From TORONTO,
March 25th, 2007
NAKED NEIGHBOUR ETIQUETTE
So let's say you and your friend Sarah have been drinking on a patio all afternoon (Ten degrees! Woo hoo! Let's take our pants off! Nutty Canadians). And let's say now it's evening and you're both sitting on your couch eating ice cream. (No, this is not going into exciting lesbianic territory; we didn't start play fighting and get sticky ice cream - oh no - all over! Maybe next week....) But let's say you look up and notice that your very hot neighbour, whose kitchen faces your living room, is walking around cooking wearing just a towel. Clearly he's making a post-sex snack for his wife who's all worn out and breathless in the next room. And he's just out of the shower, so he's kind of wet and glistening-like...and....ahem.
My question, dear reader, is not whether to stare at your wet, half naked neighbour or not; obviously you stare, I did say hot neighbour, we're not talking Mister Roper here. But let's say this certain neighbour looks up to see two chicks eating ice cream and watching him. What's the etiquette there? Do you wave? Do you, I don't know, take your top off, just to make him feel more comfortable? (Would your friend Sarah mind?) What you probably don't do is go with my spur of the moment reaction, which was to just sit there all slack-jawed and stalker-y, unable to avert my eyes, pralines and cream all drooling down my chin.
Funny that our initial assumption was that a hot male neighbour would enjoy being watched by randy strangers across the way. When he was probably just thinking, "Oh great. Now I have to cook in the dark."
My eventual solution was to go out today and pick up a set of international code flags ($16.95 at Zellers). I'm teaching myself the universal signals for "Drop the towel"...."Hey, you've been working your pecs"....and "Is your wife into this?" Even if I don't use those on the neighbour they're bound to come in handy sometime. There's also the curtain option. Which would not only give the neighbours their privacy, but spare them having to know how many games of Spider Solitaire I play each day, and how regularly I pick my nose.
STREETCAR BEACH
I like finding little mini-vacations for myself. It helps when you can't afford a real one. This one's as mini as you can get. It's in fact on the King streetcar. Under that short little train overpass between Dufferin and Strachan. After the systematic mowing down of four hundred and twenty-three cyclists, the city finally installed proper lights in the tunnel....and I don't know if there was a beauty sale at the city store or something.....but the lights they put up, instead of being your run-of-the-mill glaring fluorescent uglies, cast a truly lovely amber glow. There's this magical suspended moment when the streetcar slows for safety and the warm light comes in the windows and suddenly all the pale March faces are lit up and sunny and warm....I look up and around at my fellow passengers every time to take in how pretty they all are, how slow and relaxed the world is for just that moment......and then the streetcar leaves the tunnel and everyone starts strangling one another again and my vacation is over. It lasts all of thirty seconds. But it's probably why I usually head home along King instead of Queen. It's a little thing. But it's a motherfuckin' nice thing. Biatch. To quote post-jail Martha.
DENSE-CITY
I am getting rather fed up with the official Toronto policy of knocking down anything old (buildings, people) to vomit up ugly new condos. I mean, I think urban density is great, better than sprawl, but why does it all have to look like it's made of cardboard? I cry a little when I think that this city would look a lot like Montreal if they had left more of it the fuck alone. I was walking along Charles Street, West of Bay the other day, and noted again the small row of beautiful red-brick Victorians boarded up and slated for demolition. There are signs out front announcing re-zoning to allow for two new buildings 23 and 15 stories high. Next door is one of those boring, old-folks-in-Miami lookin' condos, and I'm sure these will be more of the same. Aross the street they're knocking down the Lycee Francais.
Walking a little further brought me to the ROM, where that huge glass and steel THING is being whacked onto the side of the building. The THING being the Michael Lee Chin Crystal (designed by Daniel Libiskind, named for a banker). See it and track its progress at http://www.rom.on.ca/renaissance/architecture.php . 
I find it kind of hideous. But at least it's interesting. And it may turn out all right. Better than that nasty thing they stuck on top of The Ontario College of Art and Design.
(See the monstrosity at right.)
The new Art Gallery of Ontario addition might be kinda cool, but it's gehry, and not, you know, GERHY, and a bit pedestrian. (http://www.ago.net/transformation/new_building-images.cfm) He apparently abandoned a more ambitious and spectacular plan when local citizens complained about its height. AAAAARGH! World famous avant garde architect returns home to be met with "Uhhh....can you make it a little smaller?" No wonder the new plan is slightly lame; he probably got pissed off and gave us some ol' crap design he's had sitting in his basement for thirty years. The addition, still under construction, is already being called the AGO Sneezeguard.
I quite like the new Opera Centre.....except the decor is a bit IKEA, something Tracy Dawson and I noted at the open house before shamedly reading some display about the imported limestone floors and the expensive German wood. Are you sure you don't mean Swedish? Isn't that staircase the Kvurtslig from page 46 of the spring catologue? Does the bar serve meatballs?
