vanewyorkouver....and sweet home

From TORONTO
DECEMBER 4th, 2006

I've just read one of those emails that people forward you all the time with you know, ADVICE ABOUT LIFE. This one was very nice, full of sound advice from the Dalai Lama (that he will supposedly be very upset if you don't forward to, like, eighty-nine people by the end of the day). Apparently it's a list of his tips for the year to come.....but I'm pretty sure I've read some of them before. No Usesies Againsies, Dalai! I want fresh maxims, every year! No more of this "Be good to others" shit. I mean, that one's even in the bloody Ten Commandments! And "Spend some time alone every day"? You used that back in '97. Jeez.

Anyway....one of his Holy Baldness' pieces of advice, which I quite like, is "Once a year, go someplace you've never been before". Well, Mister Lama - and dear friends - have I got you trumped! In the past two months alone, I have finally hit both Vancouver and New York City, two places I've been meaning to visit since I was, like, born. And my experiences of which are as follows:

I had, as you may remember, just three days between performing Of Mice and Men in Calgary and in Toronto into which to squeeze a jaunt (how jaunty!) to Vancouver to attend the nuptials of my pals Mike Wasko and Jenny Paterson - who I still think spells her name wrong, by the way. Was supposed to head to Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall's folks' place on arrival, but due to a combination of closing a show and packing and drinking, not sleeping and running around, and Shaughnessy having dropped off the face of the earth......I hadn't spoken with him and had no idea where they lived. I sat on my bags in the Vancouver airport wondering where to go and what to do.

I left several messages, talked to strangers, beat some noisy children, rode the baggage carousel until that got boring (and believe me, that takes a while), and eventually got in touch with the then soon-to-be groom, Michael Jack Wasko, who instructed me to make my way to the happy couple's home in Kitsilano, where I would find not only Mike and Jenny, but our dear friend Thom Payne, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for laid-backness eight years running, all the way from his oppositely coastal home in Nova Scotia. Actually, all three deserve a gold medal in cool. Here I am thinking, I shouldn't be bugging Jenny and Mike, they're getting married tomorrow for God's sake. Surely they have things to do, responsibilities, people to shout at for no particular reason.... But no, after a lovely cab ride there - with a great driver, indeed one of the most interesting people I've ever met, through sunny blueness with the windows down - I found them sprawled about, just emerging from the haze of the "rehearsal dinner", which from what I gather was basically a rehearsal for getting loaded. Complete with a never-ending flow of champagne cocktails courtesy of Mike's little mama, Penny. Seems everyone really threw themselves into the spirit of the thing.

Hung about yawning and smoking and catching up, was shown a series of truly odd bachelor party photographs, and then we all headed out for a walk to Jericho beach. The weather was just amazing, as it would continue to be for my entire time in the city. Shaughnessy would later tell me that the weather in Vancouver is always beautiful, and that all that stuff about rain and fog and drizzle is a myth that people from the east have made up and tell themselves as consolation for living in places that suck. This, of course, comes from his entirely unbiased objective journalist's point of view.

So yes, after we'd dragged our sweet asses (taking our sweet-ass time) back to the apartment, and talked and smoked some more and fritatta'd our way to happiness - thanks Jenny! - Shaughnessy BS did finally appear. Seems he'd been off having ADVENTURES WITH BRIDESMAIDS, which is exactly the type of thing one expects and trusts Shaughnessy to do. I love it when people live up to their expectations; it's so comforting.

