From TORONTO
December 31st, 2008
You know, My Ruggedly Handsome and/or Voluptuously Stunning Reader, if you've been following along as you should (and if not, I don't even know why we're having this conversation - I spit in your lazy face! That's right.....but in a hot, sexy way. You know you love it, you filthy little slavehog, you.) Where was I?
Ahem. If you've been following along.....you will know my feelings on annual New Year's resolutions . Ridiculous, I always thought, and doomed to failure. Why bother? Why vow every year that we will become hipper, faster, stronger - when we would be better to just accept that we are pathetic, fat, uneducated losers and get on with it already.
More recently I thought, Hey (ding!), let me not be quite so defeatist about this whole thing. Why not set really, really easy goals for myself .....and then feel an incredibly huge sense of accomplishment for, say, ceasing to pee all over the toilet seat or for giving up eating cold lard in the New Year?
Hence, the last three years my New Year's resolutions have been as follows:
2006: Don't complain about the weather
2007: Take the stairs
2008: Stop swallowing gum
For the most part I've been successful in achieving these by-my-standards impressively challenging goals, though the gum-swallowing is still one day at a time. I'm not a former gum-swallower; I'm a recovering one, and will forever be.
But Lo! Behold! Hold the proverbial phone! Stop the virtual press! A heretofore unexperienced sensation has siezed me this year; a desire to set actual, real, difficult challenges for myself and then -gasp! - go about achieving them. What the fuck is going on?! Is it the lack of challenge in my everyday life? The need, at age thirty-three, to feel a true sense of accomplishment without actually, you know, having babies or getting a real job? Why so suddenly sick of easy and longing for HARD (oh yeah, baby)? Who cares why. There it is.
So, Without further ado, The Skeptical Tourist's Resolutions, 2009 Edition, are as follows:
I RESOLVE...
To Eat Some Human Flesh.
"What?!" you may be saying to yourself, "The Skeptical Tourist has never eaten human flesh? You must be joking!" But it's true, Astonished Reader. I've always meant to, of course, but have been held back by my irrational aversion to actually killing anyone. I mean, it would be a little silly to murder a whole person just to try a bite or, at most, a sandwich; what if I don't even like it? Maybe I could have some hardcore cannibals standing by ready to efficiently use up the rest? (Could be a way to meet some interesting new people.)
I'm sure, though, that I could find several individuals on the worldwide interweb who would be willing, disturbingly happy even, to volunteer to let me bite off a hunk of bicep or something.
Better yet....I'll carve a cut of my own tasty thigh, thereby also saving hours of useless toil at the gym. They do say the flavour's in the fat, am I right?
I RESOLVE.....
To Wear More Makeup and Sluttier Clothing.
Let's face it, time's a tickin'. I can't get away with dressing like a whore forever. So why not go big in '09?
To Keep in Better Touch with Mariah Carey and the Dalai Lama.
They keep having to do Mariah-Lisa-Dalai night without me. Sorry, guys!
To Make Some Negro Friends.
I have got Jamie Robinson. But he only counts as half. Plus it's hard to keep in touch with him because he's always busy eating watermelon and running fast. Then there's Marcia Johnson.... but she just wants me for my body. And you know how I feel about that these last two days.
Other from that, since I work in Canadian theatre, I haven't actually seen a real-life black person since leaving Scarborough in 1994. Therefore, Concernedly Weeping Reader, if you actually know/have seen/are a real black person, please feel free to help me with this.
Lucky coloured candidates can contact me at:
Lisa Can I Be Your Negro Friend
P.O. Box 779, Station A
Toronto, ON M6R 3A6
or at wantsitblack88@lavalife.com. (See profile in the "Casual Encounters" section.) What? Just covering all my bases.
Oh, and applicants should remember to include a photo and 500 word essay on how they would culturally enrich my life.
I RESOLVE....
To Finally Live Out My Life-Long Goal of Blowing Up Revenue Canada.
Hey, and if I do it during office hours....maybe that's where all the roasted human flesh could come from! Guilt free!
Bonus: This is bound to help me realize that other life-long dream to get a day named after me. This would for sure put me over that Guy Fawkes dude, am I right? And Sarah Polley could play me in the movie.
To Learn How to Wilfully Breathe Out of Just One Nostril at a Time.
Come on, you try it! Not so easy is it, huh, Smugface?
To Start Documenting My Dreams Once and for all.
And then use them as the basis for a multi-million dollar hit film about a hobo and a skunk and my grandma who go on an adventure in a forest which is sort of a forest but sometimes sort of like my Junior High and sort of sometimes like my living room and then these guys are there whose heads are made of rubber bands and all my hair falls out and oh yeah Sylvester Stallone and Elizabeth May are there dancing the tango* but then suddenly I'm underwater and it's so cool cuz I can breathe and all the sharks are made of gorgonzola and I wake up screaming.
Three words for you. Box. Office. Gold.
(And Sarah Polley as Stallone.)
I RESOLVE....
