“Whhhhhyyyyyy?” and Other Answers

From TORONTO

January 18th, 2014

A WARNING: Today’s edition of The Tourist may make zero sense particularly to those new to this blague, and/or in general, to anyone, ever. What else is new.

What the fuck, you guys! I’ve been lost in West Ed Mall for the last eleven months - why didn't you send help? Some blog readers you are. What, did Gwyneth Paltrow post some vegan pie recipes or something? So much for loyalty.

Okay, okay, I can't lie to you, not when you're looking at me with those big puppy dog eyes that I can totally see through your webcam with this nifty new malware I downloaded....oh now you reach for the duct tape! Great! Like The Fifth Estate didn't warn you of this stuff months ago. I hate you guys! (No, Norton, no. Stop it. 2014 will be a year of love. Deep breath. Blame yourself. [Man, what a shitty resolution. Note to self: look into that.] Now get out of all these parentheses for God’s sake, before it’s too late.)

I have been remiss. Ant-e-social. (Get it? Oh yeah - I’m back!) AWOL. Absent. Inexcusably keeping all my own thoughts inside my own head instead of farting them all over the internet. (Farting from my head? Mixed metaphor? Pure gibberish? Fine with me. Like I said, I’m back.) But it’s not like I didn’t have you in mind, Dear Reader – proof can be found in the indecipherable blague notes all over the place: on my phone, on my computer desktop, on real paper in and on my real desktop, in the pages of my giant procrastination, er, crossword puzzle book, on the walls. It looks like A Beautiful Mind over here, guys, and makes even less sense in the light of day. For instance, what is Russell Crowe doing on my couch? Is that MY underwear?

I have the more-than-skeleton of an entire sports issue somewhere in this computer – the theme of which was, mainly, how I don’t give a damn about sports…so I guess case closed on that one.  

Most of my notes begin with long-windedly hilarious explanations of why I hadn’t written. Lord, what a liar I am. Stupid! Stupid! Useless! Ugly! (Resolution continues well.) 

Having gotten a pet dog recently, I thought maybe I could go all Lauren Hill in Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, when she held up her baby boy on the concert stage and said “You want to know where I’ve been? This is where I’ve been. This is what I’ve been doing”. Three people gave a semi-enthusiastic “whoo” and the rest of the crowd said “Meh. Cute kid, but he’s no Miseducation of Lauren Hill”. Yes. IN UNISON. They all said that. Don’t question me; I have it on Blu-ray. Also, I’ve been to Brooklyn. TWICE.

However. I don’t want you to think of my pooch, Walter, as my Yoko Ono (aside: I’ve been listening to Double Fantasy a lot; is it wrong that I like Yoko’s side of the album so very very much these days?), or as my Lauren Hill’s Stinky-ass Kid. Plus I haven’t had Walter long enough for that excuse to fly anyway; not unless you believe I actually gestated and birthed this dog, in which case, boy have I got a story for you! Warning: it’s super gross.

OH, LIKE YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE THE BEATLES FOR THIS GUY.

To be clear, I don’t in any way liken myself to the creative genius that is Lauren Hill.

…I think of it more as if Michelangelo had quit sculpting and painting in his prime, suddenly going “Guys, I like making art and all, but did you know there’s a mah jongg app for your phone? It’s got, like eighty-nine levels.” (Oh shit, not ready to unveil this “phone” technology I’ve secretly invented.) “I mean, um…chess. Playing a LOT of chess. IRL. Say what? You know – In Real Life. Oh yes, of course real life, what else could I mean, ha ha. Stop looking at me.”

Yes, Michelangelo said “say what?” all the time. Shut up. I have him on Blu-ray.

Whatever my reasons (Soul-crushing depression, anyone? Debilitating creative doubt? No, trust me – order the fish), I lost my writey-mojo for a while and didn’t feel like telling nobody nothing. Maybe I was frittering away all my good material ranting on Facebook. (Go ahead and piece together a special triple-issue from my posts there, Superfans. Sell it at the next convention.) Maybe, facing my approaching TENTH ANNIVERSARY as the Skeptical Tourist, I subconsciously thought not writing for a year could allow me to deny the absurd reality of how old that makes me. Maybe the longer I didn’t write, the more petrified I became by the enormous uber-blague that I imagined I owed you. Maybe my thoughts seemed small and petty and ugly, and I was trying to find my nobler self, which I thought must be in there somewhere: 