He and I then took off to install me in the empty basement apartment at his parents' house, only stopping along the way to buy champagne. "Champagne!", he would shout all weekend, "We must have more champagne!" I happily concurred, each and every time. Between that and all the turkey, it's a wonder I'm not paralyzed. Did I mention it was Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bishop-Stalls, after a nap in a darkened basement: Who could ask for anything more? The Bishop-Stalls: Cinnamon, Cardamom, Jacqui and Old Whatshisface (I may have taken some liberty with their names), not to mention my friend Young BS, are, as had been promised by Wasko, the loveliest family you could hope to spend time with. The gang was all there, along with two dogs, three cats (one is retarded and lives in a three-story cage so that he won't eat spatulas and things like that) and a few good-looking special guests. Perhaps that is the house guest-list criteria: no ugly people shall darken this door. Ug-ism being the only prejudice I wholeheartedly support, I have no problem with that. I, of course, was right at home, though happily out-beautified by Shaughnessy's gorgeous mother and sisters; and definitely out-weirded by Bob Stall, the funny little patriarch. I love that however brilliant a man may be, and in Bob's case I gather that is quite a lot (he is an accomplished and award-winning journalist), there is a law of nature saying that once he reaches fatherhood he must make the same lame and often incomprehensible jokes as dads the world over. And that he can't compose full sentences while the hockey game is on.

(A Speaking-of-hockey-side-note: Buses and billboards in Vancouver sport ads with splashy colourful images from Vancouver Canucks games and the phrase WE ARE ALL CANUCKS. Bloody brilliant. What could Toronto do to compete with that? WE ALL...HAVE LEAFS. IN OUR YARDS. IF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE A YARD. UM. AND IF "LEAFS" WAS A REAL WORD. SHIT.)

Anyway, Thanksgiving Dinner was a great mixture of the entirely silly and the stunningly erudite. And as the wine flowed we just got cleverer and cleverer and cleverer.....though it is questionable how many of us could have pronounced the word "cleverer" by the end of the evening. I, for one, never talked so much shit in my life (and y'all know how I can talk shit). I woke the next morning with a distinct feeling of remorse.....and then got in an argument with BS over things he swears I was spouting at the end of the night and which I was sure he'd dreamt.

Thank God for that cozy dark basement apartment - where, incidentally, I kept finding condoms. Unopened, don't worry. I don't know if that's a traditional West Coast Welcome, hiding condoms all over the guest's room for her convenience.....or if the basement is just the traditional place for Bishop-Stall kids to sneak their partners off for rendezvous. Either way, I've decided that my fifth novel shall be named Condoms in the Basement.....and will be a tribute the Flowers in the Attic series. Thank you, Bishop-Stalls. God Bless You, every one.

No doubt you've heard of Triptophan. It's the hormone in turkey that knocks you on your ass, and which is the original date-rape drug. It went out of style when Rohypnol appeared on the scene; frat boys who'd been sneaking turkey drumsticks into cocktails for years were relieved to discover something less conspicuous. Well... you'd expect a lot of clever people, who know ALL ABOUT triptophan, and in fact made EIGHT-THOUSAND stupid jokes about it over dinner, to not spend an entire wedding weekend gorging themselves on leftover turkey sandwiches. That, of course, is exactly what we did. By the time the wedding rolled around, my blood was seventy percent turkey and I could barely walk. It didn't help that another twenty percent was champagne.

Day of the wedding, and almost everything is closed for Thanksgiving, which throws a temporary wrench (OW!) in my plan of buying a sassy new number for the wedding. The BS siblings, however, spring into action and drop me off near two of the best (and most not-closed) shops on Main Street - right near Heritage hall, where the wedding is taking place. Grocery bag full of black accessories in hand, I do some power shopping, finding a perfect dress and bag with an hour to spare - which I then use up cabbing back to the house and running around because the new dress is green and brown and my black friggin' boa just ain't gonna cut it. Brown accessory emergency! Just the type of life-and-death pressure I thrive under. Doctors Without Borders, sign me up.

The wedding was sweet and dreamy. First of all, I love these guys. Second of all, and probably slightly more important, they love each other. Another second of all, this is a couple that has already been through thick and thin, hell and highwater, et cetera et cetera. They've even managed to get over the fact that neither of them is very nice, or interesting, or charming. (What dumb, ugly losers Mike and Jenny are, really. They make me sick.) So everyone there had complete faith that they will continue on together happily for the rest of their lives. Which made for a totally relaxed, loving vibe......but an unfortunate lack of bitter speeches and nasty whispers. The highest drama of the evening came when one of the guests swallowed a hunk of glass that was in the bottom of a faulty Perrier bottle. But she happens to have grown up with severe allergies, and was used to keeping entirely calm in emergencies, so even she didn't freak out. Fucking pothead Vancouverites! What does it take to get a tantrum out of one of you! Even when I started sobbing loudly throughout the vows and moaning "ME!!!! She said she loved Me-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!!!!", I couldn't seem to get a rise out of them. They just laughed and passed me the joint that that was going around.

