the norton stampede

CALGARY, ALBERTA
September 6th, 2006


THINGS I'VE SEEN:
The airplane view of the prairies. I don't know what I was expecting. One great boring field of homogenous yellow wheat? Yes, perhaps, since my previous experience of the landscape was car passenging through with my grandparents at age eight, which I definitely remember as a wake-me-when-I'm-there (and when the puking and the earaches stop) type experience. So I promptly and purposely went to sleep shortly after the West Jet safety dance, and woke somewhere over Saskatchewan, my head pressed against the window, and looking down upon the most glorious! surprising! wonderful! view. Those perfect squares of green and brown and beige and gold....I had no idea. All I could think was how it was as if someone - someone really BIG - had gone to Home Depot and then run around slapping down ceramic tile as far as the eye could see. That might sound like I'm reducing it to something puny and nonmajestic, but believe me, I'm thinking of really really nice ceramic tile. I guess I'm just not used to seeing any one thing as far as the eye can see, and that was astounding in and of itself.

My sassy new show haircut. New, improved, sexier than ever Lisa Norton! What's that you say? Impossible? Apparently not.

Mountains. (A day off in Banff and Lake Louise.) Again: Holy Fucking Christ. (I have no words big enough except for curses.)

An airline poster on the way up in a mountainside gondola saying: Now wouldn't this ride be better with seatback TV? Four words: Boy. Cott. West. Jet.

Some oustanding roadside signs. On a hill near where I'm staying (North of Kensington), a Red Cross appeal for donors as rearranged by bored Calgary youth: RAVE LIVES! TITS NEEDED! IS SUMMER. DRESS SOC (Figure it out. I did.)

On a going-out-of-business barbershop: BIG HAIRY DEAL! And, my favourite hot dog stand sign ever anywhere: SAUSAGE PARTY! (Which is also, incidentally, how I'm trying to get Theatre Calgary to advertise Of Mice and Men.)

Oh, and Help Wanted Signs. Everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. They've become pretty pointless; you can pretty much assume that everyone is hiring. The cop cars have NOW HIRING bumper stickers. They're all over the buses. Billboards. Foreheads. If you've got an IQ of 5, one arm, no legs, a drug habit and a bad attitude: there's a job for you in Calgary! Heart of the New West!

And Money! Money everyplace! Falling from the sky! Gushing up out of the ground! Overflowing from construction sites, bursting office towers at the seams. Hundreds of homeless men chasing after it, only to see it hop in a Mercedes and tear away.

On our first rehearsal day, our cast and the entire staff of Theatre Calgary standing in a circle like all the Whos in Whoville. (Welcome, welcome, ba-whoos, ba-whoos, Welcome, welcome, da-whoos, da-whoos). And Dennis Garnhum's heart grew THREE sizes that day....

Shaun Smyth with a moustache. Move over, Magnum. Go fuck yourself, Burt Reynolds.

A T-Shirt bearing the words "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner". Do you want yours in pink or blue, Christine?

Jesse who runs the Auburn Tavern (the Calgary Theatre Bar I've been hearing about all these years). Nothing quite like a handsome man who leans across the bar, takes your hands in his, looks deep into your eyes and softly asks you what you want. And, if that wasn't good enough, he brings you booze, too! Long Live the Auburn!

The Calgary Zoo. Coool.

Today: two of those cyclists who are terrified to let their feet touch the ground at a red light and wobble around the whole time like a couple of morons. Off-topic, I know, but really, what the hell?


THINGS I'VE HEARD:
Rob Ursel and the Billionaires Club, Wednesday nights at Vern's, an excellent live music bar on 8th Ave. As if John Steinbeck had writtten songs. Tear your heart out. If this guy gets you reminiscing about the wrong person (or even the right one), you're screwed. At the very least, you'll come away with a generically broken heart. (And a tapping foot or two.) And, because he reminds me of Steinbeck, when I stay out till the last note well after closing time, I'm not partying.....I'm doing research.

The sadass off-key prerecorded "bells" that fart out of the Calgary Tower all day long. Oh, Calgary Tower. Must you have nothing going for you at all?

Christina Aguilera's new Album. That's right, you gonna make sumthin' of it?
But not the Sunparlour Players, not since I left home. (Can't find the album in Calgary.) Will someone mail me a copy?

Ashley Wright's farts. Every day.


THINGS I'VE SMELLED:
No Name Brand Fabric Softening Dryer Sheets in Mountain Fresh Scent....only two days after visiting Banff and Lake Louise and being surrounded by real-life mountains! Dude. Your dryer sheets smell nothing like mountains. Back to the drawing board on that one. Can't put nuthin' over on me, No Name.

Ashley Wright's farts. Every Goddamn day.


THINGS I'VE TASTED:
The genius of John Steinbeck.

Followed closely by:
The genius of a good perogie platter when you've been drinking for ten hours.

Ashley Wright's farts. Morning, noon and night.


THINGS I'VE LEARNED:
The street system in Calgary. Way too proud of myself on this one.

If you're the only chick in an otherwise all-male cast, you get to be the all-purpose date. Ben would have just felt too gay going to the mountains with another guy. And John Kirkpatrick couldn't very well have hairy male arm candy accompany him to the Betty Awards; he was a presenter after all. Somebody better take me to Vegas next day off - the bar has been raised, boys.

Oh - while at the Bettys, avoid saying things like "Yeah, I'm here with John. He's thinking of moving to Toronto, too, and, you know, getting a real agent." or "OH! I get it! So the Bettys are like the Doras, except they're just for Calgary. How nice that you guys get your own little theatre awards!" and, consequently, "The face! Ow! Not the face!" Just kidding.....I learned those all from a cautionary dream the night before. These gorgeous cheekbones are unharmed, dear reader.

You can hop on the C-Train in the free zone and then continue to ride it all the way home without paying and not get caught. But you will feel guilty for at least a day or two.

If you try to be funny and play tricks on your friends, it may backfire. Like, for instance, if you're at the bar with Sterling and Ben and decide that it will be really hilarious to set the hungry Cougar in the skin-tight denim vest and spray-on jeans with the waist-length hair (name of Chevy, "like the car, vroom vroom") after Ben as a funny joke, so you claim (married) Sterling is your boyfriend and leave Ben to defend himself, and keep dropping hints about how interesting and single Ben is and how he would LOVE to play pool with her, but then it becomes clear that she was interested in Sterling all along, not Ben, and that she now hates you for A) being his girl and B) being a jealous territorial bitch, and then you spend the rest of the evening wondering whether you're going to show up at rehearsal the next day with one of her Lee Press-On Nails (TM) embedded in your eye..... Yeah. Like that. Don't try that kind of thing in Calgary.

Don't smoke too much BC weed. (See above.)

Don't stand next to Ashley Wright right after he's been rehearsing the scene in which he eats three cans of beans.


THINGS I FEAR:
That some of you, glancing throught this email, and not realizing that it's one of my missives from away, may think it is a suicide note. (Things I've Seen, Learned, Tasted....) That being the case, that you may not know that I am safe and sound, and loving you from here. That I will grow old and lonely, never having achieved any great success, and that my body will have been rotting in my apartment for weeks and weeks before somebody realizes that the smell must be coming from that sad old lady's place. Et cetera.


Nothing matters,

Lisa