To Start My Own Fashion Line and Call it Leese's Pieces.
To Master Not Only Peeing Standing Up, but Pooing, too.
Wish me luck. Accompanying video and inevitable worldwide YouTube sensation to follow.
To Quit Trying to Learn New Languages and Just Make Up My Own Already.
My language would rock, admit it. Will someone donate a tropical island for me to speak it on?
To Wear a Different Pair of Underwear Every Day.
Novel, I know. But worth a try. Fans keep mailing me sexy panties; the least I can do is try to get through them.
To Jump Out of an Airplane.
Or a moving bus.
Or maybe my bed.
To Finally Give in to Beyonce's Management and Let Her Have That Threesome with My Boyfriend and Me.
NO, Jay-Z, you're not invited. Go play with your money. I'll have her back by Tuesday. She's gonna be my special black friend.
To Give Up My Only Intermittently Successful Campaign to Stop Biting My Nails, Instead Seeing if I Can Go Right Through Them and Eat My Entire Hand off.
Hey - that would solve the human flesh conundrum, too! FUCK I'm smart!
To Make Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, Lick the Bottom of My Shoe.
You do know he's into that in private, right?
To Cause, Through Meditation, Hypnotism and Special Apparatus, My Left Foot to Grow Three Sizes Larger, While Making my Right Foot Shrink to a Five and a Half.
To Stop Being so Cold and Suspicious and Get to Know all My Neighbours. Biblically.
To Stop Cashing My RSP's Every Year to Get Through Christmas
....and instead cash them each year on some random day in July and blow the lot on popsicles and safety pins.
I RESOLVE.....
To Stop Using My Eyes for One Month to Test Whether I Develop Super-Sonic Hearing Powers.
(Or just ultra-enhanced good looks which will benefit mankind but madden me as I am forsworn not to look into the mirror to find out what all the fuss is about.)
To Stop Being Such a Wallflower and Let People Know What I Really Think.
Starting now, with you, Attentive Reader. I think you're a Dirty Whore. And God I love you for it.
All right, Sweet Things. Time to say farewell and go start off '09 in great style, doing what I do each year on New Year's Eve: Getting very drunk and forcing people to listen to Michael Jackson's Man In The Mirror at midnight. You heard me. Make that change.
(And perhaps I'll eat some flesh by morning.)
Resolutely Yours,
The Tourist
* Little known fact: Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party (and welcome addition to any dream except maybe the sexy kind), is in reality, a fine Tango dancer and good friend of Sylvester Stallone.
the norton resolutions
lisa norton has one friend
From TORONTO
November 17th, 2008
No, really. Many admirers. Plenty of fans. People I hang out with, spend time laughing and sharing with, comparing fears, hopes, dreams......Swapping underwear, and lovers. And lovers of underwear. Gazing at the stars. Raising important existential questions, such as "If I were a bat, would you still hang out with me?" or even, "If you were a bat, what kind of bat would you be?" (West African sucker-footed fruit bat, by the way, hands down, no question. We're talking quality of life here, people.) Crying. Helping each other through breakups, shakedowns, stirfries, and other tough times. Getting piss-ass drunk. Getting sober, and still managing to enjoy one another's company. Talking about nothing.
But when it comes right down to it, none of this really counts as friendship. Because according to Facebook....I only have one friend.
I just wrote the word "Facebook" on a non-Facebook affiliated website. (Or is it?) So rest assured they are watching me right now. And damn if I don't look good, those lucky sons of whores. (They're watching you, too, so do your hair for god's sake, would you? Jeez. You're a disgrace to your whole living room right now.) From now on I will refer to it in my usual way, as Facef**k. Not because it will stop the surveillance, but because I'm ten years old and think it's funny.
Of course, it is by choice that I have but one Facef**k friend. Well, I suppose my real choice would be for Facef**k not to exist at all, not to mention for us to get rid of these pesky Cellulite Telephones and Microwavy Ovens. These newfangled horseless carriages are getting to be a nuisance, too, but let us stick to the point at hand. Which is that I could obviously have as many FF friends as I wanted - I mean, who wouldn't like to brag that they are pals with me? Who isn't knocking down my virtual inter-door begging for the cyberprivilege to do so?
At this juncture, allow me to make my reasons for resenting Facef**k (to the point of calling it Facef**k all the time, tee hee) very clear, laying them out rationally thus: IT IS EVIL OH MY GOD IT'S SO EVIL IT WILL SUCK YOUR SOUL AWAY UNTIL YOU ARE EMOTIONALLY SHRIVELLED AND PRUNY and besides there is a reason I'm not in touch with everyone who went to my high school or that guy I once did a play workshop with and make awkward conversation with at the Fringe Festival once a year, also I already feel guilty for ignoring everyone on MSN (the stragglers who are still on it that is) and for not returning emails; do you really want me to have one more HUGE GIGANTIC THING that I am lax and inept at to make me feel like crap? HUH? DO YOU??? And everyone knows that the whole thing is half excuse to flirt with people you used to date, half fake way to feel cool and anyway I have a boyfriend now so the prospect of being poked by strangers doesn't have quite the appeal it used to....and I went on Bunker's Facef**k page for five minutes once and felt like puking after and anyway what if I do get hooked I'm lazy enough already I'll never accomplish anything again (especially with all the throwing up), Not to mention it is a WELL KNOWN FACT that Facebook is where Al Qaeda gets information about you (and about your babies and puppies and grandpa) or maybe I made that up but it sounds entirely plausible nonetheless so there!
