The Slip Knot
We've all had summer jobs from Hell. But TJ Dawe (Tired Clichés, Labrador) has what it takes to turn three of his PWs (Personal Worsts) into performance art. Put merchandiser (stock boy at Shopper's Drug Mart), mail tracer (for Canada Post) and trucker (a big bin picker-upper) into the dramatic equivalent of a high-speed food processor, attach the chopping blade and hit "on" for 90 minutes.
He's up there all alone with two lighting stands, three lights-red, green and blue. Dawe wears runners and that's a good thing: at first he steps carefully and deliberately between the lights (now the stock boy, next the mail tracer or trucker). But eventually he's going for gold in the two-metre dash. Dawe races through some dazzlingly manic material before ending up as he began: quiet, contemplative and looking like that nice boy next door. Along the way he offers some sweet profundities: you can't insure meat when you put it in the mail regardless of what the mail clerk in 7-Eleven tells you, for example. And I guarantee you'll never enter a Shopper's Drug Mart again without remembering his comment on their canned -music: "It's the music Satan listens to when he's taking a dump." That and other fresh pharmaceutical revelations guarantee that Shopper's Drug Mart won't be rehiring this puppy any time soon. That's probably a good thing, too.
Jo Ledingham
Vancouver Courier
Vol 92 No 72 September 9 2001
