The Skeptical Tourist

we are the fun percent

2011-12-05T19:42:00.002-05:00

From TORONTO,
December 5th, 2011

Dear Talent Agency by which I am represented,

I recently sent a hopeful letter to my agent, who is a relatively recent addition to your company, asking whether there would be an agency Christmas party. The following was her unedited reply:
"No, they don't do those here."

I did not leave my bed in the week that followed.

Let me explain my position. Sitting on a chair in my living room, one leg tucked under me, rather grossly hunched over my keyboard; terrible posture, quite frankly.

No, not that position. This one:

I was self-represented for many years. I was so obviously untalented and unattractive that no one wanted to rep me. Or maybe it was the fact that I had a habit of cutting my own boy-short hair, and agents were afraid I would be unmarketable, looking as I did like a crazed escapee from the Scarborough School for Worse Boys. Regardless.

When I did eventually grow out the bald spots and get an agent, she was a solo self-employed one, operating out of her high-rise one-bedroom apartment, her work mainly consisting of throwing her clients' résumés from the balcony and hoping they would land on the desk of an interested casting director. When she didn't opt to have a holiday party, there was a small sigh of relief from me and her other six clients, none of whom had relished the idea of singing carols on the couch with her Santa-hat-wearing cats and passing around a dusty bottle of Kahlua.

Meanwhile we heard rumours of the BIG AGENCIES and their BIG PARTIES; their wild-and-crazy goings-on, their open bars, their dressed-to-the-nines-ness and dancing. I dreamed of being invited as someone's guest, but it seemed everyone always brought a boyfriend or girlfriend or wife, and I was left out in the not-only proverbial cold, staring, in my threadbare parka, through a bit of fogged-up window, hoping that one of the guests would throw me a bit of a cheeseball or toss a dazzling smile my way.

Eventually the big agencies stopped allowing their clients to bring dates, a sensible austerity measure in the face of our struggling industry in those, as our friend Joe Cobden once put it, "hilarious economic times". Others joined me with their faces pressed against those windows. More still stayed at home and ate gruel and played at solitaire.

In 2005, I joined a medium-sized agency; only two agents but with plenty of impressive clients, an assistant in the front room, and an office that did not convert into a sleeping area at night. No cats. Hooray, I thought, this is my chance! December 2005, here I come! We may have to buy our own drinks, but just let me at those canapés!!!

Alas, Caldwell Jeffery had held what was to be its last Christmas party in 2004. The year I signed with them I remember them saying that they'd hopefully get around to planning a post-holiday gathering in January, which I believe they actually did. I was in Winnipeg, doing a play and dutifully sending home my commission, which may have paid for the streamers. I've never been sure whether to take that personally.

In 2010, as you know, Dear Agency, Shari Caldwell retired, and the Jeffery in Caldwell Jeffery went to work for you. A BIG FAT AGENCY, one of those whose parties I had shivered outside of, sniffing teary-eyed at their schmoozy good-cheer. Imagine my disappointment when I received Alicia's afore-quoted email.

I know it's not just you, Characters Toronto. I know it's not even our industry. I know that companies everywhere, in all business sectors, have cut back on perks like parties and dinners and gifts. My father, one recent Christmas, received as recognition for another profit-posting year of hard work, a Tim Horton's gift card in a red envelope. But at least he once — for a few decades, in fact — experienced the heyday of Christmas parties past. I was a KID in the eighties; those days passed me by! And now? What of the young actors born in the eighties or nineties, for whom, with less and less living witnesses each year, the legends of coked-up rehearsal halls and sex in the green room are becoming more and more faded and wan, less and less easy to believe? Do we bear no responsibility to them, or to the long-held traditions of our acting, singing, dancing and lampshade-wearing forbears?

What of the entire city, nay country, whose citizens should be able to look to their artists for examples of salacious gossip and hedonistic pleasure: who will the drones have to live vicariously through, if not us?

This one small outlet, but once a year: this is all I ask.

For, quite simply put, nothing happens anymore. I've taken to buying vintage gossip on etsy.com. It's just not the same.

Now and then we do hear of someone leaving her spouse and kid — but is she running off to live on an orgiastic, drug-filled commune; to smoke crack and sell guns and have rampant anal with underage hookers? Not usually. More likely, she's just amicably wandering off to find a new spouse and have another damn kid. Borrrrrrr-ring.

Gossip now:

“Did you hear? So-and-so and whats-her-name split up!”
"You're kidding! Was there someone else?"
“No, it just didn't work out and they're both very sad. I hear they're having trouble deciding who should keep all their stuff....he insists she should take everything, and she wants him to have it."
"Awww."
"In other news…I hear whos-his-face and whos-his-face are renovating their kitchen.”
“NO!”
"It's true!"

Gossip after an office holiday party:

“Did you hear? So-and-so left whats-her-name!”
“Well, after all those people eating her out on the bar at the agency party, I gotta say I'm not all that surprised."
”Oh yeah! I think I was there for that!”
”There for that?? You were handing out the limes and salt!”
”Oh YEAH. Well, what happens under the mistletoe—”
”—Stays under the mistletoe.”
“…Speaking of which - have you seen my watch?”

(Dear Agency, I can't believe I just made the ol' watch-in-vagina joke. Do you see what you've driven me to?! Things are more dire than even I had realized. Save me from myself.)

Listen, I hate to sound paranoid, but should I be taking this personally? Do you fear that I’ll dance on the tables and make a fool of myself? In that case, it might be a good time for this confession, Dear Agency:

At age 36, I have yet to actually dance on a table. I did once, very recently (EXHIBIT A), wear my first lampshade, but that was not in a burst of drunken, party-down idiocy: it was merely punishment at the hands of my asshole friends for having lost too many hands in a row of "Stoned Bastard". We weren't even stoned at the time. In fact, it was the most boring experience of my life. I hate you, Andy and Jeff.

EXHIBIT A. MAN, THIS EXHIBIT SUCKS.

In any case, the lampshade thing is not likely to happen. Most bars don't have proper lamps with shades on them, for one thing. And no one's gonna dance around with a halogen bulb on his head.

As for table dancing, my opportunities are thinning out. How much do I actually leave the house, to begin with, let alone to land in an environment with A: enticingly high tables, and B: People who will encourage such behaviour? If not at an office Christmas party, when and where will my chance present itself?

Please, I'm begging you, provide the opportunity now, lest I, desperate and determined at age fifty, clamber onto the table of a local, half-empty drinking establishment, only to be quietly helped down by an embarrassed young barkeep who then discreetly confiscates my glass of cheap cabernet. Please let this happen where at least one person will whoop and where at least Shauna Black will join me.

Have your lawyers warned you of liability issues related to office Christmas parties? Are you concerned about possible drinking and driving? Where, I ask, are we all driving to? And in what? We're actors: three of us have cars, and only one of those three can afford gas. And in a week or two that will no longer be the case, so you needn't concern yourselves about that. (Besides, there are even actors who don't drink who can function as designated drivers. I know they exist: when I joined the union I had to promise to drink enough to make up for anyone who quit. I'm currently up to five.) So at worst we may spill into the streets and be loud and obnoxious in cabs and on streetcars. But it has been well documented that actors are on average 80% better looking and 22% more charming than your typical drunk, and in 96% more dialects. Our Irish accents alone will delight and entertain our fellow TTC travelers from The Beaches all the way to Parkdale. And back, should we get lost or fall asleep.

You have rosters packed chock-a-block with attractive, charismatic single (or, you know, not strictly monogamous) people. Together we have the potential to make one helluva party and some very sweet love; why would you want to keep us apart? Are you afraid of the nuclear-grade celebratory power that would potentially be unleashed? Or. Dare I ask...?

...Does the Harper government have something to do with all this? Does our fearless federal leader suspect that a tightly-packed communion of so many arty pinkos with nothing to lose could create something akin to a merry yuletide terrorist cell? Or, that in our inevitable pairings-off, one fateful couple with one fateful hole in one fateful condom may just create the next great magnetic leader of the left? RISE UP, Dear Toronto branch of the Characters Talent Agency, RISE UP! Don't pander to the PMO; don't fear them! We're the cool kids! Or we could be! Stand with us! We are the fun percent!

Have you learned nothing from the worldwide Occupy movement? One of these days, Dear Agency, if one is not provided, we may just storm the office and make our own party. Sit on the floor and drink egg nog and play spin the demo.

Oh, and we'll need the photocopy code so we can replicate this bum-Xeroxing thing we've all heard about from old reruns of Rhoda and Newhart. Party animals, we are. Come on, you were all there in the eighties. You had all your hair and your desks were full of blow and you partied your shoulder pads right off. Show us the way.

SAY, ISN’T THIS AGENCY PRESIDENT LARRY GOLDHAR AT THE 1992 PARTY? MUSTA BEEN COLD. MAN, YOU GUYS WERE INTREPID.

But assuming you get on board (and I do have faith), you had better plan this soon. We'll need a little notice, to get out of our shifts...catering other people's office Christmas parties.

Yours, just sitting here alone in my stilettos,
waiting,

Lisa Norton

Skepterminator 2: Judgment Day

2011-10-01T16:58:00.003-04:00

From TORONTO

October 1st, 2011

Yes, yes, dear reader, it’s been three months. DO NOT START WITH ME. I will slap you silly and send you to bed with no supper. Oh, you like that, do you? Tramp.

Now shut up and listen. (I’ve missed you, too.)

Here’s what happened to me: I was eaten by wild bears. Chewed up and everything. I was so tasty that they didn’t swallow for a while, just sucked on bits of me like lozenges. Eventually sensing my will to live and feeling that deep, inexorable guilt that only bears can know, they spit me out, whence all the pieces of me came together and became whole again. I can do that now. It’s fun. I’m shiny. Also I run really fast. Like this:

Yep, I’m that guy now. It’s awesome. The hours are long and I have to kill a lot of people but the pension plan is unbelievable.

All right, what’s more strange: that “Gutti”, wherever he is, God bless his heart, put hours of time and trouble into making that video…or that I just spent forty minutes watching fan-made Terminator 2 clips on youtube looking for the perfect one to share with you?

Here’s my favourite, a medical doctor’s in-depth analysis of T-1000’s running gait and why he couldn’t catch Arnie and the Connors (failing where apparently African marathon champion Belayneh Densamo would have, in his prime, succeeded, though odds are three to one Belayneh might deal less resiliently with the being blown in the face with a shotgun):

Also odd is the Terminator 2 “Barbie Girl” mashup, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna attach that one. You can look that up on your own time, reader. What do you think I am, a link machine? NO! I am liquid metal! I have better things to do!

Okay.

All this is moot, as those of you who know me well and deeply are fully aware that “eaten by bears” is a metaphor for “in trouble with Revenue Canada”. “I am liquid metal” is clearly code for “I didn’t write because I’ve spent the last two months staring at a calculator in a pile of receipts and tears”. “I can survive crashing my stolen Mack truck which then blows up and sets on fire with me in it and can walk through walls and make my hands into unbreakable swords that can cut through elevator doors or, if need be, your face” translates to “I don’t make plans because I should be finishing my back taxes so I stay home but end up playing computer mahjong and watching clips of movies from my teenage years set to bad nineties techno songs”. “I kill a lot of people” means “I kill a lot of people”. Watch out, Canada Revenue Agency. I know where you live.

Meanwhile, in a darkened subterranean bunker deep below the heart of Sudbury Ontario, a computer beeps and flashes. Agent 38643, albino hunchback tax collector, jerks awake from his nap and squints at the screen. “Boss,” he says, “She’s writing about us again.”

“Slap another arbitrary twelve thousand dollars of penalties on her bill,” comes a sinister voice from the darkness.

“But that doesn’t seem to be working. It’s up to forty-eight thousand now, and she hasn’t flinched. Wait, wait…’shotgun’…’sword hands’…’know where you…’ — there are new threats here, boss. She’s escalating! SHE’S ESCALATING! I’m calling the RCMP!”

“Get a hold of yourself, 38643. That’s exactly what she wants. We will not play into her liquid metal hands.”

A rat runs by. 38643 recoils in fear. In the darkened corner, where Number One’s chair sits in shadow: a squeak; the sound of crunching; a small carcass hits a concrete wall and slides down to its rest.

“She claims she doesn’t have the money, boss.”

“Doesn’t have the money? Doesn’t have it?! You’ve seen her bank records: she paid debit for a chocolate bar only last week! Must be nice! And received a whopping eleven dollar cheque for tips on her last catering job! And now — NOW she’s back in TORONTO, ooh la la, centre of the UNIVERSE, working in CANADIAN TELEVISION! The self-superior little tart, she thinks she’s soooOOOOOooo great, making her millions and ordering her servants to bring her lattes and designer lollipops, smearing foie gras and caviar all over her body just for kicks! I’ll KILL HER!!! I’LL FUCKING KILL HER! I WILL GET HER, 38463, IF IT’S THE LAST THING I EVER DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”

“Hold me.”

So yeah, every last penny I make off this fancy TV show, and then some, will go to the government. I, in return, will feel the glowing satisfaction of paying a disproportionate share toward keeping those social programs I so believe in going. Or — better yet — maybe I’ll finance a wing on one of Canada’s shiny new fighter jets, or a few steel bars in one of our super new prisons. (No biggie, oil sands magnates with fancy tax lawyers; I got this one.) It would all smart a little less if they’d at least name something after me. Or commission a sculpture, both commemorating my contribution and serving as a warning to any other tax defaulters. On Parliament Hill, rendered in bronze: me, on my knees, weeping, a Revcan envelope in one hand, giving Stephen Harper a handjob.

Another question: Is it more disturbing to think of Stephen Harper’s having a penis…or not having one? Either way, I need to go wash my hands after typing that. And have my memory erased. Wipe out your hard drive and we’ll never speak of this again.

FYI, interested readers: the Wikipedia “handjob” page has been updated since last I googled it (as ever, to double check whether “handjob” is all one word or not). New mutual masturbation paintings from the 19th century! You are welcome. Out of curiosity and a fear that I’m becoming repetitive, I also just looked up “skeptical tourist handjob” to see how many mentions I’ve made over the years, and four or five popped up. (Followed swiftly by a page titled “A couple’s Bangkok experience” — no pun, I imagine, intended — and links to gayporn.com and interracialhandjobspages.com. That’s right, PAGES, in the plural. Their leading news story, according to the page(s) summary, seems to be “White Female Tourist Touching Big Cocks Of African Men”. I’m not making this up. Go ahead, look it up, I’ll wait. Okay, I won’t wait that long: bookmark it for later, pervert.

God I love the internet. It’s made us all so much smarter. Anyway, I’ve decided to let my reference stand, and not only because I couldn’t bear to change it to a Stephen Harper blowjob. (Blechhh. Bleh. Ack. I apologize.) Decades from now, in Skeptical Tourist 101 classes throughout the world, students and their profs will discuss the recurring motif of the handjob in Lisa Norton’s work and the realm of academia will be richer for it. Handjob handjob handjob. There, now when you look up my name in any search engine that will be the first thing that comes up.

This week, when you type my name in, you get this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/lisa-norton-gabriel-neilsen-swim-away_n_885297.html

And this handy mugshot:

All these years I’ve been so proud of The International League of Lisa Nortons, basking in the Lisas’ various successes as scientists and painters, novelists and teachers, conveniently ignoring the dark side of the league: the ones that get drunk and cause accidents and then try to swim away from the scene of the crime. Mind you, I do wish I shared this member’s eye colour, if not her relationship with alcohol.

It’s quite a sad story, so I don’t want to laugh at “Norton killed Neilsen in his Nissan on Nelson Road”…but, dammit, there I go again. Also not helping me keep a straight face here is the fact that a castmate on Bomb Girls sent me this last night:

Antonio’s a big star in Italy, you see, and one of his fans made this montage when she heard about his latest project. She painstakingly found info on the show and photos of the cast, and lo and behold, when you Google my name in Italy, you get Lisa Norton, Swimmer Under The Influence. The fan will probably fix this video and A: this blague post will make no sense anymore, and B: I won’t have a go-to clip when I feel like falling down laughing. It’s good just as long as it lasts. Grazie, Mariagrazia!

Well friends, there’s a lot more procrastinating to be done, and I can’t do it all here with you. There are papers to be shuffled around, laundry to be glanced at once or twice, eyebrows to be plucked into oblivion…and at least six or eight more Terminator clips. This one alone needs to be watched for about three hours:

So that’s that. More soon. Trust me, I have so much nonsense built up inside my head it’s starting to come out as snot and earwax. And on that elevated note,

Forever up yours,

The Tourist

quiet riot (cum on feel the…poise?)

2011-06-19T02:49:00.003-04:00

From VANCOUVER,

June 19th, 2011

I’m the first to admit…things got a little out of control.

The game had just ended and we were angry and shocked and upset. The atmosphere in Sarah Cobb’s West End apartment was tense and just ready to blow.

We heard a crash from the kitchen. Ashley, washing wine glasses in a frenzy of rage, had broken one.

Stacie threw a napkin on the floor.

Nick uttered the word “fuck” several times in rapid succession.

Jacquie was so mad she wasn’t even there.

The other women suddenly banded together and, in a case of classic mob mentality, began looting the apartment, raiding a box of clothes that Sarah was getting rid of with a savage ferocity.

Shaughnessy, who had flown all the way from Toronto for this, was turning a dangerous shade of red. “Man, if I had a hockey stick I would bust some shit right now. Luckily, I just have this pencil.”

Toby grabbed the pencil from Shaughnessy’s hand. “Hey man - did you have this pencil here the whole game?! This is a Sanford Number One, asshole! Don’t you realize that this pencil is painted the exact same shade as Bruin yellow? And that the Sanford Pencil Company was founded in Massachusetts?! How DARE you bring that pencil into this city, let alone this house?” He threw the offending utensil on the floor and grabbed Shaughnessy by the collar of his threadbare Canucks t-shirt, shaking him back and forth. The other men backed away to the hors d’oeuvre table, trying to avoid this sudden outburst by munching on some delicious charcuterie.

A roar came from the Designated Looting Area in the other room as the ladies discovered a one-shouldered summer dress and proceeded to tear it to pieces.

Shaughnessy scrambled to defend himself. “Sanford’s now a subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid and based in Oak Brook, Illinois!” Toby’s right fist was cocked and ready to throw a punch but now he hesitated. “This pencil was manufactured in their Mississauga, Ontario factory by proud Canadians!” The grip of Toby’s left hand on Shaughnessy’s collar loosened slightly. “This shade of yellow also matches that of the old Vancouver “flying skate” logo, used from ‘78-‘97, as evidenced by the faded but still sufficiently clear t-shirt I am wearing go Canucks!”

Toby let him go. They hugged. The women shredded a pair of navy blue capris.

“That’s it,” said Mike, who had sat silent all this time, his post-game pout looking more and more menacing with every passing minute, his rage increasing as he checked Facebook on his iPhone and read the taunts of his asshole Ontario friends saying horrible things like “Nah nah na-na nahhh” and “Maybe next time”. He now made a sudden and threatening move up out of the leather armchair. “I’m gonna go downtown and throw an egg at the bank of Montreal.”

“Hey now, whoa, let’s not get carried away,” said the others. John handed him a slice of prosciutto and one of those squishy stress balls. “Here. This should help.”

“Thanks, guys,” said Mike, sitting back down. “Wow, I was really out of control for a second there. Thanks for talking me down.”

BEFORE THINGS TURNED UGLY

But the calm would not last long. After smoking an unhappy cigarette, and an even angrier joint on the pretty balcony overlooking the ocean, we were all raring to go. We girls had each scored a garbage bag full of clothing, but now Sarah was telling us we couldn’t have her dishcloths and fridge magnets. The men had eaten all the brie and oven roasted tomatoes. Clearly, we needed an outlet.

Out we poured from the apartment building, spilling drunkenly, rowdily onto the mean streets of English Bay, wielding bottles of Heineken and pinot grigio at threatening angles. I looked around for someone to pick a fight with and settled on a Chihuahua being walked in the park across the street. “What are YOU barking at, motherfucker? I will fuck you up!” The dog and the old man walking it hurried away. “That’s RIGHT, you BETTER run!”

We stumbled across the street and onto the beach, all ten or so of us, and sat down on some comfortable-looking logs in an intimidating manner, where we would continue to wreak our havoc on the City of Vancouver for the rest of the night. We savagely kicked the sand, utterly destroyed some innocent twigs and then, in a burst of violence unprecedented thus far, gathered rocks and started throwing them viciously at the ocean. “Take THAT, Pacific!”

The savage beast inside each one of us had taken over and there was no turning back, not that night. We were monsters.

I was so ashamed of myself the next day. I headed back to Sarah’s apartment to apologize. To her credit, she let me in and accepted my offer to help clean up. The place was in a sorry state, still the wreck we had left it. Crumbs everywhere. Empties on the counter. For the love of God, a kalamata olive on the floor. It was hard to look at, especially knowing that I was partly to blame.

Then, as I was sweeping up, the others started to arrive, with brooms and offers of help. We swept and scrubbed and spent several hours reassembling a large jigsaw puzzle that had been savagely knocked to the floor. Soon, a spirit of love and cooperation spread throughout the rooms, a spirit stronger and more true than any of the ugliness of the night before. This was The Real Us. The Real Vancouver.

I picked up a Sharpie from the coffee table. (Also manufactured by Newell Rubbermaid, if you were wondering.) Standing on the couch, I wrote upon the wall in three foot high letters: I ♥ VANCOUVER.

And you know what, Dear Reader? It wasn’t long before everyone else joined me. We passed the Sharpie from hand to hand to hand, each person writing a heartfelt message about his or her true feelings of pride and love for this city, of contrition for rash actions the night before, of hope for the future and togetherness in this beautiful moment.

The living room walls were now covered. We stood back, arms linked, tears in our eyes. Sarah walked into the room and, while she’d been in the kitchen and had missed out on the actual ritual, you could tell from her face that she was as moved by the result as the rest of us were.

She just stood there staring, absolutely speechless.

__________________________________________________________

* Now: this is not for the faint of heart, and some of it is difficult to watch…but here, if you must, is video evidence of our riot on Sunset Beach. Note particularly Jaimie and Jenny’s flagrant insolence toward the photographer and Josh’s terrifying ferocity.

(Not suitable for children.)

blue

2011-05-02T04:45:00.006-04:00

He didn’t usually drink. It wasn’t a good idea, with all the pills. And tonight he’d had a lot.

“You wan’ the lasso, Mary? I’ll sthrow a moon aroun’ it! Hooowwwweeeeeeee!”

He was slurring his words, he knew. But maybe he liked slurring his words. Maybe he meant to do it. It was FUN. It was liberating. HA! LIBER-ating? Is this how the Liberals felt all the time? Was Jean Chretien off somewhere, wheeling around, doing whatever the hell he felt like doing? Probably. That made him depressed again. He took another swig of the schnapps and dropped back on the wet grass. He howled at the moon.

It had been a wild night, starting at two-thirty am, his security detail first chasing him out of the hotel in the pouring rain as he ran across the parking lot to Jason Kenney’s rented SUV, bottles from the mini-bar spilling out of his suit jacket pockets. He’d gotten in the car, starting it with the keys he’d swiped when Kenney had passed out drunk on his bed.

Steve had looked down at his snoring immigration minister, lying there all smug and pink, triumphant with his overwhelming victory in Calgary Southeast that night, hogging the entire hotel bedspread. Yeah, I won my riding too, big frickin’ whoop, that’s not the point.

“Forget you, Kenney”, muttered Steve. “You aren’t even listening to me. I tried to tell yooou, I tried to tell you how I feel. And look at you. Screwww you.” A lump came to his throat. He didn’t like it. Jason was sleeping on his back with his mouth agape, and for a moment Steve thought of sticking something in it. “Let you choke, you jerk, ‘d serve you right.” And then he saw the keys.

Screeching out of the hotel parking lot, round corners, howling down the quiet wet suburban streets of Calgary Southwest, the two bodyguards on his tail in one of the Cadillacs. When he’d skidded up onto a curb and then fallen out of the car, subsequently running from lawn to lawn, pulling up campaign signs, they’d tried to talk sense to him. But he wouldn’t have it. For one thing, he wouldn’t stop singing.

“I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY—”

“Shuddup!” yelled a man behind a screen door.

Dogs were barking behind every fence.

The guards had watched, helpless, unsure what to do, as he’d surrounded himself with the signs, knocking each into the wet ground with the post of the next and barricading himself, eventually, inside a circle of them on someone’s front lawn. He held onto one of the signs for balance and stared at it. The big C for conservative, glowing in the dark. His name, coming in and out of focus, the blurry blue and white. “Go Leafs!” he shouted. “Losers! Just like meeeee!”

The bigger of the guards reached for his tazer. “That’s it, he said,”I’m takin’ him down.” The other stopped him: “No, Jim, wait. Is that strictly necessary?” “ ‘Strictly necessary’? Oh man! When AM I gonna get to use this thing? First no eleven year old kids, now this? Besides, this is getting embarrassing – the press could show up any minute. We gotta get him outta here.”

“Just let me talk to him.”

“HE’S A REEEEEAL NOWHERE MAN, SITTING IN HIS NOWHERE LAND, MAKING ALL HIS NOWHERE PLANS FOR NOBODEEeeeee…”

Another neighbour: “Keep it down, we’re trying to sleep!”

“I WILL NOT,” he shouted, reeling back, face pointed at the drizzling dark sky. “You can’t tell me what to do NO MORE! No more Mister Cares-what-you-say! I’m on the right track baby, I was born thi-is wa-a-ay!” He lost his balance and fell back on the lawn. His head knocked against one of the sign posts. “Aww, jeez,” he said. “Now my azz is wet.” He started to giggle. Then cry. He curled up in a ball, shaking with sobs, shivering, tears and snot running sideways down his face and pooling in his ear.

He was so alone. So lonely. No one understood. “Laureeeeeeeeen!,” he shouted. Then, “Stellaaaaaaa!”

The squeak of a window. “I’m calling the police!” One of the security guys – was it Barry or Jim, Steven suddenly realized he’d never known which one was which - on his hands and knees, reaching through the signposts. A hand on his shoulder, gentle. “Mister Harper. Sir. It’s time to go.”

“Iz Steeeve! Why duzzin anybody call me Steeeve? It’s been so lonnng!”

“Okay, Steve. Let’s get you back to the hotel.”

“I wanna play the Playstation witchu guys!”

“Okay, Steve, we’ll do that. We’ll have some beers.”

“How come you never invited me?! I’s in the next room! ALL ALOOONE!”

“We didn’t think you’d want to, Steve. We…uhh…figured you were busy.”

“I wanna play Digimon! Like you guys!”

“Okay, Steve. Hey, you know what we’ve got now? Wii bowling. You’d like that one.”

“Tha’ sounds fun. Can I wear your hat?”

“Of course you can, Steve. Here you go.”

“Hey! Whuzz yer name anyway? Which one are you? You wan’ some Bailey’s?” He cracked another mini bottle.

“My name is Bar—”

“I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“Hold on, Steve. Hold on. Just breathe. Focus on something.”

They started to pull out the signs, the burly men, as the flashing cop car lights approached. They helped him up from where he sat trembling, snot-nosed, staring at his hand. They walked him towards their car, his arms around their enormous shoulders. “I’m focuzzing, Jim, look I’m focuzzing.” “That’s real good, Steve.”

“Ah poop. I zink I lozzzt my glasses.

“We’ll find them, sir.”

They slid on the wet grass and wiped out in a heap.

The Global and CTV vans screeched up at the same time as the cruiser. Reporters leapt out of the doors, cameras and microphones in hands. “Mister Harper, is that you?” “Call me Steve,” he bellowed. “Is is true that you’ve been drinking?” “FUCK YEAH,” yelled Steve, into their shocked faces, giving one cameraman the finger.

Ha HAW! – he could swear now. “Fuck fuck fuck! Titty shit McFucker!” Oh sweet Jesus, that felt good. It had been years. He’d submitted himself to that rigorous Reform Party leadership program in 92, been hooked up to electrodes and shocked whenever he thought an impure thought or uttered a bad word.