And let me reiterate, in case you didn't catch this crucial point the first time: So there!
So how is it, Mystified Reader, that I came to have a "profile" at all, empty of photo and information as it is? Who is my one, consistently ignored Facef**k friend? How did such a strange thing come to pass?
Meet Kimwun Perehinec, Lucky Reader. Actually, you may have already met, or made sweet cyberlove, as she has about eight million Facef**k friends. Kimwun (or Kimwunowassis, if the shortened version of her name isn't weird enough for you and you're craving extra syllables) and I go way back. We were both proud and talented attendees of the James Brown Theatre School (Hit us one time!) back in the day. The day being March 12th, 1942...or thereabouts. We were in different classes, but became friends, especially after graduation, when we were neighbours, and did a horrible kids' play together at Stage West.
Chatting onstage during the show one day (it was a boring scene, come on), Kimwunowassis-a-ramalamadingdong and I discovered that we had both had the rather strange misfortune (or fortune, depending how one looks at it) to be nicknamed Macchio when we were kids. At the risk of dating myself - oh, if only I had the flexibility - and her, I will say that we were somewhere late in our grade school years when the Karate Kid was king. We were young, shorthaired and flat; so was Karate Kid star Ralph Macchio: hence the comparison.
I'd like to say that I was also a Kung Fu expert, and that was the real reason my friends called me Macchio...... so I will. This is my blague, after all. So, yes, I am a Kung Fu expert. Anyway, I look good in baggy white clothes with black belts. And that's gotta count for something.
OOOH, MISTER MIYAGI, I NEVER KNEW YOU CARED.
No wonder the weird old neighbour kept dropping by to offer extra pop and chips, muttering something about bleeding and breeding.
As for Kimwun, she denied and ran from her Macchiosity, burying it deep within some sobby dark place in her soul...until sharing it with me, and learning to own it proudly. You may have heard us hail one another as Macchio across a crowded room or discuss a possible Macchio & Macchio web series, one of the goals of which would, of course, be an ultimate guest appearance by old Ralph himself (our hero).
But was it with her friendship that Kimwun lured me to the dark side? Or was it with my own pride and vanity? Take a wild guess, Dimwitted Reader. (Smart Reader, turn to page 28. And collect your prize. Ding!)
How it goes is this. It is December, 2007. I go to a party. A Christmas party. Matt Edison and Arwen MacDonnell's Christmas party to be exact, a party which I have attended several years running, but almost didn't find out about this season because the hosts, for the first time, just put the invite out there on Facef**k and didn't bother to make the usual phone calls or - god forbid - emails to luddites like me. I run into one of the hosts at the last minute and do attend....and spend the entire evening defending myself for not being a member of the Facef**k community. Every friend I run into there begins conversation with "Merry Christmas! Are you on Facebook?", which is a common thing at parties these days, and the reason I now carry a hammer with me at all times.
The next day, I receive an email from Kimwun, addressed to me and Aviva Armour-Ostroff as apparently her only friends who are not on FF. She invites us to look at the pictures from the party, includes a link which, she says, will let you look at the pictures without joining.
I have thought about it, I'll admit. Because, all this said, I am beginning to feel a bit like the cavegirl who insisted that this wheel thing was just a fad. The cavegirl who doesn't know what's going on in all the other caves. Who is afraid of missing caveparties with cavemusic and cavecanapes and catching up with old cavefriends. Who wonders how she will achieve world cave domination, particularly with her caveblog, if she continues to publish it with a tablet and chisel and rely on the five friends who come over to read it over her shoulder. Poor cavegirl.
"HEY GUYS! WAIT FOR ME!!!"
But there's the danger that by the time I do cave (haha) and embrace Facebook, it will be old hat and everyone will have moved onto something else. Hopefully something retro like Pong or velcro, or oatmeal; something warm and fuzzy that I can understand. Though I'm not quite sure about the social networking applications of oatmeal; I'll let the tech wizards figure that one out.
One thing's for sure. Waldo sure does look funny wearing two hats.
In good old-fashioned confusion,
Your favourite Stone Age hominid,
The Tourist
P.S. Please forward this to all your Facebook friends. Maybe, just maybe, it will lure some of them back to the analog side. At the very least it will let them know I exist. And that Wilson and I say hi.
"HI."
poverty is hot
From BLYTH, Ontario
September 5th, 2008
Two days left performing brilliantly on the Blyth Festival stage, Soft-Eyed, Shiny-Haired Reader, and my thoughts turn to the future. But first: whither updates on my summer? Why so quiet on all things Blyth, you ask?
