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