Now, Steven realized, he really could do anything he wanted, just like Jean Chretien. What was there to stop him? He could wear a t-shirt! Go a day – two, even - without shaving. Have sex with men if he felt like it. Would he feel like it? He had no idea! It had been years since he’d even allowed himself to wonder such a thing. He could get an abortion! Okay, technically he couldn’t, but well, whatever the male equivalent was; he’d do that!

He grabbed a cute CTV blond and kissed her on the mouth. “Hey baby! You wan’ some tequila? I got these li’l bottles. See?” She stared in shock.

Jim-or-was-it-Barry pried him away, tried to block the reporters’ view, hustling him into the back seat, and firmly closed the door, while Barry-or-was-it-Jim talked to the Calgary cops.

He could still see the press in the windows, eager faces, microphones. He could hear fragments of their muffled, frantic questions, shouted through the glass. “—disturbing the peace”…“—you and Mrs Harper?”… “What now, Sir? What’s your next move?”

Steven popped out of the sunroof as the car sped away. “I’m going to Disney Land!” he called out behind him. “And I just farted!!!”

orange

2011-05-01T21:05:00.003-04:00

WEYBURN, SASKATCHEWAN, SEPTEMBER 2010

Well, the genie was unexpected. I mean, who believes in genies, let alone expects one to pop out of the nose of a Tommy Douglas statue? Less than three percent of Canadians, that’s who, according to polls taken since 1982. And of those three, only .08 “strongly believe”; the rest believe in genies only “slightly”. (And even if they existed, who expected them to be orange? They were supposed to be blue, weren’t they, and talk like Robin Williams? This one didn’t even have the nose ring, it had glasses, and looked…well, like Tommy Douglas.)

Jack wasn’t in either of those categories of belief. He was in the “genies died out in the eighteenth century” camp, as per the accepted wisdom at his alma mater, McGill University.

When he had taken out his handkerchief and rubbed the foot of the Tommy Douglas statue, he had done it not looking for a magical shortcut to fortune, and not even, as you may suspect, out of some vague superstitious hope that it would give him luck in his political career. Sure, he’d wandered back here, alone, hours after the unveiling ceremony, but that was just because he couldn’t sleep. And the statue was pretty, he thought it might look nice and shiny in the moonlight. As for the rubbing, he had merely noticed that there was bird poop on the foot; he was trying to wipe it off.

“I AM THE GENIE OF THE NOSE OF TOMMY DOUGLAS!” shouted the genie. “AND I GRANT YOU THREE WISHES!”

Jack shit his pants. “Oh. Oh! This is gross. I’m…sorry. Ugh.”

“I can fix that for you, if you wish,” said the genie.

“Aw, would ya? That’d be swell.

Shazam. “Thanks a ton.” The genie snicked a little snicker. “Waaait,” said Jack, “When you said ‘If you wish’, you didn’t mean—”

“Of course I did! Jeez, man, have you never watched any cartoons? We get you with that one every time!…Though usually in cartoons it’s not about somebody crapping himself.”

“Dammit,” said Jack. And let me guess, no wishing for—”

“Extra wishes? No. Obviously. Now what’s your sec—”

“Tickets to the U2 concert!”

“Done.”

They appeared instantly in Jack’s hands, two gleaming tickets for U2 at the ACC next July, not right up front, but not bad either, Row K on the side. Olivia would be so pleased. They’d managed to score seats last time and then Bono threw his back out. He was proud he’d thought of this one.

“You do know,” said the genie, “That scalper prices go way down twenty minutes in.”

“What and miss half of Zooropa? Not on your life, bud.”

Now it was time for Jack to think long and hard and honestly. This next wish, the third and final one; the thing he was contemplating wishing for – was he sure he wanted it? Could he do it justice?

Oh hell yes.

And yet…he almost daren’t say it. For years, any time he’d even skirted around this, come close to mentioning it, even with those on his own team, he’d been laughed at.

He beckoned the genie closer, raised his mouth to a big orange ear and whispered.

“Sure thing,” said the genie, “Not a problem. Shazam and all that.”

Jack could not believe it. Couldn’t process what had happened. He pinched himself. He bit his lip. Punched himself in the face. No, apparently he wasn’t dreaming. He threw his arms around the genie in gratitude, squeezed with all the strength of his undying thanks. Tears welled in his eyes.

“Okay, okay,” said the genie. “Now I feel bad. I gotta tell you. You just threw away your final wish. Truth is, that one was gonna happen anyway, with or without me.”

“You must be joking!”

“No, seriously, it’s your time. Think of all the karma you’ve built up over the years. Sticking with your party even when most people dismissed it as a joke? Being saddled with orange on all your signs? I mean what a pansy, third-rate colour. And nobody looks good in it – trust me, I know. Plugging away with so little reward? Look, I know unfair: before this I spent nine years stuck inside that god-awful painting of Douglas looking out over a wheat field – at least now I get some fresh air. But you! A Ph.D. from York University, of all places? And teaching at RYERSON, for pity’s sake? The prostate thing? The hip surgery?”

“The what now?”

“Nothing. That time you rode your bike into a newspaper box and had to cancel your honeymoon? Talk about embarrassing. And pictures like this?”

“And this?”

“Okay, that last one is kind of sexy”, admitted the genie, making the photos vanish again. “But what about the topper, the whole inheritance thing? What a cruel joke, for your father to have stipulated in his will that you wouldn’t get a cent until the day you became prime minister, and only then if you wore a ridiculous moustache until then? I mean, come on, longest playoff moustache ever.”

“Yeah, old Dad had a strange sense of humour. I remember when he became a Conservative for thirteen years, just as a joke. What a card! Anyway, I gotta say, I like the moustache now. And maybe Pop knew what he was doing - it helped build character. That’s why my Mike’s middle name is Jennifer. Besides, Olivia thinks the ‘stache is hot.”

“And it will help you with Quebeckers. Boy, they love their moustaches, those frenchies. What’s up with that?”

“Don’t ask me. But hey, I’ll take it.”

They laughed.

“By the way, Genie…how do you know all these things about me?”

“What, you think just because I live up the nose of a statue of a long-dead politician in Weyburn Saskatchewan, I’m out of touch? I have ways of knowing things.”

“Magic?”

“Wireless signals. If it weren’t for that, this indenture thing would be way more of a drag. Seriously, you should read Anne Murray’s personal emails – disgusting!”

“I can imagine. That little minx.”

“You know, I like you Jack. I don’t know what it is. The smile? The tan? Those twinkly baby blues? And you’re right, the moustache does grow on you. Anyway, I feel bad about you getting gypped on your wishes.”

“What are you talking about, Genie? I’m going to the U2 concert!”

“Uhh, about that…they’ll be cancelling again.”

“Oh no. Bono’s back injury?”

“No, the Edge this time. The Big C, I’m afraid.”

“Oh that’s terrible,” said Jack. “The Edge has cancer?”

“Chicken pox, man! Wow, I can never get the hang of human slang. Is ‘bad’ still good?”

“No”, said Jack, “Epic hashtag fail there, I’m afraid.”

“Are you still speaking English?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But seriously, Jack, before I go…one piece of advice. That raid back in ‘96?”

“At my registered massage therapist’s?”

“Yeah. Just stick to that. Now let’s see…what else? Oh- I’ve got these magic beans – you want some?”

Jack smiled, shook the genie’s huge orange hand, and headed out into the Saskatchewan night.

“Nah,” he said. “I’m good.”

red

2011-04-29T21:42:00.002-04:00

Michael hated dumplings. Or did he fear them? Yes, it was fear, this feeling; blind, abject terror.

It was skin they made him think of. Human skin. Full of…human meat.

Jowls. Gall bladders.

Or he thought of a picture he’d seen of baby mice, all curled up and blind, translucent skin. Eating a dumpling was like biting into one of those; he kept expecting it to squeak and writhe and wriggle in his mouth.

Who had chosen dumplings? Why hadn’t he been asked?

The crowd outside the bus was oppressive. He couldn’t catch his breath. Next to him was whatsername, the candidate, all smiles. Wait – what was her name? He’d gone blank. How could he have gone blank like this? Shit, what was it?! He’d be expected to say something, raise her hand up high, call out…Karen. Kate? K…Ka…Christine! Phew. That would have been terrible.

He wished Zsuzsanna was here. Today of all days. A doctor’s appointment, of all things. “You’ll be fine”, she’d told him on the phone. “It’s just pasta. It’s like a ravioli. You’ll only have to eat just one.” I know, he’d said, I know. He didn’t have the heart to tell he he was scared of ravioli too. Wontons were the worst, perogies not much better. Oh God – Roncesvalles wasn’t on the itinerary, was it? They could make it borscht, he loved borscht…he’d have it leaked, some story about his grandfather and beets grown in the backyard, in the homeland. Yes. Borscht.

But now it was the dumpling. Any minute now. No way out. No turning back.

“We love you Iggy!'”, someone shouted. Dumpling, he thought. Dumpling dumpling dumpling.

He knew it was irrational. But look, he’d known someone once who was afraid of purses. That’s the thing about phobias: logic has nothing to do with them. At least his wasn’t purses, they were everywhere. That friend had given up his early political aspirations, dropped out of the university, withdrawn to his mother’s basement. There but for the grace of God, thought Michael. On the other hand, look at where he’d landed himself: no one would ever ask his school friend to eat someone’s purse. And no one would be filming it.

Hello, cameras, Hello! Yes, I’m extremely excited to be here! Oh, what a great neighbourhood! CHRISTINE will represent this riding very well!

They were getting closer. Sweat formed all along his hairline. He kept smiling. Don’t drip down, sweat. Stay right where you are.

A path cleared to the door. The sign, Dumpling House Restaurant. In neon underneath: “Got Dumpling?” He gagged involuntarily. Pretend that it’s a cough. Breathe. And whatever you do, do not throw up…

Back on the bus, the tiny bathroom; whoever built these things had not done it with vomiting in mind. He had to do it standing up, jackknifed in two, aiming down into the toilet. And quietly. The press corps erupted in laughter on the other side of the door – some joke, or was it him? Had they heard the retching? Had he looked as green as he felt, weaving up the aisle past them? “Hey, Mike, how were those dumplings? Save some for us?” Thumbs up, grin, can’t speak, mustn't puke on the reporters, just make it to the other side.

This could be bad. The papers, IFFY SICK ABOUT HIS CHANCES. RACIST MIKE GAGS ON FOOD IN CHINATOWN. “RISE UP”, INDEED! IGNATIEFF: HIS LUNCH CAME BACK FOR YOU.

When George H.W. threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister, his approval rating dipped for weeks. He couldn’t take a hit like that, not now. (And would they drag up Kinsella’s idiotic comment about BBQ cat, two years later?) Meanwhile, Jack and Olivia, all over town, eating pigs intestines and snake brains, grinning, jumping up and down. Snake brains would have been fine; he’d done that, plenty, in Afghanistan. Eaten rats in Kosovo, no fucking problem. Undone by a dumpling. God dammit. As Steven simpered in Tim Horton's, well-protected, taking no chances. Five questions a day and celery. But Steve liked hot sauce. Oooh, they cried. Play another Beatles song.

He could still feel the dumpling skin in his mouth, though he’d purged it all. There it was, a disgusting beige blob in the toilet, some creepy, amorphous underwater creature, its fins swirling under the surface. Some floated back up to the top, taunting him. He wanted to cry. He heaved some more, and spit. Dear God, please God, if they heard me, let them say I have the flu. Let them say that I’m a trooper. I ate it, didn’t I? I fed half to Christine – brilliant! – but I ate it. Like a man. Zsuzsanna will be proud.

He wiped his mouth with the tail of his red scarf. He flushed. Sprayed air freshener. Put on a smile. And headed out.

They Died With Their Boots On, or, A Lady Takes a Chance: The Legend of Calamity Norton

2011-03-17T23:39:00.007-04:00

From VANCOUVER, British Columbia

March 17th, 2011

First things first. Hello, oh loyal friends, and welcome to a whole new era of Tourist-ness. The Vancouver Era. This new and momentous era may only last until September or October, who knows, but I like the word “era”, okay? ERA! Era era era! There, it’s stopped even looking like a word. Now I’ve done it.

In an exciting milestone for you fans of punctuation out there (Josh?), I am pleased to point out that my last blague post featured a single sentence that contained five commas, three semi-colons, one pair of brackets, some choice capitalization, a hyphen and two sets of ellipses. No italics, oddly. But yes, a partridge in a pear tree.

And a warm welcome to some new fans – Ashley O'Connell, as lucky reader one trillion and five (give or take a trillion), you've won a Skeptical Tourist pantsuit! It's too small for you and, well, made of pipe cleaners, which doesn't make for the utmost in pantsuit comfort, but it IS rather dashing...and made in the official Skeptical Tourist Sweatshop, which is staffed entirely by grown men serving time for use of the phrase "lol". If any of them is heard referring to something as "epically random" or "randomly epic", his scant pay is confiscated for that week. They’ve tried to start a union on facebook but keep getting distracted by links to Failblog and “People of Walmart” and Lady Gaga videos. Men these days. (Enjoy your pantsuit, Ashley!)

To Vancouver! Firstly, yes, it’s true: I did, in fact, land the first thing I auditioned for here. Though for all I know it may be the last gig I ever book, that fact sure does sound good, and will contribute nicely, I believe, to The Legend Of Scarborough Lill (my Wild West name; they make you pick one when you move out here).

YUP. THAT’S ME NOW.

The job is a JK Rowling biopic, Magic Beyond Words, for the Lifetime Network. And thus begins my career as sassy friend. When you do a JK Rowling biopic, Access Hollywood shows up on set and gets copious shots of your butt and the back of your head to share with all of TV land. So you may have seen that and been impressed. I sure was.

The other thing that happens is, authorized or not, Rowling herself is so wracked with curiosity about the thing that she has to watch it. So THE JK Rowling herself will see my face.

She may immediately think "What a stupid face", but who cares, too late, she'll have seen it. Or she might think, "What a wonderful face; I think I'll write a book about it". Substitute "ripping" for "wonderful" and "fancy" for "think", of course. (She's from England.)

In fact, for all I know, JK Rowling (or, as we in the know call her, Jojo, or just “bird” or “mate”, is stalking me already, even before this thing airs, based on the knowledge that I've played her sassy friend. She and Beyoncé have rented the house across the street and spend hours in the dark front room, passing back and forth the binoculars and egg salad sandwiches. They're over there right now, hovering over a laptop (the one used to create the final Harry Potter book) reading this out loud, at the same time as you. Don't you feel a little famous, just knowing that?

“PUT ON YOUR CLOAK, B. THEN SHE CAN’T SEE US.”

For those of you (actors) out there feeling that ugly yet inevitable twinge of jealousy and That Bitch-ness, there’s this: My love life is the pits, I’m still eye-deep in debt, and I have a heart murmur.

Is all this true? Maybe! Take it if you need it.

I’ve also turned to prostitution, which may mitigate the envy even further for some of you who frown on that sort of thing, though I consider it a good move, with benefits both social and financial. Proactive is what I call it. Plus prostitution is nicer here because of the warmer climate.

Before the sassy actor cash and the hookering bucks came along to improve my situation, funds got awful low. It’s strange to be in a new town and broke...I kept thinking that I wasn’t just the Tourist but a tourist, and therefore felt like I should be able leap gaily from concert to play to martini sushi opium parlour…and then keep getting slapped in the face by my reality, which said, "Hey kid, you're not a special guest anymore: you live here. Maybe. Sort of. Now go home to your basement apartment and eat some toast.” (With organic peanut butter, mind.)

I’ve been living, since January, at the downstairs apartment at my friend Jenny Young’s brother and sister-in-law’s place. Jon and Kim happen to be founding members of Vancouver’s acclaimed Electric Company Theatre, and have been out of town a lot, allowing me the run of the place…so I’ve had plenty of time to tuck copies of my photo and resume in strategic locations all over the house. I’m particularly proud of the laminated headshot hanging in their shower. I think they’ll like it, too.

I also get to take advantage of that modern-day housesitting tradition, wherein you temporarily become the Borg and plunder every bit of your hosts’ technology (ask your Trekkie friend to explain that joke if you don’t get it or are pretending not to). I’ve ripped all of their CDs, which in this house has amounted to a major indie band windfall, as well as taking cellphone pictures of each page of all their books and photocopying their sheets. I spread the pages on my bed and use them as an extra set of bedding and pretend I’m someone else. It’s all so wonderful.

TAKE ME TO YOUR WINTERSLEEP

And yes, just like you, I do feel a little bad whenever I steal music – and, like you, I get over it and do it anyway. Though, I must say, I do pay for my online tunes – I’m only guilty of the friend Borg-ing. But that’s probably bad enough. Perhaps I should have to adopt an indie band as penance.

We could develop a whole system of free music reparation. For instance: Illegally download one song – the band gets to come to your house and make a sandwich. Two songs, you make the sandwiches. Steal a whole album, they get to fuck your kids. or something. These are just guidelines.

But hey, the deal here includes my feeding and changing the litter of the weird resident cat, Meow Meow. I doubt the Borg do that. Or maybe it’s in the deleted scenes. Meow Meow also tricks me by acting affectionate and then leaping on my face with her claws out, which is her cute feline way of protesting my abuse of copyright law.

Come April I’ll get to go and suck all the technology out of another home, as I’m moving into a sublet at 15th and Maple. The poor, unfortunate tenant, a beautiful flaxen-haired young writer, is being forced to go live at her rich lawyer boyfriend’s house on the coast of Spain and go for long walks and observe stunning sunsets while working on her novel. I feel for her, I really do.

If it weren’t for my sympathy for Beautiful Bevin and her difficult situation, I surely would be moving into Green Margaret’s place. It had everything going for it: great west end location, unobstructed view of Stanley Park’s Lost Lagoon, meticulous German tenant who had outfitted the place with a nice green and white carpet covering the hardwood floors, green blankets, green trinkets, green bedspread on the SINGLE green skirt-wearing bed…

Oddly, I didn’t notice all this at first (okay, I definitely noticed the single bed – that, coupled with the fact that Margaret kept insisting on “no overnight guests, ja?”, meant I had to fight the urge to run screaming into the street). As I was leaving (politely, not screaming even a bit), Margaret complimented me on my bright green bag. I thanked her and pointed out that it matched her shirt rather well, to which she replied, with the stoniest of faces, “Ja, I only vear green.” That’s when I noticed. You might want to reconsider hiring me as a detective.

Of course, I can roll my eyes at Green Margaret and her tiny bed and weird apartment all I like, but the truth is, she sent me an email a week after our meeting telling me she’d decided to rent to someone else. She’s probably writing on her blog about how weird I was, with my nonmatching clothes, and calling me Rainbow Lisa.

Today is St Patrick’s Day, so Green Margaret is on my mind. I’ve a feeling I’ll think of her on this day every year, wondering whether this is a divine day for her, a day where she looks around at her green-clad fellow man and feels a kinship, thinks, “Mein Gott, they’ve finally got it”. Or is it a day when she looks around and thinks, “You bunch of phonies. You don’t know green like I know green”?

I wonder if she adds food colouring to everything she eats and drinks, all year round. OH, GREEN MARGARET, GET OUT OF MY HEAD! You emerald temptress, you!

Anyway, my new place, which Bevin thought I was cool enough for (take that, fraulein!), is cute and nice and has a grown-up bed. It’s also conveniently located a stone’s throw from both the West Coast Tropical Bird Studio and The Spy Store, which, combined, may help me develop my weird Bond villain persona. Parrot on the shoulder, or budgies in my pockets? What to do? And can I still be Scarborough Lill?

From there I will enjoy jaunts to Kits Beach on my borrowed bicycle, continue enjoying BC’s beautiful surroundings and fine friendly folk, venture out to Spanish and kayaking classes (and Spanish kayaking classes – “Ay Ay Ay! Me he caído en el océano!”)...

I’ll also attend the occasional audition, thanks to my fancy new agent who is awfully handsome and has astounding teeth. I hang around the office on the flimsiest of pretenses (“Just making sure the building’s still where I thought it was”; ”Do you guys need some gum?”…) in hopes of catching the occasional glimpse of their gleam. Of course, my agent in T.O. does triathlons and has the most amazing arms I've ever seen, and my Toronto voice agent, even despite wearing stupid slippers around the office, looks like a hotter Faye Dunawaye, so this new guy had better step up his regimen if he wants to hold onto me, boy. My new voice agent here is a marathon runner who wears nice boots, so things are looking good.

I’m keeping in shape with semi-regular visits to the downtown Y, which are just as regularly sabotaged by the presence of the original Japa Dog cart within a block, where I can enjoy a tasty 9000 calorie snack before and after each workout. I’ve resigned, however, to eat less Korobuta Terimayo dogs, ever since the Japa Dog staff not only refused my gracious offer of a picture for their “celebrity customers” photo board, but seemed unduly angry when they noticed me pasting my head onto Ice Cube’s body. There may have been a scene.

COME ON NOW, JAPA DOG. WHAT’S THIS GUY GOT THAT I AIN’T GOT?

To your future benefit, I’ll continue to wander and observe…trying to figure out a town that can have given us Botox and a chain of stores called “Mantique”, and at the same time support the world’s highest per capita concentration of white girls with dreads. (Is it wrong to want to kick those girls? I really, really want to kick them. Can I kick them?)

I’d planned to do the Grouse Grind climb weekly on arrival but haven’t gone once yet. My excuses are as follows: It’s too cold. It’s been too rainy. My knee is buggered from running. My bed here is comfortable. And, best of all: Nature Shmature, that’s for tourists. Apparently my one trek up Grouse Mountain last year is more than any of my friends who were born and raised here have done. I will do it soon, I swear.

As for rainy days, yeah, there have been one or two of those.

But you know what, all you dry Toronto gloaters going on about how sad and soggy I must be? I’ve got two words for you: wind chill factor. That’s three words. I’m a rebel. Anyway, we don’t have that here. If it says seven degrees it is seven goddamn degrees. I know all too well the agony of those Ontario weather reports:

“It’s twelve degrees”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“- but feels like minus forty with the windchill.”

“Then why don’t you just say minus forty, motherfuckers?!!”

I’ve embraced BC coffee culture, becoming one of those people laptopping at cafes. I even bought a mug from the lovely Our Town Cafe, to replace the ceramic Starbucks one I bought on tour, which, reflecting my state of mind at the time, cracked right down the middle. I almost got the green Our Town mug, glanced down at my green bag and my green-jacketed book (Alligator, by Lisa Moore), remembered Margaret, went with blue.

But truth is, I’ve eschewed the Cafe People and written much of this post at Budgies Burritos, which makes me feel less like a hipster and more like a romantic, struggling down-and-out writer, working away with a cheap taco hanging half out my mouth and refried beans smeared on my face. Except I only write a BLOG, for FREE, and what’s more hipster than that? Plus everything here is veggie or vegan, and there’s a squeaky-voiced customer at the counter telling the staff about her “kind of an art show”. But next to her there’s a construction worker and an old guy who keeps burping while he eats. Ah, B.C.

I do think there’s something in the idea that everyone should move to a new town once in a while. I’ve never done it before, except for gigs, and hell, it is invigorating. It can be a little lonely, not having your same old gang at hand, but it’s also exciting and challenging. I'm making new friends, it’s giving me a kick in the ass, career-wise, in that nobody knows who the hell I am and I’ve got something to prove all over again, and I’m stretching my brain into new shapes…and apparently becoming ridiculously earnest and prone to spewing smug inspirational bullshit. GOD! What the hell was THAT??? Somebody needs a green cider.

So that’s enough blarney outta me.

EXCEPT…

Consider, friends, what reading this blague has done for you today. And consider every other day you’ve enjoyed the wisdom of the Tourist AT NO COST WHATSOEVER. For some of you this has been going on for years, this free delivery of guffaws, chuckles, smiles, and insight. Think of the value. Yet while I may very well begin charging exorbitant amounts for entry (as well as a complicated sign-in process and a webcam video proving that you are wearing a silly hat and doing the required dance), THIS MONTH I ask that you instead donate that money to the relief effort in Japan. Let’s say five bucks per laugh. So if you laughed five times, a modest twenty-five bucks to the Red Cross or someone. And if you didn’t laugh at all? In that case, you are clearly a black hole of humour, a very scourge on humanity, so a big fat donation is the least you can do to start justifying your presence on Earth. I’ll tell you what, it needn’t even be made in my name.

http://www.cbc.ca/japanrelief/ has a great list of links to reputable charities’ donation pages. Please help. If nothing else, it will get you in my good books. You might even win a pantsuit.

Yours, soggy and true,

The Tourist

go west, young tourist

2010-12-29T05:06:00.003-05:00

From TORONTO,

December 29th, 2010

It’s ridiculous that I haven’t written. I’m aware of this.

I’ve been to Iowa. I’ve been to West Virginia. I’ve been to Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and to Texas. North Carolina, too. I’ve been to Belleville. I survived two weeks in London, Ontario, a bout of food poisoning on a two-show day (still puking at seven a.m.; call time at twenty-past – don’t order the pesto shrimp from Boston Pizza…as if you ever would), eight-hour drives in a five-person-jammed pickup truck; lugging a set that weighed at least NINE THOUSAND POUNDS in and out of stage doors and schools, up steps and over snakepits; lived through spats with my tourmates about trivia games, luggage and generally being up at six in the morning…

Nobody loved me. Everybody hated me. I went out back and ate some worms.

My back still hurts. My wrist is sore. And my liver is more than three parts booze. I drank enough one karaoke night in Alexandria, Louisiana that I, turning green and leaving early but disappointed to be going before my Bon Jovi tune had come up, had to be told that I had, in fact, already sung it. That’s where I left my jacket. I left my shoes in a hotel closet in Chicago, my Oil of Olay under a bed somewhere, and my heart in New Orleans. I left one adorable soul singer in Austin, Texas, standing in a bar with his heart on his sleeve, dreaming dreams of exotic Toronto, where all the girls have long black hair and ruby lips. And one sad, small second cousin twice-removed behind in Dallas, wondering why in God I’m not her mother and why she can’t leave Adrian and Jo in Texas once and for all and escape a fate of eating deep-fried butter and voting Bristol Palin 2024.

I left a sock in every town – “REMEMBER MEEEEEE, NORTH LIBERTYYYYY!!! I won’t remember yooooooouuuuu!”, most of the roaches (I hope) back in that dressing room in Texarkana, and indelible impressions on the minds of thousands of awestruck children and their teachers who had the pleasure of not only seeing me perform but hearing my sage words of long-winded wisdom in talk-backs afterwards. Will they ever again wonder How We Learn ALL THOSE LINES? I think not, dear readers, I think not.

I believe this picture just might say it all, tour-wise:

(This is Hallowe’en in Weston, West Virginia, incidentally. I am CLEARLY Amy Winehouse, but the locals, not knowing who that was, deducted I was “someone with a dildo for a head”. Close enough.)

Speaking of dildos…Rob Ford is the new motherfucking goddamn mayor of Toronto. (See the previous two blague posts for a sampling of my feelings about that.) I survive. Winter’s here…and still, I manage to go on. Christmas came and went and didn’t bother me a bit. I bought a tree and lugged it down the street. I baked ten billion cookies.

And yet I didn’t write.

It was all too much, My Puzzled Reader. As large and capable as my brain may be, it managed to get overfull, and not sure what to tell you, I told you nothing. I apologize.

But enough of the past two months. Instead let me tell you about…the Christina Aguilera movie.

Yes, Burlesque! Also starring Cher! And Stanley Tucci! What the fuck?!

I’ve been excited about this film ever since I was at the movies with Sarah Allen and we saw the poster of Christina and Cher’s big tall slutty faces and I peed myself. I didn’t know what it was and didn’t care. Christina was in it! It was called BURLESQUE! I tore off my now wet (first creamed, then pee-filled) jeans and ran a pantless bluestreak through the Scotiabank Theatre, screaming incoherent words of joy. Sarah managed to catch up with me and deal with management.

JUST LOOK AT ALL THOSE LIPS!!!

But it would be months - until tonight, in fact – before I would see it. Burlesque came out while we were on tour, and I did rope my other showgals, Emma and Krista, into seeing it with me. It was all we could handle intellectually at the time, and seemed a perfect way to celebrate our last week on the road. Plus we knew when we got home none of our friends there would want to see it.