Well...what can I say, really? Since one of my two shows closed, the schedule here has committed me to a gruelling six-hour work week (yes, you read that right), and the town itself, nestled as it is in its secret location eighty five kilometres outside the border of hell's half acre, leaves me with little to say. My biggest daily challenges over the last month have been deciding what to bake, stopping myself from leaping off the stage and tickling random audience members, and breaking out in a sweat on my couch watching tiny Chinese girls win gold medals at three a.m.
And what about my Great Big Vow Of Celibacy, you wonder? How is that particular challenge going for me? Well, let's just say that, as it turns out, the best way to meet somebody worth screwing on a regular basis.....is to take a Great Big Vow Of Celibacy. So ja, das vow ist kaput. And you certainly don't want to hear about that. Well okay, many of you do....but to those readers I can recommend several handy websites. No, I'm not on them - don't get your dirty little hopes up, Gutter-Minded Reader. I'm just saying.
So what do I have to share, from this time and place? What pearls of wisdom have my ruminations on the future yielded? Oh boy, you won't believe it! Here it is, my Squirty Little Honeys.....in preparation for my much anticipated return to Toronto and an(other) indefinite period of unemployment, I give you......
THE SKEPTICAL TOURIST'S GUIDE TO POVERTATIOUS LIVING, or.....
FUCK FUCK FUCK HOW DID I DO THIS LAST TIME?
There are always little things to get you through the hard times. Here are a few of my favourites:
Panhandle, late at night, preferably while wearing a balaclava, with the catchy pitch line, "Give me some money or I'll stab you in the face." Okay, so technically that's called "mugging", but must we get hung up on technicalities, people? God! I'm trying to get creative here; roll with it, will you?
Knock over a liquor store. By "knock over", I don't mean rob it. I mean steal a wrecking ball and KNOCK OVER A LIQUOR STORE. It won't do you any good financially, but fuck, dude, it will be awesome.
Go to a grade school during morning recess and play poker for the kids' lunch money. Careful, though, some of the little bastards are sharks. Beware grades three and up. And High Park Junior Public is a bitch. Try to find a school with lots of "special" kids. But not the freaky little smart autistic ones. If they don't have cash, play for gummy worms and sandwiches. In Scarborough, guns. Bonus features: Learn all the latest schoolyard poker slang. And meet hot teachers while being escorted off the premises. Get the digits. Note: Toronto District School Board teacher to unemployed actor = Hot Sugar Daddy. Avoid art and music teachers.....though I hear they may be cutting math and science, too.
Make your own currency using colourful pencil crayons and construction paper. If local merchants refuse to accept it, break things in their store. When cops arrive, offer hand jobs all around. Scot free! Repeat.
Wait for the phone to ring with auditions and job offers. Check for dial tone. Smash phone.
Want to keep busy with a hobby or classes during your unemployment? Interested in learning a new language? Easy. Since you can't afford fancy language classes or CDs...simply find a family that speaks the language you wish to learn and force them to be your new best friends. Invite yourself over for dinner. Make your own key. Sleep with their nieces and nephews.
In my case, I'd like to improve my Spanish, so both the food and the sex should be good. I'll spend Wednesdays with some Guatemalans I've been casing, Fridays with a nice old couple from Madrid, and Sundays - after Spanish-language services at Our Lady of Guadalupe (694 Weston Rd., free blood and body of Christ too....yum) - having dinner at Father Lopez' house.
Put things you can't afford on your one credit card that's isn't yet maxed out. Or, better yet, a borrowed one! Buy some electronics. Spend a day at the spa. Get that diamond-encrusted pimp-cup you've always wanted. And keep a baseball bat by every door of your apartment/cardboard box to deal with creditors. When things get really hot, change your identity and skip town. Hitchhike south and move in with Father Lopez' cousin, Ignacio, in Guadalajara. Get caught stealing avocados and move into a Mexican jail. Learn Spanish there....for free!!!
Entertainment on a non-existent budget? Watch TV through peoples' living room windows! Use your swiped universal remote to change the channel to what you want to watch. Tap on the glass and gesture for them to open the window so you can hear, goddammit.
Speaking of entertainment, the Toronto International Film Festival (or tiffy tiff tiff, as it's known to insiders) is in full swing right now. You know what that means - prime opportunities to take revenge on rich people. Get in line at galas and red carpets and yell, "You suck! Boooo!" at the stars, and try to get their bodyguards to tackle you so you can sue. Bonus points for kicking Angelina Jolie in the shins. Double if she's holding a baby at the time.
Think you can't eat well when you're down and out? Two words: Raccoon bake. Toronto also has no dearth of squirrels, bats and crawling rodents. That neighbour's yappy dog that won't shut up? Chihuahua quesadillas! The cat that keeps spraying your back porch? Tabby on a stick! That's right. This is my territory, bitch.
