From TORONTO,
March 25th, 2007
NAKED NEIGHBOUR ETIQUETTE
So let's say you and your friend Sarah have been drinking on a patio all afternoon (Ten degrees! Woo hoo! Let's take our pants off! Nutty Canadians). And let's say now it's evening and you're both sitting on your couch eating ice cream. (No, this is not going into exciting lesbianic territory; we didn't start play fighting and get sticky ice cream - oh no - all over! Maybe next week....) But let's say you look up and notice that your very hot neighbour, whose kitchen faces your living room, is walking around cooking wearing just a towel. Clearly he's making a post-sex snack for his wife who's all worn out and breathless in the next room. And he's just out of the shower, so he's kind of wet and glistening-like...and....ahem.
My question, dear reader, is not whether to stare at your wet, half naked neighbour or not; obviously you stare, I did say hot neighbour, we're not talking Mister Roper here. But let's say this certain neighbour looks up to see two chicks eating ice cream and watching him. What's the etiquette there? Do you wave? Do you, I don't know, take your top off, just to make him feel more comfortable? (Would your friend Sarah mind?) What you probably don't do is go with my spur of the moment reaction, which was to just sit there all slack-jawed and stalker-y, unable to avert my eyes, pralines and cream all drooling down my chin.
Funny that our initial assumption was that a hot male neighbour would enjoy being watched by randy strangers across the way. When he was probably just thinking, "Oh great. Now I have to cook in the dark."
My eventual solution was to go out today and pick up a set of international code flags ($16.95 at Zellers). I'm teaching myself the universal signals for "Drop the towel"...."Hey, you've been working your pecs"....and "Is your wife into this?" Even if I don't use those on the neighbour they're bound to come in handy sometime. There's also the curtain option. Which would not only give the neighbours their privacy, but spare them having to know how many games of Spider Solitaire I play each day, and how regularly I pick my nose.
STREETCAR BEACH
I like finding little mini-vacations for myself. It helps when you can't afford a real one. This one's as mini as you can get. It's in fact on the King streetcar. Under that short little train overpass between Dufferin and Strachan. After the systematic mowing down of four hundred and twenty-three cyclists, the city finally installed proper lights in the tunnel....and I don't know if there was a beauty sale at the city store or something.....but the lights they put up, instead of being your run-of-the-mill glaring fluorescent uglies, cast a truly lovely amber glow. There's this magical suspended moment when the streetcar slows for safety and the warm light comes in the windows and suddenly all the pale March faces are lit up and sunny and warm....I look up and around at my fellow passengers every time to take in how pretty they all are, how slow and relaxed the world is for just that moment......and then the streetcar leaves the tunnel and everyone starts strangling one another again and my vacation is over. It lasts all of thirty seconds. But it's probably why I usually head home along King instead of Queen. It's a little thing. But it's a motherfuckin' nice thing. Biatch. To quote post-jail Martha.
DENSE-CITY
I am getting rather fed up with the official Toronto policy of knocking down anything old (buildings, people) to vomit up ugly new condos. I mean, I think urban density is great, better than sprawl, but why does it all have to look like it's made of cardboard? I cry a little when I think that this city would look a lot like Montreal if they had left more of it the fuck alone. I was walking along Charles Street, West of Bay the other day, and noted again the small row of beautiful red-brick Victorians boarded up and slated for demolition. There are signs out front announcing re-zoning to allow for two new buildings 23 and 15 stories high. Next door is one of those boring, old-folks-in-Miami lookin' condos, and I'm sure these will be more of the same. Aross the street they're knocking down the Lycee Francais.
Walking a little further brought me to the ROM, where that huge glass and steel THING is being whacked onto the side of the building. The THING being the Michael Lee Chin Crystal (designed by Daniel Libiskind, named for a banker). See it and track its progress at http://www.rom.on.ca/renaissance/architecture.php . 
I find it kind of hideous. But at least it's interesting. And it may turn out all right. Better than that nasty thing they stuck on top of The Ontario College of Art and Design.
(See the monstrosity at right.)
The new Art Gallery of Ontario addition might be kinda cool, but it's gehry, and not, you know, GERHY, and a bit pedestrian. (http://www.ago.net/transformation/new_building-images.cfm) He apparently abandoned a more ambitious and spectacular plan when local citizens complained about its height. AAAAARGH! World famous avant garde architect returns home to be met with "Uhhh....can you make it a little smaller?" No wonder the new plan is slightly lame; he probably got pissed off and gave us some ol' crap design he's had sitting in his basement for thirty years. The addition, still under construction, is already being called the AGO Sneezeguard.
I quite like the new Opera Centre.....except the decor is a bit IKEA, something Tracy Dawson and I noted at the open house before shamedly reading some display about the imported limestone floors and the expensive German wood. Are you sure you don't mean Swedish? Isn't that staircase the Kvurtslig from page 46 of the spring catologue? Does the bar serve meatballs?
YOUNGER LIVING
So I'm playing a teenager again starting next week. Which is getting a bit weird. Starting to feel like Gary Coleman or Emmanuel Lewis. That's right, I feel small and black. This time I'm teening it up in Better Living and Escape From Happiness, two George F. Walker plays at Factory. The very eerie thing about this casting though, is not my extraordinary oldness, thank you very much. (Hey, I still do get carded buying booze and hit on by adolescent boys.) No, what has me freaked out is all the parallel lines to my younger life. It's one of the East End Plays, and my character has a cop for a father and a hoodlum boyfriend named Junior. In case you're not up on your Tourist lore (and I'll forgive you this time), I grew up in Scarborough (east end as it gets), my dad was on the force (even worked fraud, same as the dad in the show), and my first big high school boyfriend was Junior Bailey, a small-time hood in training.
That Junior actually showed up backstage at the Royal Alex one day when I was doing The Innocent Eye Test. I hadn't seen him in fifteen years and he was there, he said, because he'd seen me in a bikini in the newspaper (an ad for the show, not a Sunshine girl spread, sadly). He came by himself, sat in the first row and now was being all pick-uppy and weird. I don't think he blinked the whole time we talked at stage door. And not in that gorgeous Joseph Fiennes "my eyes are so beautiful it would be a shame to deny you them for a moment" way......or I suppose that's the effect he was going for. Instead it read like he was overmedicated. Or just the kind of guy who comes to see his ex up-close in a bikini and keeps telling her how great she looks and talking about himself in slightly suspect ways. He told me he'd gotten his Masters....and later slipped up and mentioned that he'd been to Community College, not University. Not sure when Humber started handing out Masters degrees. But I am glad he's turned from drug dealing to a career in law enforcement. My Dad's about to make the opposite switch, to supplement his pension on retirement. Good for him!
I had another teenager audition this week, and the director had clearly looked over my resume pretty thoroughly, which is usually a good thing. In this case, the more we discussed my past work, the more I felt the role slipping away from me, as each bit of experience added to my perceived age. I could almost hear him calculating years in his head..... I started hunching over more and more, little lines suddenly appeared around my eyes and mouth, my knees started creaking, clumps of hair fell from my head.... I finally did the scenes with a cane and a tremor....and then I woke up and realized it was ALL A DREAM! And that I'm not an actor at all, but a very successful Pakistani engineer, living in Boston with my wife and three children and playing tennis every Thursday! Phew. What a relief. Now who the hell are you and why am I writing this?
PLAYBOOK
Do you suppose anyone has ever adapted a play into a novel? I ask this because the usual course is to take books and adapt them for the stage or the screen, but I started thinking the other day, what if you tried it the other way around? And not like those " based on the movie" novelettes aimed at twelve year olds. (Back to the Future: the Book! Marty McFly woke up. He knew it was going to be a BAD DAY.) I'm thinking this could give a play another kind of life beyond its three-week run, and one for people who read novels but not plays. (Who reads plays except for actors? Oh yeah. Playwrights.)
It would be an interesting exercise, if nothing else, taking a stage work and then being able to dive into the secret thoughts of the characters, elaborate on or invent back stories, add new scenes, more locations.....With a page-to-stage adaptation, a lot of it is cutting things out, distilling, editing....but with stage-to-page, you could expand, explore, extrapolate....do other things that start with ex......and then get punched in the nose by the playwright for getting it all wrong. And have him or her deny you the rights to do anything with it. But it's worth a thought. I shall begin with Puppetry of the Penis: A Novel. It will surely be my master work.