Seriously, the wedding was gorgeous. Jenny wore an awesome gown made out of the wings of real-life fairies, which she and her sister have captured and de-winged themselves since childhood. The couple got through their vows with only a tasteful amount of giggling, and those of you who know Mike will be happy (or devastated) to know that he wore pants, though there was a piper. I didn't really moan and sob, nor did anybody else, except for the usual isn't-this-so-sweet sniffling and retching. Shaughnessy did an admirable job as MC, and there were some hilarious and touching speeches, and a proliferation of songs containing lyrics about what a big jerk Mike used to be. Awesome food! Great company! And Wasko-Paterson soundtrack CDs for all the guests! Dancing in the hall......and dancing our way down the street to the after party at Sarah's place and partying as much as the turkey sandwich coma allowed us.

I was overjoyed to be able to be there, to see some old faces, and to put faces to other people I've heard about for years. And to see my friends so happy.

There must be something in the air right now out West. In Calgary, I had a fantastic reunion with my old college chum, Jacquie - excuse me, Jacqueline....though she lets her new redneck friends call her Jadie - and she nearly electrocuted me with happiness, she is at such a brave and happy and exciting moment in her life.

Also in Calgary, I met up with Dean Carter (another pal from the James Brown years) and his wife Luka Symons, and their sweet little girl, who nearly didn't survive infancy. They are so grateful to have her, all fun and full of joy, and also madly in love with their jobs. Luka has her own radio show on CKUA, that station I plugged in my last email (pure coincidence) and Dean is a teacher at the Waldorf School , which is the coolest institution on Earth.

At the wedding I got to catch up with Jody Marklew, who was in my class in first year and then went to Studio 58 with Mike and Jenny. She recently went through a divorce and a year of hellish health problems, which doctors couldn't diagnose after ten billion tests for everything under the sun. She was just about to start a regimen of drugs for MS, which hadn't been ruled out, when she figured out that it was MERCURY POISONING. From an old filling that had fallen apart. She is now healthy, amazing, as gorgeous as ever, starting to act again, and dating an awesome new guy. I wonder if I were to continue across the country, finding all the people I've lost touch with, they'd all be this happy. It was really something, all these joyous people. If I made them shed just one tear each, my travels have been worth it.

One more day - sleeping, a farewell turkey sandwich, post-wedding lunch, goodbyes, dinner with Young BS, a mad dash to the airport singing G n' R at the top of our lungs - I and my new green dress took our bags and reluctantly left green Vancouver. It's so green! Why did nobody tell me it would be so green? Everyone talks about the mountains - but the trees! So many trees! Or was I just seeing them through fresh-from-the-prairie-eyes, and not used to seeing green again? Six of one?

On the redeye back to Toronto, I was politely holding in three days of champagne gas, and eventually went to the washroom for just long enough for an old lady on the plane to have a heart attack. She was between the washroom and my seat, so I couldn't go anywhere and was stuck at the back of the plane with a very boring person who is too tall to sit comfortably in airplane seats and so spends his flights at the back of the plane annoying flight attendants. I heard all about his (boring) trip, his (boring) job, his (boring) wife and his (boring) allergies, until I was wishing for a heart attack myself. Watched all the drama unfold from back there: the calls to the pilot, the appeals for a doctor, the five doctors on the plane all getting in each others' way, the defibrillator coming out, the defibrillator going back in......eventually she came around, and they arranged for paramedics to meet us at Pearson. I never did get a wink of sleep on that overnighter. I just couldn't rest easy knowing that my farting in the bathroom was enough to stop someone's heart. What if I fell asleep and let one go? It could be the pilot next time.

And on that elevated note, dear friends........it's 2:45 am. New York will have to wait a day or two. But hell, I waited thirty years for it.

Off to dreams of places i've never been before,

Lisa