Alas that was THE DAY OF THE SHRIMP PIZZA, and I stayed home (or, rather, hotel-bound) to lie in my own vomit – better than someone else’s, I suppose – while the intrepid ladies soldiered on without me.

I came home and fell into a deep deep sleep, the sleep of those just off a kids’ show tour, which means I didn’t even move for eighteen days (a rep from Actors’ Equity came by to hook me up to an I.V. – it’s in the union rules, go check it out) and by the time I emerged, Burlesque had closed.

However, this week it was playing at my neighbourhood rep cinema, The Revue. Of course it was, having just been nominated for a Best Musical/Comedy Golden Globe, and the Revue being a bastion of all things noble and artistic.

Now I had to go, and right away. I mean, what if ends up on the American Film Institute’s best movies of the decade list? I couldn’t even wait for the couple of friends/family members who may have actually gone with me. I was walking home from the gym and there it was!

And it was glorious…or maybe I was just flushed with endorphins from my workout.

I admit to being consistently distracted by Xtina’s new, enormous breasts. They actually looked normal enough, in a way, when she was all dolled up in push-up bustiers, but in the scenes where she was dressed casually, they were jarring. Especially when she’s supposed to be braless in PJs and has these sturdy rock-like things sticking straight out of her chest. At those moments her boobs had the look of an inappropriate accessory, like when you see someone wearing tons of eyeliner at the gym. And they didn’t even bounce when she jumped up and down. It was strange. I had to go straight home and watch some movies with properly bouncing breasts in them, just to make up for it.

But aside from that…it is “the greatest movie ever made”…says Sharin-Maizie Elliwand-Johannson of Arborg, Manitoba. Dolly32122 exclaims, “I was dancing all the way through the film in my seat paha”, while phatgurl509 calls it “so fun LOL” and male lead Cam Gigandet “off the hook for hotnesssss!!!!!!!!”

Christina’s acting is far less wooden than her immovable jugs. In fact – I’ll say it - I found her charming, though perhaps in a “Wow, she’s not half so horrible as I thought she would be” way. Her love interest had easily watchable pectorals and abs, heavily featured, Cher made you care just a little from time to time, and the dancing was sufficiently dancy.

And I was moved – yea, moved! - because that’s just the state of mind I’m in these days. I’m headed to Vancouver, you see, to try my luck in the little big city, and thus the story of a young starry-eyed girl headed to L.A. to strike it big was right up my proverbial alley. I’m going around with big new half-baked plans these days, involving being discovered in a soda shop, and I’m prone to saying things like “Wait’ll they get a load a’ me!” and “Look out world!” and “We’ll put the show on right here in the barn!”.

And it’s not just me. Today a friend – Jamie Wilson, whom I haven’t seen in years and who hasn’t heard my current schemes – happened to send me this clip on face&%*k, with the caption “This reminded me of you.”

See? That’s just the type of positive enthusiasm I’m putting out in the world right now, and Jamie must have sensed it from afar. Or maybe it was just Liza’s nose that he was thinking of. I’m hoping not her slightly wonky eye. Or her alcoholic mother shouting in the background. But hey, I’ll take it!

So yes, I’m off to be a huge voice star, start climbing mountains, achieve a black belt in Karate…and then the Coen Brothers will discover me. All this as I break into the elusive Vancouver Theatre Scene. OoooOOOOooooh.

OR…(in that Skeptical Spin you all so sickeningly crave) I come back in three months not triumphant but defeated; broken-backed and sobbing, “B.C. sucks! Nobody liked me! And I just missed (insert your name here, Toronto resident) too much! I couldn’t bear it!”

For now, however, you will find me packing suitcases and singing this song:

(If, in a week or so, you should hear a story of a Vancouver-bound flight brought down for security reasons after a suspicious woman of ambiguous ethnicity wouldn’t stop belting a show tune at the top of her lungs, this will have been the one.)

I recently played this recording for a particularly handsome young man who happened to be sitting in my kitchen at the time, and was deeply disappointed that he didn’t seem to ‘get it’ like I did. I now realize that if a guy I was sharing pillow-space with did freak out over a Dionne Warwick recording of a show tune from a Natalie Wood movie, I might start to wonder. Or maybe I’d just take him to Burlesque and help him pick out panties. And then we’d do each other’s nails. To pass the time, you know, until the Coen Brothers happened by.

I’m stakin’ my claim. Remember my name…

The Tourist

Democracy in Action (Is this thing on?)

2010-12-05T15:50:00.005-05:00

From THE MEGACITY,
December 5th, 2010

Readers....make your way through the thread below for a look at my scintillating correspondence with Councillor Karen Stintz (Rob Ford's new TTC chair). This makes me laugh. And then it makes me barf.

(The initial correspondence is my modified version of a letter found here: http://www.emailthem.ca/transitcity/ .)

Dear Toronto Councillors and MPPs:

As a citizen of Toronto and regular TTC user, I am upset and outraged that Rob Ford wants throw away all the hard work, time and money that has gone into Transit City,in favour of a "plan" to shove all public transit underground at great expense to, and unneccessary delay for, Toronto taxpayers.

Rob Ford claims that his having been elected is evidence that the people of Toronto have given him a mandate to do just this. However, many people voted for Ford based on his "stop the gravy train" rhetoric (or rather, incessant hammering). This action, in its throwing away of millions of dollars already spent and/or promised for Transit City, would go against the very principle of stopping wasteful spending that those voters so responded to.

Residents of Toronto desperately need accessible transit to get around our city. Facts prove that Light Rail vehicles - not subways - are the best technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Streetcars and LRVs have the lowest energy consumption per passenger mile of any mode of transportation. Replacing carbon-emitting buses with LRVs will also reduce emissions, leading to cleaner air to breathe and reduced healthcare costs.

Facts also show that subways cost far more and take much longer to build, thereby depriving Torontonians in priority neighbourhoods of faster access to better public transit and rapidly depleting our city budget. And a new line in time for the 2015 Pan Am games, starting from scratch NOW? How in God's name could any reasonable person think this possible?LRV expansion under the extensively researched Transit City plan will boost Toronto's economic productivity by easing congestion, which will prevent people and goods from being stuck in traffic. Building subways will mean this reduction in congestion will be severely limited in scope, compared with the Light Rail expansion planned under Transit City.

At the end of the day, cancelling Transit City is an attack on priority neighbourhoods, the environment and the public purse. I strongly urge you, as city councillors representing our best interests, to bring this matter up for a vote in city council on Dec 16th.I also urge MPPs who represent Toronto to be advocates for accessible public transit and keep the Transit City plan on track.

Mayor Ford declared that the war on cars is over, yet ironically the cancellation of Transit City will wage war on public transit users, particularly those who do not live near a subway or who cannot afford a car. Many taxpayers need the TTC; where's the respect for those taxpayers, Mister Ford?

If the new mayor tries to force this through without support of council, it is a slap in the face to Torontonians and an abuse of office. In that case, I urge councillors to walk out. Let's see how voters like Ford and his ever-present brother running things on their own, as the dictatorship they so desire.

Sincerely,
Lisa Norton
M6R2K5

Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 00:32:29 -0500
From: councillor_stintz@toronto.ca
To: n*******@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: RESPECT FOR TAXPAYERS? Don't let Rob Ford trash Transit City. (Transit City)

Thank you very much for taking the time to send me a note about your concerns.

As you may know, Transit City was not fully funded by the Province of Ontario or the Federal Government. The transit plan that has been funded is the Metrolinx Plan and that plan includes transit investment on Sheppard, Eglinton, the Scarborough RT and Finch. Stopping Transit City does not jeopardize the Metrolinx Plan.

During the last municipal campaign, the voters of Toronto, through their support for Mayor Ford, indicated a preference for below-surface transit. Over the next few months, the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will revisit the current Metrolinx Plan with a goal to increase the amount of below-surface transit.

We all have a shared goal of a regional transportation plan that meets the needs of the riders of today and in the future. I am confident that the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will work together to adjust the plan in a fiscally responsible manner that will receive the endorsement of the residents of Toronto.

Yours truly,

Karen Stintz

From: n*******@hotmail.com
To: councillor_stintz@toronto.ca
CC: councillor_perks@toronto.ca
Subject: RE: RESPECT FOR TAXPAYERS? Don't let Rob Ford trash Transit City.
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 13:04:37 -0500

Councillor Stintz,

I'm afraid that your claim that by voting for Ford, Toronto gave him a mandate to do whatever he wants with transit, just doesn't wash. You and I both know that's not how the political process works, nor should it work that way. Toronto didn't just vote for Ford, they also elected a body of councillors, and expect them all to have a say (our say) in huge decisions like this. Furthermore, people who voted for Ford did so for a variety of reasons (chief among them being that many people believed, with his "gravy train" mantra, that he would be fiscally conservative and not go throwing their money away) and don't neccessarily support every facet of his platform or every idea that comes into his head. The man is a mayor after all, and not a king.

I, for one, live in pre-megacity Toronto, which overwhelming did NOT support Ford, and I count on my elected councillor to have a say. I believe he should have had a say before a call was made to the TTC telling them to stop work that was underway.

Now that it looks like Toronto's transit plan is inevitably changing one way or another, I do hope that you're right: I would love if Ford could find some way to get subways built quickly and safely and without huge extra expense to our city and billions lost in dishonoured contracts. But, to quote a popular phrase of late, that sounds like fairy dust to me. His logic and economics just don't add up, and I fear that we, the people of Toronto, will end up with NO viable replacement for Transit City, which was worked on so long and so hard by so many people only to be thrown away in one day...or at least end up with no replacement built for a decade or two in the future. What a waste.

Lisa Norton,
Ward 14

From: Councillor Stintz (councillor_stintz@toronto.ca)
Sent: December 5, 2010 1:05:51 PM
To: Lisa Norton (n*******@hotmail.com)

Thank you very much for taking the time to send me a note about your concerns.

As you may know, Transit City was not fully funded by the Province of Ontario or the Federal Government. The transit plan that has been funded is the Metrolinx Plan and that plan includes transit investment on Sheppard, Eglinton, the Scarborough RT and Finch. Stopping Transit City does not jeopardize the Metrolinx Plan.

During the last municipal campaign, the voters of Toronto, through their support for Mayor Ford, indicated a preference for below-surface transit. Over the next few months, the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will revisit the current Metrolinx Plan with a goal to increase the amount of below-surface transit.

We all have a shared goal of a regional transportation plan that meets the needs of the riders of today and in the future. I am confident that the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will work together to adjust the plan in a fiscally responsible manner that will receive the endorsement of the residents of Toronto.

Yours truly,

Karen Stintz

From: Lisa Norton (n******@hotmail.com)
Sent: December 5, 2010 1:38:53 PM
To: councillor_stintz@toronto.ca

FYI: I was just sent the same stock answer that I recieved to my previous letter. My letter (this time) was in reply to what you've written below. Is anyone actually reading these things?

Lisa Norton

From: Councillor Stintz (councillor_stintz@toronto.ca)
Sent: December 5, 2010 1:39:51 PM
To: Lisa Norton (n*******@hotmail.com)

Thank you very much for taking the time to send me a note about your concerns.

As you may know, Transit City was not fully funded by the Province of Ontario or the Federal Government. The transit plan that has been funded is the Metrolinx Plan and that plan includes transit investment on Sheppard, Eglinton, the Scarborough RT and Finch. Stopping Transit City does not jeopardize the Metrolinx Plan.

During the last municipal campaign, the voters of Toronto, through their support for Mayor Ford, indicated a preference for below-surface transit. Over the next few months, the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will revisit the current Metrolinx Plan with a goal to increase the amount of below-surface transit.

We all have a shared goal of a regional transportation plan that meets the needs of the riders of today and in the future. I am confident that the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will work together to adjust the plan in a fiscally responsible manner that will receive the endorsement of the residents of Toronto.

Yours truly,

Karen Stintz

From: Lisa Norton (n*******@hotmail.com)
Sent: December 5, 2010 2:41:37 PM
To: councillor_stintz@toronto.ca

You are a smelly smelly poo head. (Testing, testing...Is this on?)

From: Councillor Stintz (councillor_stintz@toronto.ca)
Sent: December 5, 2010 2:45:40 PM
To: Lisa Norton (n******@hotmail.com)

Thank you very much for taking the time to send me a note about your concerns.

As you may know, Transit City was not fully funded by the Province of Ontario or the Federal Government. The transit plan that has been funded is the Metrolinx Plan and that plan includes transit investment on Sheppard, Eglinton, the Scarborough RT and Finch. Stopping Transit City does not jeopardize the Metrolinx Plan.

During the last municipal campaign, the voters of Toronto, through their support for Mayor Ford, indicated a preference for below-surface transit. Over the next few months, the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will revisit the current Metrolinx Plan with a goal to increase the amount of below-surface transit.

We all have a shared goal of a regional transportation plan that meets the needs of the riders of today and in the future. I am confident that the TTC, Metrolinx and the Province will work together to adjust the plan in a fiscally responsible manner that will receive the endorsement of the residents of Toronto.

Yours truly,

Karen Stintz

rumours of my death are slightly exaggerated

2010-10-25T21:26:00.002-04:00

From LONDON, ONTARIO

October 25th, 2010

I write this from a schoolyard full of screeching, flailing, wiggly children. Nearby, some kids hide from some other kids under a truck. Across the way, a few stray boys play a game of “Would You Rather?”, which seems to be comprised entirely of questions involving a fat girl named Jessica. “Would you rather never sleep again…or sleep with JESSICA?” “Would you rather have no face…or use your face to kiss JESSICA?” Tough decisions.

Kids these days.

There is a reason for my presence here, and it goes beyond the usual stalking and staring. That’s reserved for high schools, incidentally, and I only ogle seniors. I’m performing a play for the lucky children of Southwestern Ontario, and later, through scattered areas of the United States. (Of America, not Mexico, alas.) It’s been twelve years since I did this kind of thing, and I was lured back by my dear friend and fellow actor Jamie Robinson, whom I now shake my fist at every day. This is hard work. Did you hear that? HARD WORK. EARLY MORNINGS. CARRYING STUFF. And this is me, Lisa Norton, the Skeptical Tourist, the long-acknowledged laziest woman in show business, we’re talking about.

I was also seduced by the fact that it’s with Roseneath Theatre, a company I’ve long admired – and the show is pretty great, as are my colleagues (thank the lord above). There’s the added ego boost of the kids regularly guessing my age at around twenty-five, shaving off a nifty ten years and thus encouraging my wearing of ridiculous clothing far too young for me. I’m the proud new owner of a weird little pair of Nike sneaks that not only glow hot pink and even hotter purple, but have this crazy insert that communicates with my tunepod and my computer about my exercise habits. When I complete a particularly challenging run, Lance Armstrong’s voice coos sweet congratulations in my ear. When I cack out and quit, my ipod gives me an electric shock and calls me a fat whore. Neat, I know!

This gig also got me with that irresistable Norton kryptonite, the promise of travel – thus far, to exotic locales like Ingersoll, Ontario! Mississauga! Richmond Hill! Luxurious nights at the Hojo in London!

Ahead lie Texas and Florida and the midwest, where I plan to pick daily fights over abortion, health care and dirty Canadian Socialism. I’ll also claim that our version of So You Think You Can Dance is superior to theirs, which always gets those Yankee conservatives right where it hurts.

Anyway, who can complain? ME, that’s who, and well, and daily. I have to watch the sun come up on the way to work, and it’s all annoyingly beautiful and stuff, like “Oooh, look at me, I’m the sun.” . Some schools we play don’t even stock Monarch brand foaming hand soap in the bathrooms, which is like, totally my favourite. And I’m not even sure that life’s worth living ever since the Body Shop stopped making honey shampoo and conditioner. If I were Oprah Winfrey, I bet I could just call up the Body Shop and tell them to start making my shampoo again and they would do it, just like that. So my main problem in life is actually that I’m not Oprah Winfrey. But I will be. Someday.

I did have a moment of true and awful outrage yesterday evening when I left my house to head for London. As I exited my building, two men were walking away having just attached a huge “Rob Ford For Mayor” sign to our gate. This is a building full of artists, progressives and cyclists, and for those of you from elsewhere, Rob Ford is the big angry reactionary dude with zero arts policy who thinks only gay needle users contract HIV and who wants to scrap all bike lanes because roads are for cars and cyclists are a pain in the ass and just asking to get run over. He has no cohesive plan for our city whatsoever and no platform but to shout the words “gravy train” over and over again while steam shoots out of his ears.

From the sidewalk you could look to the right of the Ford sign and see about fifty bikes parked in our courtyard. In fact, I saw people doing just that, all seemingly as perplexed as I by the sign’s presence. I huffed and puffed and asked the guys who it was that had requested the sign. “Paul,” apparently, who is apparently the owner’s son, and for whom it wasn’t enough to put a sign on his own damn house but had to put one on daddy’s rental property as well.

As I said, I huffed around for a bit while waiting for the streetcar and wishing I weren’t headed straight to London so I could fashion some kind of enormous disclaimer, stating “This sign does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the people who live here”…or order competing Smitherman and Pantalone signs to place next to the offending one…or, at the very least, stand there spitting all night long. Maybe set the building on fire.

In the end, I predicted the sign wouldn’t last ‘til morning, and made my sneaky contribution by (shock of shocks!) undoing one of the four twist ties holding it to the fence, in aid of whoever had the balls – and time – to do the rest. I felt so baaaad. But still so angry. In the sexiest of ways. I’m just so hot when I’m political, am I right? Don’t fight it.

I should mention that the last half of this blague has been broadcast from Toronto, to which I returned this afternoon to discover that the sign was gone (a result of protest to the landlords, or of sneakiness like mine?) – as were the questionably kosher Ford signs on the construction fences in the middle of my street and on the old folks’ home. Yaaay, Roncey!

So now, tonight, we Torontonians wait with bated breath to find out whether our fair city will be soon mayored by the loudmouthed phenomenon of assholishness that is Rob Ford. I’ll admit to having had a certain bias against the man before ever even having heard him speak, his big angry red face being enough to put me off instinctively. But then he opened his big angry red mouth and spewed out his big angry red thoughts, and it got no better. For us or him. Here are some of my favourite Ford clips, which will be either hilarious or terrifying in the morning, depending which way this thing goes.

Note how happy he looks when he discovers he may have been called a fat fuck and has something to freak out about.

I actually teach children about this kind of behaviour in our show every day. I’m hoping if Ford loses he’ll join our tour and take over one of my roles, that of the school bully. He would be amazing.

The most disturbing thing about this last clip, perhaps, is all the youtube comments commending this performance for demonstrating that at least he’s real and stands up for what he believes in. I’m terrified. But if he’s fleeced enough people to win this thing, I give the guy six months tops before he blows a gasket screaming at someone in a meeting and drops of a massive heart attack.

Orrrrr…

Now that’s more like it. What Toronto needs is Princess Leia. And Oprah Winfrey. Pantalone (whom I didn’t dare vote for, sadly) for mayor and honey shampoo in every pot! Foam hand soap in all the schools! And no one has to get up before noon! Vodka in the water fountains! And winter is abolished! Down with menstrual cramps! All ex-boyfriends will be nice! Puppies everywhere! And cute friendly monkeys following behind to eat the puppy poo! Save the whales and sharks and fuck seals anyway, who the hell do they think they are?

Oh God Oh God. Just got a call from my stage manager informing me that A: My call time is ten minutes earlier tomorrow morning, and B: That Ford is leading the count at fifty percent.

WHAT KIND OF NIGHTMARE AM I LIVING?????!!!!!

I’m off now, to turn on the TV and watch the results roll in and drink and swear and smoke things. And burn the building down.

Help me Oprah-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

moonwalker and me

2010-07-25T00:41:00.013-04:00

From BLYTH, Ontario
July 25th, 2010

Okay, so yes, I’m away at the Blyth Festival again. Okay, so yes, that means I’m legally contracted to post about cows and pigs and country life; rep theatre and homemade jam; pies* and the lack of eligible cock around. (As opposed to cow and pig.)

*I wasn’t using “pie” as a euphemism for “vagina” there, by the way. I really did mean baked goods. It just happens to work on that level, too. (Bonus joke!)

However.

I don’t know if you guys have heard about this but…Michael Jackson died. A year ago. Oh, wait, what’s that - Michael who? Oh, he was this entertainer, he was really neat, you might be able to find a clip or two on the internet. Of course, he was never truly recognized and never achieved the success he might have, because he was black. If he’d been a white guy, “Michael Jackson” might have been a household name, or at least he might have had a hit or two, rather than dying in obscurity, almost completely unknown but to a group of prisoners in the Philippines that liked his dancing for some reason.

_________________________________________________________

(TAKE TWO…for real this time)

I promised one year ago, just after we all heard, to devote an issue of The Tourist to the gloved one. As I said at the time, I just wasn’t ready.

But now I am. Here goes.

At first we just friends. Or rather, he was a friend of my mother’s. It was her copy of Off The Wall that I would take out, unfold carefully and talk to. “Michael,” I’d say, “my socks never look that white. How do you do it?” I’d wonder at his flexibility, being capable of bending all the way in two like that. I’d listen to his groovy songs and try to dance, which I hadn’t quite figured out yet, but he was teaching me. Sometimes I’d fall down. Oh, we’d LAUGH! What fun!

I remember when we fell in love. It was Christmas, 1983. Michael had been away awhile. I’d moved on to other friends; he’d been working. I wasn’t angry, but we’d drifted. And then somebody, God bless them (Uncle Steve?), gave me Thriller as a gift. I unwrapped it and gasped. There he was, looking at me again. Different nose but those same old beautiful brown Michael eyes. He smiled. I smiled. Something was different. I was older now. Nearly nine. Practically a woman.

There, in front of the Christmas tree in our Scarborough living room, family shouting festively around me, I sat blushing as new Michael and the new me regarded one another. I felt shy. My noisy, laughing family may not have noticed the sparks suddenly flying, but I was embarrassed that they might. And suddenly I just couldn’t stand all these people being everywhere. We needed to be alone. We went up to my room.

I sat on the carpet and Michael sat in front of me. I unfolded him and laughed. “There you are again, showing off your flexibility!”

He just giggled, playing with his baby tiger, Lisa, whom (he told me now) he had named after me. It had been the record company’s idea to have him pose with a cute, cuddly tiger cub in a ploy to show fans his sensitive side, as Michael was (for obvious reasons) always in danger of being pegged as “too macho”. But the cub had grown on him, particularly after he’d taken her on the road to keep him company on his latest tour.

It was there that he’d given her my name and would spend late nights confiding in her all his deepest, most private thoughts, pretending she was me. “But Michael,” I asked, “Why didn’t you just call me?”

“I wanted to,” he said. “But I know you’re busy with school and everything. I remembered you were in Mrs Thielking’s class this year, and we all know how tough that is. I just didn’t want to bother you. Congrats on all your track and field ribbons, by the way,” he said, gesturing to where they were tacked up on the wall. “Oh, Michael, I just think of you and I jump higher, run faster, go that extra kilometre - as we say here in Canada. I’m always picturing you out there on the sidelines, cheering me on.”

“I am. I cheer you on within my heart.”

I took down my high jump ribbon, my first of what would be a short but distinguished career, and I pinned it to his chest. “Ouch,” he said. So then I pinned it to his shirt instead. I held a finger to his beautiful forehead.

“Remember, Michael, wherever you are, no matter how far apart we may be…I’ll be right here.”

(NOT THE MOST FLATTERING PICTURES OF ME)

He took off one of his gloves and gave it to me. At first I wouldn’t take it, knowing how cold his hands always were. But he insisted.

“You’re such a P.Y.T.,” he told me.
“A what? What’s that?”
“Track eight," he said. “You’ll see.”
“Eight! My lucky number!”
“How could I forget?”

There were so many more things I wanted to say. I wanted to tell him all about Kim and Hansa and Mangala and Anita and all my other awesome friends. About last year, when red-haired Brandy had moved into town and bullied me and taken all those friends away and made grade three a living hell. How I’d beat her up and won them back. Wanted to show him pictures I’d drawn, stories I was working on. (Oh MY GOD, he hadn’t met my dog yet, Toby! Dad got him from the pound, surprised me!) I wanted to show him my moves.

But as the needle touched down on the record and he started to sing, I fell silent. Michael sang. And sang and sang. And sometimes Paul McCartney sang. I listened and we looked at one another. And it was good.

I should have known it couldn’t last.

THE POSTER

With Michael gone for months on end, I had only his recordings and occasional TV appearances as reminders. When he debuted the moonwalk on Motown 25, I was watching. Okay, everybody was watching. The next day at recess, as my classmates were trying it out, I just watched and smiled. Michael had tried to teach it to me many times. If he had failed, what chance did these clowns have? When he won those eight - eight! My number, again! - 1984 Grammys, I was at home, wearing the other glove. He had wanted me, not Brooke Shields, on his arm that night, but I had a geography project due the next day. I had all my friends over for the broadcast of the Thriller video. They gasped and danced and screamed; I cried. I missed him so.

Even though I was nine years old by this time, I still had no steady income. My sister Nancy, who was fourteen and rolling in cash, had a poster of Michael that I eyed and coveted for months. (Michael was too shy to send me pictures and I was too shy to ask.) Thanks to the magic of the intertubes, here it is:

Alas, there were no intertubes to be tubed at the time, and all I could do was hang around Nancy’s door and catch the occasional peek. Eventually she took pity on me and told me she would consider selling it. I made an offer of jelly beans and laundry folding. She held firm at twenty dollars. At the time, that was eight weekly allowances for me. (My allowance always being the going rate of a movie; this was in the days of Two-fifty Tuesdays).

I scrimped and saved and forwent movies with my friends for two whole months. One happy allowance day the transaction was made: I eagerly handed over my hard-saved quarters and two dollar bills; the poster was rolled up and delivered into my shakey little hands. By now it was edge-frayed and faded and everyone was saying Michael was gay. But it wasn’t until somewhat later that I realized that the store price of posters was eight dollars and that my sis had pocketed a tidy one hundred percent plus profit for a poster she didn’t want anymore. Clever girl.

When he would visit, it was lovely, just like old times. But those visits were seldom and we couldn’t help but drift apart. He had the Jackson Five Victory Tour, I had Speech Arts and volleyball. And in the spirit of total disclosure, there were other men, I must confess. Nigel Brown and I went so far as to hold hands, about which Michael never knew, but I had strayed all the same.

NAZEER PAREKH AND THE THRILLER JACKET

My friend and schoolmate, Naz, had a similar experience to my poster ordeal when he begged and begged his parents for a Michael-style red pleather Thriller jacket. They said, again and again, “Don’t be ridiculous", but eventually gave in when he met them halfway with his paper route money.

Little did I know how tragic, for me, would be the day when Nazeer finally showed up at school in the jacket. By this time, scorn for Michael had gotten vicious in the Grey Owl Junior Public schoolyard. He was lame, he was a loser, he was SO GAY.

And did I defend Michael as staunchly as I had the myth of Santa Claus only a year or two before, popping Michael Haynes in the nose for saying Santa wasn’t real? No, friends, I am ashamed to say. I took the easy, coward’s route, making a show of laughing with the others before leaving Naz to the wolves. Shaking my head that he didn’t know better, I retreated into the background. I turned my back on Nazeer just as they were tearing the arms and zippers from his coat and pooing on him, and just then noticed a shadowy figure on the other side of the chainlink schoolyard fence. The backlit halo of a jericurl caught my eye. I saw the glow of silver socks, the glint of a so-familiar glove, and as he turned away I caught sight of a single tear rolling down my poor, sweet Michael’s face.

I called out his name once, feebly, but I knew that what he’d witnessed had been unforgivable. A terrible betrayal. I had lost him, maybe forever. I stood there stunned, and could only watch him walk away.

I wrote letter upon letter, for years, pleading for forgiveness. Michael eventually responded with a hit single.

He became more and more reclusive and reports of his strange behaviour worried me. I wished I could be there with him, for him, provide some kind of grounding influence as I did for all my other international celebrity friends. But Michael had good reason to feel angry, and how could I help him when I was part of what had sent him spiralling into darkness?