BLAH!
My favourite suggestion addressing the problem of the word "Blog", which really does sound like a creature of the deep, comes from Maureen Del Degan of Parkdale, who points out that the word "blague", French for joke, is a tres chic alternative (Why, yes! It makes me think of croissants! Berets! Sexy little men smoking Gauloises!) and is rather appropriate. Yeah! As if this is all some big joke! As if it doesn't cost me to share all this with you! As if I don't die a little every time I tear out a small piece of my heart and smear it flat on the page for you, MAUREEN! Thanks a lot! Just kidding, I love it, your prize is in the mail. (It's a small piece of my heart, torn out and smeared across a page. Serve with toast. Mmmm - like foie gras, but human!)
An honourable mention goes to Dylan Trowbridge, who is not quite bright enough to have understood the question, but did suggest I call my blog "Leese on Life". Can't believe a retard thought of that before I did. Hell! And I may use that for something in the future. But for now....
I remain,
The Tourist.
blague city
the tourist is in.
From TORONTO,
MARCH 9th, 2007
THE BITTER WAY
Just got through a very angry few days where any Toronto Transit vehicle I tried to take (streetcar, subway, horsedrawn carriage) would break down, or short turn, or be overrun by deadly fireants. I started to get a serious case of TTC rage. I was on the subway a couple of days ago and when the conductor was announcing the train going out of service at Warden, I swear I could hear whispering in the background, "No, make it before Vic Park.....She's trying to get to Vic Park." And then just a lot of giggling. I know what you're thinking: come on, Norton, get over yourself, everyone was delayed this week, it's not about you. And I would fully agree with you, were it not for the fact that the TTC has also hired a couple of guys to follow me around with baseball bats and beat me on the shins. Wearing TTC uniforms and everything. No shame. It seems a little strange considering the funding shortage and all......but now you know where the latest fare hike went. Anti-Norton goons. Yes, it IS all about me. Next on Turner Classic Movies: Lisa Takes a Streetcar. Hell, if they could make twelve Ernest movies.... Ernest takes a Dump was really the last one worth watching though.
It's not just the transit, however. This whole city is out to get me. All week, there were these Oompah Loompahs up on the CN Tower throwing hunks of ice down at me. Oompah Loompahs built the CN Tower back in the 70s, you know. When the city had money for that sort of thing. Look it up. Anyway, it got so I couldn't go downtown. Which is why I'm in my apartment, writing to you for eighteen hours.
MY BIG FAT COMMERCIAL SHOOT
Did this ad a few weeks back for Ontario Tourism....you know, one of those look how cool we are having fun and flirting in a bar things....they cast me, a blonde, an Indian chick, a Chinese girl, and one of those nice young Negroes. I think I, with my patented ethnic ambiguity, was supposed to represent the Italian. The two guys were a white dude and my new pal Carlos Gonzalez, who says he's Argentinian. I'm convinced he's really Bob Johnson from North Bay. Hey! Come to Ontario! You will have a big group of multi-ethnic friends! You will be just like the United Nations, except drunk and horny! And you know those Asian chicks, man......
The other girls were all very beautiful - and very skinny. At the wardrobe call the day before (bring your own clothes in so we can pick them over and scowl at them) we were all there at the same time for the wardrobe person to check out and dress up. Everything the skinny girls put on looked fantastic, of course, while the wardrobe staff just kept staring at my thighs like "What are we gonna do about those?" Now I know I'm not fat, but it took me about six minutes to develop My First Body Issues (another new "My First" product from Fisher Price). Imagine what it must be like being an actor in L.A. Terrifying. By the time she gave my hair a sour look, I was convinced that it was overweight: "That's it isn't it? I've got FAT HAIR, don't I? I knew I'd never make it in this town!!!"
At the shoot, in the wardrobe trailer, I'm wearing my weird vintage dress that the wardrobe chick liked so much, and I sit down in the makeup chair. The makeup artist, lets call her Christina (because that was her name), is dialling her cellphone while looking me up and down. She just has time to say "OHMIGOD what have they got you wearing I hate it!" when her call picks up. "Hi Mom, can you watch the kids tomorrow" etc, while I'm sitting there shrinking into the chair. She hangs up and tells me again how hideous the dress they gave me is.
"Um. It's mine actually."
"OH! I didn't mean I hate it..... It's just.....so....colourful."
"That's okay, I don't really even know why they picked it, I shouldn't have brought it in the first place, it's really not something I usually wear...."
"No it's goood, it's just, um, it makes it hard to pick out what colours to use on your eyes, (under her breath) you fat whore."
"Uh....Did you just call me a fat whore?"
"No."
"I thought I heard you say -"
"NoOOoo. Why would I say something like that (sotto voce)...stupid cow."
"There! You just did it again! You called me a cow!"
"RING RING! Would you excuse me, I gotta take this."
"That wasn't even your phone, it was just you saying ring ring."
"HELLO?"
So yeah.
A few days later, talking to Marc Bendavid, I make some dumb disparaging joke about airhead models (not meaning my skinny commercial girls, they were fun and awesome - and put out! Those Asian chicks - whoooee! Don't get me started!)......and Marc tells me that the one time he worked with a model, she was wonderful and smart, and gives her whole salary away to AIDS victims in Africa, and has fourteen pregnant teenage runaways living in her bachelor apartment. And you know. Campaigns for Amnesty International or some shit. So what, I can't even make fun of MODELS anymore? Who's left?! What's next, feeling sorry for Jude Law? Actually, poor Jude.....I haven't returned his calls in weeks. He must be pretty upset.
To keep warm on the commercial shoot, some of which was shot outdoors in ten or twenty or eight hundred and nine below, I was wearing my Magical Supercoat, which some of you may remember as the star of my Winnipeg trip. (Makes a mean omelette, deploys Airbags when needed, takes its Martinis shaken not stirred....) A couple of months ago, I am sad to report, Supercoat had an accident involving a heater on a CBC shoot. It was busy writing a novel and failed to notice that its back was melting, but luckily for me, who was in it, the damage was stopped before it actually set on fire. It's still wearable, just injured. It's taking it quite well. A producer on set promised they would replace it for me, but now when I call them they just say "Lisa who? Como? No speaka Inglese!" Just as well. Could my next coat play the maracas?
J.C. VS J.T.
By now you've heard they found what could be a box full of Jesus. You know, film crew in Jerusalem discovers that standing in the way of a new housing complex was a tomb from which have been removed boxes that contain what may be, from the markings on the front, the remains of Jesus and his family. Including his son. Whaaaaa-? DNA testing to follow to see if ol' JC is related to Joseph (hm) , and whether he had a kid (well well well) and to generally drive the Christians insane. Of course they won't acknowledge that it's him. But it's still driving them insane. Who knew that James Cameron could upset even more people than he did with that Celine Dion song in Titanic ? Of course no one will ever give credence to something that a film crew claims to have discovered. Look at the Disney Pixar people, who unearthed that lost civilization of ACTUAL TALKING CARS! Will that make it into the history books? Noooooo. But anyway, what has DNA testing ever really proved? Except that you're not my real mother, Lolita! I'm onto you!
I am convinced that Jesus has timed this comeback as a plot to dethrone Justin Timberlake. 2006 was the year of Dick in a Box? Well how about Christ In A Box, bitch? Booya! You think you're bad, JT? Wait 'til Superbowl '08, when JC rips Janet's panties right off! And not a twat protector in sight! Look who's bringin' sexy back now!
What did they call that thing? A nipple shield? That may have seemed strange to you, but if you know the history of assassination attempts on the Jackson family, it makes perfect sense. True. Tito barely survived the Victory Tour. For some reason the shooters always aim right for the nipple. Eeerie. By the way, if you live in too deep of a cave to have seen Dick In A Box, thereby missing out on the joy of one of my jokes, please watch it now. http://youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA . I do love my Timberlake. Shh. Don't tell Jude.
