The Skeptic’s Inquisition, or, Open Letters to Everyone Everywhere Ever, or, OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME AM I GETTING WEIRDER

From TORONTO,
July 6th, 2012
Dear Citizens of Toronto…
I just walked home on garbage night. A reasonable West End garbage night, at a positively balmy twenty-three degrees Celsius. And yet. My God. Truth is, Toronto, I’ve not spent a lot of summers here of late. I apologize for, during the civic workers’ strike (AKA Great Garbage Strike) of 2009, having been possibly smug and at least flippant, from my safe distance in sweet-smelling Gananoque, about what you were going through. There’s a word for it: hell. You all survived hell. Or not; perhaps you’re all actually dead. In which case, WHY CAN I SEE YOU??? Man, this is raising more questions than that Higgs-Boson thing. I’d better move on, before I get too confused. We’ve got a lot to cover here.
Dear Jilted Ex-Lovers,
All right, fess up. Which one of you thought it would be funny to go and publish my phone number in an online adult-personals ad? Hm? Okay, ALL of you, fair enough - but who actually did it?
You might think it’s hilarious now, all these hooker-seeking phone calls I'm getting in the middle of the night- but how clever are you gonna feel when I'm riding high as the richest accidental escort in town?
It's likely just a typo. And I haven’t yet succumbed. But I'm saving those incoming phone numbers for when funds get low… Or I get bored. Just watch me. (For a fee.)
Dear Conscience. Dear Comedic Instincts. Can you ever happily coexist? Will you always live in strife, or cancel one another out?
I ask, because, well, case in point: face-eating jokes. A month ago it was too early to make a good face-eating joke. I mean, I didn’t even WANT to. (Put me in mind of when, the very day of the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster, someone in my grade five class made a “How many astronauts does it take” joke, and I, in typical sensitive-violent Scarborough-child mode, indignant tears in my eyes, threatened to punch his head right off. (If you knew me in grade five, you’ll know this threat was not idle. The streets of Malvern are littered yet with the victims of my comedic judgement.) Too soon, clearly. Within two weeks though, of the infamous bath salts (or as it turns out, perhaps not) attacks, a friend posts on face*&%k that, in the wake of the LA Kings win, he’s going to head into downtown Los Angeles and get crazy…and I find myself typing, without hesitation, “When someone eats your face don’t come crying to us.” Suddenly, having observed a respectful two week face-eating joke moratorium, I just can't stop:
It's all fun and games until someone eats your face.
The early bird gets the face.
A face in the mouth is worth two in the bush.
Why buy the cow when you can eat the face for free?
ET CETERA.
But guess what? Another few weeks have passed, and all that shit is old school. Old hat, even. Passé.
There’s about eight seconds between too soon and too late these days. By the time you get to the Catskills, they’re gone. “I’ll be here all week folks, try the face! …What? Too soon? …No? Oh. You’ve heard that one already.”

Dear Mister T. Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying about you. (I’m an insomniac, don’t be too flattered; it doesn’t take much.) Do you like having a mohawk? Do you desperately want to grow it out but fear that that will be the de facto end of your career? Do you start to let your hair grow in and then your agent gives you hell? Do you dread not being recognized in the grocery store (“Say ‘I pity the fool’,” says the aggressive guy in aisle three, “Say it!…Ha ha ha, he said it…”) or is anonymity what you dream of? Are you a little self-conscious about the term “Mohawk”, when applied to your haircut, being culturally insensitive to our First Nations brothers and sisters? You are not your mohawk, Mister T. And you have a whole name, even. I’m not nearly industrious enough to check what it is, but you do. Oh, Mister T. I do hope you’re okay.

Dear Late Nineteenth Century… when it was you, did girls say to each other, “OMG, I can't believe he broke up with you by telegram”?

 
Dear armchair and/or real psychologists (hey, professionals have armchairs too)… the other day on the streetcar, I heard the guy directly in front of me answer his phone by saying “Jeff speaking”. After he hung up I was nearly overcome with the urge – which I battled until he got off – to whisper “Jeffff” every couple of minutes, so faintly that he couldn’t quite tell whether he was imagining it. Is that crazy? If so, crazy in a charming way, like “That sounds like a cute quirky thing Zooey Deschanel would do in a movie” crazy…or “Let’s never speak of this again, delete it from your blog this instant and never sit behind me anywhere” crazy? Oh, did I mention I also really wanted to eat his face? I know, so June 15th, I know.