When feeling particularly bitter, go to Holt Renfrew, gather armfuls of beautiful designer clothes that you can't afford to buy, and ask to try them on. Take them into the dressing room and pee on them. Ha ha! That'll show you, Stella McCartney! Fuck you, Alexander McQueen! That's what you get.....ill-paid store employee! Oh.
Stand in the lobby of a bank and cry. Go ahead, let it all out. You'll feel better. Again, try to break and/or pee on something before leaving. Preferably a manager.
Keep a positive attitude. By murdering at will.
When bill collectors call, talk really, really softly. On being asked to speak up, apologize, saying that there's a problem with your phone and that they'll have to turn the volume up on their end. Once they've done so....scream as loud as you can into the receiver and hang up. Laugh...and laugh....and laugh..... (For some reason, this is even funnier when the caller works for Revenue Canada. I don't know why.)
Move into High Park. keep moving. Don't let the bastards catch you.
And finally, if, even with all of these suggestions for keeping your destitute life kicky and fun, you somehow get tired of being poor:
Take back what you said about Internet porn and pay the bills, yo. It's the responsible thing to do.
Always glad to be of service,
Your hero,
The Skeptical Tourist
ON LOVE or BLAME THE FISH
From BLYTH, ONTARIO
August 5th, 2008
So, it's early August and I've completed my ex-lover tour of Ontario.
It all began at my pals Pete and Lisa's wedding reception, where I happened to be seated so that my heartbreaking former lover was DIRECTLY IN MY LINE OF VIEW to the microphone where everyone was giving their speeches, singing their songs, et cetera. I was moving around so much, trying to look on one side or the other instead of continually accidentally staring at his stupid head, that Bunker, who was my (utterly platonic) date, was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, did I have a yeast infection or something that was preventing me from sitting still. I dealt well though, I thought, until I went out on the sidewalk after dinner and passed out.
Yes, I literally fainted. For the record, I have low blood pressure and often do get dizzy. (Ask my college movement teacher, who attributed my dizzy spells to "Unresolved Emotional Issues", the crazy bitch.) For the record, I was dehydrated from the long drive from Blyth without drinking any water, and for the record it was thirty-some degrees and the air quality in Toronto was new and strange to a temporary country girl such as myself. Also for the record, I did smoke some of a joint, but believe it or not, Scandalized Reader, that's nothing entirely new. And for the record, this was before the dancing and the carrying on, and I'd only had two glasses of wine; this on a night when I'd planned to get so thoroughly in the bag that they'd have to dig me out from under coffee grounds and banana peels. Open bar. Goddammit. For the record, I ate the fish.
So I get dizzy, faint and hit the sidewalk, and Bunker and the Bundy-DeBeers, who are there, take fantastic care of me when I come to, and within minutes I feel fine but decide I should go home. Bunker drives me and helps me open all the windows in my apartment, which my subletter, who cleared out for the weekend, had earlier described to me as being "A really pleasant temperature; It reminds me of when I lived in Cambodia". Read: pretty much like hell.
Later, bored and feeling fine and watching Futurama, missing all the fun of the reception (the open bar! the Macarena!), I realize that there may be suspicions that I left early:
A) To avoid putting my envelope in the honeymoon donation box......or B) Because of The Boy.
So...Pete and Lisa: Your gift is in the mail! I swear! And Ass Head: I didn't leave early to avoid you! I would have danced you under the table! Well....not that way. I mean unless you really wanted to.... I mean....Up Yours, you no-good son of a whore!
Unresolved Emotional Issues indeed.
Stop number two consisted of actually AUDITIONING FOR a hot former lover, which is like one of those things actors have recurring nightmares about. And which turned out to be absolutely totally normal and fine, I mean as much as any audition can be normal and fine.....but do you think I slept at all the night before, sure that I would wake up fat or with a giant zit or something?
The whole ex-lover tour, though, centred on one trip to Stratford, where if you spit you'll hit someone who's fooled around with me. Really, I'm like some Stratford Festival wormhole - get in me, you'll be working there within a year. (Note to self: stop referring to vagina as "wormhole")...... But I digress.
Anyway, what with the wedding, and the audition and Stratford, I'm on this string of visitations with ex-lovers, some intentional, some surprising, and at the end of that week, what with the lack of sleep, and the booze and the pills and the fish, and oh, maybe it had something to do with the ex-lover sightings...... at the end of it all, I have a BIG REVELATION ABOUT LOVE. Do not, I repeat, do NOT cue strings; this ain't that type a' revelation.
I get to thinking about a recent encounter with a man I really like, who told me on discovering a film we'd both always wanted to see and missed, "I really want to watch that movie with you." Well, by God if that wasn't the most romantic thing I'd ever heard in my whole life. As if he'd written me a sonnet, sung me a song, dedicated the next inning to me on the Jumbotron....
"I really want to watch that movie with you." Sigh.