SING, FOREST, SING!
Another thing you oughtta YouTube is Forest Whitaker's performance on "The Maurizio Costanzo Show". http://youtube.com/watch?v=dxoc5QgEBKI It's a brief clip of him singing. Apparently he did a lot of singing on his SNL appearance, but I haven't found a clip of that yet. The man went to college on a football scholarship and then transferred to USC to train as an operatic tenor before switching his focus to acting. Also he used to be a woman. Is there anything you can't do, Forest? As a Canadian (i.e. godless hippie potsmoking heathen) I could have done without him thanking God in his Oscar acceptance speech.....but the football training explains that.
Finally went to see The Last King of Scotland with my Pops at the Fox the other day. As the movie ends, the postscript is telling us what became of everyone involved. The screen has just said that 300,000 Ugandans died under Idi Amin's rule, and my dad chooses that exact moment to say (rather loudly, I think), "He did a good job." I slowly turn my head to face him. "Who?" "Forest Whitaker," he says. OHthankgod.
Actually he said Forrest Tucker at first. But that's an old white guy from F-Troop and Gunsmoke. His Wikipedia entry also shows a great poster for a b-movie called Cosmic Monsters. ("Man and alien unite to combat the most insidious peril the universe has ever known!!!!" WOW!) I'd like to have seen him play Amin. Actually, sorry, he did, I've just discovered - in a made-for-TV thing in 1997. Less extraordinary for the fact that he was white than that he'd been dead for eleven years at the time. Seriously, even fairly recently, there have been examples of weird blackface (and "redface", and "yellowface") acting.......witness ANTHONY HOPKINS as Othello. Not joking. We watched it in high school. I threw up.
MYSTERY NUN (vote now)
I saw a nun (in full habit) at the library taking out all kinds of gory and sensational-looking crime novels. The librarian had put the latest arrivals aside for her. One of them was called "Always Time to Die". Is this weird, or is it just me?
GO AWAY
Time to go and listen to my ceiling drip. (See, Terrence, my life isn't always that exciting. Especially when I'm in hiding from.....the evil ones.) Little weird things keep going wrong and breaking down in my wonderful apartment. A big hunk of my kitchen ceiling caved in right where Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall had been sitting the previous evening when I had him and Blair Williams over for dinner. If it had happened then, it surely would have KILLED HIM. Unless, of course, he was wearing his nipple shield. Re my apartment...I've got a plan. I'm gonna call up my landlord and say "David! You are gonna fix my fireplace and repair my ceiling and get me a stove that works once and for all, or I am gonna tell everyone where we buried those bodies last summer!" I mean. Um. Forget I said that. I guess I could just delete that last bit.....but you know I don't work that way.
I've never killed anyone, honest,
Lisa
the skeptical tourist vs. santa claus
From TORONTO,
DECEMBER 31st, 2006
My dear smushy sweet wonderful people......I have so much useless information for you, it boggles the mind. Where could one possibly begin? By giving you each an electronic holiday hug? By sending on Joy and Peace and crap like that? By telling you all about New York.....or the rest of the run of the show.....or my peaceful yet weird and unpredictable life of the moment? By absolving those of you who only ever get this far into one of my emails and then give up and go pick your noses and watch reruns of The Simpsons? By cursing those people who never even open them and just say "Oh, fucking Norton again."? Yeah. Let's start there. Screw those people. They suck anyway. I hope their 2007 is GARBAGE.
As for you.....well, enough about you. I mean, who am I kidding? As for ME, it all began in a shady New Orleans neighbourhood, where as a child I went from house to house selling coal to prostitutes in the red light district. Oh wait, that's Louis Armstrong. Sometimes I get us confused. (Useless Norton fact number one: I'm on part nine of Ken Burns' Jazz Miniseries. If I start talking about my gigs at Birdland and my heroin addiction - okay, well that part's true.) Who knows what lies I might tell you tonight? The other day I was so worn out from Christmas shopping and lack of sleep that I very nearly told the cashier at National Sports that I needed artichokes, Kalamata olives and a chicken. If only life were that easy.
Last we communed across the web of the wide world, I was telling you all about my (first ever) trip to Vancouver. I ran out of time, and energy, and the will to live in general - hey, it happens - and left you with a month-long cliffhanger. Stop salivating already. Cease the letter campaign. Leave my agents alone. Here, at long last, is the eagerly awaited sequel.
I came back to the T dot O dot et cetera dot in mid-October, and promptly began the run of Of Mice and Men at Canstage's prestigious yet perhaps-seen-better-days Bluma Appel theatre. (Sorry, Bluma: the 80s chandeliers are not lookin' so state o' the art these days.) One or two days of tech and the rehearsing in of a new dog and we were ready to go.
This, of course, would be our fourth official dog on the production. Dog number one, who so convincingly captured the energy of the old, sick, blind animal Steinbeck describes in the novel - wait for it - dropped dead before rehearsals even began. The Calgary Herald, which had shown an almost freakish obsession with our dog casting from the beginning, ran a front-page obit in which the dog's owners said that his ashes would reside next to the family hamster's cage so that the two animals could "talk to one another". Hm.
In a clear backlash against that experience, the replacement dog was Pookie, a spry, happy young thing who, in his scant two previews, was every bit as excited to meet the audience as they were to see him. Thank you Pookie, we have your resume on file.
Our third dog, Maggie, who apparently wowed 'em on the casting couch, was slow, partially deaf, had cataracts and a bad hip, and weighed at least two hundred pounds completely dry. I loved her. She had to be coaxed onto the stage and was just gonna sit wherever she was gonna sit. She might make it all the way to her mark.....or she might barely get onstage and decide it was time for a nap. By the end of the run, though, she knew her cues better than some of the human actors and, according to her owner, was showing signs of a new lease on life. Having a job had given her a sense of purpose, and approaching show-time, even on the day off, she would go out to the car, wagging her tail and eager to go perform. I fear old Maggie didn't deal too well with the closing. Following a brief appearance in Nunsense 3 at Stagewest, she found it hard to get acting work. She's now flipping burgers at a Calgary McDonalds and drinking heavily. But we've all been there, Mags. I mean, at least to buy a Happy Meal or something.
That brings us to Watson, our Toronto dog.....who was one of those hardcore method acting dogs who thought it necessary to live every detail of his character, particularly his oft-mentioned deathly stink, completely fully. I'm not sure how he did it, but MAN did that dog smell. I stopped petting him when I realized it was affecting my social life. Talk about taking "the method" too far! I mean, I may have given the occasional handjob in my dressing room to get inside the mind of a character that everyone calls a tramp.....but I was getting paid extra for that! Jeez.
Dogstink aside, the Toronto run went well. Our entire time at the Bluma coincided exactly with the construction of a three thousand story condo tower on the adjoining property, but by all accounts, the constant bone-rattling pounding of jackhammers only served to add to the growing sense of unease in the play. It certainly added something.....every performance, as my character's inevitable demise approached, all I could think was "kill me now." Of course, we only had to put up with the construction during matinees - three times a week. And the screaming and innapropriate laughter of the student audiences was almost enough to drown out the pounding.....especially on Special Scarborough Matinees, when there would be a curtain speech welcoming and thanking members of the Future Residents of the Don Jail Club. Only six shootings the entire run - a Club record!
WARNING: ANGRY PARAGRAPH APPROACHING
I made the mistake of once again reading the reviews. I always do; I'm too nosey not to. In my particular case, the critics were split a pretty even fifty-fifty. Depending on whom you read, I was either the weakest link or one of the strongest. Which is so confusing! How am I supposed to know what to think of myself?! Oh well....guess I'll just go back to my default opinion that I AM FUCKING AWESOME. Some dickhead in the Sun, I think it was, said that the design was flawless and then in his paragraph-long diatribe against me, blamed me for the shoes I wore, of which he didn't approve. How did he know that they had made the actors stay up nights in Calgary, designing and cobbling our own shoes? Weird. The reviews that were harshest on the production were tempered by the fact that John Steinbeck himself didn't even escape the bile. Kamal Al SuckMyAss, of the Globe and Mail, said that while the novel is a beautiful and enduring classic, the play is a sentimental old chestnut that doesn't bear remounting. Strange, considering Steinbeck wrote them both and that they're almost word for word the same. Anyway, I felt in good company indeed.