Somehow, Michael eventually found it in his heart to accept me into his life again. He was in his “Man In The Mirror”/“Heal the World” period and it had affected him deeply. He wanted to let go of old grudges and move on. But he would always keep me at a distance. We were friends but didn’t dance. There was talk, but little laughter. Liz never trusted me and she was a big influence. But after what I’d done I was grateful to be in his life at all and was content to visit Neverland now and then and give Bubbles his baths. Now and then Michael would almost forget himself and it would be like old times…but that was mostly when we’d been drinking, or eating Pixie Stix.

And then there was the time that Michael took all those painkillers and married Lisa Marie Presley by accident, thinking she was me. I was there; he thought I was Diana Ross. I could have stopped it but my pride got in the way. (Plus I was kind of enjoying being Diana Ross for a day. Who wouldn’t? Now if only I could make my hair go like that.) But it hurt, I won’t lie. Especially because he’d taken the last of the painkillers and there were none left for me.

Things between us would never be the same. Visits became fewer and fewer, and more and more sad. I didn’t deal well with his legal troubles, and he didn’t seem to understand how hard theatre school can be.

When news came through that Michael had died I was working on a play in Gananoque, Ontario. All I could do was sit, stunned, in front of the TV like everyone else. And that, after all, was all I deserved.

So where does that leave me, Dear Reader? Alone, getting older, and full of regret. We never had our wedding on the Moon. We never had our honeymoon at Disney World. Sure, I force everyone to listen to, REALLY listen to, Man In The Mirror every New Year’s Eve…but did I ever actually tell him how I felt, how desperately I still loved him after all these years? No, I kept it all inside, kept it inside and let him fall apart and bleach himself and shrink his nose smaller and smaller, until like some pathetic symbol of all his and my romantic possibility, it caved in and disappeared altogether.

It leaves me here, Dear Reader, talking to you. And while you’re very lovely, you’ll never moonwalk through my heart like Michael did. No one ever will.

>

Blyth bonus issue! Now with 100% real Blyth!

2010-07-16T17:23:00.011-04:00

From BLYTH, ONTARIO
July 16th, 2010

All right, all right, this isn't the Michael Jackson issue I've been working on....but it's close. Because Michael Jackson and The Blyth Festival are practically the same thing. I don't know what that means. But I refuse to delete it.

For all those who want a Blyth bedtime story, this is a little one. It's something I wrote for inclusion in the patrons' newsletter, and if they actually publish it I may be getting strange looks around town and gifts of lasagna for years to come. Here's hopin'!

(Moonwalker edition coming soon, promise.)

Dear friends (and I say friends because I do consider all Blyth patrons as such...except for the ones that don't like me in the shows),

Heather Black, our marketing guru-ette extraordinaire, has asked me to share a few words on the Blyth experience from my point of view as an actor in my third season here. Never one to turn down a chance to write a thousand-word essay on my day off, here I am.

I could tell you about the shows, and acting here, but you've seen me do that. And really, what can I say? I put on funny clothes and pretend to be somebody else for a living. Eric Coates and company have assembled one of the finest groups of people in the country at putting on funny clothes and making faces, and I'm pleased and proud to be one of their number.

But what I'd really like to tell you about is the Blyth administrative offices. Nothing fancy, really, just a former bank divided up into a few working areas, mostly open concept except for Sir Coates' CUSHY CORNER OFFICE; a boardroom used alternately for having meetings or for eating sandwiches; the former bank vault used as a photocopy room (so they say, but I keep looking for the piles of money); the box office around the corner...

What makes the office special to me is the feeling I get there. It's such a fun and welcoming place to drop by, and to see people buzzing around, happy about the work that they're doing. Or maybe they're just nice to me because I keep hanging around and they think, "Poor girl. No one else will talk to her". But that's sweet of them, isn't it?

The first day I arrived in town this season to begin rehearsals, I dropped by the office to say hi to Deb Sholdice, General Manager, superhero and all-round cool gal. In pops Sharon Thompson, equally cool and always well-coiffed Head of Box Office, to talk some important business with Deb. Seeing me, she immediately shouts, "What's your shoe size?!" and runs out to her car. Seems the shoe shop in Wingham recently had a big sale at which the two of them went hog wild, buying even shoes that didn't fit anyone they know. Catherine Fitch has also just arrived and next thing we know, the Box Office and General Managers are down on their knees sizing us and shoving shiny new shoes on our feet. This is why I like working at Blyth; it makes me feel like Cinderella.

Of course, it's not all fun and games and shoe sales at the Blyth Festival; sometimes there's serious work to be done. For this, Deb employs a small brass wheel that sits atop her desk. You spin the dial and it points to "Maybe", "Pass the buck", or "Fire someone". Lacking this sophisticated technology, Eric sits in his office buried knee-high in new scripts under consideration, relying on the age-old technique of eenie-meenie-miney-moe. To cast the plays, he considers the pile of photos and resumes sent in by actors across the country and then throws them all up in the air, seeing which ones land on top. Since Canada has such a deep field of talented performers, this method has done well for him so far. Sadly, Gordon Pinsent's CV is too heavy and keeps getting stuck at the bottom.

A visit to the office isn't complete without some kind of comedy routine from Eric and Deb, who keep their doors open, I suspect primarily so that they can shout witty one-liners at each other. There's the occasional guest appearance from Deb's daughter and Box Office rep, Sarrah, who is a bonafide comedian and makes me run from the office in fear of laughing so hard that I'll pee. Then there's Heather Thompson, House Manager, who acted with me years ago in The Thirteenth One, which she takes as license to make fun of me and call me rude nicknames all day long. Hey, the office needs its insult comic, too.

In the middle of the room sits a desk sometimes used by summer interns and such, but more often covered in bakeware and crockpots. There's always some kind of potluck or bakesale or barbecue at the festival, another big reason I can't stay away. The Shaw Festival wants me back, badly, but I keep telling them, "Not until you put some pork on this here fork."* And Martin Scorcese keeps calling, but he hasn't learned to offer me a Bonanza Breakfast.

A new tradition at Blyth, one I find endearing and utterly characteristic of this place, is that, on a show's first tech rehearsal day (a twelve-hour day going from about noon until midnight), the stage managers and cast of the other shows serve a dinner in the lower hall to the cast and crew. This so that everyone can have one less thing to do or think about in the middle of a long, sometimes difficult day.

Of course, by the time I got to our dinner (a little late) for A Killing Snow, the food had run out and I had to go home and cook. (And I made banana bread and a rhubarb crumble for The Bordertown Cafe people.) I'm not angry or anything; somebody around here owes me some lasagna is all I'm saying.

Reluctant as I always am to leave the office (having never had one and suffering from cubicle-envy), I do inevitably have to pass through that back door and into the backstage area to get ready and perform. For the best, most responsive and warmest audiences I've ever experienced anywhere in my fifteen years as an actor.

And in case you were wondering, backstage is not exempt from the Blyth food culture. Every few days, we'll walk into the green room to discover Gil Garratt sitting there with a grin and a box of cream puffs from Culberts in Goderich, at which point we all shout at him (as best we can through pastry-filled mouths) for making our costumes not fit.

I can think of worse problems to have.

See you all out there,

Lisa

* A reference to an annual Blyth Country Supper event, hosted by the local pig farmers' association. It really is called "Pork on Your Fork".

P.S Touristas: http://www.blythfestival.com/ if you want to know what the fuss is about. Some excitin' new-fangled video clips on there and everything!

the skeptical whatsit

2010-05-25T16:55:00.010-04:00

From TORONTO,

May 25th, 2010

Have you ever given blood, Dear Reader? Firstly, if you don’t, and you can, then you should. I’m a regular donor of platelets and blood and my great and powerful fluids have saved thousands of lives, made sickly people more well than they’d been in their entire lives, allowed newborn babies to leap tall buildings in a single bound… But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, it’s a good thing to do, you get to feel like a hero….and then a lady gives you a cookie!

At every Canadian Blood Services outpost, there are these nice old lady volunteers who are sweet to you and thank you for your help and give you Tang and Chips Ahoy and make sure that you’re okay before sending you back out into the world.

Now have you ever given an audition? It’s very similar to blood donation: you give of yourself, empty out your very essence, as it were, feel somewhat drained and woozy - but nobody gives you a cookie, or even anything, which is my point. You immediately stagger out into the bright light of day after nary a kind word, depleted and stunned and confused. Old ladies don’t offer Tang; they glare at you for talking to yourself and running into them. (Or over them, if you’re one of the unfortunate five Canadian actors who owns a motor vehicle.)

“GODDAMN PESKY ACTORS!”

I’ve decided to start a volunteer brigade, comprised of kind old parents/grandparents of actors, and residents of PAL (Performing Arts Lodge), who will offer tea and sympathy at audition halls across this land. This shall be my legacy. Think of me while you’re crying all over that Oreo, a pair of comforting wrinkled hands smoothing your hair, a honeyed old voice saying, “There, there. There’s always teachers’ college.”

(In lieu of the not-yet-created Old People’s Audition Auxiliary, I will, after a particularly brutal audition, often take away the sting by treating myself to a nice brunch or a dress, spending money I'm not going to make on that job I didn’t just get. Sometimes I do this after a really good audition, too, because I’m just so darn excited!)

I’ll confess I’ve started to have fantasies of having other lucrative skills, like waking up one morning to realize that I have a profound knowledge of, say, biological warfare, or the tango. I’ll suddenly be in demand as a tango-dancing weapons-maker, travelling the world and making piles of dough, setting my own schedule, driving several fancy cars, three boats and a motorcycle simultaneously (a lasso ‘round my helicopter), appearing in the occasional play or movie as my exciting life allows. (I’ll suddenly be wildly in demand as an actor, of course, now that I’m no longer slithering into audition rooms wearing Eau de Desperation, but dashing around trailing tantalizing puffs of the sweet smell of success.)

But let us catalogue my actual other possibilities, in something we will call:

THINGS I MIGHT YET BE (vote now)

Thing #1: A crazy old lady.

Okay, maybe this one doesn’t exactly solve the financial worries or buy me that helicopter, but it’s something I’ve always dreamed of. And I think it could be creatively fulfilling. I’ve always been fascinated by the moment that a person cracks. I imagine mine would be sudden and dramatic. Like, what if I were on stage when it happened? What if, in the middle of act two of an Oscar Wilde play, I stripped down to my panties and ran into the audience, screaming random Gordon Lightfoot lyrics and mooing like a cow (to give the obvious example)? And the ushers had to chase me down. Or if, during some long, pause-y drama, I just paused forever and never spoke again? And refused to leave the stage, and the ASM had to come and lift me.

Of course now if I ever go nuts everyone will accuse me of faking.

#2: A politician.

This is merely so I can have the distinction, when the sex scandal breaks, of being the first elected official to say, "So fucking what. None of your business. Now go away....you idiots. And you can quote me on that." (All things Giambrone shoulda said?)

Thing #3: A Jedi.

Note: I wrote this one down and then got to the part in my pal Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s (or Young BS’s, to regular readers) excellent new novel, Ghosted, where the lead guy confesses that “Jedi” is one of his never-grown-out-of career choices. I AM NOT RIPPING YOU OFF, BS. I want to be a Jedi independent of you. Or rather, we could be Jedis together (fun – like Luke and Obi-Wan!), but I thought of it independent of you. Maybe it’s something everyone born between 1965 and 1980 wants to be.

Another note: when I imagine myself as a Jedi, I never think of myself as tall and cool and me-like in my Jedi gear. I always picture myself all small and wrinkly like Yoda. But I guess the wrinkly bit comes later, once I’ve been a member of the order for like five thousand years. I shall now try to amend my Jedi self-image.

Done. Damn but I look good in Jedi robes.

The other night I had a dream that I was a contestant on some actor reality show. Like that Sound-of-Music-Problem-Like-Maria thingy but without all the annoying songs. My friend Jeff Irving was on it, too. At one point they call us all into a room for a “talk” and when we get there it turns out to be full of important directors and all our friends and family, and we’re meant to give an impromptu audition, using material we’ve never read before. And we have to wear costumes, comprised of bits we pull from a tickle trunk at the back of the room. I’m given a monologue from Joan of Arc, and, grumbling along with the other actors about why we consented to be on this stupid show in the first place, manage to cobble together a costume out of odd bits of armour and scraps of clothing. I top it all off by putting a very large, red pointy shoe on my head as a hat, and I’m looking in a mirror, pleased at how surprisingly cool I look with a shoe on my head, when I realize I haven’t even looked at the monologue and it’s my turn.

Thing #4: One of those “professional eaters” who travels around competing to eat the most burgers or chili or blueberry pie (yes, I’m remembering Stand by Me) at state and county fairs. It would seem I’m infinitely qualified for this one – not only do I like to eat, I also have plenty of experience in making a spectacle of myself, and tend to enjoy the sensation of food dribbling down my chin. Multiple chins would be even better.

BUT THEN…I read this stupid article about the World Poutine Eating Competition, held just the other day here in Toronto.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/deep-dish-scarfs-down-13-pounds-of-poutine-to-wear-the-crown-of-curds/article1578435/

Apparently it’s really hard, and now I’m not so sure I’ve got the right stuff.

However, whether or not I ever win the Golden Corndog, I trust I have got what it takes to metamorphose into…

Thing #5: A very large woman. Not a profession, per se, this is along the lines of “crazy old lady” in terms of not being the most obviously practical choice, but truly fascinating. When I was a kid I always looked forward to the day that my metabolism would slow down and I would start to grow. I imagined a great power in taking up as much space as possible, rumbling down the street as everybody stared at me in awe and admired my latest African print muumuu. I think in my big fat woman fantasies I’m also black. I’m not sure how I’d pull off that part. Of course the myth here may be far more romantic than reality, considering that now, in my MID THIRTIES (gulp), I spend more and more time sharply turning on strangers and asking, “Were you looking at my thigh? The left one? It's big isn't it? Bigger than the right. Oh God, stop looking at it! I'm hideous!”

I’m rushed backstage at the Shaw Festival mainstage theatre, where I’m suddenly being thrown into understudy overdrive to IMMEDIATELY go on in Laurie Paton’s role in Candida. Time is tight, it’s all a jumble of corsets and wigs and people shouting blocking at me. The moment I set foot onstage, my wig gets caught in the doorframe and flies from my head. The audience roars with laughter. No going back to get and reattach the wig now, or rescue my cloak which has gotten snagged as well, so I wriggle out of the cloak and soldier on. Only when my fellow actor, the amazing Bernard “Bunny” Behrens, speaks to me, do I realize that in all the panic I didn’t take a moment to look at the script and I don’t remember a thing. The upstage part of this set, however, consists of a giant wall of bookcases and surely, I think, there must be a copy of Candida in there somewhere. As Bunny goes on talking to himself, I turn away from him and the audience, searching frantically….and there it is! A paperback “Plays Pleasant” by George Bernard Shaw! I sit down at the desk, open the book and start to read my lines aloud. By now, I’ve so thrown Bunny off that he’s forgotten what he’s supposed to say, and so he sits across from me, facing upstage, so he can use the book as well. We spend the rest of the show like that, passing the script across to one another, hunched over, reading the play in barely audible voices.

When I wake up, I think, Holy fuck! That was awful! I’d better brush up on my lines for Candida just in case. It takes me five full minutes to remember that I’m not an understudy for that show, and have only seen it once.

Alternate Career #6: A parody songwriter. Like Weird Al, but hot and girly. Funny, too.

I have a bone to pick with Weird Al. My own burgeoning songwriting career was sidetracked by a clear case of plagiarism on his part. It was grade four at Grey Owl Junior Public School, and my writing partner Hansa Prasad and I had just finished our final draft of “Eat It”, a comic refashioning of Michael Jackson’s song “Beat It”….when WE HEARD WEIRD AL YANKOVIC’S VERSION on the radio. It wasn’t near as funny as ours, which would now clearly never see the light of day.

We were so disillusioned and embittered by the experience that, there and then, newly angry, burnt-out nine-year-olds, we stopped working altogether. Which is a shame, really, because “Eat It” wasn’t even Norton & Prasad’s best work. It was less impressive than our master opus, “Get Away From George”, but had more of a chance at commercial success as “Beat It” was a much more ubiquitous hit than was “Get Into the Groove” by Madonna.

Our classmate George Karismanis wasn’t even a fat kid; he just wore lumpy sweaters and maybe five extra pounds around his waist. Maybe he ate a lot, I don’t remember. More importantly, he was a nine-year-old named George.

Some highlights? Why, I happen to remember a few:

Get away from George, ‘cause he likes to gorge

and he might eat you (yea-ah)…

He gets to know you in a special way,

And then he eats you for breakfast the next day-a-ay,

Only when he’s eating does he feel this free-ee,

At night I lock the doors so he won’t eat me-ee!

Get away from George (et cetera)…

I can assure you, we never sang this to, or even around, George Karismanis. (If it gets back to him now, I do apologize.) It was, in fact, our sensitivity to George’s feelings that made us not want to release it, instead pinning all hopes on “Eat It” as our first big single.

Until you, Weird Al.

P.S. UHF sucked ass.

SOMEONE KILL THIS MAN. (OH, LIKE YOU DIDN’T WANT TO ALREADY.)

#7: A Paralympic curler. This involves volunteers hacking off my legs or poking both my eyes out....and teaching me how to curl.

#8: A pool shark. Or a card shark. Some type of shark. (And YES, BS, I thought of this one, too, before I read your book. Wait a minute…Are you me?)

#9: A pinball wizard? Yeah, that’s the one.

Then I’ll feel real tough and cool.

I’m acting in a play on a stage that looks oddly like the one at my old high school. At some point, I realize that the imaginary “fourth wall” separating the actors from the audience is, in this case, very real. A construction crew is working on it as we speak, banging drywall up on a wooden frame, covering the few gaps through which the play can still be seen. I try to perform in the gaps, and then resort to clawing at the wall and trying madly to get to the other side. Everybody else has given up. The spectators talk amongst themselves.

#10: A software engineer.

My latest brilliant invention-in-my-head is interactive software that intuits your reaction to whatever application you’re using at the time and adjusts your computer accordingly. For instance, on opening an aggravating email from someone at work, you simply wave your hand dismissively at the screen while rolling your eyes – and your browser immediately opens some porn! To cheer you up! Just got a nasty online reminder that tax time is coming, or over, or exists in general? Give your computer the finger - and your browser immediately…opens some porn! (Other options pending.)

Recently my friend Ross Manson, after laughing uproariously for about an hour over some little joke I’d burped up, managed to calm down and said, “Norton, If you didn't exist, someone would have to invent you”.

Well, actually, I thought, someone did. All at once I realized with an absolute clarity that this whole “theory of evolution” I’ve always bought into is just so much bullshit. Because if I'm not the best argument for Intelligent Design out there, I don't know what is. Trees and, I don't know, diamonds, could have been merely randomly generated - but The Skeptical Tourist? Clearly the work of an awesome, benevolent God. (Who can also be cruel in that He won't let you have me.) All this to say that I obviously must become:

Thing #11: A left-wing Creationism lecturer.

Or there’s #12: A prostitute. (Image available…in your brain.)

It often seems a waste of my considerable carnal talents that I’m not having sex with as many people as possible. (And doing it for money would solve those oft-mentioned intermittent fiscal woes.) There’s usually a stigma attached to this kind of thing....but when you're the best there is at something, that oughtn’t to apply. In that case, I believe there's a actually a responsibility to share.... My being celibate right now is as if Gretzky had decided to hang up his skates in 1986. Tragic. Inconceivable. A blight on the human race, in the following sense of the word:

Blight (blaIt), noun

(3.) Something that impairs growth, withers hopes and ambitions, or impedes progress and prosperity.

See? That’s terrible! (Somebody fuck me, for God’s sake.)

Maybe what I need to do, Erect Young Reader, is let my hair go grey (as a grand symbol of, ahem, GROWING UP) and see what becomes of me. I keep wanting to, but then I have to audition to play some twelve-year-old so I pluck the silver hairs away and bid them fond adieus. (I must admit there's some fear & vanity involved here as well... Are you looking at my grey-haired thigh? The left one?)

If only I weren’t so fucking good at acting.

Yours, on the cusp of everything,

The Tourist

P.S. I've added a poll on the sidebar where you can help me to decide which of the eminently practical careers listed above is the one for me. So go ahead and vote now. And then I can get on with life.

own the odium*

2010-03-23T20:00:00.012-04:00

From TORONTO,

March 23rd, 2010

So here I was, sprawled on the skeptical sofa, watching women's moguls through a veil of tears, and suddenly thought, I've gotta get outta here and own me some podium.

I know what you're thinking. Veil of tears??? Norton, our savvy old crony, surely when a relationship ends you just laugh, light a cigarette and call out “Next!”. You can't feel heartbreak like us mere mortals over here. Why, you're....you're....The Tourist! The skeptical one... Remember?

And the answer to that, my worried little friends, is that I don't feel heartbreak like anyone else. My heartbreak is HUGE. Thundering. Of epic proportions. The Tourist does heartbreak like no one does heartbreak.

I weep the most enormous tears, wail the biggest wails, yell at the neighbours, kick dogs. I don’t merely tear at my beautiful ebony hair; I set it all on fire - and grow it back within the hour. I fling things around my apartment, yelling, “Out of my way!” and “Shut up, you!” I wake to discover I’ve eaten three entire pillows out of madness and hunger for affection. I hurl all my pots and pans and the contents of my fridge out on the floor, because loud noises comfort me. I stare at one wall for hours on end, then cover it in feces and smears of dijon mustard.

I gnash my teeth, whatever that means.

It’s all either not a pretty sight, or intensely beautiful, depending what you’re into. I’m a weepy, snotty, angry whirling hurricane. Of love.

And on the seventh day, I walk into the Flight Centre, demanding to be flown somewhere.

In this case, Vancouver.

VANCOUVER, 2010

DAY ONE

I arrived in town with my Olympic gear (sweatshirt, t-shirt…alas, no coveted red mittens) and my excited Olympic grin secretly tucked away out of sight. Arriving from afar, I was expecting a grumbly, unenthusiastic Vancouver full of people who just didn’t approve. I thought I’d be conspicuous in my CANADA shirt. That only outsiders would be seen in such things.

I’d imagined the fans consisting of a few Japanese tourists ducking through as angry locals pelted them with organic yogurt and spelt (it’s a B.C. thing).

….Until I realized the gear (and the spirit) was EVERYWHERE. Who can hold onto boring old grumpy ideals when there are gold medals flying around? And when Alex Bilodeau and Jenn Heil are so darn cute?

I was staying with my buddy Christine Oakey, who was working for the Olympics (at VANOC headquarters, spending very long days saying, “Go here.” “Don’t go there.” “Stop picking your nose”). Mackenzie Muldoon (similarly bossing people around at the curling facility) was crashing on the couch. Except for that evening, Oakey and I would scarcely see or speak to one another at all until three days after the games, despite literally sharing a bed at night. It was a king size bed, and we didn’t even spoon. Perhaps we communicated telepathically, between the wee hours when I would crawl in and five a.m. when she would crawl out.

But that night, we went to the victory ceremony. Sadly, no canucks were receiving medals that night, but we yelled and whooped at Russians and Chinese and other types with great enthusiasm. It was “Newfoundland Night” at BC Place, which meant a whole lotta Sean Majumder, lots more fiddling, a song or two from Hey Rosetta among others, and a headlining performance by Great Big Sea.

That was fun, if made slightly trying by the presence of a very small, very drunk young diehard Great Big Sea fan standing right behind me, whose mouth was exactly at my ear-height, and who wailed along off-key to every word, even the singer’s impromptu riffing. I miraculously managed to hold onto my Olympic spirit and not wring her drunken little neck.

Oddly enough, I’d spent the previous evening at the C.R Avery concert at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, listening to songs all about Vancouver; now here I was in Vancouver, listening to a guy sing about Newfoundland.

After that we were deposited onto Robson street, where Oakey went one way (back to work) and I went the other: into the throngs celebrating the Canadian men’s hockey team’s defeat of Slovakia which moved them onto the final against the US.

It was fucking insane. Crowds of running, singing, high-fiving crazy people going absolutely wild. I remember thinking, It can’t get any crazier than this. What’s gonna happen if (when) we win the final? What will people do then? Blow themselves up? I guess this is ten and the knob goes to eleven.

It was a bit much to be alone in. After four thousand high fives and getting puked on once or twice, I started to feel infinitely lonely, and so slid into a coffee shop on Granville, to eat cheesecake and listen to an Irish guy play the guitar and wail about lost love. That was more my speed. As a backdrop to the music, you could still hear constant screaming in the streets outside; I started to play a game of pretending that everyone out there was being attacked by zombies as we sat in a café, waiting for the end to come.

DAY TWO

…Included a trip to Atlantic House on Granville Island, to see Nova Scotia’s own (excellent and rather dreamy) Matt Mays, though Oakey and her coworkers weren’t awake enough to last until he came on.

One of Oakey’s friends, an expat Brit, spent about an hour trying to figure out my accent – eventually bursting out with “I’ve got it! I know who you sound like: That scientist guy from the Simpsons!” (The guy who says “Glavin” all the time.) And then explained that it was just that I have “a very intellectual way of saying things”. Which may be the nicest way that I've been called a nerd.

When those assholes left, I got to spend the the rest of the evening with my real friends – a bunch of young yahoos from Coquitlam that I’d met in the lineup while waiting for Oakey and her gang. Perfectly friendly, gentlemanly yahoos, who couldn’t believe their luck in suddenly having a girl to hang out with, without pressing it. One of them, though, the most weavingly drunk one of the bunch, felt a constant need to grind my gears about being from Toronto. First he wanted to hassle me about being a Leafs fan; when I told him I didn’t really follow hockey, except during the Olympics, Go Canada, he switched to ridiculing people from Toronto for not even caring about hockey.

He asked if I followed lacrosse. I said no. He scoffed at that. I asked him “Do you play?” He told me he used to, before he decided to just go fuckin’ drinking every night. I eventually got to the root of his resentment: some lacrosse team from Toronto that was better than his lacrosse team had come out here and kicked his lacrosse team’s ass…and “they thought they were pretty fuckin’ great”. I pointed out that it was sports, not a tea party, and that if he had won, he would have thought he was pretty fuckin’ great, too. He almost conceded on that one, and was soon lifting me in the air during the Matt Mays show and nearly dropping me on people’s heads. Score one, snooty girl from the centre of the universe. Winning them over, five drunk boys from Coquitlam at a time.

DAY THREE

…And final day of the Olympics, I straggled over to my pal Mike Wasko’s house in Kitsilano for the game. Saw a sign for THE BEST CINNAMON BUNS IN THE WORLD as I stepped off the bus, so I had to take a detour, obviously, and was just coming out with my box of sticky goodness (insert…dirty joke here) when the bar next door erupted. First goal Canada! I ran the rest of the way to Mike’s place, leaving a trail of icing sugar and excitement in my wake, and got to watch the rest with a quality group of Wasko’s family, friends, a sandwich buffet and mimosas. (You got style, Wastich, my friend.) The buffet proved a valuable distraction; whenever the game got too tense, someone would declare, “I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to eat meat!” Except for Yurij, who kept threatening to walk around the block and was watching most of the proceedings from the next room, by the door, ready to flee….and whom everyone kept admonishing to stop being so goddamned Eastern European and have some faith.

Well, you know what happened, obviously, and obviously it was glorious.

There at Mike’s place, a contingent of us leapt into Sarah Cobb’s car and headed downtown where, indeed, the knob had been turned to eleven.

We wandered around, soaking it in and grinning ‘til our faces hurt. At least my snooty Toronto face did - I’m not used to that kind of thing.

(That second one is Cobb, almost passing for me.)

I must say, I do appreciate the ferocious return of the high five; it indicates people forgetting that they're too cool for such things. The sun is shining, we are the champions - what's not to high five about?

The cops stood in the middle of it all, grinning and receiving high fives themselves, looking proud as anything. A few of them , though, were just a-twitchin’, waiting for something to go wrong. One sports bar had imported some snow, the only snow in town, and had it piled out front. Some dude scooped up a handful, threw it at someone…and was immediately tackled by police! When I lobbed my modest snowball (gently, friendli-ly, at Nick Wasko’s feet), handsome, tall, grey-haired Officer Doom was instantly in my face, letting his presence be known.