YOUNGER LIVING
So I'm playing a teenager again starting next week. Which is getting a bit weird. Starting to feel like Gary Coleman or Emmanuel Lewis. That's right, I feel small and black. This time I'm teening it up in Better Living and Escape From Happiness, two George F. Walker plays at Factory. The very eerie thing about this casting though, is not my extraordinary oldness, thank you very much. (Hey, I still do get carded buying booze and hit on by adolescent boys.) No, what has me freaked out is all the parallel lines to my younger life. It's one of the East End Plays, and my character has a cop for a father and a hoodlum boyfriend named Junior. In case you're not up on your Tourist lore (and I'll forgive you this time), I grew up in Scarborough (east end as it gets), my dad was on the force (even worked fraud, same as the dad in the show), and my first big high school boyfriend was Junior Bailey, a small-time hood in training.
That Junior actually showed up backstage at the Royal Alex one day when I was doing The Innocent Eye Test. I hadn't seen him in fifteen years and he was there, he said, because he'd seen me in a bikini in the newspaper (an ad for the show, not a Sunshine girl spread, sadly). He came by himself, sat in the first row and now was being all pick-uppy and weird. I don't think he blinked the whole time we talked at stage door. And not in that gorgeous Joseph Fiennes "my eyes are so beautiful it would be a shame to deny you them for a moment" way......or I suppose that's the effect he was going for. Instead it read like he was overmedicated. Or just the kind of guy who comes to see his ex up-close in a bikini and keeps telling her how great she looks and talking about himself in slightly suspect ways. He told me he'd gotten his Masters....and later slipped up and mentioned that he'd been to Community College, not University. Not sure when Humber started handing out Masters degrees. But I am glad he's turned from drug dealing to a career in law enforcement. My Dad's about to make the opposite switch, to supplement his pension on retirement. Good for him!
I had another teenager audition this week, and the director had clearly looked over my resume pretty thoroughly, which is usually a good thing. In this case, the more we discussed my past work, the more I felt the role slipping away from me, as each bit of experience added to my perceived age. I could almost hear him calculating years in his head..... I started hunching over more and more, little lines suddenly appeared around my eyes and mouth, my knees started creaking, clumps of hair fell from my head.... I finally did the scenes with a cane and a tremor....and then I woke up and realized it was ALL A DREAM! And that I'm not an actor at all, but a very successful Pakistani engineer, living in Boston with my wife and three children and playing tennis every Thursday! Phew. What a relief. Now who the hell are you and why am I writing this?
PLAYBOOK
Do you suppose anyone has ever adapted a play into a novel? I ask this because the usual course is to take books and adapt them for the stage or the screen, but I started thinking the other day, what if you tried it the other way around? And not like those " based on the movie" novelettes aimed at twelve year olds. (Back to the Future: the Book! Marty McFly woke up. He knew it was going to be a BAD DAY.) I'm thinking this could give a play another kind of life beyond its three-week run, and one for people who read novels but not plays. (Who reads plays except for actors? Oh yeah. Playwrights.)
It would be an interesting exercise, if nothing else, taking a stage work and then being able to dive into the secret thoughts of the characters, elaborate on or invent back stories, add new scenes, more locations.....With a page-to-stage adaptation, a lot of it is cutting things out, distilling, editing....but with stage-to-page, you could expand, explore, extrapolate....do other things that start with ex......and then get punched in the nose by the playwright for getting it all wrong. And have him or her deny you the rights to do anything with it. But it's worth a thought. I shall begin with Puppetry of the Penis: A Novel. It will surely be my master work.
BLAH!
My favourite suggestion addressing the problem of the word "Blog", which really does sound like a creature of the deep, comes from Maureen Del Degan of Parkdale, who points out that the word "blague", French for joke, is a tres chic alternative (Why, yes! It makes me think of croissants! Berets! Sexy little men smoking Gauloises!) and is rather appropriate. Yeah! As if this is all some big joke! As if it doesn't cost me to share all this with you! As if I don't die a little every time I tear out a small piece of my heart and smear it flat on the page for you, MAUREEN! Thanks a lot! Just kidding, I love it, your prize is in the mail. (It's a small piece of my heart, torn out and smeared across a page. Serve with toast. Mmmm - like foie gras, but human!)
An honourable mention goes to Dylan Trowbridge, who is not quite bright enough to have understood the question, but did suggest I call my blog "Leese on Life". Can't believe a retard thought of that before I did. Hell! And I may use that for something in the future. But for now....
I remain,
The Tourist.
blague city
the tourist is in.