Thought I'd be clever and wear the sexy green dress that I wore to the wedding in Vancouver to Canstage Opening Night. After all, it had gotten great reviews in Vancouver - strangers on the street calling out "Where did you get that dress?", gorgeous, fat burlesque dancers climbing all over me at the reception...... Who wouldn't want to repeat that? And besides, no one in Toronto had seen it. But then some stupid Ontario friends who went to the wedding just had to come to opening in Toronto, and be all supportive and stuff. Courtenay Stephens is now under the impression that I own one dress. You can't know, dear readers, how hard that is for me. ME, of all people! I actually have the biggest evening gown grow-op in Ontario. The smell of taffeta in the hallway is starting to make my neighbours suspicious.
It was a little sad to see the ol' Steinbeck go, though we had a good long run at it. Just a great gang, both on and off stage. Too bad I've forgotten all of their names. I was hoping what's his name might hire me for something some time. Oh well.
To hold the unemployment demons (albeit not the bill collectors) at bay, my mom, the lovely Lolita, suggested a mini-vacation to New York just after closing.
I think I ought to travel more in general. First of all, I love being away and broadening my horizons, if only so that I will have new and more numerous things to make fun of. And that's important. Secondly, I'm having a lot of fun, in this era of hyper-security, in seeing how much I can get away with at airports. At first, I would honestly forget I'd packed a nail clipper or a pair of tweezers or something. At the Calgary airport, I accidentally went through the scanny beepy thing (yes, that IS the technical term) with a pocket full of change - and no scanny beepiness! On my most recent flight I got through U.S. security with two lighters, several packs of matches and a dazzling assortment of undeclared liquids and gels. Next time I'm bringing a hunting knife, with which, after boarding the plane, I will pick my teeth while staring at fellow passengers in a menacing way. I'm not quite sure if there's a non menacing way to pick one's teeth with a knife while on an airplane..... If there is, I'll avoid it.
We also quite enjoyed the airport staff. Except for one dink at the Montreal airport (where we had a stopover en route to NY) who made fun of my French the second I opened my mouth and said it was "worser dan" his English, and then called me a "pretty lass"......everyone was great. A security chick at Pearson actually handed me back my I.D. saying "You're awesome". Chubby, nerdy U.S. customs officer Dansby happily chatted with us, taught us some interesting trivia, and called out "Ciao, Bella" when we walked away.
And what can I say about New York, really? First of all, I have no idea what to say because I can't remember it. It was so long ago now that I've forgotten all the details, and this as much a lesson in how old and senile I'm getting as anything else. Vague memories of tall buildings.... aggressive drivers...noise...Jon Voigt lookin' stupid...Diane Keaton in a shirt and tie...Dustin Hoffman in a dress.... Pretty good celebrity spottings, huh?
Speaking of celebrity spottings, we probably had the lamest ones of all time. We saw, not necessarily in order of unimportance: 1) The guy who plays Larry's agent, Jeff, on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe. I only saw the back of his head. 2) Some celebrity chef from some assy chef show in which he shouts at people on TV. Mom recognized him but couldn't remember his name, and if she had any feeling about him, it was a mild desire to kick him in the shins. And 3) Some Guy sitting near us in a pizzeria who I thought might be on a reality show or something but maybe not maybe he just looks like someone I knew once in school or something.
The most important person we met was probably this round and funny teenaged rapper who chatted us up and tried to get us to buy his homemade CD (after leaping out at us from behind and yelling in my ear, making me jump seven feet into the air). He said he was related to some "famous" hip hop artist I'd never heard of, and promised us he would make it big soon, too. Someday I'll see his big fat face on MTV and I'll regret not having had my picture taken with him. Or just going to bed with him, which was his other, very generous offer. He actually used the line "Once you go black you'll never go back." Look, I've had back-and-forth privileges since high-school, baby. Don't tell me where I can't go.
We did see Jon Stewart, but he wasn't within hugging - or shin-kicking - range. Mom and I are both huge fans, and this being her belated birthday vacation, I thought I'd surprise her by booking tickets to a taping of the Daily Show. Yes, free tickets, big spender that I am.....but we all know it's not about the money - or didn't you watch your Christmas specials this season, boys and girls? Of course, you can't just book tickets and show up; they routinely overbook the show by half, so you have to get there early to ensure a seat. An odd birthday present, really: Surprise! You get to sit on urine-smelling pavement for three hours waiting to see something we could have watched on TV later tonight! But we did get to see Jon in person. And he comes out between the warmup dude and the taping to field questions from the audience. I sat there petrified with fear that either Lolita would say something mortifying, or that I would be unable to stop myself from blurting out the only question I could think of, which was "WILL YOU EVER LOVE ME AS MUCH AS I LOVE YOU?!" Not cool.
After the Daily Show we went for a fantastic dinner at a very good Ethiopian place, the name of which I of course don't remember. (See? Old.) New York - or I should say Manhattan, which was all we had time for - was a pretty great gourmet-on-a-reasonable-budget experience. Between wandering around and trusting serendipity to do its bit, which it always seems to, and an emailed Cheap Eats guide courtesy of Derrick Chua, we just went around happily stuffing our faces for four days straight. At first when deciding, we'd say, "Oh look, this place is Zagat rated"....until we noticed that every fricking restaurant in the city is in the Zagat Survey. The street meat vendors have been reviewed for God's sake. Breast-feeding babies get shoved aside by food critics: "Move it, kid; we haven't reviewed these boobs yet." "What do you have to do to get a good table at this rack?" "We gave her crotch a great rating last year - you'd think she'd be grateful for all the business we've gotten her."
My favourite may have been an adorable and delicious joint on 10th Ave called Empanada Mama. Great food, cool decor and a cute waitress with a funny accent. We thought at first of limiting our trip to Matriarchal experiences, like Don't Tell Mama piano bar, the MOMA, Empanada Mama, Mamma Mia, etc. Fortunately, we're not morons. One fun meal was at Mara's Homemade (almost a Mama name) in the East Village, a personal recommendation from Derrick, who drops in whenever he's in town. It's a Cajun/southern comfort food place, run by a cool chick from Texas who you'd swear was a born-and-raised New York Jew. We feasted on oysters and barbeque ribs and catfish and collard greens and crawfish etoufee and sucked back hurricanes all night.
When Mama Lo was in the washroom having her wash, I secretly ordered a chocolate souffle, and when it came, I, timid Canadian, coaxed a bunch of New Yorkers into singing her Happy Birthday. Dessert was warm and gorgeous and gooey, and I was feeling the same way at this point, so I decided then to be all generous and make this a Big Birthday Meal On Me. Of course, I was doing the math through a haze of rum and chocolate......so it didn't turn out quite as smooth and cool as intended. "Happy Birthday! Um.....do you have a twenty on you?" And then we walked out into a crazy wind and rainstorm. Hey, better than the pee-covered sidewalk.
Our hotel was The Paramount on 46th Street, a block from Times Square and right across from the half-price ticket booth. It's a pretty groovy boutique hotel where everything is designed by Philippe Starck, and where they pay good looking people to hang about the lobby being cool. Shaun Smyth later told me there's a line in Patrick Marber's play Closer about the Paramount Hotel being staffed entirely by hookers. So you can get a little more than a mint on your pillow if you know what I mean. If only I'd known. Come on, people, you need to give me useful travel tips before I go somewhere.
The rooms, according to the Paramount website, feature "the now legendary gilt-framed headboards, most depicting images from famous Vermeer paintings". Ours were blank. Blank canvasses. Legendary my ass. Mama Lolita suggested we fill them in with our sharpies. I was thinking feces. You know, I like to live on the edge. Plus I like to mention poo in my emails whenever possible.
Speaking of legendary art/poo (check this segueway, people!), we spent most of one day at the MOMA, which was fantastic. Had the classic "I could have made that" vs. "Yeah but you didn't" argument, which is unresolvable but fun.