“Haya doin’?”

“Great, officer! How about you?”

“I’m worried. Remember ‘94.” (When the Canucks lost the cup and downtown erupted in riots.)

“Yeah, but everybody’s happy this time!”

“Well they started off happy then, too.” (????)

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. Everybody’s celebrating!”

“….You’re not from around here, are you?”

Maybe he was just trying to pick me up.

I'd love to know the numbers on how many people called in sick the next day (or just didn't show up for work).

We headed back to Mike’s place after an hour or two, to watch and ridicule the closing ceremony. It was so stinky (though I actually didn’t mind the Buble-and-the-beavers bit; it was every other stinky thing)….but valuable for this: it made me realize how lucky it was that the opening was so good. Thank God they saved the shite for when no one was watching.

DAYS FOUR THROUGH ELEVEN

The 2010 games over and life returning to normal, suddenly everyone was talking about something that any theatre professional instantly recognized as post-show depression. It was getting news time even, Brian Williams referring to the sadness and sense of loss spreading across Vancouver, and VANOC offering counselling to staff to deal with it all being over. My theatre friends working at the Olympics were used to this kind of thing: closing a show, saying goodbye to friends made and moving on…but for poor Joe Volunteer, having just participated in two weeks of the greatest show on earth, the feeling was new and devastating. Like a little kid leaving summer camp and bawling as her parents drag her away from her pals (unless she went to smelly Brownie camp). PSD for everyone!

People on the Skytrain looked wistfully around, wondering if anyone would high five them today. Someone in line at Shoppers Drug Mart saw someone else buying a half price Quatchi (Olympic mascot) keychain and sighed, “Wasn’t it awesome?” “Yeah…where were you for the game?” “I can’t believe how quiet it is now,” people kept saying.

Perhaps the saddest thing I saw was a city bus with its sign scrolling, “GO CANADA GO! SORRY…OUT OF SERVICE”. Okay, it seemed really poignant at the time.

As for me, I was feeling mostly okay, if occasionally blindsided by some stupid thought such as, That's it. Where am I ever gonna find another man who doesn't snore?

I was looking good, which added some spring to my step. As is always the case in such climates, my skin was all dewy; my hair had acquired a wave.

My postgames consisted of a lot of sightseeing, some visiting with friends (Hi there, Nadia! Good to see you, Challenor!), surprise Oscar night in Victoria with my stepmom Liisa and her family, and some good old fashioned B.C…exercise. See, you thought I was gonna say “bud”, didn’t you? Okay, that too. But mostly exercise.

And walking through Stanley Park one day, I felt really good. Like breakthrough good.

There you are, face to face with the mountains and trees, the ocean and sky…and you can’t help but think: Look at how small I am. How paltry are my problems. And look how beautiful the world is. There are worse things to be than alone. And, thinking these wonderful positive thoughts, you turn around and nearly smack right into this:

And then you cry for eighteen minutes.

I soon realized it was a marker for a path and, while certainly a kick in the shins from God, not only that. I decided to bravely follow the path, imagining it could still include me, one who, while not technically a “lover”, not right now, not in the classic sense of the word, was still a lover of nature, of life, of the mountains and sky….et cetera. The sun was falling rapidly as I ventured deep into the woods, hoping I would get to the other side before getting lost in blackness. And then industrious local rapists started jumping out from behind the trees, one after the other….so there was romance to be found in lovers lane after all! How sweet!

(Romantic post-ravagement idyll)

A day or two later, I did the “Grouse Grind”, a trek to the top of Grouse Mountain in North Van that I proudly finished in an hour and a half instead of taking the other option of giving up halfway through and rolling back down to my death. Oakey had heard it was “just a bunch of stairs", to which I answer, “Sure, Oakey...maybe if you're, say, Lance Armstrong or a mountain goat.”

In case you doubt me, here’s a word from Wikipedia, which never, ever lies: “(The Grind) is an extremely steep and mountainous trail that climbs 853 m (2,799 ft) over a distance of 2.9 km (2 mi), with an average grade of 30 degrees. The trail, nicknamed "Mother Nature's Stairmaster", is notoriously gruelling due to its steepness and mountainous terrain. - Total Stairs: 2,830.” So there.

Thank God for signs like this to let me know I was actually getting somewhere:

And ones like this, that made me feel dangerous and cool:

At the top, before lunch and hard-earned cider at the restaurant, I trekked around some more, and found myself walking down a grassy ski hill as skiiers slid down next to me. That was weird:

DAY THE LAST

While arriving at the airport drunk isn't exactly what I’d call a plan…it seemed to work for me. Wasko and I'd spent the evening previous at an improv show, and later in his kitchen, consuming whiskey and shouting at each other over topics far and wide. (Even though we agreed on almost everything, we still managed to get all hopped up and wave our arms around.) After hours of this, Mike finally squinted at the clock and said, "Hey what time's your flight?" I shouted, "AAAARGH!" and ran. I had two hours to cab home, pack my bags, wash dishes, and get to the airport to be scanned and prodded for a seven am departure.

The drunkenness allowed me a remarkable level of humour through the usual ordeal. I giggled my shoes off and barely stopped myself from saying, "Most action I've seen in weeks" as security was groping me for drugs. I swaggered though the terminal with that all-knowing, drunk girl leer we know so well, then flirted with my cute young seatmate, Eric, until falling into a satisfyingly deep sleep most of the way across the country. This could be the beginning of a bad habit or even a series of arrests, but it's what I'm doing from here on in.

THE NOW

And then I got home and the hurt hit me double. I was done running around and back on home turf, where the memories lived. Back to the couch, still carrying that broken heart, and now with a lot less cash to keep it warm.

There was the Paralympics to watch, but while CTV had coverage, it mostly played highlights, and rather silently, without anyone to provide context or tell you what the hell was going on. I’m not actually enough into sports to dig that.

I need colour commentary. I need juicy tidbits to keep me interested. Like, “Michael Such-and-such is a role model to many, having overcome his blindness AND cerebral palsy to become a world-class skier…but it’s a little-known fact that he murdered six people last year”…..or “Curler Helen So-and-so is a big one-legged slut who left her husband for her coach this month”…Stuff like that.

I liked the Paralympic closing ceremony, but when it came to the Sochi stuff, it begged the same question: The Russian anthem is about twenty-seven minutes long – are they gonna do something about that before 2014?

It also kind of made me laugh that one of the musicians featured sang a tune the refrain of which was, “You may think you’ve got it all, but it could be a pebble that makes you fall”. I imagined one of the athletes having a sudden flashback and freaking out: “It WAS a pebble that made me fall! That's how I got my spinal cord injury!”

So now it’s all over folks, nothing to see.

I could try to mitigate the sadness by jumping in bed with the next supermodel who happens by…but then, whoever gets to touch this body inevitably grows addicted and wants it 24 hours a day. And I'm not ready for that kind of schedule yet. (Not that my people aren't reviewing applications.... Operators are standing by.)

But hey, back when Mister Miyagi had me paint his fence, I did learn a thing or two about patience. Sometimes you just gotta wait this shit out.
And I really am getting better and better every day. (Except when I'm not.)

Wax on, wax off,

The Tourist

___________________________________________________________

*odium

The state or quality of being odious.
Strong dislike, contempt, or aversion.
A state of disgrace resulting from hateful or detestable conduct.

BONUS SHOT:

Darth Fiddler, downtown Victoria

SKEPTOLYMPICS 2010!

2010-02-14T00:17:00.002-05:00

From THE SOFA,
February 13th, 2010

Yes, I'm a big sucker for the Olympic Games. Yes, the pre-games coverage and the opening ceremony always get me kinda teary, right down to the unveiling of the latest feature-length Tim Horton's ad. And yes, this year's ceremony in Vancouver was really well done, and impressive, not to mention inclusive and respectful of the memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian luger who had tragically died that day. Organizer John Furlong's speech was nice. The music was pretty great. They made it look like frickin' whales were swimming under the stage.

But....

I would be remiss were I not to comment on the unacceptable paucity of silly hats. Clearly Olympians the world over had read what The Tourist had to say during the 2006 parade of athletes at Turin, thus discovering that we've all been having a snicker at their expense. (No, not the chocolate bar; that's only if it's plural.) Come ON, superhuman world-class jocktypes; this is the one time we mortals get to laugh at you, don't you get that? Is it so much to ask that you let us, just once every couple of years?

No, this year far too many of you had your shiny, lustrous, just-done hair out waving around along with your flags and arms and whatnot, no hats on whatsoever. Hardly fair.

GREEK NATIONAL TEAM, OSLO WINTER GAMES, 1952. NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT.

Our sweet, muscle-bound Canucks, I happily report, did wear their silly hats dutifully. HOWEVER: flag bearer Clara Hughes was wearing a different AND DECIDEDLY LESS SILLY hat than the rest of Team Canada. Boo, I say to you, Ms. Hughes. And good luck. May your powerful thighs be wrapped in gold come Thursday.

Cut to our poor put-upon truant-from-parliament Prime Minister in the stands, looking slightly stoned, he and his wife terrified someone might mention him in a speech and draw boos from half the stadium. Waving timidly while crazy drunken premier Gordon Campbell goes insane right next to them. "Shut up, Gord," the Highly Medicated Harpers whisper through tightly clenched smiles, "You're gonna make them notice us. Here - take this valium."

All right, why do they have to drag stupid old Nelly Furtado out for all these damn things? Every time she did her inappropriately sexual yet awkward little hip wiggle Bryan Adams looked like he was gonna laugh.

Who did Sarah McLachlan's hair and why?

Kickass gay biker hooker fiddlers with tattoos and spiky hair! Cool!!!!

Props to the Japanese, for waving Canadian flags as well their own. Of course our flags do match theirs, so it didn't compromise their colour scheme or anything....but I thought it was a friendly gesture.

As for the U.S. team, I can never stop wishing someone would smack all those stupid camcorders out of their hands.

Now, I'd never before heard of Shane Koyczan, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who was worried for him when he was introduced as a poet and stepped out onto the empty stage. That poor fat nerd, I thought. The jocks are all gonna laugh at him. They'll make him stick around for the whole games with the sole purpose of shoving him into their lockers when they've had a bad day. But then brother comes out with THIS:

(Except last night’s version was even better.)

Like that Molson (I AM) Canadian ad meets W.O. Mitchell meets Jay-Z. Right on for chubby bearded slam poets! Our games are so inclusive they even include you!

All tolerance has its limits however, and the overriding message of the Canadian media’s Olympic coverage, when it comes to our team, seems to be this: no useless little bronze or silver medals will do.

Bring home the gold or CTV will ram your decapitated heads onto stakes as a warning to future losers. And feed your bodies to the winners. Mention the words "personal best" and we will ship you to Nunavut, stick a pointy thing in your skull and Michaelle Jean will eat your heart.

Speaking of Jean, anyone notice the two minute shot of her sleeping during the speeches? I know, she’s had a pretty tough month.

Another thing that scared poor Harper was that the drums they'd handed out for everyone to beat on instead of clapping made a sound oddly like that once-familiar rumbling when all the MPs complain and bang on things in the House of Commons.

Or maybe the crowd was grumbling, about having to wear white smocks that made them look like a bunch of morons in the kind of cheap dollar store raincoats that tourists wear when they get caught in the rain. God forbid the audience shouldn't match! (What's that, Emily?) My trusty research intern is informing me it had something to do with the lighting effects. Well lah dee dah.

Jacques Rogge en francais is just as boring as Jacques Rogge en anglais.

Luckily, to wake everyone up, there’s kd lang sounding fucking amazing. But I gotta say it...Hallelujah? As in "It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah"? Wow, nothing says "Go Canada" quite like that. (Heads on stakes, people.)

And then there's Measha Brueggergosman singing the Olympic Anthem. Measha B belts that shit out….and is met with a little meh and some limpwrist flag waving. Bloody Canadians.

Follow that up with some overdramatic croaky franco-dude (called Garou of all things) who gets to sing on account of having a song called Un Peu Plus Loin, Un Peu Plus Haut, which is like oh so inspirational. Un peu plus BLECHH. I try to get Quebecois music, I really do. Okay, that's a lie, I really don't. Whenever my dad waxes nostalgic about his mom and all his aunts and uncles jamming in the Laurentians back in the day all I can think is, "Oh thank God I wasn't born for that".

As for Nikki Yanofsky, she’s lovely, but it’s day one and I already don’t ever need to hear that song again. Thanks again, CTV.

Wayne Gretzky runs like a girl. Of course I skate like a turd.

By the way, have a look my right skate, which literally exploded under my feet last time I went skating (the other one was ready to blow), which explains my nonparticipation in this games' short track speed skating events.

Watch out in 2014, when I'll be 38 and therefore really ready.

Anyway, it was very exciting when the Great One took the torch from BC Place…

To his Fortress of Solitude…

And lit the magic cauldron of Olympicon.

(As he’s doing this, Brian Williams points out that the torch ceremony was conceived by the Nazis for the ‘36 Olympics as a symbol of Aryan supremacy??? WHAAAT??? Jesus Christ.)

The people lining the streets were so excited! They didn't know whether to yell CANADAAAA or GRETZKYYYYY! So they shouted sort of a combination of the two, peed themselves and cried. That's why the RCMP mistook them for derelicts, tasered them and drove them out of town in the “Spirit Van”. Just for the duration of the games. Then they get to come back and dine on the succulent yet untriumphant limbs of the Canadian competitors - er, big fat failures – who don’t get gold, along with all the rest of us.

See you in two weeks, when all this is over and I pry my atrophying body off the couch,

The Tourist

GO GRETZKADAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Random Crap 2009!

2010-01-05T10:57:00.031-05:00

From OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO
Just kidding.

From TORONTO,
January 7th, 2010

Friends, I am about to go downstairs and murder the dog that won't stop barking, as well as any neighbours that try getting in my way. This could result in jail time, and while I imagine I am legally permitted to blog from jail, I fear that my noisy laptop would disturb the other inmates and put my life in danger. There's also the possibility that, due to its size and heft and strange appearance, the guards would consider it a dangerous weapon and take it away fom me along with my belt and many knives.

I may manage to escape the authorities and flee to High Park on my new snowshoes (!) and wearing the corpse of the offending dog as a hat. There I'll live among the raccoons and Japanese tourists all winter, emerging in the spring unrecognizable with my long beard and therefore safe. But clearly, as my Vaio's battery won't even last me to the streetcar stop and back, I won't be blogging from the woods either.

Either way, it may be a while, so I've a few things to get off my chest first.

#1: I have snowshoes! Here they are!

OOOH. AHH. OHHH.

I hate that stupid little laugh that Joni Mitchell does at the end of Big Yellow Taxi. It's enough to make me hate the entire song. And I just don't understand it. What's so funny about paving paradise to put up a parking lot? Nothing! And that's why the laugh is so fake.

I read an audition posting the other day in which the theatre stated it was looking for performers who are "able to move". This is not the first time I've seen this. They don't say that you need to be able to dance, or even be particularly graceful, though that's what they mean. Just able to move. I'd love to go into the audition, introduce myself, and for my audition piece, just sit in a chair, completely still, and occasionally shoot an arm or leg in the air. Or painstakingly raise an eyebrow or a single pinky with a pained groan. Better yet, I could pose as a quadraplegic and have someone wheel me to the audition, where we loudly protest the discrimination being demonstrated against me, an actor who isn't able to move.

Do animals get insomnia?

Has anyone died because they couldn't find their phone in their apartment to call 911?

I'm surprised that apples don't have a PR problem. Isn't it the fault of them and that snakey little devil that we all don't live in Eden? Don't they represent our fall from grace with GOD? And yet Boy Scouts sell them, and they have this squeaky-clean image, "American as apple pie" and all that. You'd think evangelical Christians would be condemning apples as Satan's fruit and stoning those who grow or eat them. Who represents apples? I want their agent.

Speaking of apples and Boy Scouts...

I can no longer bear to hear my boyfriend speak of his scouting years as a kid. It makes me angry. It makes me jealous. It makes me want to jab him with sharp, pointy objects. And not in a sexy way.

I was a Brownie. It sucked. I may have told you this before, but I was the worst Brownie in history. I earned precisely two badges; one for knowing how to read, and one for learning the alphabet in sign language, which was the only other choice that interested me. It seemed they were always trying to get us to sew and bake and darn socks and make useless crafts. I tried for a sewing badge once, but it was just too complicated. My two sad badges were stuck on me with safety pins. Meetings took place, usually, in the horrible ugly gymnasium of some Scarborough school nearby.

Kimberly Moonlight and I only joined because we followed some older, cooler girls there one day and wanted to be like them. We lied about our age. (You had to be seven and we were six.) There were weird rituals involving dancing around a fire and chanting. As we were in a gym, the "fire" was an effect created by some creepy girls crinkling orange cellophane and waving it around. There was something called a toadstool. We were Pixies first, and then danced around chanting until one day we were "flown up" to the Brownie level. I think there may have been a stuffed owl involved. I know we had to call the adults things like Brown Owl and Tawny Owl, and that one of them would read us boring stories and things from the bible.

One day I got in deep trouble because, restless during storytime, I started showing all the other Brownies the gross cut on my tongue. My sister and I had been trying to breakdance on the kitchen floor one day (obviously), and I had bit down on my own tongue while attempting a headspin. It now looked kind of lumpy and scary and what could be better than that? All the sucky girls around me reacted appropriately, looking grossed out and shocked and mouthing "Ewww", until one Brownie whose nose was particularly brown, raised her hand and told on me.

They stripped me of my badges and clothes and made me sit on the plaster toadstool shivering and naked for the rest of the meeting, while they chanted insults in Cree and pelted me with pine cones and macaroni. At least that's how it felt.

When we got to be old enough, our mothers let Kim and me quit Brownies and join Guides, which was for older kids, where you got to wear blue uniforms, and where my mom said the girls "might be less sucky". They weren't! They were MORE SUCKY! Some of them were thirteen and still doing this shit by choice, when they should be out experimenting with crack cocaine and boys! Some of them were horrible tyrants. And the whole thing was infinitely boring, and still took place in a school, this time one further away.

Also, wearing your uniform to school on National Scouting Day was even more humiliating now that you weren't so young and cute and had an awkward haircut and might get boobs soon.

I hated selling Girl Guide cookies. I resented it. It was awful. It set the tone for any humiliating joe job I've had to do since. (It was, however, infinitely better than the time our grade school announced that our fundraising product that year would be family-sized jars of spices. They even had an infomercial-type salesman lead a pep talk in the gym, telling us how great an idea this was. I remember standing in a neighbours' doorway, offering up the one fact I, the ten year old not-yet Tourist knew about any spice in an effort to help the school effort: "Seasoning Salt is REEEEEAALY good on popcorn. I use it myself all the time.")

Anyhow, boyfriend Jason wasn't a BROWNIE, he was a Cub. Way cooler. He wasn't a Guide, he was a Scout. They didn't sell sugary fattening cookies, they sold delicious fresh healthy apples. He didn't go to meetings in an enormous, fluorescent-lit gym, he went on expeditions. They went hunting! They went winter camping, for fuck's sake! When I went to Brownie camp one summer, and later to Guide camp, we stayed in these pre-built wooden platform tents, so we weren't even sleeping on the ground, and didn't get to pitch anything. Our main duties seemed to be waddling back and forth filling buckets with water in case our tents caught on fire, and scrubbing the toilets. I shared quarters with a girl named Barbie, who was my fast friend, but later my mortal enemy (ending with us rolling on the ground, at blows, while on a nature walk), and with two whiney, fat, identical twins who cried all night and whimpered, "I miss mom." "Me too. I miss Mom." "I miss Dad." "Yeah, I miss Dad."

At this camp, Windy Owl and Farty Owl would give us time each day to write letters home, despite the fact that we were gone for less than a week and we'd get home before our letters did. I kept pointing out this fact to the twins, who nonetheless huddled together every afternoon, sniffling out, "Dear Mom, Dear Dad, come get us." They were twelve.

The only redemptive moment came each evening at dinner time, when I got to sit near Penny, an older, slutty girl who would share confusing and interesting facts about sex and periods. But she started to sicken me after a while.

Meanwhile, the fucking Boy Scouts were off killing wolves with bows and arrows or sometimes just skinning them alive, and building bridges across rapids while their handsome, rugged leaders shouted handsome, rugged words of encouragement and tossed them each a beer as a way of saying, "Job well done, son".

This is why one cannot speak to me of Boy Scouts.

I really love leaving my contact lens case on the window sill overnight in winter. In the morning when I put my lenses on my eyes, they are deliciously cool and kind of shocking. This is fun.

I need to get out more.

I just busted one of the straps on my new snowshoes. Here it is:

BOOOO. HOOOO.

Half of me thinks it ridiculous that "installation wizards" are called what they are. The other half thinks it's kind of wonderful. I don't encounter many wizards in everyday life.

No, Scotiabank. I am not "richer than I think." Unless you're planning to give me some cash, I know exactly how poor I am, you profit-posting sons of whores.

Jason is designing some shows in the Next Stage Festival. So far, I have been invited via facefuck and group email a dozen times by three or four people and some "groups", none of them the man himself. I was fully intending to go, but now I think I won't, to protest all the harrassment.

When Daniel Karasik was promoting his play The Crossing Guard (not to be confused with the 1995 film of the same name though, oddly enough, they did both star Jack Nicholson) he sent out facefuck invites three times a day for six years. I started waking up in the middle of the night with a start, drenched in sweat and yelling "Crossing Guard! Crossing Guard!" In the end I actually went. And I really enjoyed it. But I didn't like enjoying it.

Also I think Hugh Grant is underrated.

Unintentional Four Weddings and a Funeral segue in 5...4....3...2....

Have you seen this L'Oreal hair dye ad in which Andie MacDowell, spokesmodel, claims the product will even work on "those stubborn little wiry ones"? What the fuck? Why is Andie MacDowell taking an interest in my pubes? And why does she want me to colour them?? I just don't understand the televisor.

This is from an ad on ebay from a seller peddling the Dora the Explorer Talking Cash Register, a popular item for little capitalist golddigging sluts in training....er I mean, girls:

Dora the Explorer she is such a popular character. This is Dora's talking Cash Register. This is new in the box, never opened. Dora the Explorer is off on another adventure. This time, she is teaching children the value of money with her very own talking cash register. It comes to life with pretend shopping trips and bilingual phrases to send kids on their own shopping trip. They can use Dora dollars or even swipe their own Dora credit card. As a real working cash register, it has a credit card tablet for kids to sign their name, just like adults! And to help Dora with her shopping, they can scan bar codes on the price tags or in the adventure book. This toy provides hours of amusement and the children can even act like different customers using the dress-up accessories provided. Kids ages three through eight will have lots of fun as they shop with Dora.

Just look at this kid, proudly displaying her first credit card.

I guess that's not so bad. I probably had some kind of Fisher Price cash register when I was a kid. But check out.....Polly Pocket's Race To the Mall!

In case you think I made that one up, here's the terrifying TV ad:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m3T8CFI8XBRD3B

Guess when I first saw these products advertised? Last Christmas, just before the financial crisis! Training our little girlchildren to rack up debt! I know, I know, spend five years acting at The Shaw Festival and you come out the other side a big fat socialist. Good thing I didn't work at The Stalin Festival (located in picturesque Espanola, Ontario, pop. 5 314).

The other night I had a dream in which I came up with the ultimate business plan. It goes like this: get hold of a bunch of crocodiles, tranquilize them and then wire their jaws shut so they can't bite. Toss them in a pool with a bunch of rich businessfolk and extreme sportsters who've paid a lot of money for the danger and excitement of swimming with predators. I'd just moved on to the idea of adding great white sharks to the mix when I woke up. I now realize that the sharks and crocodiles would likely be strong enough and determined enough to break anything holding their jaws shut, so I think I may not have come up with a brilliant unethical business plan but a brilliant horror movie plot. Could they use this in Saw IX? I hear they're running out of writers who will work on those things.

You know those junkmail items you get intermailed by lovely young ladies like Mandy! and Wendy! with subjects such as "bigtitttttssixtynein" or "wild girl ayyynal" (weird spelling in hopes of passing through the spam filters)? I got sent one titled "Brutal 3some fckuking at the gloomy bedroom".

Ladies and gentlemen....Mister Burt Reynolds!

And some bandages that look like bacon!

And that My Friends, for now, is all.

So much the lighter for sharing this all with you, ready for 2010, for murder, mayhem and life on the run,
The always Skeptical,

Tourist

the holocaust/music issue

2009-10-20T15:03:00.018-04:00

From TORONTO,

October 20th, 2009

Here I am, long suffering reader, your even more, even longer suffering Skeptical Tourist, writing to you at considerable risk to myself, my little tourist hands and my little tourist feet. Not to mention the usual emotional trauma of opening my heart to you.

My hand, oh my hand! (Sniff.) I suffer for my art. I acquired a slightly gimpy, maybe broken hand ("Oh, who cares?", says the orthopedic surgeon at St. Joe's, "Call me if it falls off") while performing The Diary of Anne Frank at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. It hurts a little to type for too long. The mezcal helps.

"What happened", you shriek, tearing at your hair and eyes?

It was during our final student matinee....or as I like to call them, Birth Control Wednesdays. (Trust me, share an afternoon at the theatre with seven hundred of today's heartless little heathens and you'll never want one of your own.) Those pesky Nazis were throwing us out of the secret annex and I tripped, taking a nice little tumble and hitting my face and hand quite hard on the wooden floor. What can I say, the children were screaming for actor blood and I tried to oblige.

Don't blame the Nazis. Our Nazis were perfect gentlemen; Stephen Cullen, the one who gave me the fake shove that sent me tumbling, felt so bad about not having performed some superhuman (and dramatically nonsensical) feat to catch me before I hit the deck, that he followed me around for the next two days with an icepack and a woebegone look on his face, weeping. This after weeks of the director telling them to stop being so fucking Canadian and release their inner Nazis. (I was all like, "I've got a wicked case of PMS - can I play Gestapo today? Just before I go on tell me that the Jews called me fat or made moves on my boyfriend.")

Not to be outdone, Natasha Greenblatt, playing Anne, whacked her round little head on the doorway the next day, nearly concussing herself; the day after that, at our final performance, our Mister Frank, the wonderful Tim Koetting, tripped and flew across the stage while holding a crash box and shouting "Look at ME everyone, look at me!"

Luckily we closed before Catherine McNally, as Mrs Frank, could fall out of the attic or be eaten alive by deadly fire ants.

The guy at emergency (he may have been a doctor) wanted to put a cast on me right away ("right away" being after I'd waited from one am until 4:30) but I spat at him and ran, opting for a splint I could take on and off until the show had closed. But as I said, on going back to get a cast AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING THE DAY AFTER CLOSING the orthopedic dude was unimpressed by my xrays and said I may or may not have something broken and I could or could not get a cast or a splint and could or could not go fuck myself. Never one to pass up an opportunity to go fuck myself, I went home. It's a challenge though, with only one healthy hand.

I have no idea how many -or how few- of you are aware of how entirely terrible a typist I am, even at the best of times. Of how painstaking, slow and mistake-riddled an undertaking this continually continues to be. (For example, before proofreading, the previous sentence read as follows: Of how paindtaking, slow and mistake-riddled an undertaking this continually fontinues to be. I'd like to pretend I'm joking.)

My beau, who was born in the eighties and can type in his sleep and text with his nostrils, caught me two-finger typing the other day and I had to pretend it was because my hand was hurting.

Do you know, effortlessly (efoortlessly) tech-savvy, coordinated young reader, that last year I spent good grownup money on a "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" CD-ROM in a sad contribution to the old dog vs. new tricks struggle? (I lost. Congratulations, old tricks. You reign supreme.)
I was progressing well for a while, but then it kept wanting me to use more than three letters. There was this game with a bunch of frogs on a log, each with a letter on its stomach: you type the letters and as you get each frog's letter right, it jumps off the log and swims away. Not only could I not get past level two, but those bastardy little frogs started to laugh at me and give me the finger. I couldn't take it anymore.