From TORONTO,
MARCH 9th, 2007
THE BITTER WAY
Just got through a very angry few days where any Toronto Transit vehicle I tried to take (streetcar, subway, horsedrawn carriage) would break down, or short turn, or be overrun by deadly fireants. I started to get a serious case of TTC rage. I was on the subway a couple of days ago and when the conductor was announcing the train going out of service at Warden, I swear I could hear whispering in the background, "No, make it before Vic Park.....She's trying to get to Vic Park." And then just a lot of giggling. I know what you're thinking: come on, Norton, get over yourself, everyone was delayed this week, it's not about you. And I would fully agree with you, were it not for the fact that the TTC has also hired a couple of guys to follow me around with baseball bats and beat me on the shins. Wearing TTC uniforms and everything. No shame. It seems a little strange considering the funding shortage and all......but now you know where the latest fare hike went. Anti-Norton goons. Yes, it IS all about me. Next on Turner Classic Movies: Lisa Takes a Streetcar. Hell, if they could make twelve Ernest movies.... Ernest takes a Dump was really the last one worth watching though.
It's not just the transit, however. This whole city is out to get me. All week, there were these Oompah Loompahs up on the CN Tower throwing hunks of ice down at me. Oompah Loompahs built the CN Tower back in the 70s, you know. When the city had money for that sort of thing. Look it up. Anyway, it got so I couldn't go downtown. Which is why I'm in my apartment, writing to you for eighteen hours.
MY BIG FAT COMMERCIAL SHOOT
Did this ad a few weeks back for Ontario Tourism....you know, one of those look how cool we are having fun and flirting in a bar things....they cast me, a blonde, an Indian chick, a Chinese girl, and one of those nice young Negroes. I think I, with my patented ethnic ambiguity, was supposed to represent the Italian. The two guys were a white dude and my new pal Carlos Gonzalez, who says he's Argentinian. I'm convinced he's really Bob Johnson from North Bay. Hey! Come to Ontario! You will have a big group of multi-ethnic friends! You will be just like the United Nations, except drunk and horny! And you know those Asian chicks, man......
The other girls were all very beautiful - and very skinny. At the wardrobe call the day before (bring your own clothes in so we can pick them over and scowl at them) we were all there at the same time for the wardrobe person to check out and dress up. Everything the skinny girls put on looked fantastic, of course, while the wardrobe staff just kept staring at my thighs like "What are we gonna do about those?" Now I know I'm not fat, but it took me about six minutes to develop My First Body Issues (another new "My First" product from Fisher Price). Imagine what it must be like being an actor in L.A. Terrifying. By the time she gave my hair a sour look, I was convinced that it was overweight: "That's it isn't it? I've got FAT HAIR, don't I? I knew I'd never make it in this town!!!"
At the shoot, in the wardrobe trailer, I'm wearing my weird vintage dress that the wardrobe chick liked so much, and I sit down in the makeup chair. The makeup artist, lets call her Christina (because that was her name), is dialling her cellphone while looking me up and down. She just has time to say "OHMIGOD what have they got you wearing I hate it!" when her call picks up. "Hi Mom, can you watch the kids tomorrow" etc, while I'm sitting there shrinking into the chair. She hangs up and tells me again how hideous the dress they gave me is.
"Um. It's mine actually."
"OH! I didn't mean I hate it..... It's just.....so....colourful."
"That's okay, I don't really even know why they picked it, I shouldn't have brought it in the first place, it's really not something I usually wear...."
"No it's goood, it's just, um, it makes it hard to pick out what colours to use on your eyes, (under her breath) you fat whore."
"Uh....Did you just call me a fat whore?"
"No."
"I thought I heard you say -"
"NoOOoo. Why would I say something like that (sotto voce)...stupid cow."
"There! You just did it again! You called me a cow!"
"RING RING! Would you excuse me, I gotta take this."
"That wasn't even your phone, it was just you saying ring ring."
"HELLO?"
So yeah.
A few days later, talking to Marc Bendavid, I make some dumb disparaging joke about airhead models (not meaning my skinny commercial girls, they were fun and awesome - and put out! Those Asian chicks - whoooee! Don't get me started!)......and Marc tells me that the one time he worked with a model, she was wonderful and smart, and gives her whole salary away to AIDS victims in Africa, and has fourteen pregnant teenage runaways living in her bachelor apartment. And you know. Campaigns for Amnesty International or some shit. So what, I can't even make fun of MODELS anymore? Who's left?! What's next, feeling sorry for Jude Law? Actually, poor Jude.....I haven't returned his calls in weeks. He must be pretty upset.