Did Central Park, too, of course. I'd convinced La Lolita to add one pair of non-pointy, un-high-heely shoes to her collection - and that was a struggle; we kept the staff at Discount Shoe Warehouse up waaay past their bedtimes, while she tried on every shoe in the place....including all the pointy black leather high-heeled boots. Anyway, I had to teach her how to walk in flat shoes, and she did crawl a lot of the way, but we had a lovely time, and Central Park was amazingly beautiful and still autumnal, by which I mean lots of purty leaves on the trees.
Have I mentioned the weather? Aside from that windy rainstorm - which was a lot of fun to walk in, actually, and strangely pretty in its spectacle of abandoned broken umbrellas everywhere like the corpses of crows - the weather was amazing. Mostly grey, but so beautifully warm that we were walking around in T-shirts half the time. We're talking mid-November here. We'd walk out of our hotel, take off our coats....and Al Gore would come running across the street with a blanket, crying "Cover yourselves up for Chrissake! Don't encourage it!" Poor Al. If only he could learn to love Global Warming, like the rest of us.
We only hit one play while in town. I figure we watch so much theatre at home that we didn't need to spend our entire vacation sitting inside in the dark. I mean it's not like we're from Moosenee and only get to see the local seniors put on Dreamgirls once a year. Our pick was The Drowsy Chaperone, good little Canadians that we are. I had seen the Toronto Fringe production in '99, and it was great to see it all expanded and so successful.
Our only other dark theatre experience was seeing Babel at the fifty-something screen Empire Theater on 42nd Street, and we only did that because some passerby, hearing us discuss whether we were too tired for it, fairly forced us to go inside. The man felt so strongly about us seeing this movie, I thought he'd cry if we chose not to. I now suspect he works there. When we left, he was in tears telling some tourists how moved he was by Jackass 2.
All in all, New York was fucking fantastic. I found myself, while looking down from a revolving restaurant high above the city, thinking "How do I get to live here?" And wondering how long it would take until I did. This was on my very first day. People who know me even a little have always told me I would love New York. They were definitely not wrong.
Since coming home, I've been living the unemployed life, catching up with friends and my apartment, celebrating Christmas with my family, doing the occasional audition. Don't think life is all just one big lazefest for me, though: I've decided to devote myself quite seriously to the art of masturbation. I mean, there are just too many armchair masturbators out there who do it as a hobby, and not enough people really putting in the time and dedication it takes to further it as an art form. I proudly consider myself a professional. For tips on how to join our ranks, go to www.wanking/whyjustahobby.ca .
Another industrious move is my taking baby steps toward getting my driver's license at long last. I'm doing Young Drivers of Canada, and my Dad's joke that I should be at Middle-aged Drivers was confirmed when I walked into a YD classroom full of sixteen year-olds. The in-class portion of the training was all this week at Bloor and Islington, with a bunch of rich Etobicoke kids who can't wait to get their hands on Daddy's SUV. I mean, teenagers have always wanted Hummers, but that used to mean something different. Something much more innocent.
At first I was disheartened by how reticent these kids were. They were so concerned with being cool, so worried about looking stupid, that they wouldn't answer anything, let alone ask any questions. For instance, there were the Sarahs, two blond high school hotties and obvious BFFs (that's Best Frendz 4Evah, oldie). The Sarahs sat at the back and didn't talk to anyone except each other and their cell phones. If the instructor asked one of them a question, they'd look at one another and giggle and say "I dun-noOOoo". If anyone else spoke to them, you'd hear a faint beeping and a tiny voice calling "Intruder Alert. Intruder alert. Outsider attempting entry to Sarahtown." Yeah. It was weird. Lucky for you, if they ever manage to get licensed they will outfit their matching Escalades with vanity plates that say I'MDUM and YAY. Wow... Should I have put an anger warning on this paragragh, too? You'd think cute blond girls were mean to me in high school. When in fact it was the Chinese.
Over the week, a few of the students did come out of the cool shell, which is nice. My favourite was The Doomsayer, who seemed to have a morbid example for everything the instructor brought up. Like "Yeah, you have to be careful? Cuz my cousin was driving, right? And this guy threw down a bucket of acid from an overpass? And it like burned through her windshield and melted her face." Or "I read in the paper one time about how with hatchbacks, sometimes all four tires just, like, fly of off all of a sudden. And then you get raped."
The holidays have been great except for the complete lack of snow. For those of you not in Toronto, we didn't have a single flake of snow for Christmas. Well, there was one......but he looked around, said "What the hell....I thought there was supposed to be a party down here tonight," and went straight back up. Al Gore ran after him, screaming "Come back!!! Come back!!!! Bring your friends! Pleeeeeeeaaaase!!!!!"
Tonight is New Year's Eve and I'm exhausted, since Tracy Dawson and I went out last night determined to go dancing the night before New Years Eve, and I was up till five. I hate going out on the 31st and being surrounded by drunken assholes. I'm drunken asshole enough for me, thank you very much. I don't need any other morons stealing my thunder. Shortly I shall rent some stupid movies and head over to Bunker's to hang about and try to feel the year change.
I do encourage you all to make at least one New Year's Resolution, the Lisa Norton way, which is......pick something easy! Really....choose one or more totally attainable goals and don't worry about the big ones like "Quit Smoking" and "Stop the Killing Spree". You will never win with those. A couple of years ago, I chose "Take the Stairs", and I have scarcely ridden an escalator since. Last year? Stop complaining about the weather. And my great big resolution this year: Don't Swallow Your Gum. This one I started early, and it's proving SO DAMN EASY that I may have to add another. Of course I have been swallowing gum for twenty years or more, so I may have a relapse at some point. If I show up at your house at three a.m. begging for Hubba Bubba, well.... give me some. But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD make sure I throw it out when I'm done. Anyway, regarding my next resolution, I'm open to suggestions. As long as you take mine. You shall begin by wearing less underwear. And drinking eight to ten glasses of brine per day. Nothing like it for the kidneys. Send ideas to: http://www.youhavetoomuchtimeonyourhandsnortonyouidiot@loser.net/
Stay tuned for tips on how to live like a tourist in your own hometown, a fool-proof method for making your children behave, and instructions for building an eight foot christmas tree out of pipe cleaners and icing sugar. Oh, who am I fooling? I already told you that all I do is play with myself.
Keep hope alive (unless it signed something saying it didn't want to be on life support),
Your coolest friend,
Lisa
vanewyorkouver....and sweet home
From TORONTO
DECEMBER 4th, 2006
I've just read one of those emails that people forward you all the time with you know, ADVICE ABOUT LIFE. This one was very nice, full of sound advice from the Dalai Lama (that he will supposedly be very upset if you don't forward to, like, eighty-nine people by the end of the day). Apparently it's a list of his tips for the year to come.....but I'm pretty sure I've read some of them before. No Usesies Againsies, Dalai! I want fresh maxims, every year! No more of this "Be good to others" shit. I mean, that one's even in the bloody Ten Commandments! And "Spend some time alone every day"? You used that back in '97. Jeez.
Anyway....one of his Holy Baldness' pieces of advice, which I quite like, is "Once a year, go someplace you've never been before". Well, Mister Lama - and dear friends - have I got you trumped! In the past two months alone, I have finally hit both Vancouver and New York City, two places I've been meaning to visit since I was, like, born. And my experiences of which are as follows:
I had, as you may remember, just three days between performing Of Mice and Men in Calgary and in Toronto into which to squeeze a jaunt (how jaunty!) to Vancouver to attend the nuptials of my pals Mike Wasko and Jenny Paterson - who I still think spells her name wrong, by the way. Was supposed to head to Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall's folks' place on arrival, but due to a combination of closing a show and packing and drinking, not sleeping and running around, and Shaughnessy having dropped off the face of the earth......I hadn't spoken with him and had no idea where they lived. I sat on my bags in the Vancouver airport wondering where to go and what to do.