But to the point: THE MUSIC ISSUE!

I recently lost my tunepod on an airplane and if my new phone didn't have music on it I surely would have killed myself. Especially considering the (usually bus-riding) commute to and from Hamilton each day, the needing to decompress after the show and to drown out the unwashed masses. I've replaced it now with a little ipod ninny, and am struggling to adjust to the mere 4500 song capacity. Yes, this from a person who's just been helping tell the story of eight people who spent two years in hiding with inadequate food and a really bad internet connection.

YES, THIS PHOTO'S REAL. YES, SOMEONE ELSE HAS TOO MUCH TIME ON HIS HANDS.

Bear in mind, please, that I grew up in one of those households where there was music on in every room, at all times. We had a little pink tape player in the bathroom and often had shaving accidents due to getting our groove on. My parents had an impressive collection of vinyl, including a lot of Motown on 45. Nancy and I both had those groovy little plastic portable record players in our rooms as well as ghetto blasters with which to blast our respective ghettos; I was the proud owner of a cheap little Casio keyboard used mainly for the deliberate plunking out of Salt n' Pepa's "Push It" and the making of original songs featuring my recorded voice played back high and chipmunk-style to a canned beat.

As a kid I hated, dreaded and feared having to do a project each year for the annual school science fair. One year, while on my customary desperate search for an easy way out, I heard the intriguing news that plants were possibly responsive to the human voice and/or music.

I had my out! I would sit around talking and playing records to the household plants, then measure them and compare. Laziest science project ever! (Perhaps even better than the one where Anita Yoon and I - as a pair, no less - compared the effectiveness of Tide and new UltraTide by smearing a bunch of socks with ketchup, washing them and sticking them on a piece of bristol board.)

The plant project did feature lovely handdrawn pictures of me, my pink stirrup pants, and the two test plants, which were named, for some reason, Chico and Magnum (after Magnum P.I.). My scientific conclusion: plants like being talked to, like music even more, and markedly prefer Bryan Adams to Tina Turner. This was a questionable time for the young Tourist's musical tastes; somewhere in here was my Huey Lewis and The News period and my Lionel Richie year. But at least I was done waking up my family with my morning top-of-my-lungs rendition of "Tomorrow" from Annie. And Kimberly Moonlight's and my lip-syncing to the Minipops.

In grade four I fell deeply, secretly in love with Philip Curtin, the cutest little Philipino in the schoolyard. At the time, Madonna's "Crazy For You" was big, big, big. It was featured in some movie at the time that I was too young to see because people did it, or swore, or did it while swearing. Philip Curtin never knew it, but "Crazy For You" was our song. I had elaborate daydreams about the end of year dance, about it coming on as the very last song, just as Philip and I locked little nine year old eyes across the gym. He'd walk toward me, through the smoky air (I don't know why the air would be smoky, but it's in the lyrics), and without a word we would begin to dance. In that steamy, grade four, barely-touching, rocking awkwardly in circles way.... And oh, but it would be the best day of my life. Of anybody's. Ever.

Top Three Heartbreakers:

Nina Simone - "My Man's Gone Now"

Stevie Wonder - "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer"
Tom Waits - "Martha", from the masterpiece album Closing Time
http://www.vbox7.com/play:e62cb077

This last one actually makes me weep, almost every tme. A lonely middle of the night phone call to an ex-lover; a sad aging man full of lost dreams and regret. The final line: "I remember, quiet evenings, trembling close to you..." kills me. Absolutely kills me.

Also in the sad club: I just heard a Tegan and Sara song in which they sing "I feel like I wouldn't like me if I met me." Poor little self-loathing lesbians. I love you and your sad haircuts.

In grade nine, Prince's Diamonds and Pearls came out. The whole album was shockingly, deliciously filthy, beginning to end, but "Gett Off" topped them all. I remember sitting in the living room of the house my mom and I were sharing with two hip friends in their twenties. I was listening to Jen's copy on her walkman and it felt as if I was sitting there with a copy of Penthouse in plain view. There everyone was, walking around, making dinner, chatting, while Prince moaned in my ear about "A little box with a mirror and a tongue inside". I could hardly believe I was getting away with it.

Does anyone else get just a little creeped out by the song "Let's Get It On?" I mean, it's basically four minutes and fifty seconds of Marvin Gaye (the rohypnol of soul) pressuring a woman to have sex with him. And he tries everything! He follows up saying "I ain't gonna push" with "C'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon"! And "If you believe in love let's get it on"? Around the two minute mark I'm yelling "For God's sake, just hit her over the head with something already!" Or, "Surely there's someone else who wants to have sex with you! You're Marvin Gaye!!!!"

Solomon Burke worked along the same lines but seemed a little less forceful - and less successful. He was always ad libbing things like "Come on, Baby, where you goin? Sit back down here. No really, what is it? Do I smell, baby? Aw shit....I do."

And has anybody noticed that Al Green always has to go and ruin things? I have a version of him singing "You Are So Beautiful". It's sweet; it's romantic......and then he goes and throws in, "You are so beautiful to nobody but me." WHAAAAAT?

In his version of "I Can't Get Next To You" he actually sings, "I been trying to call you all day long, but I don't have your phone number, baby". Pretty flimsy there, Reverend.

I've always thought I'd like to have Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" (from Black Brown and Beige) as my funeral song. Maybe performed by a string quartet as the whole world sobs uncontrollably (family and close friends inside the service, acquaintances lined up for blocks, fans watching by simulcast, former lovers too distraught to use their arms and legs....). But then I read an interview with Kid Koala in which he named Kermit & Fozzie singing "Movin' Right Along" as his choice of funeral song. And then I felt like a precious, dweeby knob. And wished I'd thought of it first.

I love Neil Diamond. No bones about it. I do not love him ironically or with a wink. He is fantastic. I'll beat you up if you say otherwise.

Back in college, I briefly dated a strange young Swiss boy who had a huge Neil Diamond crush about which I would tease him all day long, except when he would actually pull out the guitar and serenade me with "Play Me" ("You are the sun, I am the moon, you are the words, I am the tune...play me" - I know, I know). Urs gave me one of the greatest hits CDs he had doubles of (they'd come out with a better version that came with one of Neil's real-life eyelashes or something), which I promptly threw away when we stopped dating. One month later, I had an uncontrollable hankering to hear Neil Diamond again, and went out and bought the very CD I'd so callously thrown out. I never looked back. And now I've seen him live. (Thanks, Gregg.) Thanks, Urs Rusterholz.

"Ode To Billy Joe" by Bobbie Gentry (though I must say I have the softest spot for the Ike & Tina version): Most mysterious, intriguing song I know. What the hell were she and Billy Joe throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge that day? And why did Billy Joe off himself? Miss Marple? Anybody????? AAAAAAAARGH!!!!! Here's Bobbie doing a weird version on The Smothers Brothers Show, complete with creepy mannequin props (and amazing hair).

DIRTY SONG OR DIRTY MIND:
#1. "I Won't Dance": Irving Berlin's sweet old-fashioned ditty about a man who's nervous about his two left feet....or Irving Berlin's song about a guy who doesn't want to dance because he has a massive hard-on?

#2. Here's an excerpt from the Mamas & Papas' tune "Words of Love":
Words of Love, so soft and tender,
Won't win a girl's heart anymore.
If you love her, then you must send her
Somewhere where she's never been before.
Worn out phrases and longing gazes
Won't get you where you want to go. (No!)

Okay, if this is not a song about cunnilingus, I don't know what is. "Send her somewhere that she's never been before? I mean, is this just me, or what? The more innocent option is that it's about hooking your lady up with drugs, but still..... Bad Mamas! Dirty Papas!

Tres Romantique: Simon & G's To Emily Wherever I May Find Her...the song that makes me want to tie up that naughty little Garfunkel and Garfunkel him all night long. (See video in the "timewasters" sidebar.)

I'm sensing a bit of a theme here. For the record, I do not think "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree" is a euphemism for anal.

Finally, as I draw to a close, I will address the glaring ommission you've no doubt noticed, sharp, observant reader. (Other than the sad near-dearth of Can Con.) I have not spoken of my man MJ. He gets his own edition. I'm just not ready yet. I loved him so. Even more passionately than Philip Curtin, that little Philipino firecracker. More than Beyonce or my boyfriend Mos Def or that sexy slut Xtina. More than Stevie. More than Simon and Garfunkel put together and embracing, wearing ladies underwear. (Nothing. Ahem.) I loved him. I love him still. And the world shall know. Oh sigh.

For now, my funky chickens, I dare you, next time you're standing on that street corner waiting for that light to change and that song comes through your headphones that always makes you want to dance....just do it. I found myself in this position the other night, drunkenly resisting, somehow, the opening bars of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition". I don't know what awful thing I thought would happen if I did dance out loud at King and University....but I wish I had. A little more spontaneous boogie would not be such a bad thing in this crazy crazy world of yours and mine.

Yours in joyful stompy dancing, all the way to CAMH, maybe,

The Tourist

a day in the life

2009-08-08T22:21:00.011-04:00

WELCOME BACK. WE'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.

From TORONTO
August 8th, 2009

What happens when I get off one gig and have very little to do until the next? That's right, Faithful Reader: I masturbate. A lot. But also.....random weird thoughts that have been jiggling around in my very large brain get a chance to rise to the surface. I've been home from beautiful Gananoque for a month now, my head empty of the creative struggle, my couch dented with a large ass print, the contents of my liquor cabinet in a constant busy rotation......which means that you now get:

AIMLESS MUSINGS FROM THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF NORTON.

WhOOOOOOOO!!! (I just like to say that. Typing it is pretty good, too.)

I think I often make the mistake, when working out of town, of thinking that as soon as I get back things are going to be some kind of exciting nonstop party all day and night, with no effort on my part. Like I'm going to be lifted up and put on a float the second I arrive and led through screaming throngs of Torontonians on some kind of Back From Gananoque V-Day Parade. To be sure, there's more going on here than there was there......okay, there's a LOT more going on than there was there, and friends to see, and sex to be had.....but I also get to do wonderful things like sort receipts and organize my closet. Maybe I should do mushrooms and then sort receipts and clean my closet. Actually, that sounds terrifying.

Speaking of sorted receipts, I've now paid my 6000 dollar debt in back GST. Just 7000 bucks in back taxes to go + whatever horrors remain on my credit cards! Donations toward my worthy cause may be made to girlyoullbeawomansoon@paypal.com . And oh, I will be free!!!

My television blew up the very day that I arrived back in Toronto. While that's never much of a distraction for me - my timewasters are more often of the intertubing wormhole/show-spider-solitaire-who's-boss variety - I do like watching DVDs. Now that I have an inability to do that (except on my angry old laptop, which makes a constant sound like a family of four all blowdrying their hair, and so is, oh, slightly distracting) there's more time for staring at the wall and into my own head.

You will be interested to know that as I turned the TV on - hoping to settle in with West Side Story and a pizza or two - it made a terrifying, loud, PchOOOOOOoooooo sound (go ahead, try it) that scared the hell out of me. And a bright flash of light left me legally blind for the next ten minutes. It was exciting. Obviously an attempt at contact by the aliens who live in my TV set.

To even out the technology balance, I did get my stupid fridge replaced, so I now have a working freezer for the first time since I moved into this apartment. What's to complain about when I can sit here, chewing happily on ice cubes hour after hour and stuffing ice packs down my pants to make up for two lost years of coldness? I know, it's no West Side Story.

And now, A Glass Half Full Moment: I suppose this crappy, crappy summer means a little less melanoma for everyone. Thanks, Crappy Summer!

I fear I have a homicidal streak. I really enjoy murdering fruit flies. And every winter I derive great pleasure from seeing the mounting tally I keep on a pad on my fridge of all the mice I've electrocuted in my little zappy trap. I bought the trap on a Home Depot trip with my mom; on the way home in the car, I got all excited and said, "I can't wait to get home and start killing mice." She turned to me and said, "That might just be the strangest thing you've ever said."

I suppose the word "homicidal" only applies to killing humans, though, and I've never done that yet. I'm just flyicidal and mousicidal. (And centipedacidal - those things are fucking disgusting.) I envy my boyfriend for his flying bug killer. The spray I have kind of leaves the fruit flies writhing around on the counter, whispering "Kill me." His has "instant knockdown" - you spray them and they drop right out of the sky, which is super fun.

The mouse thing perplexes me, since I once had a pet mouse, and loved him like the son I'll never have. His name was Nick. I bought him at the Humane Society for four dollars, though his cage cost thirty. They make you buy one on the spot, which reassures them that you're not just taking the mouse home to feed to your pet snake, though I'm not sure why they care.

Nick lived in a cage in the kitchen of my bachelor apartment and each night I would hear him try to get his hamster wheel going and then give up. He didn't weigh enough to keep it going all the way around. After months of rooting for him, I finally heard the thing spinning, and snuck in to watch, proud tears in my eyes. He'd been pumping iron or something, I don't know. From then on I had to keep his cage behind the closed bathroom door each night because the annoying wheel sound kept me awake.

Sometimes I took Nick out of his cage and let him run around on the carpet, making little barriers around him out of towels and things. Invariably he would make a break for the space under the futon and I would just catch him before he could disappear forever, my heart pounding like crazy. Late one night he died in my hand. I put him in a little Chinese lacquered jewelry box that someone had given me for Christmas and went out and buried him in the Don Valley in the middle of the night, digging in the dirt with a spoon, crying the whole time. Rest in peace, Nick. Forgive me for electrocuting your family.

While I was away this summer, a new neighbour with a yappy little dog moved in next door. This is to replace the neighbours directly below me and their yappy dog, who have moved out.

The day I got back to town, still shaken by the PchOOOOOooo sound and the lack of West Side Story, I went to bed and was woken at 1am by the new little rat-dog-thing, which barked until 2:30. Then at 7:30 am the bone-shakingly loud construction on Roncesvalles began; they're tearing up the road, for water main work, or streetcar tracks, or maybe just for fun. That week the landlords started destruction on my building's courtyard, and knocking down the walls of the empty apartment below mine. You would not believe how loud it was. Unless maybe you lived in Baghdad circa 2003. No wonder I enjoy killing flies.....The power! The absolute power!

A couple of times a month, I board a train or a plane and go to Montreal, where I take the metro to Papineau station, walk up the street, enter a brick building, climb two sets of stairs and go into a little room behind some glass and pretend to be a bird for a couple of hours. Then I go back home. I'm trying to decide whether my work doing cartoon voices is more or less strange than my usual work as a stage actor. Making funny voices to entertain children versus putting on funny clothes to entertain adults. Mind you, just about any job is pretty weird when you really break it down, except maybe if you're a farmer or a surgeon or a prostitute. Anyone remember this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7pijrAOLdg

Another weird gig I have is doing audio recordings used to train TD Bank employees. Once a month or so, our agency sends along some of the best stage actors you'll ever see (a veritable who's that of Canadian Theatre, as my cousin Adrian would say) to pretend to be TD VISA bill collectors or disgruntled bank customers. The whole thing takes about two hours, sometimes only ten minutes or so of that in studio, the rest in the boardroom eating Timbits. For this we are paid more than we would get for an entire week of performing a play.

One day it occurred to me that my help in training debt collectors to be more humane might directly impact me and my friends. And that much of the money I would be paid by TD would go right back to TD. Just as the money I get from the government in the form of residuals for my Tourism Ontario commercial I send back to the government as tax payments. And last time I got a big residual cheque for my IKEA ad? I went right out and bought myself an EKTORP.

Is that bank training gig more or less weird than the hours I spend providing the voices of miscellaneous cheerleaders, teachers and passersby on Degrassi: The Next Generation? More or less weird than my friends who fake various aches, pains and diseases as "standardized patients" for health care training? Or my old theatre school friend who bought his house and feeds his child with money made dressed as a giant tube of toothpaste? Or is it really weird that I have never been able to describe what my mother does in twenty-five words or less? That my stepmother gave many overworked, worried years of her life to the noble cause of possibly helping Royal Bank post a slightly larger profit every quarter?

AAAARGH! I've got to stop thinking about this! My head is going to blow up. I think I've breathed in too much Raid Flying Insect Killer. Raid Satisfaction With the Status Quo Killer. With Instant Levelheaded Commonsense Knockdown. Hey, that's catchy copy; we might just have something here.

I'm off now, to bake a batch of cookies and change in-the-pants icepacks (because I can), and then pack for a couple of days in Niagara-On-The-Lake. There, I will attend a tribute to the late and great Neil Munro, a director who was an excellent guy and probably the biggest risk taker I'll ever know, and whom I feel lucky to have worked with. Weird job or no.

But before I go, what have we learned today, boys and girls? Why, that your hero, the Skeptical Tourist, is a loser just like you. (Though as far as losers go, she's pretty cool.) That your job is weird and pointless. And that, next time, you will throw a parade.

Yours, not even stoned, not really,

The Tourist

the dog ate my blog (the beyoncé issue)

2009-05-14T20:44:00.019-04:00

From GANANOQUE, Ontario,
May 29th, 2009

What's this, Dear Reader? No friendly hello? No "How are you, our lovely and adored Tourist"? Just demands for more words per month? Outrage at my missing April post?

Well, fuck you too, Dear Reader!

As for excuses....whoo-ee, do I got 'em! You just watch me, boy! Not only do I have a perfectly good excuse - You've never seen excuses so perfectly good in all your life!

Let me first address a rumour begun by Pete Treadwell, treasurer and former chair of the Official Skeptical Tourist Fanclub, that I haven't written lately because my boyfriend and I got back together.

My response to this is not merely that Pete Treadwell is a stupid asshole (and hereby demoted from treasurer to Official Fan Club snack bar operator/janitor), but to point out that my slackerhood has been well cultivated - and documented - for many a year, through times of both deep single-hood and busy getting-laidness....through employment and through months of sleeping in and dragging my ass to the beach with a pitcher of vodka. Through thick and thin, in all kinds of weather, count on me to put things off as long as humanly possible.

I must confess, though, that the campaign to win my boyfriend back did eat into what would have been my research period for the April edition, as it consisted of long hours picketing outside his house and workplace day and night, shrieking the lyrics of I Want You Back by the Jackson Five and Bon Jovi's I'll Be There For You into a megaphone until I lost my voice and switched to hurling rocks through his windows. Naked.

But that campaign ended succesfully, Demanding, Selfish Plebe! A reunion was successfully enacted, with plenty of time left before the April blarging deadline, a heart full of inspiration, and a head stuffed with ideas....none of which would see the light of day.

Because then I was kidnapped by Beyoncé.

Thus I arrive at the real, and brutally traumatic, reason for my not having written in so long.
You may know that being kidnapped by Beyoncé Knowles has been a decade-long dream of mine, but trust me, it's not all it's cracked up to be. She may seem sweet in interviews, but that woman is one fucked up, if smoking-hot, individual. Looking So Crazy in Love, indeed.

It all began one sunny Sunday afternoon. As I walked home from church that day, I whistled a little song to myself, thinking, 'Hey, how come I can whistle all of a sudden?' and 'Wow, that's neat!' and 'I wonder what else can I do! Maybe I'll try a handstand!' Understandably distracted, I failed to notice the ominous-looking black Hummer limousine crawling along behind me, faint strains of "Bootylicious" drifting from behind its tinted windows.

As I experimented with the possibilities of my newfound whistling and acrobatic skills, performing a purse-lipped Star Spangled Banner while doing backflips down Roncesvalles, impressing all the local Polish widows, two masked figures slipped out of the limo and grabbed me, mid-flip. Before I could say J-J-J-Jay Hovah, I was in the back of the limo, a chloroform-soaked rag held over my mouth. My kidnappers removed their balaclavas...and before I could say "Aren't you Kelly Rowlands and Michelle Williams formerly of Destiny's Child fame?", all went black.

When I awoke, groggy and disoriented, I was in some sort of dungeon, chained to a wall and wearing an incredibly stylish fur bikini by House of Dereon. I heard laboured breathing and, as my eyes adjusted to the scarce light, I was able to make out other prisoners chained to the walls around me. "What is this place?" I whispered. "Who are you? How long have you been here?"

Two young black women across from me, more emaciated-looking than all the rest, spoke up first. "We're former members of Destiny's Child. You'll never make it out of here alive doo-wah doo-wah!!!"

A heavyset, grey-haired man with glasses occupied the wall-space next to mine. I blinked.
"Ebert? What are you doing here?"
"I gave a bad review to that stupid Etta James movie! The ungrateful bitch - I liked Dreamgirls!"

And, a little further down....
"Mom? Is that you?"
"Remember when I tried EHarmony? Jay-Z was one of my matches. We went out a few times. It was nice....until she found out!"
"Jeeze, Mom, you dated Jay-Z?"
"He said they were taking a break!"

It had rapidly become clear who was behind my abduction......but why?

Before I could find out more....a huge commotion interrupted. A section of the dungeon ceiling suddenly opened and a staircase lowered down. Through impressive clouds of dry ice I was able to make out one shapely brown leg after another sultrily (yet somehow angrily) stepping down.

And suddenly there she was, right in front of me, decked out in a black bathing suit and that tough eye makeup and weird metal arm that she's been sporting lately.

OOOH, I AM SO FIERCE.

OH YEAH? TAKE THAT!

Behind her, more legs, attached to those rotten backup girls of hers, my kidnappers, Kelly and Michelle. Lousy stinking bitches, I thought. Nice shoes. They glared back at me. "Uhh, uhh, uhh," they sang ominously.

"Beyoncé!" I said, "Why would you kidnap me? I'm your number one fan! Well, okay, so I only actually have one of your albums, and try to hide the fact that I paid itunes good money for the Single Ladies video....but still....everyone knows I love you!"

"Don't you misquote Woody Allen film titles at me, woman!", she said. "And if you love me so much, why are you always spreading rumours that I'm gay?"

"Oh, Beyoncé, is that what this is about? That was mere wishful thinking! I just think you are so beautiful and talented and hot! You can't blame a girl for dreaming just a little!"

"Well, that's flattering," she told me, flipping her hair back and popping her booty once or twice, "And for what it's worth, I think you're lovely, too. You have pretty eyes and an undefinably exotic look and your ass looked amazing in that dress you were wearing last Saturday night.....I mean, If I were a boy....but I say this all as a perfectly straight successful pop star who is ever so - I repeat, ever so - in love with her weird-looking husband. Come on - do I seem like a lesbian to you?"

"Well...uh...Honestly...?"

"I am not a freaking lesbian!"

"But Beyoncé, why are you so afr-"

"Don't call me Beyoncé! I am....Sasha Fierce!"

With that, she pressed a button on her metal armshield, releasing a laser that blasted a hole in the wall behind my head.
"Aaaaaaah!" I said.
"Doo-bee doo-bee ooh-ooh-ooh!" sang Kelly and Michelle.
"Ow," said the wall.

"And now, to prove once and for all that I'm not gay...I am going to whip your scantily clad body with this riding crop until you scream, while Kelly and Michelle take pictures that I will post on the internet! Will THAT make you stop saying I like girls?"
"Actually", I said, "That doesn't really make a lot of sen-"
"-Shut up!" cried Beyoncé, "Or I'll kiss you all over!"

What happened next you can only imagine. Or peruse the pictures online. They're quite flattering, actually. But I don't want to talk about it.

After it was over, she left in an flustered, sweaty huff, breathing heavily as she ascended the hydraulic staircase, and already perusing the pictures on Kelly's Canon Powershot (official camera of Sasha Fierce's secret torture dungeon).

And she was gone for days.

Days of no light, no food save for a few scraps of Pepsi Products (official food and drink provider for Sasha Fierce's secret torture dungeon) thrown down from above....days of dark uncertainty, drifting in and out of consciousness.....listening to the feeble whiny singing of the former Destiny's Child singers, our only entertainment Roger Ebert's shot-by-shot descriptions of his favourite movies. My mom and I caught up: I told her the circumstances of my capture (including my newfound tumbling and whistling skills - she was very proud); she revealed to me the full depth of her feelings for Jay-Z.

And Beyoncé herself only returned periodically to threaten me, massage my shoulders or play This Little Piggy with my toes. It was terrifying.

Until.....

I was awoken in the dead of night (or dead of day - it was all a painful blur, as I said) by the ceiling opening ever so slowly, so quietly. No backup singers this time, and no smoke machine. Just a tall and sad-eyed man in an impeccable suit, stepping as gingerly as he possibly could. Jay-Z.

I sat up. He saw me and put a finger to his lips. A set of keys was in his other, shaking hand.

One by one, he gently roused the singers, Ebert and my mother, and explained. His wife was upstairs sleeping in her sealed L'Oreal Skin Science anti-aging chamber (official anti-aging chamber of Sasha Fierce's....oh, you get the point). We didn't have much time. He was helping us escape, he said. He'd discovered his marriage was a sham, and he'd had enough.

"She doesn't love me," he whispered, fumbling with his keys in the dimly lit chamber. "She's completely obsessed with some white chick from Toronto. Lisa Norton this, Lisa Norton that! How could I have been so blind!"

Thinking fast, I used my super acting powers (SAP TM) to temporarily adjust my facial features before he could recognize me as said white chick and fly into a jealous rage. Looking like Yao Ming and speaking in the voice of Regis Philbin, I said: "What are you going to do now, Jay-Z?"

"Well, I won't help her with this world domination thing anymore, that's for sure! After I release you prisoners, I'm dismantling her atomic bomb. And deprogramming her backup slaves. Then I'm outta here! I'll sell Roc-A-Fella Records, Roca Wear and the New Jersey Nets and move to Etobicoke to open up that little gelato shop I've always dreamed of." He turned to my mother. "What do you say, Lolita? Come with me? Give it another try?"
"Oh, Jay," said mom. "I knew you'd come around!"
"Call me Shawn," he said. "Shawn Corey Carter."

And, beaming with new hope, my mother on his arm, he started to free us, when....
JUST THEN - there she was!

With one blast from her metal arm, Jay-Z was down. So far, only I was unshackled. The stairs ascended and slammed shut. Beyoncé turned on me, aiming the arm, her fiercest Sasha Fierce eyes fixed on me in anger. There would be no This Little Piggy this time, Dear Reader, no sir.

It seemed hopeless. Until my mom cried out, "Your new acrobatic skills, Lisa! Use them!"
"And my whistling?" I paused to say.
"Yes, my second-born! Whistle! Whistle like you've never whistled before!"

Beyoncé, who had been conveniently tying her shoelace during this exchange, stood up just in time for my first flying triple sow-cow roundhouse kick to her chiselled abs. I simultaneously unleashed a lengthy and highpitched series of whistles the, er.....length and high-pitchiness of which you've never heard before.
"Ow," said the wall.
"You stay out of this."

Beyoncé stumbled backward, sharply manicured hands over her ears.

I did a couple back handsprings, just for fun, and punched her head repeatedly.

"Why, Lisa?" She wheezed, barely hanging on to consciousness. "Why do you want to leave me? Haven't I treated you well? I mean, as far as dungeon-confined prisoners go? You know I like you more than all the others."

"If you like it," I said, "Then you shoulda put a ring on it." And I kicked her in the face.

She was out.

I grabbed the metal arm thing and tried to decipher the complicated controls. WIND MACHINE....SMOKE...ALL THE SINGLE LADIES....TO THE LEFT TO THE LEFT. EXIT. I took a chance and tried that one.

The hydraulic stairs swung down.

I had Jay's - er, Shawn Corey's - keys and started to unshackle the other prisoners.

"I'm making a break for it! Who's with me?"
"No!! We'll never make it past Michelle and Kelly! Doo-Wah, doo-wah!"
"What about you, Siskel?"

"It's Ebert!
"Whatever! Are you in?"
"Two thumbs down!"
"Mom?"
"I can't leave Jay-Z!"
"Fine, then! I'll go it alone!"

And I made my escape......up the stairs, past rooms and rooms of wind and smoke machines.....through the maze of interconnected walk-in closets, pausing only to admire my reflection (forcible confinement does wonders for the complexion) and to grab a few choice items on the way, including a huge and ugly Gucci handbag which shortly came in handy when I used its enormous metal buckle to protect myself from Michelle and Kelly's bullets. When they ran out of ammo I grabbed for a fortuitously close-at-hand pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos and beat them off, leaving them a crumpled pile of glittery limbs and fake hair.