And WHY, why did this simple little phrase move me so? Wouldn't it be more exciting if he had said, Oh I don't know, I want to make love to you all night on the back of a dolphin swimming across the Pacific? No, actually, that would have just been weird. If he had said I want to take you on the top of a mountain and make you call out my name in ecstasy from the mountain tops? I would have told him, Sorry I have a matinee tomorrow. If he'd said, I want to spoon pudding all over your ass and slowly eat it off, flavour of your choice? Well....okay. Maybe. But, dear reader, appeals involving pudding and my butt are a dime a dozen (or at least they WERE, before I moved to Blyth).....while appeals to my mind are all too rare. I know, I know, my intellect is too vast and intimidating for most people. Then again, so is my ass, and men seem to get over that. Here was someone holding off the pudding and wanting to get to know me first. Or maybe he really did just want to watch the movie and nothing more. But I don't see how that's possible. I mean, really.
I don't blame men for the fact that EVERY ONE OF MY RELATIONSHIPS has been sex first, ask questions later. (Or sometimes just one question: "What are you still doing here?") I often orchestrated it that way. Partly I was just randy and impatient. Maybe, too, I didn't want to waste my time with someone who didn't know his way around, if you know what I mean. Trouble is, if he knew his way too well, I would manage to convince myself that he was Hugh Grant, Denzel Washington and Einstein all rolled into one. Except better. When he was actually more like Hitler, or Pauley Shore. So I ended up in some "relationships" that probably should have ended at how-do-you-do. And then, still reeling from the last ill-advised thing, I always intended that the next one wouldn't go anywhere and then whoops - there I was again. Going out with Hitler.
Would you believe that the Tourist, of all people, or at least her fully non-fictional alter-ego, Miss Norton, has spent a fair bit of time being walked all over by men? It's true. But I had a crick in my back, and they've got such pleasing, tiny feet, what can I say. Oh wait, that's geishas. Fuck men! Bring me twenty geishas!
Of course, I was cursed with ten years bad relationship karma because I was lousy, really lousy, to a good man when I was young. Occasionally I'll run into him on a streetcar or something and he's always so nice to me that I want to shake him, which doesn't help. And a couple of good, honest - if slightly homosexual - men along the way have provided parole breaks in my sentence here and there, giving me reprieves between the jerks....which means I'm still doing my time. Thanks a LOT, you no good, nice-guy motherfuckers.
I started to realize the other night, as I strolled the streets of Stratford trying to clear my head at three a.m. (eventually becoming so lost that I didn't make my way back to friend Kelli's house until five), that I've fallen into valuing myself based on my sexuality above all else. That I've used my wiles - and my pudding-bearing posterior - to get men interested, to keep them coming back. That I've underestimated my likeliness to attract love interests with my charm, my humour, and my big fat mutant brain.
And if I, a relatively well-raised, clever woman of thirty-two, have been treating myself as a sex object all these years - what does that mean for girls much younger than myself, girls raised in the light of billboards, girls coming of age sexually in a time when they get - and publicly reveal - their first thong at the age of nine? I'll tell you what it means, folks - we will never be at a loss for a neverending flow of prostitutes! And that's necessary to the North American economy. Also manufacturers of tube tops and eyeliner will continue to do well.
But I say NO! No, things must not continue this way!
Listen to me, Miley Ray!
Listen up, Shakira! (What's that you say?...Shakira's not a virgin? What - she's thirty-one? Research Department!!! I can't work like this.)
Listen to me, Virgins of the world!
Listen to me, Sluts!
Listen to me, Nice Girl Who's Confused About Love!
Women of Greece!
Start with dating first, Shania! Get to know him, Hillary MacDuff!
Join with me and let us take a VOW OF CELIBACY (until we change our minds or someone really hot convinces us otherwise. I know I know, I'm just getting the hang of this vow thing, give me a break).
Our only exceptions to this Vow will be as follows:
- One night stands with twenty-one year olds in Paris. No, Paris, Ontario doesn't count. Nor does Paris Hilton.
- "I was really, really wasted"
- "He's my dad. What can ya' do?"
Other from that, we shall live by the 3 Ates:
Wait, and Date, and Masturbate.
I will encounter criticism, I am sure, for taking this vow while living in Blyth, Ontario, after having famously and repeatedly complained about the town's lack of eligible cock. It will be easy for me, you will say, where there is a lack of temptation. The local tourist board, after all, has long advertised with brochures titled "Huron County: A Great Place to take your Vow of Chastity", and there's a monastery being built right next to the arena.
However, the opposite is true; I could not have chosen a more difficult time to take this vow. On arriving back in Blyth the other day, clutching my new-forged committment to celibacy, I immediately encountered a handsome, charming friend of a friend who danced the hours away with me at that night's opening party AND started dropping hints that he was neither gay nor had a girlfriend.
"No! Noooooo! Don't do it," cried the celibacy angel on my left shoulder, pulling up my bra strap while she was at it. "Besides, you haven't had a waxing recently! Do you have any idea how hairy you are down there?!"
"Yes! Yes! Oh God Yes," moaned the devil on my right. "You know you want it, you dirty little whore!" She pulled my strap back down, adding, "And hair is in right now."