I remember when doctor Tarek Loubani and filmmaker John Greyson were being detained in Cairo, all I kept thinking was how I just knew that if I were Greyson’s boyfriend here at home during the crisis, I'd be all like "Oh great, John - you just had to be taken hostage with a gorgeous doctor/professor/humanitarian? You couldn't find some ugly loser to be taken hostage with like the rest of us? ONLY YOU, JOHN, ONLY YOU!” …Striving desperately to say supportive things for the media, while getting too deeply into the pinot home alone at night (“Well, might as well finish the bottle now”) and scratching out Tarek’s eyes in the Toronto Star; taking the “Free Tarek and John” button Sarah Polley gives me at the TIFF press conference and sharpie-ing in “FUCK Tarek and John” angrily in the bathroom stall after everyone else leaves for a big premiere to which I’m not invited. “Rachel McAdams, you cunt! Who needs you!” …Sobbing as quietly as I can on the cold tiled floor and all I can think about is what a great six-pack that doctor must be getting as the hunger strike stretches on, while my hairline recedes further and further and my eczema acts up. “What about ME, Sarah Polley? What about MEEEE?”

I KNOW YOU’RE IN SEPARATE PHOTOS AND EVERYTHING 
BUT MUST YOU LOOK AT HIM LIKE THAT?
AND ARE THOSE HAZEL EYES? FUCK RIGHT OFF.

My endless high-minded optimism doesn’t stop there, Dear Reader, oh no. On reading of a certain recent fiery car crash involving a fiery movie star and his friend, I couldn’t help the places my mind went as to the cause:

Was it a hand job? Or a blow job? In my mind’s twisted eye, the aftermath goes like this: 
Ejected from car, movie star’s body burnt to bits; movie star’s penis, severed at the base but otherwise intact in his secret lover’s dying mouth. Movie star’s intact member kept and preserved in jar of formaldehyde, unknown to anyone, by the Medical Examiner, who keeps it on her bedside table at night with a special light trained on it which she flicks on, to stare and stare, unblinking, when she can’t sleep at night. “What about MEEEE, Sarah Polley?” she cries, “What about meeeee?”  

Anyway.

Now I realize that stuff is all hilarious, and not disturbing AT ALL. (While simultaneously realizing that my perhaps veering on unhealthy obsession with handsome-man gay sex might bear looking into.) And anyway, I haven’t mentioned names, so absolutely no one could have any idea what real-life idiot drag-racing movie star and his stupid friend I’m talking about. (Disclosure: I actually debated back and forth with myself about whether to delete this whole sordid and insensitive bit, but ultimately, come on - grown men? With children? Drag racing? Morons. Save your flowers, people.)   

The thing is, and I’m not sure if this is heartening or incredibly the opposite, this is the kind of shit that everyone out there is ever thinking all the time. Right??

I mean, what goes on in the heads of all those mild ordinary people you encounter every day? WEIRD THINGS are happening behind the glasses of that librarian over there. (And why jump to librarians as the go-to icon for nerd-dom, Lisa? How lazy - and just plain wrong, when you know full well that librarians are enjoying a resurgence as some hip new breed with lots of degrees and rockabilly hairdos who spend their days inventing hilarious Ryan Gosling memes.) Anyway, can we just agree that we’re all obsessed with severed celebrity penises? Thank you.

LET US NOW TAKE A MOMENT TO APPRECIATE THE RARE 
POLLEY-McADAMS-GOSLING BLOG HAT TRICK.
THANK YOU. AS YOU WERE.

Well here I am, knowing all that. My thoughts on severed penises are as worthy as the next guy’s. And I finally thought I’d better get back on here before people starting referring to me as Defunct Blogger Lisa Norton. Or more accurately as “…Who?” (Always thinking about that obituary. If I don’t blague enough for The Tourist to even be mentioned, how is my immeasurable wit ever to be discovered posthumously? How will anyone know the pain of John Greyson’s poor nameless boyfriend? Hmmm, SARAH POLLEY?)

 HELP ME, MUSLIM HAZMAT SARAH POLLEY. YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE.

But nobody can make a lady feel like writing. Fact is, I finally got that “I’m going to suffer from insomnia and gut pain and constant pooping until I write everything I’m dying to write” feeling. And hey, if I was gonna be awake with diarrhea all week, I might as well be awake with diarrhea WITH YOU. Awwww, sweet, I know. Plus, when I do sleep of late, I’ve having dreams in which I write big brillant things. For instance, a recent dream hit novel of mine that I ought to wake up and bring to fruition: Kill The Dead. Zombie book? Jumped the shark? Who knows. But try and tell me that’s not a brilliant title and I’ll beat you with a baseball bat. So them creative juices are aflow and try and stop me now.

Jesus. I just Googled it to be sure and Kill the Dead is already a novel. I give up.

Until next year, 

The Tourist