To keep warm on the commercial shoot, some of which was shot outdoors in ten or twenty or eight hundred and nine below, I was wearing my Magical Supercoat, which some of you may remember as the star of my Winnipeg trip. (Makes a mean omelette, deploys Airbags when needed, takes its Martinis shaken not stirred....) A couple of months ago, I am sad to report, Supercoat had an accident involving a heater on a CBC shoot. It was busy writing a novel and failed to notice that its back was melting, but luckily for me, who was in it, the damage was stopped before it actually set on fire. It's still wearable, just injured. It's taking it quite well. A producer on set promised they would replace it for me, but now when I call them they just say "Lisa who? Como? No speaka Inglese!" Just as well. Could my next coat play the maracas?
J.C. VS J.T.
By now you've heard they found what could be a box full of Jesus. You know, film crew in Jerusalem discovers that standing in the way of a new housing complex was a tomb from which have been removed boxes that contain what may be, from the markings on the front, the remains of Jesus and his family. Including his son. Whaaaaa-? DNA testing to follow to see if ol' JC is related to Joseph (hm) , and whether he had a kid (well well well) and to generally drive the Christians insane. Of course they won't acknowledge that it's him. But it's still driving them insane. Who knew that James Cameron could upset even more people than he did with that Celine Dion song in Titanic ? Of course no one will ever give credence to something that a film crew claims to have discovered. Look at the Disney Pixar people, who unearthed that lost civilization of ACTUAL TALKING CARS! Will that make it into the history books? Noooooo. But anyway, what has DNA testing ever really proved? Except that you're not my real mother, Lolita! I'm onto you!
I am convinced that Jesus has timed this comeback as a plot to dethrone Justin Timberlake. 2006 was the year of Dick in a Box? Well how about Christ In A Box, bitch? Booya! You think you're bad, JT? Wait 'til Superbowl '08, when JC rips Janet's panties right off! And not a twat protector in sight! Look who's bringin' sexy back now!
What did they call that thing? A nipple shield? That may have seemed strange to you, but if you know the history of assassination attempts on the Jackson family, it makes perfect sense. True. Tito barely survived the Victory Tour. For some reason the shooters always aim right for the nipple. Eeerie. By the way, if you live in too deep of a cave to have seen Dick In A Box, thereby missing out on the joy of one of my jokes, please watch it now. http://youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA . I do love my Timberlake. Shh. Don't tell Jude.
SING, FOREST, SING!
Another thing you oughtta YouTube is Forest Whitaker's performance on "The Maurizio Costanzo Show". http://youtube.com/watch?v=dxoc5QgEBKI It's a brief clip of him singing. Apparently he did a lot of singing on his SNL appearance, but I haven't found a clip of that yet. The man went to college on a football scholarship and then transferred to USC to train as an operatic tenor before switching his focus to acting. Also he used to be a woman. Is there anything you can't do, Forest? As a Canadian (i.e. godless hippie potsmoking heathen) I could have done without him thanking God in his Oscar acceptance speech.....but the football training explains that.
Finally went to see The Last King of Scotland with my Pops at the Fox the other day. As the movie ends, the postscript is telling us what became of everyone involved. The screen has just said that 300,000 Ugandans died under Idi Amin's rule, and my dad chooses that exact moment to say (rather loudly, I think), "He did a good job." I slowly turn my head to face him. "Who?" "Forest Whitaker," he says. OHthankgod.
Actually he said Forrest Tucker at first. But that's an old white guy from F-Troop and Gunsmoke. His Wikipedia entry also shows a great poster for a b-movie called Cosmic Monsters. ("Man and alien unite to combat the most insidious peril the universe has ever known!!!!" WOW!) I'd like to have seen him play Amin. Actually, sorry, he did, I've just discovered - in a made-for-TV thing in 1997. Less extraordinary for the fact that he was white than that he'd been dead for eleven years at the time. Seriously, even fairly recently, there have been examples of weird blackface (and "redface", and "yellowface") acting.......witness ANTHONY HOPKINS as Othello. Not joking. We watched it in high school. I threw up.
MYSTERY NUN (vote now)
I saw a nun (in full habit) at the library taking out all kinds of gory and sensational-looking crime novels. The librarian had put the latest arrivals aside for her. One of them was called "Always Time to Die". Is this weird, or is it just me?
GO AWAY
Time to go and listen to my ceiling drip. (See, Terrence, my life isn't always that exciting. Especially when I'm in hiding from.....the evil ones.) Little weird things keep going wrong and breaking down in my wonderful apartment. A big hunk of my kitchen ceiling caved in right where Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall had been sitting the previous evening when I had him and Blair Williams over for dinner. If it had happened then, it surely would have KILLED HIM. Unless, of course, he was wearing his nipple shield. Re my apartment...I've got a plan. I'm gonna call up my landlord and say "David! You are gonna fix my fireplace and repair my ceiling and get me a stove that works once and for all, or I am gonna tell everyone where we buried those bodies last summer!" I mean. Um. Forget I said that. I guess I could just delete that last bit.....but you know I don't work that way.
I've never killed anyone, honest,
Lisa