I left several messages, talked to strangers, beat some noisy children, rode the baggage carousel until that got boring (and believe me, that takes a while), and eventually got in touch with the then soon-to-be groom, Michael Jack Wasko, who instructed me to make my way to the happy couple's home in Kitsilano, where I would find not only Mike and Jenny, but our dear friend Thom Payne, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for laid-backness eight years running, all the way from his oppositely coastal home in Nova Scotia. Actually, all three deserve a gold medal in cool. Here I am thinking, I shouldn't be bugging Jenny and Mike, they're getting married tomorrow for God's sake. Surely they have things to do, responsibilities, people to shout at for no particular reason.... But no, after a lovely cab ride there - with a great driver, indeed one of the most interesting people I've ever met, through sunny blueness with the windows down - I found them sprawled about, just emerging from the haze of the "rehearsal dinner", which from what I gather was basically a rehearsal for getting loaded. Complete with a never-ending flow of champagne cocktails courtesy of Mike's little mama, Penny. Seems everyone really threw themselves into the spirit of the thing.
Hung about yawning and smoking and catching up, was shown a series of truly odd bachelor party photographs, and then we all headed out for a walk to Jericho beach. The weather was just amazing, as it would continue to be for my entire time in the city. Shaughnessy would later tell me that the weather in Vancouver is always beautiful, and that all that stuff about rain and fog and drizzle is a myth that people from the east have made up and tell themselves as consolation for living in places that suck. This, of course, comes from his entirely unbiased objective journalist's point of view.
So yes, after we'd dragged our sweet asses (taking our sweet-ass time) back to the apartment, and talked and smoked some more and fritatta'd our way to happiness - thanks Jenny! - Shaughnessy BS did finally appear. Seems he'd been off having ADVENTURES WITH BRIDESMAIDS, which is exactly the type of thing one expects and trusts Shaughnessy to do. I love it when people live up to their expectations; it's so comforting.
He and I then took off to install me in the empty basement apartment at his parents' house, only stopping along the way to buy champagne. "Champagne!", he would shout all weekend, "We must have more champagne!" I happily concurred, each and every time. Between that and all the turkey, it's a wonder I'm not paralyzed. Did I mention it was Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bishop-Stalls, after a nap in a darkened basement: Who could ask for anything more? The Bishop-Stalls: Cinnamon, Cardamom, Jacqui and Old Whatshisface (I may have taken some liberty with their names), not to mention my friend Young BS, are, as had been promised by Wasko, the loveliest family you could hope to spend time with. The gang was all there, along with two dogs, three cats (one is retarded and lives in a three-story cage so that he won't eat spatulas and things like that) and a few good-looking special guests. Perhaps that is the house guest-list criteria: no ugly people shall darken this door. Ug-ism being the only prejudice I wholeheartedly support, I have no problem with that. I, of course, was right at home, though happily out-beautified by Shaughnessy's gorgeous mother and sisters; and definitely out-weirded by Bob Stall, the funny little patriarch. I love that however brilliant a man may be, and in Bob's case I gather that is quite a lot (he is an accomplished and award-winning journalist), there is a law of nature saying that once he reaches fatherhood he must make the same lame and often incomprehensible jokes as dads the world over. And that he can't compose full sentences while the hockey game is on.
(A Speaking-of-hockey-side-note: Buses and billboards in Vancouver sport ads with splashy colourful images from Vancouver Canucks games and the phrase WE ARE ALL CANUCKS. Bloody brilliant. What could Toronto do to compete with that? WE ALL...HAVE LEAFS. IN OUR YARDS. IF YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE A YARD. UM. AND IF "LEAFS" WAS A REAL WORD. SHIT.)
Anyway, Thanksgiving Dinner was a great mixture of the entirely silly and the stunningly erudite. And as the wine flowed we just got cleverer and cleverer and cleverer.....though it is questionable how many of us could have pronounced the word "cleverer" by the end of the evening. I, for one, never talked so much shit in my life (and y'all know how I can talk shit). I woke the next morning with a distinct feeling of remorse.....and then got in an argument with BS over things he swears I was spouting at the end of the night and which I was sure he'd dreamt.
Thank God for that cozy dark basement apartment - where, incidentally, I kept finding condoms. Unopened, don't worry. I don't know if that's a traditional West Coast Welcome, hiding condoms all over the guest's room for her convenience.....or if the basement is just the traditional place for Bishop-Stall kids to sneak their partners off for rendezvous. Either way, I've decided that my fifth novel shall be named Condoms in the Basement.....and will be a tribute the Flowers in the Attic series. Thank you, Bishop-Stalls. God Bless You, every one.
No doubt you've heard of Triptophan. It's the hormone in turkey that knocks you on your ass, and which is the original date-rape drug. It went out of style when Rohypnol appeared on the scene; frat boys who'd been sneaking turkey drumsticks into cocktails for years were relieved to discover something less conspicuous. Well... you'd expect a lot of clever people, who know ALL ABOUT triptophan, and in fact made EIGHT-THOUSAND stupid jokes about it over dinner, to not spend an entire wedding weekend gorging themselves on leftover turkey sandwiches. That, of course, is exactly what we did. By the time the wedding rolled around, my blood was seventy percent turkey and I could barely walk. It didn't help that another twenty percent was champagne.
Day of the wedding, and almost everything is closed for Thanksgiving, which throws a temporary wrench (OW!) in my plan of buying a sassy new number for the wedding. The BS siblings, however, spring into action and drop me off near two of the best (and most not-closed) shops on Main Street - right near Heritage hall, where the wedding is taking place. Grocery bag full of black accessories in hand, I do some power shopping, finding a perfect dress and bag with an hour to spare - which I then use up cabbing back to the house and running around because the new dress is green and brown and my black friggin' boa just ain't gonna cut it. Brown accessory emergency! Just the type of life-and-death pressure I thrive under. Doctors Without Borders, sign me up.
The wedding was sweet and dreamy. First of all, I love these guys. Second of all, and probably slightly more important, they love each other. Another second of all, this is a couple that has already been through thick and thin, hell and highwater, et cetera et cetera. They've even managed to get over the fact that neither of them is very nice, or interesting, or charming. (What dumb, ugly losers Mike and Jenny are, really. They make me sick.) So everyone there had complete faith that they will continue on together happily for the rest of their lives. Which made for a totally relaxed, loving vibe......but an unfortunate lack of bitter speeches and nasty whispers. The highest drama of the evening came when one of the guests swallowed a hunk of glass that was in the bottom of a faulty Perrier bottle. But she happens to have grown up with severe allergies, and was used to keeping entirely calm in emergencies, so even she didn't freak out. Fucking pothead Vancouverites! What does it take to get a tantrum out of one of you! Even when I started sobbing loudly throughout the vows and moaning "ME!!!! She said she loved Me-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!!!!", I couldn't seem to get a rise out of them. They just laughed and passed me the joint that that was going around.
Seriously, the wedding was gorgeous. Jenny wore an awesome gown made out of the wings of real-life fairies, which she and her sister have captured and de-winged themselves since childhood. The couple got through their vows with only a tasteful amount of giggling, and those of you who know Mike will be happy (or devastated) to know that he wore pants, though there was a piper. I didn't really moan and sob, nor did anybody else, except for the usual isn't-this-so-sweet sniffling and retching. Shaughnessy did an admirable job as MC, and there were some hilarious and touching speeches, and a proliferation of songs containing lyrics about what a big jerk Mike used to be. Awesome food! Great company! And Wasko-Paterson soundtrack CDs for all the guests! Dancing in the hall......and dancing our way down the street to the after party at Sarah's place and partying as much as the turkey sandwich coma allowed us.
I was overjoyed to be able to be there, to see some old faces, and to put faces to other people I've heard about for years. And to see my friends so happy.
There must be something in the air right now out West. In Calgary, I had a fantastic reunion with my old college chum, Jacquie - excuse me, Jacqueline....though she lets her new redneck friends call her Jadie - and she nearly electrocuted me with happiness, she is at such a brave and happy and exciting moment in her life.
Also in Calgary, I met up with Dean Carter (another pal from the James Brown years) and his wife Luka Symons, and their sweet little girl, who nearly didn't survive infancy. They are so grateful to have her, all fun and full of joy, and also madly in love with their jobs. Luka has her own radio show on CKUA, that station I plugged in my last email (pure coincidence) and Dean is a teacher at the Waldorf School , which is the coolest institution on Earth.
