I first saw this abomidable book in the Chicago airport 2 years ago while I was making my way to my grandfather's place in the wet-est, hairy-est armpit in the armpity-est area of this here continent-just in time for my grandmothers timely death.
Upon first glance, it was obvious that this book could serve only two purposes: to flood said places with yuppie retirees and completely decimate their local cultures and economies, and to that end, serve as a comprehensive anti-real-estate guide to anyone who wanted to avoid places that were doomed to such a fate. My mother and I thumbed to the index to check if where we are living now was in it, and blessedly, it wasn't; however, to none of our surprises, my hometown was and it is nothing but a den of saggy American blobs of botox and collagen, and overpriced artisan cheeses.
And then I went to see the Incredible Hulk. I do have soft, squishy place in my heart, above left ventricle, for super hero movies, provided they in no way glorify the US military (Ironman, I'm, talk to YOU), in which case they can swivel on the proverbial. But The Hulk was quite enjoyable, and Edward Norton was very convincing as a mild-mannered Bruce Banner - I wish "mild-mannered" was still a compliment in popular use: I think the modern day equivalent is "pussy".
There was a great rush of applause at the end of film when it showed him hold up in a small cabin in the middle of Super Natural Bella Coola, BC, which must have sent the minds of its American audiences racing back to grade school trying to remember which one of 49 states bore that abbreviation. My father and I were actually planning on settling there and co-owning some land until he got himself a new girlfriend and decided to stay where he was. I too appaulded at first, and then got that sinking feeling in my heart that, oh fuck, now that someone KNOWS about it, it'll be DOOMED to be another victim of the Foreign Yuppis Idiots (F.Y.I, for your information) takeover that seems to have started right around the same time as NAFTA; coincidence?
However, Bella Coola enjoys several advantages of privacy that most other beautiful, exquisitely rape-able lands do not. One is that it is very, very isolated. It costs about $500 to fly in and out from Vancouver, or a 2 day ferry ride from Port Hardy, or about a 5 day drive from Vancouver on a road that is only passable about 7 months of the year. The second reason is that it is very very un-luxurious. There are no spas, or beauty salons, or fancy-pants-ery of any kind: it is a rough and tumble land still ruled by a majority of First Nations, and appealing mostly to the hunter-gatherer type of person, not the heiress housewife who spends most of her day ordering flats of Fijian water to be helicoptered in, and dusting the light fixtures of her 10'000 sq. ft "cabin" for two.
Besides, now that the Incredible Hulk is living in Bella Coola, it'll likely soon be missiled off the face of mother earth. Oh, you mean that wasn't real? Shit. I hope the Avengers don't plan to move up there too.
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