Holding my dress and panties firmly on, I said goodnight and went home, but have since realized the extent of my quandary. I've returned to a place where I am now infamous for being the single horny girl who wants to get some. Where I can't compliment a young man on his show without it being assumed by the rumour mill (that's you, Eric) that I plan to compliment him with my vagina. Now they're knocking down my trailer door all night. (That's not a dirty euphemism by the way; I really do live in a trailer here. Ask anyone. Follow the crowd.) My last blague post, my earnest appeal for partners, was now paying off. Word has spread and single men and lipstick lesbians are flocking in from all over the world! Planes, trains and automobiles are in transit as we speak! Just as I have taken a firm and decisive (honest I swear) vow to forgo sex!
I'm aware that I asked for this. I'm aware that I begged. Petitions were signed, emails forwarded, travel agents got excitedly involved. But now that my very prayers have come true, all I can say is....
STOP THE TRAINS! I WANT TO GO TO THE MOVIES!
(And there's no cinema in Blyth.)
SAME BLYTH TIME, SAME BLYTH CHANNEL or, What Does it Take to Get Laid in This Town?
Sent: 16th July, 2008 11:48AM
To: Eric Coates, Artistic Director,
Blyth Festival,
Blyth, Ontario
From: Lisa Norton, Chair, S.W.O.B.
Dear Mr Coates,
I write you today on behalf of the Single Women of the Blyth Festival Company (S.W.O.B), in order to point out what we consider to be an unfair and blatant breach of contract.
We were promised action, Mister Coates. Nookie. A li'l sump'n sump'n, know 'm sayin? In one notable case, Sir, a single female member of the acting company was lured to work for you this season by promises that you would "find her a husband".
Where is this husband, Mister Coates? Where is the nookie, for that matter? The anonymous cornfield love? The spicy country sausage? It is noted that you have chosen to employ precisely ZERO single men at this season's Blyth Festival, while employing several (okay, two to four) unattached straight women. Is this your idea of a cruel joke, Sir? It is one thing to have this unfair ratio in effect; it is surely another, and far more malicious thing, to have actually promised otherwise - to have lured trusting, healthy young women to an out of the way town in order to leave them frustrated and lonely as you cackle away with delight in your corner office and go home each night to spoon your attractive wife.
Do not think we haven't tried to find the bright side of this, Mister Coates, the celibate cloud's silver lining, if you will. We have been handed lemons, and gamely tried for Lesbian Lemonade*, to no avail. One of us, at least, looked inward to one of her own number, making what may be considered some quality Lesbionic (part gay, part.....bionic) moves on a cute girl from wardrobe. On returning to work the day after these preliminary moves, what was our hardluck gal surprised to find out? You know the almost unbelievable - yet all too terribly true - answer, Mister Coates: she was informed that said cute wardrobe girl had resigned her position and suddenly left town.
Not only are we not provided men, but sapphic love is denied us in your horrible isolated world as well? As soon as we show some interest in a perhaps legitimate romantic possibility, long shot as it may be, that possibility is whisked out of town under cover of darkness?! How dare you, Mister Coates. How can you sleep at night? Oh, yes, we've been over that - you sleep very comfortably at night, arms around your attractive wife, coming back to work each day refreshed and happy, as all the while certain members of your company become more and more agitated and slowly go insane.
I hereby present some sad facts, you evil, evil man. They are not pretty, and we are not proud, but perhaps this will adequately illustrate the pain and suffering you have caused:
Exhibit A: A young woman stands on the steps of the Blyth Festival office, hovering dangerously close to returning the attentions of the drunken stranger across the street outside the Boot, that unyielding - and, it must be said, only - town watering-hole. He regales her with shouted pickup lines ranging from the typical ("Hey gorgeous, where youse goin'?) to the bizarre ("I'm the best Celt you'll ever cuddle!"). As she considers this last, thinking, Hell, it's something! And chances are he has a penis...., the drunkard's cell phone rings. He answers and commences a brief conversation, his side of which is: "Yup, still at the bar......Be home soon......Okay, love you too, babe." As our girl walks away, he yells, "Nice ass!", and she fights the impulse to run back and say, "Yeah? You really think so?"
A look at Exhibit B finds another of our young put-upon ladies alone in her kitchen late at night after an evening of drowning her sorrows at the Boot, and returning home inevitably alone. As she prepares a midnight snack, she finds herself standing over a pan of sizzling bacon and thinking how each piece looks like a lover curling around the others. Every rearrangement of the bacon in the pan, each touch of the spatula, reveals to her a new tableau of orgyaic delight, each more excruciating than the last. She knows it is ridiculous to dream of orgies when even one single man is not to be found, but she finds herself unable to look away from the hot, writhing little pork bodies as they cook away and entwine in increasingly obscene ways. She returns to work the next day, horribly burned from grease splatters, but, trooper that she is, does not complain.