At the wedding I got to catch up with Jody Marklew, who was in my class in first year and then went to Studio 58 with Mike and Jenny. She recently went through a divorce and a year of hellish health problems, which doctors couldn't diagnose after ten billion tests for everything under the sun. She was just about to start a regimen of drugs for MS, which hadn't been ruled out, when she figured out that it was MERCURY POISONING. From an old filling that had fallen apart. She is now healthy, amazing, as gorgeous as ever, starting to act again, and dating an awesome new guy. I wonder if I were to continue across the country, finding all the people I've lost touch with, they'd all be this happy. It was really something, all these joyous people. If I made them shed just one tear each, my travels have been worth it.
One more day - sleeping, a farewell turkey sandwich, post-wedding lunch, goodbyes, dinner with Young BS, a mad dash to the airport singing G n' R at the top of our lungs - I and my new green dress took our bags and reluctantly left green Vancouver. It's so green! Why did nobody tell me it would be so green? Everyone talks about the mountains - but the trees! So many trees! Or was I just seeing them through fresh-from-the-prairie-eyes, and not used to seeing green again? Six of one?
On the redeye back to Toronto, I was politely holding in three days of champagne gas, and eventually went to the washroom for just long enough for an old lady on the plane to have a heart attack. She was between the washroom and my seat, so I couldn't go anywhere and was stuck at the back of the plane with a very boring person who is too tall to sit comfortably in airplane seats and so spends his flights at the back of the plane annoying flight attendants. I heard all about his (boring) trip, his (boring) job, his (boring) wife and his (boring) allergies, until I was wishing for a heart attack myself. Watched all the drama unfold from back there: the calls to the pilot, the appeals for a doctor, the five doctors on the plane all getting in each others' way, the defibrillator coming out, the defibrillator going back in......eventually she came around, and they arranged for paramedics to meet us at Pearson. I never did get a wink of sleep on that overnighter. I just couldn't rest easy knowing that my farting in the bathroom was enough to stop someone's heart. What if I fell asleep and let one go? It could be the pilot next time.
And on that elevated note, dear friends........it's 2:45 am. New York will have to wait a day or two. But hell, I waited thirty years for it.
Off to dreams of places i've never been before,
Lisa
where's the beef?
CALGARY, ALBERTA
October 7th, 2006
So here I sit at the end of two months in Cowtown, bracing myself for the giant email I owe you. Brace yourself, too. We'll get through this together.
I'm living in a week that includes eight shows over five days, many of them for evil callous teenagers, drinking too much with old friends, a Brazilian wax (the pain of which cannot be expressed in writing), a horrible lack of sleep, packing to go home......and if I can make it through all that...(OhPoorMeMyLifeIsHardIWishIWasInKazhakstan.)
You'll be happy to know I just took a moment to put some pants on. Love you as I may, it just felt too weird writing one of these letters without pants. You may take yours off if you like.
So....CALGARY THE UNKNOWABLE. Don't know if I've got any kind of a handle on the place. And I'm not sure who does. Locals seem to ask "What do you think of Calgary?" in a puzzled tone that suggests they're not quite sure what to make of it themselves. As if they're hoping that an outsider will be able to suddenly make it all clear to them. However, my experience of the place has been mostly the actor-hanging-with-lots-of-other-actors and working a lot and sleeping experience. I haven't had much time to mingle with the little people. Or the BIG people, I should say, what with their ten gallon hats and their high-heeled boots and their spurs and the raw meat hanging out of their mouths. (Just kidding, they apparently only dress that way during Stampede time.....and I think I dreamt the part about the meat.)
The theatre community is happily thriving. Seems new things are popping up all the time; new small companies, a good buzz in the air, a very supportive vibe in the community. I'm happy for them and hope it will continue. And that Ordinary Joe Calgary will put down his raw meat (and his Blackberry) for a minute and join in, so it's not just a self-contained thing with theatre people taking turns going around looking at each other. I fear that everywhere.
I do think it's an odd time to be here, what with the big BOOM and all. No one quite trusts it will last (and of course it can't, not the way it is now) and the town seems to be scrambling to get what it can, while it can. And to catch up with itself. It's great to have jobs flying around like confetti, sure, but if there's nowhere to house and school and take care of the sick among all these people...... There are folks with good jobs living in tents here. And winter's coming. Very strange days.
The cab drivers have no idea where anything is. If it stops pissing you off, it starts to become hilarious. They, of course, cleverly came to town from other cities and countries to cash in.....but they are so hopelessly lost out there that they seem slightly terrified all the time, poor buggers. The combination of a passenger new to town and a driver who got here last week can be ridiculous. And expensive. Luckily the meter rates are WAY lower than in T.O. On my birthday (September 15th - it rained and then snowed), which was also opening night, I decided to splurge and just take a cab everywhere while I ran all my opening night gift shopping errands and went to rehearsal. I felt so cosmpolitan actually getting a cabbie to wait for me as I ran in and out of places. But I can afford that here. Even when he got lost and we ended up in Jersey, it wasn't too bad. And New Jersey is quite the detour from Alberta. You'd think I would have noticed.
Yeah. Snow on my birthday. Unheard of. The weather in this place is out of its mind. Two days before the snow, it was thirty degrees celsius outside. And two days after, it was again. We're expecting locusts on Sunday, but it's so hard to predict, really. I've hired a dresser to follow me around in the streets with a suitcase. We stop and do quick-changes in phone booths whenever the weather shifts. Just another little luxury I've allowed myself - hell, I am in my thirties now.
Nobody jaywalks in this town. Not only that, but if you do, people look at you as if you're stabbing babies. Okay, so I did once jaywalk and stab a baby at the same time. But that was only once......and that kid was already dead. There are signs around saying "Caution. Do Not Jaywalk. TWO-WAY TRAFFIC." Well....in that case. I mean, I could make it across one lane, but if there are cars in both directions???! Wow, that's complicated.
White as Calgary is (by grew-up-in-Scarborough-live in-Toronto standards it's like some weird Caucasian planet), there is enough immigration to provide interesting places to eat. I've seen a few Ethiopian places, been to a Thai place or two, lots of Indian and Sushi around. It's taken being in Calgary to get me hooked on Lebanese takeout. And no, "Lebanese Takeout" is not a euphemism for "picking up chicks". Though there's always room for chicks.....like Jell-O!
As I write I am listening to a fantastic radio station called CKUA, somehow based in Calgary and Edmonton. Go to http://www.ckua.com/ and click "Live On Air" to listen to it right now. It's the country's oldest public broadcaster, founded in 1927 on the U of A campus. Hour by hour you never know what genre you're going to get, depending on who's hosting, but a lot of it is wonderful. Go there. I'm also hooked on CBC Radio 3 lately, which you can get on your itunes sattelite radio listings under "public". All Canadian indie stuff. Pretty great. But I digress...... You now have permission to skip a random paragraph. Or just read every other one from here on in. Though you may miss the bit that contains the meaning of life. And you'll just never know.
A couple of weeks ago, at one of our (ten million) student matinees, a teenager tried to get up at intermission and felt something in his back go terribly, terribly wrong. He couldn't move and paramedics were called, who eventually put him on a morphine drip, right in the house, to try and loosen up his seized muscles so that they could move him. I imagine that may be the trippiest theatre experience you can have: being high on an Opiate in an audience while seven hundred people stare at you and whisper. Our intermission lasted an hour and thirteen minutes, during which we sat in the green room and placed bets as to whether the show would continue. It did, but only for about fifty students -the others all had to catch their buses back to school - and of course the kid with the back problem, who remains in the house to this day, and holds the record for most consecutive performances attended at the Max Bell Theatre. He is covered head-to-toe with gum and urine (mostly his), but still seems to be enjoying the production. He is considering a career as a theatre critic when he graduates. (By correspondence.) Poor kid. I hope he is okay. The back thing, I mean, not as a critic.
I spent my first month here billeting with a family up north of Kensington. I was meant to stay in an apartment hotel, but the place I chose (from the Theatre Calgary list) turned out to be a disaster. A rude, bitchy, falsely advertised disaster. $1750 a month for a one-bedroom with no phone, no internet access, no maid service, broken sauna...... Culminated in a conversation that ended thus:
ME: And you know the carpet in there stinks.
