to get some defensive and inflammatory comments from the shameless Internet bully who has taken aim at What’s Up Yukon, animal rights activists, the dog on Yukon’s Coat of Arms, and Yukon MP Larry Bagnell, to name but a few.

So, imagine our surprise when we began to return the calls and discover they wanted our perspective on what it’s like to be the victim of cyberbullying.

“Say what?” we said.

And that’s when we learned that Smells Like Yukon is being taunted by a Facebook group dedicated to the destruction of all things good and pure.

Well, as soon as we saw this, we convened an emergency meeting of the Smells Like Yukon team. We also tried to include General Al-Kuzbari via Skype from his Syrian jail cell (who better to suggest some possible retaliations to this outrage?) but he was in another part of the prison, having his own torture methods used against him.

After some heated discussion, and a lot of crying, we came to the consensus that this Facebook slap really hurts. Not a Syrian prison sort of hurt, but certainly enough to warrant a consolatory trip to the local Dairy Queen. Matters were only made worse when we remembered it’s out of business.

We think, for all of us, the hardest part of this whole ordeal has been trying to come to terms with the fact that:

a) Mark’s parents are even aware that Facebook exists;
b) They would go to the trouble of setting up this malicious group;
c) They would sully the good name of Skookum Jim; and,
d) They would publish such an uncomplimentary and outdated photo of their son

In these difficult times, all we can do is turn the other cheek, put our faith in God, and pray that the abuse will stop.

In the meantime, we do encourage you all to join the group. “Skookum Jim” looks kind of lonely in there. And given the status of our own retarded Facebook group, we know how he feels.

It must be a good year for salmon on the Taku River, because we could see no evidence of grizzly activity in the vicinity of the Flying Pisces fish and chip stand at the Atlin Arts & Music Festival over the weekend. Even the six gallons of bacon grease we slathered all over the trailer’s exterior didn’t seem to do the trick.
At any rate, we’re all optimistic that this week could be a turning point for the Grizzly Project. Mark has heard several reports of a grizzly sow (possibly with cubs) in the vicinity of Chadburn Lake and the Yukon River trail in recent weeks. And while no one at the Department of Environment has returned his messages requesting that conservation officers be dispatched to track, dart and relocate the mama bear to First and Main during a weekday lunch rush, he’s pretty sure it’s just because every bureaucrat in the territory is on holidays right now.Then again, the non-response could also have something to do with Mark’s other request: to have the COs drop the cubs off at his place, all because he’s too cheap to buy his daughter a puppy.

Life in the Yukon has always been boom or bust–and that probably applies to government regulation, as well. It seems we’re either suffering from too much or too little. And that point was really reinforced this morning at the Riverdale house that doubles as Smells Like Yukon’s corporate headquarters.

Only two months ago, Yukon’s Occupational Health and Safety watchdogs sat idly by as a local contractor lobbed large projectiles from the Hamilton Boulevard extension into the living room of a trailer in Lobird. Today, the government’s storm troopers have closed down our workplace for safety violations. The culprit? Believe it or not, a hyperactive squirrel in a tree outside the small room where we toil away to bring you Smells Like Yukon.

We believe the problem began when Mark forgot to replenish the bird feeder’s usual supply of qualudes and grain. The situation was exacerbated, of course, by his refusal to purchase a push broom and simply sweep the deck clear of the dangerious debris. It’s bad enough that the gaphics on the Season Two Wrap-Up Poll give us seizures every timewe view the results. Should we be forced to suffer a near-deadly ankle-twist while visiting the deck for a morning beer and smoke? If this incident hasn’t taught Mark a valuable lesson, then maybe the fact that Social Services is now on its way to take his two year-old daughter into protective custody will finally do the trick.

At any rate, this means we’re all off until further notice. We know, the timing couldn’t be worse, with the campaign to rescue General Al-Kuzbari from a Syrian jail just getting started. But hopefully, the deck will soon be cleaned up and the offending squirrel, if not Mark, will be brought to justice for the inexcusable violations.

In the meantime, some of us are getting a head start on the trip to the Atlin Arts & Music Festival, where we’ll be combining some Grizzly Project related business with some good old fashioned foot-stompin’ fun.