"All the ladies who truly feel me...throw your hands up at me," they wheezed, but their hearts just were not in it. Plus they had some broken ribs.

I also broke Michelle Williams' neck, and for that I'm sorry, though not really, really sorry, as she did follow up her brilliant years as a member of the most successful girl group of all time with a couple of sucky gospel albums. So perhaps it served her right. And I completely destroyed one of Kelly Rowland's long and perfect legs. So there goes her career.

I stumbled out the door, limping, barely able to eke out the whistle that would summon my getaway cab. I climbed in the back.... and as it drove away, the entire place went up in flames. No. I don't know why.

But I was free! At long last! And how long had it been? I had no idea.....but my first thought was of you, Puny Little Reader, and of how worried you must be, sitting in your darkened hovel staring at that empty screen of yours, waiting for the sweet relief of my monthly words of comfort and advice. Waiting God knows how long for news of me. My goodness, I thought....the poor, poor things.

So as soon as I was able to type of it without collapsing in uncontrollable sobs, I sat down to relay this whole sad story to you. And here we are.

It's all true. Ask the Polish widows.

Now a month has passed and here I sit, in my quaint and lovely summer home in the picturesque town of Gananoque, Ontario, scant blocks from the St. Lawrence river. I'm recovering nicely from my traumatic time in that awful dungeon, keeping myself busy rehearsing a sweet little play about single welfare mothers in Winnipeg and immersing myself in small-town life.

One of my housemates is downstairs overseeing an oven full of baking cookies; another is rubbing my feet, while the third paints my portrait. From here I will write many blog posts, all about flowers and butterflies and the heavenly scent of freshly baked goods. I'll treat you to Hymns to Dirt Roads, share an Ode to a Cumulous Cloud, and post slide shows of my barbeque and everything that has the honour of being grilled upon it. I'll let you know just what I'm up to, Dear Reader.

I'll make you wish you never asked.

P.S. If you see my mom and Jay-Z, let me know.

the skeptical stage

2009-03-16T01:08:00.010-04:00

From TORONTO,
March 16th, 2009

One year ago, Deeply Blessed Reader, I treated you to a little (invaluable, indespensably brilliant) missive containing The Skeptical Tourist's Advice to Young Actors. (See "The Practical Artist", March 2008 in The Skeptical Archives, at right.)

Since then, my people have been regaled, all but constantly, with demands for more. "What else?", you cry! How this, and Why that, and More More More!

When I run into recent theatre school graduates, or hold one of my impromptu five-hour talks in one of the schools, I am bombarded by young people who weep, fall to their knees, and tell me how much my advice has helped in their careers. Or something like that.

So now, Dear Readers, I lift you gently from the dirty ground and direct your humble eyes to my latest words of wisdom for those Treaders of the Boards out there. BEHOLD, my Little Reader:

THE SKEPTICAL TOURIST'S ADVICE TO YOUNG ACTORS......VOLUME II! The Super Awesome 2009 Holiday Spectacular (err....Spring Equinox? St. Patrick's Day?), Back By Popular Demand, New Improved Lost Weight Haven't You, Love the Hair, My God You're Sexy Edition! (Et cetera.)

And so I begin. Last time around, as you well remember, I gave a general(ly incredible) overview of the entire Business of Acting; today I will concentrate primarily on the stage itself(Which is usually very dirty, by the way, so always wear rubber gloves as part of any costume.)

First, some notes on connecting with your audience:

Since humour is the surest way to people's hearts (well, that and gifted oral), and since the whole point of this performing thing is to be the one they love the most....make 'em laugh!
Looking to spice up that little Holocaust comedy you're starring in? A well-placed fart joke goes a long way. But six fart jokes go even further.

Other popular methods include simulated humping (real humping reserved for dramatic moments/edgy Canadian plays only), open zippers on or around the crotch area, tripping, falling, double takes, spit takes, double spit takes, triple sow cow one eyebrow inverse reactive spit takes, and poo.

It's important to make eye contact with the audience as much as possible. This way, you can directly monitor that all-important connection, remaining in constant touch with how much the viewers are enjoying themselves. And it gives you something to do when you get bored. Calibrate your fart jokes according to both enjoyment levels, theirs and yours.

More essentially, this is your chance to scope out attractive audience members and decide which fans you'd like delivered to your dressing room for the traditional post-show psychedelic orgy.

In the case that there is an awards jury member, critic, or adjudicator of any kind at your performance that night, be extra diligent in maintaining eye contact and directing all your attention his/her way. It helps that you will have been alerted to the presence of such people by your faithful ushers, who will assist by keeping a flashlight beam continually trained on their faces throughout the show, making their reactions easier to spot. Again, adjust your performance as necessary. Lift your skirt in the critic's direction. Flash a little leg. Or a hundred dollar bill. Work his name into the show. In the case of The Toronto Star's Richard Ouzounian, make the play a musical that night. Jazz hands, people. And beam the entire curtain call at him. As he's running down the aisle towards the exit.

Find a way to make your character distinct. This needn't be anything huge or outrageous; something subtle like a hunchback or a twitch can be an equally effective choice. Be aware, though, that everything must increase exponentially in relation to the size of the theatre. In a larger space, try combining two or three memorable traits, such as the limp-funny accent-constant scratching combo. New York actors have been experimenting of late with exciting new combos, such as the funny accent-eye patch-projectile vomiting blend, with some success. Make this your own. Note, however, that 89% of successful combinations do begin with a funny accent. Hopefully your acting school will have given you the fundamentals you need to do dozens of dialects very badly. (Good renditions are rarely funny.)

Speaking of schools.....I must here take a moment to address a disturbing trend in actor training, something that's been upsetting me since first I heard about it. A lot is made, in theatre schools these days, of an experimental concept called "generosity". You must give to the other actors onstage, say your professors; you must make yourself "available" and "share" and be "unselfish".

Well, listen up, Young Actors! You needn't listen to this lousy bunch of Communists! This is America! (What's that, Editor?) This is Canada! And my forbears didn't fight for my rights, didn't forge the Declaration of Inde- What's that? - Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the Emancipation Procla-Constitution just so I could be told by some precious pansy (peculiar purple pie) Professor wearing a beret and an I Vote Arts and Culture pin, that I have give up those hard-earned rights and SHARE.

I refuse to be ashamed of myself! Don't you back down either, Actor-Reader! Take pride in who you are, white, black or...those other things! Take centre stage, God Dammit! And only move when you want to! Say what you want to say! And never, ever, look another actor in the eye! (Unless she has, say, green eyes and pretty lips and you plan to do her later.)

Pay no heed to the barefoot tree-hugging hippies who are trying to strip you of your rights as a Performer! Leave them, I say, in your theatrical dust! (Which is made of ground-up pixies, by the way, and available for sale at Theatrebooks on St. Thomas Street, just $18.99 a gram.)

Someone else who will try to tell you what to do is that asshole, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Some actors take his advice to the players as the word of God himself. But sawing the air with your hands and strutting and bellowing are staples of any strong performance. (In concert with twitches and flatulence.) And if you can't tear a passion to tatters, what can you do with it?

Hold fast, Young Thespian. Take my advice, keep getting better - though, sadly, never quite as good as me - and I will see you out there. I look forward to sharing the stage with you. Except not. You know what I mean.

Go, make you ready,

The Tourist

See The Tourist put all these principles - and more! - into action, in And Up They Flew, on now until April 4th at Toronto's Berkeley Street Theatre. www.theatrecolumbus.ca or 416 368 3110 for tickets.

lisa vs norton

2009-02-11T14:35:00.018-05:00

From TORONTO,
February 11th, 2009

Lisa Michele Norton was born in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough in 1975, into a family who loved her and whose names (Lolita, Mike and Nancy) began with letters that made up her initials. They later said this was coincidence. It made her feel, however, like the centre of their universe. This could be what you call "formative". Her initials are also in alphabetical order, a fact which always made her secretly believe she would one day marry a man named O'Patrick, thus becoming L.M.N.O.P.

Lisa's alter ego, Norton (one name, like Rihanna or Snoopy or Cher), was born a few years later, but is also somehow infinitely older. Norton raised herself.

The Skeptical Tourist came from Outer Space. To be reared on Earth by wild dogs.

Lisa remembers, at about age five or so, a legendary pie. The day her mother made the legendary pie, lemon meringue, her favourite. She remembers peering up at the kitchen counter, at all the mysterious implements, the strange actions. Rolling pin and alchemical charts; the dust of flour floating through a beam of light that shot through the kitchen window, a perfect afternoon light, a perfect summer afternoon. The comfort of being just knee-high to everything; of being surrounded, protected. The magic of pie, of lemon meringue, and of love.

Her mother claims Lisa's memory is faulty; continues to insist that this was not the ONLY pie she ever made. Lisa only pretends to believe her.

Norton's earliest memory is of arriving at Grey Owl Junior Public on the very first day of school, triumphant atop her dad's big black ten-speed. Pulling up, right to the door, the Queen of Sheba in the child seat, up so high above all the other kids who waited, leaning against the brick wall of the kindergarten, to be let in; being lifted down from up on high (in slow motion, it seemed) and lowered into the throng of staring children, who all gasped out in unison, "Wooooooow".

Lisa was named after a kid in her sister's class at school. I wonder where that kid is now.

Lisa is a girl.
Norton is a motorcycle.
The Tourist is a piece of macaroni.

Lisa's sister regularly forced her (crying, terrified) to put on cabarets for the family. So Norton became a performer. But Lisa is the better actor.

NORTON TAKES OVER.

Norton once worked at the LCBO and loved load day. Down in the store basement, running around, grabbing boxes from an ever-full conveyer belt, she got to feel her muscles growing stronger while people shouted things like "Move that skid!" and "Coming through!" and "Count of three!" Picking up two cases of wine, one on top of the other, to keep up with the boys.....the camaraderie of ice packs....the satisfaction of a sore back. The ladies all holding their own, "I'm stronger than I look, assholes", singing along to the Mighty Q, laughing, lifting, laughing....

(Lisa liked the way the boxes looked piled high and lined up row on row like a city of cardboard skyscrapers; she loved their numbers facing all the same way, their edges lined up nicely; balance, symmetry. She enjoyed the even numbers of six-packs, of two-fours, of cases of twelve; the ring of "Seven Hundred and Fifty Millilitres". She didn't care for ounces. Where did ounces fit in anyway?)

Lisa likes filing.

Lisa is a Virgo. Norton is a Scorpio. The Tourist thinks it's all a load of crap.

Norton makes an appearance wherever cameras can be found.

(TRYING TO CRACK UP CASEY WONG)

So does the Tourist.

Occasionally, even Lisa's caught on film.

Lisa was de-virginized in high school. Norton was born experienced. The Tourist thinks that virgins past sixteen are a myth, like satyrs or the Sphinx.....at least in Scarborough.

All three are perpetually two years behind on their taxes and many more behind on filing GST. They blame each other. Lisa starts to hyperventilate and cry when opening those off-brown envelopes from Revenue Canada. But Norton wins over the tax collectors. The GST agent assigned to her file recently wished her good luck on her upcoming show. They wished one another fond Happy New Years, and the agent is pleasantly surprised when Norton calls. She sniffs the cheques that Norton sends for traces of her scent.

Lisa fears she will never find true love. Norton and the Tourist both say "Fuck it".

In grade three, Norton forced her friends to perform in elaborate stagings of fairy tales strongly influenced by "Disney Classics", in front of the whole class. She was playwright, tyrannical director and star....though she did once cast herself in the more minor role of Sleepy dwarf, as, A) It was full of comic opportunity, and, B) She bristled at her grade three colleagues' assumption that she would play Snow White merely because she had black hair, pale skin and ruby lips. (Okay, so she didn't have ruby lips; I made up that last part. - The Tourist)

Lisa is easily humiliated. On the rare occasion she's involved in any kind of verbal altercation, she turns bright red and goes over every word that was said for hours.

Norton is dying to be on the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. If Lisa shows up we're in trouble. The Tourist would rock....or get the show a lot of angry letters.

Norton once gave a rollicking, rude, politically outspoken interview to Eye Magazine, completely on the record, but the writer, whom I daresay had a minor crush and didn't want her to get in trouble, instead wrote a lovely story about Lisa, and how doggone nice she was, and gee how much she loved being an actress.

Lisa says Hee Hee Hee.
Norton says HA HA.
(The Tourist says a doo doo doo, a da da da, this is what I say to you.)

Lisa has a recurring dream that she can breathe underwater. It's always so realistic that she is regularly devastated ten minutes after waking when it dawns on her that it isn't true. Sometimes even in the light of day she believes she's not like other people, and that if she just stuck her face in the water while having a bath and took a deep breath, she'd be fine. She keeps on meaning to try it.

Norton loves any kind of powder candy. Pixie Stix, Rockets, Lik'm'Aid.... Lisa makes soup and bakes cookies. The Tourist will eat anything, but do you think she ever lifts a finger to help?

When Lisa was seven, she made fast friends with a girl her grandmother babysat. They were in love with Eric Estrada and Larry Wilcox of the TV series Chips, and one day, while Grandma was upstairs and they were downstairs watching the show, they decided to write them a letter telling them so.

DEAR ERIC AND THE BLOND GUY. WE LOVE YOU. WE LOVE CHIPS. WILL YOU MARRY US?

They drew pictures of the men with their best crayons, folded the letter and addressed the outside with "CHIPS GUYS, HOLLYWOOD, U.S.A." Then, because they thought this was how it worked, they placed it in Lisa's grandparents' mailbox where the mailman would come and take it away. Instead, of course, her grandmother found it in the mail and read it, returning it directly to the girls. Grandma likely never gave it another thought; for Lisa, it was the most humiliating, mortifying moment of her young life. The girls fought over whose stupid idea it had been to put the letter in the house's mailbox.....and from then on could barely look each other in the eye without acute embarrassment, let alone be friends. Good thing Norton can laugh about it now.

Lisa is afraid of lots of things. For instance: spinning classes. She has yet to take one. The whole thing's terrifying: the hellish stench emerging from the glass cage where it takes place; the techno music; the fierce, tiny woman on the bike at the front of the class screaming "GO GO GO GO GO!!!!!" Norton could probably teach it. (The Tourist thinks it's just a load of crap.)

Lisa likes to be alone. Norton likes that, too. The Tourist just wants them to get it on already. Can't they see that they're in love?

Sometimes people invite Norton to the party and Lisa shows up. She does her best Norton imitation but the jokes are just not flowing. She wishes she could come back in the door and be herself.

The Skeptical Tourist hates Facebook. Lisa admits that maybe it helped her feel a bit less lonely the last week or two. (Lisa is going through a breakup, and it's hard. Norton hates herself for telling you that. The Tourist wonders whether it will land her any dates.)

Lisa fears she'll never write anything of note.

Norton brags that she will be the perpetrator of the Great Canadian Novel someday.

The Skeptical Tourist thinks this blog is the greatest accomplishment known to upright man and why bother trying to top that?

She may have a point.

the norton resolutions

2008-12-29T16:17:00.011-05:00

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.

lisa norton has one friend

2008-11-14T22:14:00.028-05:00

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.

I embraced my Macchio-ness (can't beat 'em to a pulp with a large spiky stick without being tried for attempted murder in a court of law....join 'em, as the saying goes), to the point of dressing up as the Karate Kid for my Dress-As-Your-Favourite-Movie-Character birthday party that year. Kimberly Moonlight, Hansa Prasad and Janice Luke all came as Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan, using the occasion as an excuse to dress like sluts, a phenomenon anyone who's ever been to a Hallowe'en party will find familiar....but remember my earlier description of us as being in GRADE SCHOOL.

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).

[Sidenote: one day a few years ago, while running at the Winnipeg YMCA - yes, ooh, exciting - I caught The Karate Kid on my treadmill television (as high-tech as I get).....and was amazingly struck by Ralph's resemblance to both of us. It was true! Some angles he looked just like me; some expressions were pure Kimwun. It was beautifully eerie. I cried, just a little, all over my impressively large muscles.]

If you've been paying attention, Dear Reader, you will have gleaned two things from this story. (Actually, if you've really been paying attention, you will have noticed many more than two; anybody catch the blue broomstick hiding in the corner? And that Waldo's wearing two hats? Way to go, Judith from Etobicoke!) The two major things to be learned here are these: one, that The Tourist did, in fact, have a childhood, rather than springing in finished adult form from her father's head in full battle armour like Athena, Goddess of War...as is popular belief. (I sprang out as a fully formed toddler, thank you very much. Far easier on ol' Dad's skull.) Two, that the bond shared between Kimwun and me is deeper than you may ever know. I hear her thoughts at night when it's quiet, for one. They're not very interesting, really, but a neat feature nonetheless. And if anyone wants to know what she's planning on washing at the laundromat today, just say the word.

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.

Kimwun is snapping pictures at this party. (You already know where this is going don't you? No, wait! I didn't take my top off - that's not where this is going! Okay, keep reading.) She captures on, er, digital stuff, my exasperation at the Facef**k offensive....my joy (Woo hoo! I'm at a grownup party...with boys! And booze! And pin the tail on the boozy boys!)....my general gorgeousness and flair. You know. And perhaps my eating of every last clementine on the food table. Tell me those little suckers aren't like crack cocaine; girl, you know it's true.

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.

Clicking the link, however, only takes you to a message informing you that you cannot look at photos unless you sign up. Aviva, on reading this message, shrugs, turns off the computer, and goes back to polishing her halo. I, however, am wracked with an ugly, narcississtic curiosity. How horrid - or stunningly wonderful - do I look in these photos? What is the entire Facebook world thinking as they wake to a dawn of postparty pictures of me on Kimwun's page? Shall I expect marriage proposals, or harsh rebukes this week? Did she catch me scarfing down the clementines.....or punching Arwen's grandma in the face.....or humping the sofa? More important, is there something in my teeth? The cat, maybe?

So I clicked. For one brief moment, ladies and gentlemen, I clicked with all my heart.

The pictures were fine, nothing to be embarrassed about - I looked very nice while humping the sofa, in fact - but here I was, suddenly ashamed, painfully aware of my weakness, having changed my life forever. I immediately got a message ON MY WALL from Kimwun, saying "Shut up!!!!! Shut Up!!!! Woooo Hoooo!!", expressing her great joy and surprise at my sudden 180, and meant as a welcome of sorts, but which only made me sob harder. I felt naked, exposed (and not in the usual fun way), when within minutes I started getting friend requests from Kimwun's eight million Facef**k Friends. Her page was proudly proclaiming "Kimwun Perehinec and Lisa Norton are now friends!", as if we had been bitter enemies the past twelve years and suddenly come to terms. I was getting "poked" by people whose names I didn't even recognize. Oh, Beyonce, is this what life is like for you???

Reluctantly, Kimwun agreed to make our friendship secret (now her page merely whispers "maybe kimwun perehinec knows lisa norton just a little bit. sort of.", in a small font, hidden within an advertiser's message.) At first she was convinced that I would become hooked and share her eight million friends in no time. She even wished this on me, because, as I have come to learn, everyone on Facef**k feels somewhat ashamed of themselves and can only relieve that guilt if everyone else in the world is doing the same thing. Hence all the Facef**k evangelism.

Over time, though, my Macchio grew to love that she was the only one defacing my otherwise pristine wall....the only poker of my fire, my secret facebook friend. Now, even if I changed my mind and wanted to jump in, I couldn't, as Kimwun derives such glee from checking in and reading the words, "Lisa Norton has one friend."

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

2008-09-05T15:16:00.016-04:00

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

2008-08-05T12:52:00.006-04:00

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?

2008-07-16T12:22:00.006-04:00

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

2008-06-12T13:29:00.060-04:00

From BLYTH, ONTARIO

On BERLIN & PARIS
July 2nd, 2008

First, a lesson, just to get your eyes acclimatised, my Continental Reader.

Europe:

Not Europe:

And again. Europe:

Not. Frickin'. Europe.

Yes, those other two were taken across the street from the stunning Hotel Europa in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where I will no doubt return someday for a slightly cheaper version of the romantic overseas experience. And a wider variety of microscopic insects and toilet seat diseases.

Enough. This is the photo issue, dammit.....and I think you may be ready.

BERLIN:

Hey! Look! Contrary to popular North American belief, Berlin is not actually in black and white! At least not since the sweeping Letsnotlookenlikeeinenewsreelundinfactletsenpartyalldienacht andnotbeclosendieklubsundalsodrinkendiebeerindiestreet Reforms of 1982.
So colour is a recent development......and all the more impressive for it.

(In one of the city's many huge and gorgeous parks)

Along the sunny spree:

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 all
my friends back home had begged and begged for....

....And, of course, the Brandenburg Gates and
the 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.

If you try to snap a pic without paying, they do what the other dude was quick enough for: cover themselves with their flags. I did pay, by the way, and pose for a shot with them. But in it, I seem rather miserable and confused - sore feet? Bad drugs? Gas? Mostly, I think, I was trying to look serious and venue-appropriate - unlike my American companions who posed on the lap of the grieving mother statue while giving the thumbs-up...and ditched the tour half-way through.

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).

Mm-mm-MMM! Eva Longoria looooves her some German ice cream!

Helps her keep her figure!

Mm-mm-MMM! Indy loves him some Konigreichs des Kristallschadels! Mmm! Yeah!

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

TOURIST GOES HOME! HEARTS HEARD BREAKING ACROSS EUROPE!

2008-05-23T10:27:00.012-04:00

From TORINTO,

May 23rd, 2008

It was both deafening and heartbreaking, the great wail that went up as my plane lifted off European soil. Alas, I was eager to get back to my mom's basement in Etobicoke and, ultimately, the little hamlet of Blyth, Ontario, favoured summer destination of all world travellers.

And the cheering as I landed made up for all the broken hearts so very far away.

What can I say? Paris. It's, you know, okay. If you're into that kind of thing.

First of all, everybody and everything was just so gorgeous. So obviously I felt right at home at once. I mean, don't get me wrong, Berlin was cool and hip and everything, but I don't find the people there particularly attractive. So Paris was a bit of a relief in that regard. I don't think I could ever live in a place where I wouldn't make out with at least, say, six percent of the eligible adult population. Okay, maybe that's a bit high. My point is that Paris is far more Makeoutable than Berlin, in my opinion. I'm just not down with the whole Aryan thing. Not my bag, as the kids are saying.

Skinny jeans finally made sense there. On us fatass North American bitches they don't work at all, but there seem to be a lot of slim hips and skinny thighs wiggling around Paris - must be all the pastry - and on them, the whole thing works a treat. I did see one chunky Parisian girl frumping along in skinny-bottomed jeans and I chased her down the cobblestones shouting "Non! Non! Pas pour vous!" Civic duty and all that. Nothing I wouldn't do at home.

They're all wearing these weird little ankle boots with a slit in the back of them. You tuck your skinny jeans inside them and they peek out throught the slit. It's odd. But works somehow. It's all in the confidence. And the wrist, for some reason. I only saw one gal in Harem pants, thank God. I think she was from some silly place like Spain.

I felt I fit right in. For one thing, the owner of the apartment I rented for the week (no hostel in Paris, no ma'am, not for me) left for my use, among other things, a big straw shopping bag, which served as my instant French disguise. No tourist would have that bag - c'est impossible! She must be one of us!

I always have prided myself on a general ability to blend in and not look like a tourist. Part of it is my one-eighth-everything ancestry, part of it my superfantastic acting ability. It didn't work so good in Germany, at least until I put my blond wig on (and then it was assumed I was an escapee from a local institution). But in France, as other places, I did all right. One help is that I have never set foot in a pair of Tevas/Birks/piles of puke with buckles(TM). Secondly, I ain't wearin' no damn fanny pack. And third, I walk with confidence, as if I know exactly where I'm going, even when I have less than half a clue and have forgotten to put on my glasses. Which is a lot of the time.

Seriously, I'll bet ninety-nine percent of people who get pick-pocketed in Paris are wearing fanny packs. It's like wearing a sign saying "Rob me! Rob me! Idiot tourist here!" Hell, even I wanted to rob those people. Teach them a lesson. And also score some extra cash for lingerie.

Of course, due to all this cockyness, I did pick up some hubris feet. I had cleverly bought a couple pairs of flat shoes (having not worn flats since 1982) before my trip, realizing that I'd need something comfortable for skipping merrily along the cobblestones eight hours a day. I got two pairs of little slip-on Champions. But early on in my European adventures - on the walking tour of Berlin, in fact - the white ones tried to destroy me.

I got a massive, and massively painful, blister on my left heel, and it was a bad, bad chain reaction from there. I'd show you a picture of my left foot as it is right now, but I honestly fear the feedback from people telling me it's the most hideous thing I've ever seen. These shoes are Champions? Champions of WHAT, I ask you! Champions of pain??! (Though the black ones are brilliant, if by now more than usually smelly.) But you'll never get me Tevas! NEVER!!!!!

Okay. I've calmed down. What you really want to know, I am fully aware, is where exactly my ugly little feet took me.

First things first: No, I did not go to the effing Louvre. I did not line up to see the Mona effing Lisa. Not interested. Everyone who'd been to Paris, in advance of my visit, told me the same thing, in a weary tone of voice: "Well you have to go to the Louvre, of course..." Why? Why do I have to go to the goddamn Louvre? Especially if you, who have been there, can't even seem to get worked up about it?

So I went to the Pompidou, the contemporary gallery, and hung out with my buddies Matisse and Man Ray and Picasso and all those cool motherfuckers. There was a temporary Louise Bourgeois exhibit, which was fantastic, and several things that made me nauseous, which is all I ask of modern art.

The other temporary exhibit was called Traces Du Sacre, and was an exploration of artists through the ages working out their relationships with God. I was all, like, who cares, get over it already, but it started to get to me after a while. There was a psychedelia section, which really made me ill - all right! - and then this piece called "Him" by Maurizio Cattelan, which left me shaken to the very core.

It really has to be experienced personally, but here's a description. You walk in to a room in the gallery, and in it, there is a little boy in short pants down on his knees facing a wall, his back to you. He seems to be praying. It takes a moment to realize the little boy is a sculpture. You walk over to the wall and look at the card that tells you that the piece is called "Him", which you take as meaning "God". Perhaps you, as I did, start to walk out of the room and on to the next thing, when you decide to move around for a closer look, see the boy's face. You approach, and realize that the boy is the adult Adolf Hitler. Completely lifelike, his eyes skyward, praying. I felt instantly terrified and frozen. I felt like running clear out of the museum yet couldn't look away. Maybe it was especially strange having just been in Germany, I don't know, but it was like being in the room with the man. I get freaked out just thinking about it.

Do look up Cattelan; his other work is pretty fascinating. Here's "La Nona Ora" (The Ninth Hour), his sculpture of Pope JP2 hit by a meteor:

Yup.

I had decided, before coming to France, to spend a day in Giverny, at Monet's house among other places, and this turned out to be one of my favourite days of the whole trip. I've never been totally gay for Impressionist art, but last year when my mom and I visited the NY MOMA and I saw the water lilies full scale for the first time, it suddenly made sense. Quite different from my previous Impressionist impressions, which had been from the usual Renoir dog food bowls and Degas keychains.

So anyway, they've got Monet's house open as a museum, preserved in its original colours, which are basically like the Best Little Whorehouse in Strawberry Shortcake Land. And - the exciting part, and the really big draw - they've maintained his enormous gardens exactly the way they were in Monet's life. So you can hang out on the green bridge with the lilacs and look out at the water lilies. And shit like that.

Understand that the day in question I was proud of myself for being up and about at all, as I had been awake until the wee hours with blue-eyed Danny, an other, even more extraordinary, gulp, twenty-one year-old from Chicago. Too weird. Later, back in Berlin, I would make fast friends with Tracy, an L.A. animator who turned out to be originally from.....you guessed it. If these three are any indication, I oughtta just go ahead and buy myself a one-way ticket. I'm thinking ol' Chi-town would score pretty high on the Tourist's Make-Out-O-Meter.