Exhibit C: The Single Blyth woman who spends an inordinate proportion of her weekly pay at the local farmers' market so that she may catch a glimpse of the gorgeous Amish man who smiles and sells her meat. This same girl, I am sad to say, recently developed a fear of the radio. Every song, it seemed, was either the horny rejoice of someone who was getting some, or a lonely-hearted lament designed to remind her of her unsatisfied state. She became convinced that the radio was addressing her directly. A feeling that many desolate people share from time to time, this was easily sympathized with yet dismissed by other members of the S.W.O.B....until it was discovered that she had a point - yes, each song actually was about her. And the rest of us, too. Certain members of the committee suspect you, Eric Coates, of manipulating the airwaves, our ipods, and the recording industry at large.
This could go on and on, Mister Coates, but hopefully by now you will have seen the error of your ways.
Be warned that some members of the S.W.O.B. are of the disturbing opinion that the husband offered was you; that you have hatched a plan to prey upon these desperate young ladies and become the sole male member of the Blyth Theatre Festival/Cult, surrounded by pregnant theatre professionals, who will populate Huron County with an army of Coates's(s...s), whom we will raise as scenic painters, dramaturges, and most importantly, as wealthy patrons of the arts/militiamen.
But let us hope that is not true, and assume for now that you did not set out with malice in your heart. The 2004 Blyth season saw the beginning of many couples, several of which have blossomed into love and even marriage. The entire team of female stage managers that year found love with able-bodied, eligible crewmen. Perhaps this is what prompted you to boast of your skills as a matchmaker, to say that you have "a way with these things". To promise us lovers and husbands. Well, four years have passed since that magical year of romance, and we of the S.W.O.B are here to tell you that you may no longer rest on the very cold laurels of 2004. We want men, Mister Coates, and we want them now.
Also I would like the pretty girl from wardrobe back.
Sincerely,
Lisa Norton,
Chair,
Single Women of Blyth
__________________________________________________________
* Also a good band name
The Eiffel Tower Swimsuit Issue
July 2nd, 2008
Enough. This is the photo issue, dammit.....and I think you may be ready.
So colour is a recent development......and all the more impressive for it.
(In one of the city's many huge and gorgeous parks)
The shots below are from Museum Island -er, Insel. The purty old church is only a hundred years old; it was built to replace another church that burned down, which had been built to replace another one that burnt down. All this before it got bombed during the war. Ah, peaceful Berlin. The shell to the right of it is the former East German parliament, which they've been taking apart for years now. Apparently in Commie times it housed several hopping discos and a bowling alley. Seriously. You can't make this shit up.
Altes (old) Museum: You may have seen footage of Hitler giving speeches in front of this building. He thought it would make a serious, imposing backdrop and make people mistake the Nazis for something along the lines of the Roman Empire. Note questionable replacement of Hitler with Calgarian blondes.
The floating Russian soldier at Checkpoint Charlie:
Typically Berlin bizarre tourist shit:
The "Checkpoint Curry" Currywurst stand .....
.....That much-coveted souvenir gas mask that allmy friends back home had begged and begged for....
....And, of course, the Brandenburg Gates andthe Titanic rendered
in tasty German chocolate.
Here are the two dudes dressed up as American and Russian soldiers at Checkpoint Charlie. That's a "1 Euro for photo" sign on the one guy's crotch.
A piece of the Wall:
At the Reichstag (which you're now supposed to call the Bundestag; the official pamphlet insists on this - and then it immediately goes back to saying "Reichstag" in the next paragraph), where I got a little snap-happy....
......And where I took my self-portrait-ization to a whole new level (eerie lighting and all...though I clearly should have splurged on a better hairstylist).
The Berlin Fuhrnseturm (or some variation of that, which I am too lazy to look up). Real groovy- looking from the ground, no great shakes to go up, especially if you hail from the CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE and have been to the top of the CN Tower several times. (Yes, I will let you touch my feet, for a small fee.) Berlin's beauty is at ground level anyway. But it IS a groovy tower.
The entrance gate to the beautiful Berlin Zoo....
...And a sampling of the five million photographs I took inside:
Below, also in the zoo: Hands-down the strangest fountain I've ever seen. A devil spitting on a young boy's head and naked body. There's a nearby statue of Lida and the swan, so maybe this one's from some fable or myth as well??? Fucking weird, that's all I have to say. Berlin, Berlin, Berlin. What am I gonna do with you?
Okay. You know what, Naive and Trusting Reader? I'm done. At least for today. I mean, I've been awake for, like, hours.....and my medicinal vodka alarm is ringing. You're pooped, too, I'm sure, what with the overload of artistic beauty, not to mention monkeys and giraffes.
So, as is becoming usual, I lied. The Paris photos will have to wait until another day. Suckahhhs!
Oh, wait. That's no way to treat you, my loyal and magnificently gorgeous public. I smooch you all. And, as thanks for sticking with me thus far......
Bonus Monkey Video!!! Just like you've all been waiting for!!! Woo Hoo!
A million kisses on all your little monkey paws,
Your Sophisticated Lady,
The Tourist
