SKEPTOLYMPICS 2010!

  

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!

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

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a day in the life

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)

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.