All that to say I was a little in the way of a hangover that was trying to walk through me, and rather underslept, when I awoke that morning, but what a beautiful frenchy day it was, and I was determined to get out into the country.

As planned I took the train to Vernon, about 45 minutes NW of Paris, and then rented a bike across from the station. There's a lovely bike path that runs between the two towns, which I enjoyed very much once I finally got on the damn thing. I'd stupidly taken the wrong turn I knew full well not to take, and then ended up cutting through someone's yard and up a hill and ripping my arm open on some rosebushes.

I didn't know I'd cut myself until I was in line, dripping blood all over Monet's sidewalk, and heard some British tourists behind me contemplating what I'd done to myself. They assumed I didn't speak English, you see, on account of my straw bag.

I was glad I went to Giverny for several reasons: It was amazing and liberating to get out on a bike and away from the city in the middle of my urban vacation. It was perhaps life changing to discover my future career as a photographer of flowers, fences, and blades of grass. (I would add monkeys later in Berlin.) And lastly, I think it's very important for everyone, at age thirty-two, to decide where they want to live when they retire/get rich and famous and married to George Clooney. The French countryside definitely tops the list right now.

What else? Champs D'Elysee? Check. Arc de Triomphe? Check. Eiffell tower, gathering place of the rudest, pushiest tourists from everywhere on Earth? Check, twice, day and night, though I never did go past the second level due to a bomb threat or mechanical problem or the top level being rented out by the Olsen twins. Umm.....Broken Social Scene show at the Elysee Montmartre? Check check checkity check. (Great show, the french are NUTS for BSS, and when they were filled in that the chick onstage that night was Amy Millan of Stars, they all started saying "Ooooh, Stars, Stars," in hushed awed voices and taking lots of pictures.) Caught in an insane thunderstorm on the streets of the left bank? Check. Turkish bath house full of mostly-naked French girls? Check.

Now that was one ill-planned Saturday. I had decided I didn't want to visit Versailles on a Saturday, thinking it would be lousy with tourists on the weekend and wanting a relaxing final day.

I'd read about this beautiful old Hammam called La Grande Mosquee and figured that even if it were busy on the weekend, surely a quiet spa atmosphere of tranquility would reign. I didn't know it was the one place where all the loudest girls in Paris congregate on their day off. It's beautiful all right, but full of hundreds of women all shouting at the top of their lungs, in very echoey rooms. The massage and gommage (a big ol' mama scrubs you all over with gritty stuff and a mitt until your ass near falls off) take place on tables all over the place with people constantly shouting and shoving their way past and checking out each other's tits. Now and then the front desk decides to blast half a Turkish song at full volume for some women near the door who feel like dancing, and then it stops abruptly again.

By the time I realized you had to take a number for your massage, I was number 178, and plonked down and half-napped in the courtyard for close to three hours while trying to listen out for the shout of "Mille Soissant-Dix-Huit!" I tell you, it takes some kind of Jedi power to relax in that place. I managed to do it somehow, which maybe just shows how worn out I was by this point.

I also saw my first real-life naked pregnant lady, who asked to go ahead of me for her gommage. (I said "Back off, fatty", but she didn't understand English.) She was stunning, as are all the pregnant women in Paris. I would see them walking down the street with their beautiful dresses and their chic haircuts and their glowing skin and want to cheer them on. "Yes! Go, you beautiful French ladies! Populate the earth with more like you!" Later I realized how rare it was that I saw any actual infants in Paris. Where were they hiding, I started to wonder. Then, on my last night, as I left La Canaille, the exquisite restaurant where I had my last French supper, a man was heading in with a wailing baby in a basket. And it hit me: I was witnessing a delivery. Yes, my friends, the French eat their young. But who can complain, when they're prepared so well? Nothing like a Little Boeuf Babeignon. (Hardy har.)

By the way, I didn't find Parisians to be particularly rude. Then again, I'm from Toronto, so I figure if you punch me in the face you're just saying hi. No, I look at it this way: Paris has been a tourist destination for hundreds of years. People come, people go, most don't bother to learn the language. So they're just not gonna bother all too much with you. I mean, even in Niagara-On-The-Bloody-Lake, we developed a rather dismissive view of daytrippers; now imagine you're a waiter in Montmarte. So, no, you don't get much Where y'all from?, but I can deal with that. Besides, even the people who are stuck up have got pretty good reason: they live in fucking Paris! Look around for chrissake!

I was getting by speaking mostly french, so that helped right off the bat. My problem is, and I have the same problem in spanish, and now in german to some extent, I sound pretty good. I'll decide what I want to say and it'll come out quick and confident, and then the native speaker will come back at me full speed ahead, and all I can do is giggle and shrug and look like an ass because I have no idea what he just said. So I learned to start off with a little "pardon my French" right off so they wouldn't think I was a local. Or Swiss. Apparently I speak french with a Swiss accent, which is I guess what happens when you learn it in Ontario.

The only time someone was patently rude to me, it was a huffy, impatient transit employee, but any TTC driver could give him a run for his money any day of the week. I am in love with the Paris Metro system, by the way. It's efficient, and easy to use, and the windows open on the trains, so you can feel the breeze rushing at you as you zip through the tunnels..... The automated lady who calls out the stops sounds kind of hot, and the signs on the platform telling you when the next train is coming are aways right. (This was true in Berlin too, though I found their system more confusing as all the trains run on the same tracks and everything is in stupid german for some reason.) Toronto, man. It's one thing that they don't let you know when the train's supposed to come; I thought they went a bit far when they put up signs saying "It'll get here when it gets here. Go fuck yourself."

I was a little sad to leave my honeymoon for one in Paris after just one week. Especially to have to leave my little loft in the Marais to go back to the (totally great, mind you) hostel.

But I did get some great souvenirs, some world-class photos, and yes, some slinky lingerie - along with the exciting knowledge that, in Europe, I am bra size 85B, which makes me feel like I have a ENORMOUS rack. Even if it is the smallest size they carry.

The train ride back to Berlin was beautiful and scenic and featured many a field of windmills. I observed that Germany's main crop is grass: lush, green, ordinary grass. Which they dry and stuff into little baggies for export to Amsterdam, where it is sold to morons from Toronto. I also learned the importance of knowing the difference between "Is this seat taken?" and "Is this seat available?" in the local language. I was confusing Germans left, right and centre, as I tried to save the seat for the stupid woman next to me who kept disappearing every time new people got on the train and leaving me to deal with them.

One unavoidable and perversely fun game is to imagine all the stern train employees - and later everyone, everywhere - in Nazi uniforms, and decide their rank. Okay, maybe that doesn't sound like fun; in fact now that I've written it down it sounds really, really fucked up.....but you go to Germany and try not to do it. I mean, they're actually strolling up and down the aisles shouting for your Reisepass! "Herr Jones?!"

On my return to Berlin, I checked back into East Seven, where this week's roomies included a sweet child-like Brasilian, several Canadians who seemed to have come to Europe in order to take a nap, and a dude from Dubai who was a dead ringer for Gene Simmons, never took off his cowboy hat, and insisted that I was from some place called "Torinto".

"Nope, I'm from Toronto."
"Toronto? No, no, I only know Tor-in-to."
"Okayyyy...but are you thinking of Canada?"
"Yes - what is the capital?"
"Well, that's Ottawa.....but you're probably thinking of Toronto."
"Torinto."

In the end I conceded. Quite frankly, he was so confident that I started to wonder and became really embarrassed about the fact that I've been pronouncing my hometown's name wrong all these years and everyone's been too nice to tell me so.

So I was all daytimey and good this time around. The next few days if I met anyone from Chicago or London I ran across the road and insisted they keep a fifty metre distance. So I done did the Deutsche History Museum (for six spellbound hours or so), went up the Berlin TV tower (meh), checked out the Reichstag's beautiful new dome (fantastic), and on my last, glorious day, rented a bike and rode through Tiergarten Park and to the Berlin zoo, which is amazing.

Aforementioned monkey photography to follow on another day.

I had wrongly been prepared for a lot of ack ack ack, but the German language really is quite soft and full of shhh sounds. It's like visiting a country full of well-heeled librarians. Or maybe they were actually telling me to shut the fuck up. Ang go home already. Which sadly, I did.

My neighbours on the plane were a gang of drunken redfaced Germans wearing headphones and shouting at the flight attendants over the sound of 27 Dresses. They yelled "Viskey!" on repeat until there was none left on the plane and then demanded that we touch down immediately. I'm pretty sure the big one next to me stole my peanuts as I slept.

Stay tuned, my sexy friends, and even hotter family, for the trip photo issue, for the return to Blyth, and for The Tourist's Practical Guide to Airport Etiquette (or how to tell customs to

suck it and not end up in prison).

Until then,
Send a file or dynamite,

The Tourist

first i take my pants off.....then i take berlin.

2008-05-11T12:43:00.015-04:00

From BERLIN, GERMANY
May 10th, 2008

Dudes, oh dudes. (Am I allowed to say "dudes" when in Europe? Will the cool police come and get me and throw me in the loser tank for the night?) Dudes, my darling ones, mein dammen und herren, here I am safe and sound across the pond, madly typing away on a silly Euro keyboard from Berlin before catching my overnight train to Big Fat Gay Paree. Just wanted to say a few words from Germany.....
APFEL!
VERGNÜGEN!
ACHTUNG!
PFANNKUCHEN!
That's all. Goodbye.
(Most blessedly short update the Tourist has ever written! All this German efficiency must be rubbing off on me.) On second thought.........

Okay, first of all, Berlin is pretty awesome. I hadn't pictured it quite so green, and even though I'd read somewhere that the city is something like 40% green space, I had to be here to really comprehend what that means. (Hey, no one ever said I was the brightest bulb on die tannenbaum.) It means trees EVERYWHERE, stupid. Parks everywhere. And then - get this, concrete-dwelling Torontonians - trees.....that aren't even in parks. Now that's just weird. I mean, get off it already, fancy Europeans. Seriously.

The weather here is insanely good right now, so it's a prime time to enjoy all this nature and crap. I arrived what should have been completely exhausted but the sunshine managed to wake me up, miraculously. I'm about eighty days behind on sleep right now. And I only got here on Thursday.

After a fairly sleepless Tuesday night in Toronto, I took the bus to the airport from Kipling Station, which I'd never done before. There we all are, a gang of strangers on the bus platform waiting for the Airport Express, and I'm thinking, Hey, Isn't this neat!

Surely this was no ordinary TTC bus. It would be full of world travellers, both excited and sophisticated. We'd talk about our travels, share stories and advice, wish one another luck. I thought we'd, I don't know, hold hands and stare into one anothers' eyes and join in singing It's a Small World After All. I'd get lots of autographs in my yearbook, and comemmorate the experience with a new tattoo. I thought it would be beautiful.

Instead, everyone just shoved their fat asses and their suitcases on and glared at one another, like on any other bus ride. I was the only idiot who couldn't stop grinning, undaunted even by the puffy, scary man across the aisle whose face looked like it had the habit of being punched at least twice a day and who continually glared at me as though he wanted me dead.

I became (still cheerily) convinced that he was a regular user of this route for the sole purpose of robbing tourists at the airport, and promptly reported him to security as a terrorist when we arrived. Last I saw, they were punching him in the face.

I boarded the plane with my usual assortment of undeclared liquids, gels, illicit drugs and a miniature chainsaw, and some declared shampoos and things in their little see-through case, each of which airport security insisted on swabbing with some mysterious goop. Because the bottles have no labels, security woman says. What does the goop do, say I, merely curious. We have to put it on if there are no labels, she says. Yeah but, I say again, what does it DO? Then she tells me if I don't want goop next time I should buy mini travel shampoos and things instead of using my refillable blank ones. As if I couldn't have filled a Head and Shoulders bottle with something else. I explain that I don't like wasting the plastic. She looks at me like I'm a retard. I punch her in the face and run away. Problem solved!

Another thing that joined me on the plane was my arsenal of sleep thingies. I had my soft fuzzy eye mask (like a teddy bear is sitting on your face), my earplugs, my pillow, my syringe of heroin........all the things a seasoned traveller brings to conk out en route. Unfortunately, I'm also a quite accomplished insomniac, damn me, and didn't get one wink. When I did drift just to the edge of sleep, the army of screaming babies attacked. This one kid five rows behind me spent most of the trip screeching as if his mother had ripped his arms off. I was ready to suggest she do it, as having arms was obviously doing nothing for him.

And there's the broad next to me, no earplugs, no eye mask, nothing......out absolutely cold. Lucky German bitch.

I've decided that all planes should have a soundproof room on them for babies and for frat boys who want to spend flights comparing, A) How drunk they got where they were, and B) How drunk they plan on getting where they're going. And another soundproof room for me and me alone. Oh why didn't God make me deaf? Instead, he made me funky.

So I arrive in green Berlin at nine (Berlin time) the next morning, take a cab in and drop my stuff off at the hostel (which I can't check into until THREE), and spend the day wandering along the River Spree, sitting in a beach chair at a waterside bar, and napping briefly in a park full of Berliners tanning in their underwear. By the end of day one I'd developed a tan and some truly silly tan lines..... It was great. It's been upwards of 25 Celsius here every day, and the outdoor life in Berlin is glorious. Every bar has a patio, the Spree is covered in them, the parks are gorgeous (Volkspark Friedrichshain would be the biggest and best park in any other city; here it's number two or three. When I come back here after Paris I'll hit Tiergarten, the big one, which is enormous.)

So yes, The Tourist is staying in a HOSTEL. I know, I know, I'm too old for this shit. I just really wanted the experience of bedbugs and diseases caught from toilet seats. Joking. This place, East Seven Berlin, is cute and clean and looks like an IKEA catologue come to life. I did have my own private room the first night, and then switched to a dorm with five other people (mostly Germans who won't speak to me) as the singles were booked.

I was unsure how I felt about sharing a room. Everything I'd read told me this place was not a big party hostel, but still, I anticipated staid old me being woken by loud nighttime partiers stumbling home. Instead...well....reverse that. Yep. I'm the asshole.

Day two I decided to take a walking tour of the city that leaves from the hostel, expecting something kind of serious yet informative. I didn't know it would end up leading me to partyland. (Indirectly, of course).

The tour was led by Sylvia, a hot chick from Montreal who's been running tours all over the place the last ten years - she arrived in Berlin three years ago and was giving tours of it a week later. Our tiny group set out and picked up people at another hostel and in a park until it was a group of about twenty, some Yanks, some Brits, a very gorgeous Frenchman, a couple from Senegal and a gaggle of blondes from Calgary, who managed to typify everybody's idea of the obnoxious American tourist. Ah, Alberta, doing us proud as usual. They were a few of the many people I encountered who were "doing Europe" in a few weeks, which of course means two days in each place, hence hostels and pubcrawls with fellow tourists, and very little else.

Anyway, Sylvia was not only cute but very insightful and an excellent tour guide, and had a definite twisted Canadian sense of humour, which made for a few odd jokes that were lost on everyone but me and may have seriously confused the Calgarians. At one point she actually referred to Goering as "everybody's favourite Nazi"; all she said about the Huguenot museum was that she had never actually seen anyone go into it.

We saw a great many of the sights-to-see, including the Holocaust Memorial, which is quite amazing, the Brandenburg gate, Checkpoint Charlie, a piece of the Wall, and a parking lot outside an apartment complex. This particular lot is situated on top of the former site of Hitler's bunkers where he and Ava Braun and the gang spent their final days. No sign , nothing. Just a parking lot. I think the idea was that to acknowledge it would be to glorify him in some way.

Berliners have put so much thought into these things; I read that there are over 200 memorials all over the city, some big, some small, some hardly noticeable unless you know where to look. In the square where the Nazi book burning took place, there is a tiny window in the ground: you look into it and see an underground library full of empty bookshelves. Across the way, Humboldt University, whose students helped Goebbels gather the books to be destroyed, holds a used book sale out front 365 days a year by way of an apology. It's taken the almost twenty years since reunification to decide what to do about the former East German parliament; after much heated debate, they are only now tearing it down, brick by brick. The Neue Wache Memorial is quite moving and very controversial. It's stark chamber containing only a statue of a grieving mother holding the body of her son. It's also the resting place of - here's the controversial part - both an unknown German soldier and a Holocaust victim, and is dedicated to all the victims of war.

It's no wonder Berliners aren't the smiliest lot. They're being reminded every single place they go and every day that they were complicit in something unspeakably terrible. I think it's wonderful how thoroughly their stance has been to not let themselves off the hook.

A very strange note: a company recently given a contract for a preservatory substance for the Holocaust memorial turned out to be the same company that manufactured Zyclon B, the death chamber gas. When this was discovered there was a huge uproar, and the company defended themselves by saying that first of all it wasn't the current proprietors' doing, and besides, what they had done was no worse than any factory that made anything during the war and contributed to the German economy at the time, thus fuelling the war effort and the holocaust. Basically equating making Zyclon B with manufacturing toothpaste. They eventually agreed to donate their product and the work for free.

You may be wondering how all this led to dancing until six a.m., but it turns out that a walking tour is the perfect place to meet crazy British people who want to take you out on the town, among others. At the end of the tour a gang of us, including Sylvia, ended up drinking on the Spree (Caiparinhas, which I've since discovered should be called Crapperinyas for what they do to you - I met a bartender last night who thought he was doing me a big favour by giving me a really large, really strong one at the end of the night and I've been cursing his name all day).

Anyway, I joined Sylvia and the Brits, and Jean-Philippe, aforemontioned Frenchman, who really is the kind of goodlooking that can make women take their clothes off by just looking at them too long, for dinner and drinks and then dancing all night at this beautiful, hopping club on the river called Watergate. I managed to party like it was 1989 (tee hee, Berlin joke, wall coming down, get it?), dancing with the city's best party animals to an amazing DJ.....and escape with my clothes still on, breaking Jean-Philippe's mystical gaze with my SuperCold Canadian power. Yeah! Wait......am I bragging about not sleeping with gorgeous French people? Dammit! I've fucked up this trip already!

Next night was the Jamie Lidell concert (Lidell is an awesome funky singer I learned of through the ex-squeeze - he's British but now lives in Berlin), at a beautiful old venue called Admiralspalast, with Johnny Greeneyes from Chicago, another dude I met on the tour. Jamie Lidell was fantastic and absolutely wildly insane on stage, and we had a great time, despite the minor shock of Greeneyes and I sharing our ages and discovering that what was maybe supposed to be a date was transpiring between a twenty-one year-old and a thirty-two year-old. I was shocked at his youth, considering his maturity; he was blown away that he'd just met the youngest looking, coolest and most unfathomably beautiful thirty-something IN THE WORLD. What luck.

And I snuck into my hostel at six in the morning again, knocked everything over and woke everyone up. The Germans tried to gore me with their bayonets.

I've been getting by with really crap language skills: my Deutsche when I arrived consisted of "Good morning/afternoon/evening. I'm sorry, I don't speak German. I would like a glass of wine." I've since added different variations on the wine thing, and about five different ways of saying "I want". That's right, travelling the world speaking like a five year old again. GIVE ME THIS! GIVE ME THAT! I WANT BOOZE! (Okay, so I had an unorthodox childhood, what can I say?)

I had trouble at first remembering which version of "the" corresponded with which version of "a/some", ie which was masculine and which was feminine. Until I figured out the trick that "eine", which is feminine, rhymes with "vagina". So yeah. "eine vagina" - that's the extent of The Skeptical Tourist's Practical Tips on Learning German. I also think that Eine Vagina is the perfect name for the heroine of Disney's upcoming sex ed animated feature. I will provide the voices of both her and her (also German) trusty post-op tranny sidekick, "Nicht Dick".

There are ticket machines on all the streets that say "Hier Parkschein Losen" on them. Which I know is just telling you to buy your parking ticket, but I like to think it means "Park here, loser."

And the word for "tour" is "fahrt", which obviously makes me giggle. There are all kinds of fahrts here, too. Big ones; small, intimate ones; long ones; short ones; loud and rowdy ones. Again with the five year-old business! I know, I know. But can I just tell you that I saw a sign in a park the other day that said "Bitte Nicht Futtern"? Do Not Feed the Animals? Or Please Don't Fart? You choose.

I'm off now. Every now and then I have to jump up from the keyboard, grab one of my many passports and break into a panicked run through the streets of Berlin, in honour of my hero, Jason Bourne. (Love you, Matty D. Wish you were here.)

And now, a confession. I've written a great chunk of this email not from Berlin, but from Paris. This is the first time I've had the time and the energy (no thanks to last night's caipirinhas, the big Parisian ones) to finish saying all I want to say about Berlin. And don't get me started on Paris. All I'll say for now is that I'm trying desperately hard to stay Skeptical. The only thing that sucks here is my choice to be inside, in an internet cafe, on a stunning and warm Paris springtime day. But goddammit, I had to stay somewhere that's close to a toilet.

A bientot, my faraway darlings,

Everybody's Favourite Sweet and Sour,

The Tourist

P.S. Post your comments, send your emails. It's always nice to know you're all not dead.

the norton debacle

2008-03-27T16:45:00.010-04:00

From TORONTO
March 28th, 2008

I have a confession, and therefore an apology, to make:

I broke up the Stratford Festival Artistic Directorship.

Yes; despite what you may have heard and whatever overtures have been made to protect me and keep my name out of the media, I, Lisa Norton (a.k.a. The Skeptical Tourist), bear the sole responsibility for all this unrest and upheaval. Phew. I feel so much better. The guilt was killing me.

Here, in brief, is how it all went down. Some weeks ago, I had my first ever audition for Stratford. I had never so much as mailed a resume there before; the new triumvirate of Artistic Directors, however, signalled to me an infusion of hope and excitement to the tired old place. The Stratford Festival, I thought, might finally be ready for me.

I was to perform two monologues for and interview with new (now former) Artistic Director Don Shipley, and was excited to meet him. In I walked to the rehearsal hall high above Toronto's Canon Theatre, photo and CV in hand, hair done largely and elaborately, my best facial expressions only recently practiced in the mirror, to meet Don and Bonnie Green, the casting associate. "Hi Don," I said, "How're things?" He began to cry.

I mention this because, in retrospect, it was the first sign that something was wrong. It was, however, soon remedied, if only temporarily, by my audition. I gave such a dazzling display of acting virtuosity that Mr Shipley was immediately cheered, all worries forgotten. "WOW!" he exclaimed. "Jeez! GOSH! Oh my! Sarblllaphhhhrgat!" He momentarily lost all control and peed on the floor. Eventually recovering, he sat me down for a chat as Ms Green scrambled to find some paper towels and clean up the mess. "Honestly," said Don, "I have never seen anything so wonderful in all my life. If you could do that with a mere two contrasting pieces in four minutes or less.....Why, just imagine the possibilities! You, my dear, could change the world." I agreed and went on my way, thinking nothing of it. I expected contact from Stratford shortly.

It came a scant few days later in the form of a panicked phone call from Stratford General Director Antoni Cimolino.
"Lisa!" he said. "We don't know what to do! You're tearing this place apart!"
"Hey there, Tone," I told him, "Slow down. Take a breath. Drop and give me ten."
He did so, and then, as calmly as he could, informed me of the recent goings on at Stratford. I've pieced it together as best I can.

It seems that Don Shipley, as soon as I left the audition hall, immediately cancelled all other auditions for the day, and in fact, the entire week. "That's it," he told Bonnie. "That's all I need to see." They made instant haste back to Stratford, only stopping for a couple of Quarter Pounders and two Shamrock Shakes along the way and talking madly on their cell phones, arranging an emergency meeting of the Artistic Team and the General Director for the moment they got back to Stratford.

Their car squealed into the staff lot just as Des McAnuff's helicopter arrived from New York and Marti Maraden pulled up on her bicycle. They all made a run for Antoni Cimolino's office, pushing and shoving, Shipley madly waving my photo and resume in the air......and after getting stuck in the doorway for just a moment, they managed to get inside and sit down.

Don Shipley informed the group of what he had just witnessed. "We must have her!" he told them, "We must! I must!" I would, he decided on the spur of the moment, play Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra in the 2009 season.
"But we're already doing that play in the 2008 season," Marti Maraden reminded him. "It's been cast."
"Are we?" said Des McAnuff. "That sounds like fun!"
"You're directing it", said Marti.
"Yay!" said Des.
"Who cares!" said Don. "We'll do it again! In fact, we'll repeat the entire 2008 season, only based around Lisa Norton. She'll make a fantastic Juliet! I'll direct her!"
"No," interjected Marti, "Surely I should direct her......that is, if she needs direction at all! I won't let you near her! After all - I knew her first!"
"I've never even heard of this Lisa Norton," said Des McAnuff, "But I sure like her headshot! Let's fill the lobby of the Festival Theatre with a permanent display of sculptures of her! She'll spend the whole season posing for me! I'll sing songs!"
"What are you talking about?" said Marti.
"LAAAAA!" said Des.

Bonnie Green discreetly snuck off with the remains of her Quarter Pounder with cheese.

What ensued was one of the ugliest fights over me since....well, it's so hard to compare really..... There have been some pretty nasty fights over me lo these many years. But it was up there. Each Artistic Director wanted me to his or herself entirely. None would concede that another might be allowed to direct me in a play, speak to me, or hold my hand while strolling along the Avon. Each wanted me as his personal muse at the newly christened Lisa Norton Shakespeare Festival of Canada (the name of which was the only talking point they could agree on).

Antoni Cimolino watched quietly for the most part, caressing his pet Siamese cat and sitting back in his high-backed leather chair. Then he stroked his newly grown goatee and reached for the big red button on his desk. Not the "eject" button. Not the "arm nuclear device" button. The other one.

As the carefully aimed taser guns retreated back into the walls, and the triumvirate of Artistic Directors lay writhing on the ground, Cimolino leaned forward and finally spoke. "The Norton," he said calmly, "Is MINE. I shall direct her. I shall speak to her. I will keep her in a box in my office, and let her out when I please. I will cover her with lanolin to make her skin soft and shiny and then I shall make her into a coat that I will wear to the prom. Now does ANYONE have a problem with that?"
"How dare you," managed Shipley.
"I'll never allow it," said Maraden.
"YAY!" said McAnuff.

"Ouzounians!" called Cimolino, and in marched his team of specialized security monkeys. (With wings.) "Remove Ms Maraden and Mr Shipley from my office. We will announce their joint resignation tomorrow. Muah ha ha."

But the two, weakened as they were by the taser attack, would not leave it at that.
"You will never have the Norton!" cried Maraden, throwing monkeys from her back and attacking Cimolino with sudden superhuman strength. Shipley, similarly fortified by rage (and love for me - not to mention the amazing properties of the McDonald's Shamrock Shake), made a run at him as well. They bruised him; they beat him; they tore off his new goatee. Des MacAnuff ate his cat, just for kicks. "You're on my side, Des!" cried Cimolino, shielding his head and his collection of poseable Cynthia Dale action figures as best he could. "Yippee!" said Des, and ran out to his helicopter and flew to England.

The phone call I received was made by Cimolino from under his desk during a temporary stand-off three days later. The Ouzounians had abandoned him and flown away to write an article, and the fight had continued, Shipley and Maraden alternating between ganging up on him and turning on one another to fight over me.

"We don't know what to do! You're tearing this place apart!"
"Hey there, Tone. Slow down. Take a breath. Drop and give me ten."
"They ate my cat!"

Anyway, Dear Reader, there was only one way to settle the thing. "Forget it," I told them on speaker phone, "Let it go. I can't stand to see you injure one another, not to mention flying monkeys, on my behalf. Besides....and you should have realized this....The Norton belongs to no man."

I wish I could say that solved all their problems. However, after another hour or so of kicking and biting, Mr Shipley and Ms Maraden left anyway, and have since become a bit of an annoyance to me with their constant stalking and attempted professional wooing. Mr Cimolino has acquired a new cat, is working on his goatee, and has instructed the Ouzounians to keep my name out of the press and go back to their usual routine of slagging hardworking theatre professionals and raving about the blueness of Nicole Kidman's eyes.

I, however, obviously felt that the truth must out. Again, my sincere apologies for all of this.....
and for the fact that The Lisa Norton Shakespeare Festival of Canada will have to remain but a lovely dream.
.....For now.