HOTEL BROAD: Yeah, well, a wet carpet will do that.
ME: You know, maybe you shouldn't move somebody into a room with a wet carpet. That's just bad service.
HOTEL BITCH: It's not bad service - it's called same-day turnover.
ME: Haven't you ever thought you shouldn't have same-day turnover into a room with a smelly wet carpet?:
WHOREY AWFUL HOTEL WOMAN: Well, I guess we've learned.
ME (trying to be tough and play hardball when they wouldn't give me back my FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR SECURITY DEPOSIT AFTER I HAD SPENT FIFTEEN MINUTES THERE): I'll tell you this - Theatre Calgary isn't going to be happy. They won't be sending any more business your way.
SKANKY HOTEL TROLL: I don't care about Theatre Calgary. I'll call them right now and tell them not to send me anybody else.
ME: Uh........
After much cajoling and badgering ("I know it's not you, but boy is your boss's policy unfair"...) they agreed to give me part of the deposit back ( I had to go back the next day to get it, and brought big tough Ashley Wright with me as goon backup.) I basically paid two hundred dollars to get out of there. Turns out Dennis Garnhum (TC Artistic Director) once had a strikingly similar experience there. I believe The Birkenshaw has since been removed from the housing list.
Anywaaay.....I ended up living with Tim and Alyson Culbert, this fantastic couple with whom I have become friends, and their three beautiful shy little girls, and their dog and cat and daycare. Became the sort of person who takes little kids to the Zoo on her day off, and thinks putting silly things on her head is the funniest joke in the world. Which it is, of course. I was also, though, the type of person who crawls in at two a.m., and spends mornings during tech week with a pillow on her head moaning "Shuuuuuut uuuuuup" as the dayhome kids arrive for a day of screaming and jumping. The Culbert kids (Sonya, Abigail, and Mikka - named after, no word of a lie, hockey fans, Miikka Kiprusoff, Calgary Flames goalie) were fantastic. At first they were very shy and suspicious of me, but I knew I was in when Sonya (the eldest and most painfully, sweetly shy) took me to her room to show me her glass collection. Her favourite is a unicorn. Glass Menagerie, anyone? Abigail is four, and wild, and Tim is sure it's only a matter of time 'til she is riding off with rough guys on motorcycles. I told him it was surely sweet shy Sonya who would go that way. He is terrified.
Day before opening I left my double life and moved into The Regency Suites, the place where every visiting artist in his right mind stays. Incidentally, Shanna Miller is here while she runs Ronnie Burkett's latest show at ATP; Chris Newton, David Boechler, Maria Vacratsis and Dixie Seatle the next TC show; Randy Hughson, Colombe Demers, probably Chris Abraham and Daniel Brooks, who are doing Insomnia ...... It's conveniently next to hooker Mac's, though I've only had one hooker encounter at the Regency, and that was with a very nice crack whore who thought her umbrella was attacking her. Unfortunately this did take place on the elevator, which is rather close quarters for an actor, a crack ho, a dealer or pimp or john or pal or whatever he was, and an active, flying umbrella. As the umbrella victim got off the elevator, she did warn me, while nearly poking me in the eye, "You gotta be careful.....the spokes'll getcha." One of the lonely maids seems to be slightly obsessed with me, but other from that the good ol' Reege is just peachy.
Another odd downtown Hot Dog Stand name: The Yodelling Sausage. I don't know about you, but if my sausage yodels at me, I'm suing. Or at least I want my money back.
Accidentally discovered Devonian Gardens the other day......This is a huge greenhouse that takes up the top floor of one of the malls downtown (TD Centre, I think). A great and relaxing way to spend a lunch hour, and a lovely surprise when you're not expecting it. Fish pools, fountains. Greeeeen-ness, which is fairly rare out here. Ahhhh. Of course I am spending far too much time at the mall, feeding my addictions (Shoppers Drug Mart, HMV, et cetera.)
Incidentally, don't you think when a skin care line is billed as "Non-Comedogenic", it should mean that it doesn't make you laugh? I want to put out a Comedogenic line. Active ingredient: Peyote.
I've had odd luck with objects here in Calgary. With interesting results. Allan Stichbury, our cavern-voiced designer (dogs can't hear him) refusing to carry home my pink gift bag that I left at the Auburn. Tough ol' John Wright happily wearing my lost feather boa back to the theatre after it dropped off me at the Opening Night party. Leaving a photo and resume that I promised to forward for someone in the cast at a corner store. Going back and getting it and then meeting the gang for dinner, after which I realize that I don't know where my bank card is (and that I have no cash). Returning home at three a.m. to a steamy tropical hotel room, made thus by a dishwasher that has been running for fifteen hours (and melting plastic things inside) since the cleaning staff turned it on that day. Dropping my cell phone (a replacement for the phone that I poured water all over in Toronto) in the street, where it gets run over by a (or several) cars. My subletter at home has broken my toaster, a wine glass and two tumblers. Somehow, he says my plants are still alive. Okay, most of those weren't technically due to bad luck - mostly they were me being stupid or forgetful. But the dishwasher? I mean, come on!
Two new glorious objects in my life, to make up for all the lost and broken ones. I gave in and bought a stupid cowgirl hat (orange straw, and I look fucking hot in it), and the most wonderful pair of cowboy boots I have ever seen, or touched, or smelled, in my life. Not that I go around smelling cowboy boots. Okay.......you got me!
Of course, I didn't buy the boots and hat until after I'd been horseback riding. Went to Rafter Six Ranch in Exshaw (Kananaskis country, halfway between here and Banff) with a few cast and crewmates for a trail ride in the woods. If Exshaw sounds familiar, it's where holocaust denier Ernst Zundel lived before he got deported. But this was not, I repeat NOT, a Nazi Ranch. My horse was named Himmler, but I think that's a very common name for mares. The ride was great, though it was a cold and misty day, so the backround view of mountains was not happenin'. Lovely though, and we hit the Banff hot springs after. Just like sitting in a big pool with a bunch of strangers. But it's a hot pool. Outdoors. With an amazing view. Pretty perfect after freezing cold horseriding.
So, yeah, I've become a social convenor in this cast. Yes, I, Lisa Norton, (happily) confessed LAZIEST PERSON YOU KNOW (c) have been arranging horseback rides, hiring the band for opening night, planning future potlucks..... Which tells you one of two things: A) Even the laziest woman you know is more industrious than your average nine males. Or, B) That I am super-industrious when I am out of town: witness all the soup kitchens I've started and all the Habitat for Humanity projects I've worked on. Okay, screw you all for knowing that I've only drunk booze and hung around flirting with strangers. But I did invent pomegranate raspberry pancakes....and how many of you can say that for yourselves? Hmmm? Thank you. Let's move on.
What else? Seen some plays, some movies (cultural highlight: Snakes on a Plane. Shudder), some old friends......Had an amazing time out with old George Brown pal Jacqueline Day the other night, who sends her love and hopes to see the gang at Christmas......breakfast tomorrow, I think, with Dean Carter, also from GB, who is now a teacher and married to Luka, with a seventeen-month old daughter, Eliza.
Guess I'm afraid of winter coming. And a long gig coming to an eventual end, leaving me high and dry again, waiting for the phone to ring. I had a dream the other night in which I found out that my friends Jeff and Rachel were storing nuts in their house. I broke in while they were out, searching frantically for their hoard so I could steal their nuts and hide them for myself.
Off on Sunday for my first trip ever to B.C., where I am lucky enough to be able to attend my pals Mike Wasko and Jenny Paterson's nuptials, and jet around Vancouver a little bit. And then back to Toronto to do Of Mice and Men at Canstage like crazy. Two or three nine-show weeks, designed to help Canstage out of financial trouble. If it works out, this will be the second time I've bailed out Canstage, since it's all the money I made them as a telemarketer back in the day that has kept them afloat until now. I was a disturbingly persuasive telemarketer, definitely a dubious distinction. Dread the day I turn my powers to real evil.
Hope you are grand and that I hear from you soon. Now for God's sake, put your pants back on.
Leese