Dear Local Buddhist Monks: When did you all become fashion icons and start wearing wicked cool sneakers in burgundy and gold that match your robes so perfectly? Is that, like, okay, or against your order and stuff? Is it wrong that it makes me want to be a monk? You just look so comfy – and like you’d be hella good breakdancers. Tell me I’m wrong. I know you’re bustin’ out those prayer mats for headspins late at night.
Man, y’all monks is cool.

Dear Sarah Allen… I have a confession. You may have noticed that, when you first so rudely abandoned me to live in Los Angeles with your hunky TV-vampire boyfriend, seeking fortune and fame, all I did was whine at you to come back. More recently you may have noticed my harassment, mailing of maple syrup samplers (and anthrax envelopes, hoping you’ll need to return for the health care) etc has stopped. Truth is, I came up with a whole new, secret life plan – which is to pin it all on you. You’re just so darn good-looking and charismatic and talented, my friend, and might yourself play a vampire on TV or a whore in a big movie any day now. I should have been honest about this, Sarah – but don’t let me down. It’s a good plan, no? Then you can fly me to Belize and I can be part of your entourage and “help you keep it real”, as you’ll tell Entertainment Tonight . I can be like Nicole Kidman’s brunette sister and stand with you on red carpets when you get divorces. "What do you mean you wouldn't take your top off? Sure it's not Shakespeare, but who are you, Judi Dench?!"

Dear Readers, you may by now realize that this blague post has elements of what in the past would have been called a “Random Crap Issue”. That term is now defunct.

Dear Professional Torturers:

If I ever become a political prisoner (and I MAY), and the state wants to offer me some kind of personalized torture experience, it will consist of you locking me in a room and forcing me to describe things as “random” and use the word “fail” as a noun. “NOOOOO, I won’t do it!” Shockkkk-k-k-k! “Say it! Say ‘epic fail’ !” “NEVER!!!” VBBBBBZZZZT!!! “What do you have to say now?” “Fail…is…a….verb…” WHACK! CRACK! CRUNCH! “Aaaargggggh!” “What’s the matter, Prisoner 8752? Feeling epically RANDOM??” “Kill me! Kill me now!”

Dear Sarah Harmer’s husband…

Will you please cheat on your wife or give her syphilis or something, so she’ll stop singing about birds and rivers and go back to her shitty-basement-apartment-I’m-wasting-my-life period, which may have sucked for her but was far more interesting for us? Thank you.

(Dear World… have I really sunk so low? Am I that full of hate? Or so starved for entertainment? Hungry for other people’s misery? Am I a terrible person? Is my glass half empty - or just full of angry, frothing backwash? Will you go to the prom with me? I like you. I mean, like you like you. Do you like me too? Check here [  ] for yes.)

I’m thinking maybe there’s a balance. I may be getting old and curmudgeonly – and filled with judgement and bile – in some respects, but then maybe for everything I start to despise, there’s something I begin to love. Perhaps my glass just sloshes around, some stuff spills out, and then fate tops me up with something new and tasty, keeping the contents of my glass refreshing and level. Perpetually half full.

For instance. Dear Mangoes….what I lost in Sarah Harmer I gained in you.

I used to hate you, mangoes. As a kid, I regularly witnessed my mother’s side of the family descending on a plate of you like a pack of hyenas: drooling, snarling, shoving each other aside, making obscene sounds of enjoyment as they sucked your skins and pits dry…

It was not only the wanton and uncivilized display that put me off; I just didn’t like you. I found your smell overripe and fetid. There was something about you that made me think of mouldy basements and humid unwashed crotch. My sister, mother, aunts and uncles, after realizing that there was one direction from which their precious haul was not under attack, would stop the carnage for a moment and stare at me in disbelief: the vulture who didn’t "get the whole carrion thing”. They would declare that I was “CRAZY!” and “UNNATURAL!” and “no child of mine” and “probably switched at the hospital”, before someone would inevitably declare, through yellow-flesh-strewn teeth, “Oh well - all the more for us”, and they would get gleefully back to it.

But now I love you, mangoes. There’s still something of the ripe and musty crotch about you, but my taste for that must have developed. These days, if anyone dares try to take a piece of mango from me I will make my mama proud and MURDER them. Or at least EAT their FACE. But only if it smells of mango.

Dear Tea Party… I think I understand you. Are you just, like me, afraid to do your taxes? Is that why you hate them so much? I know a guy.

Dear Prince Harry, how old are you anyway, and do you think we should get married? It could be a strange art project, like Lady Gaga.

Dear Current and/or Future Rock Stars. When are you going to fall in love with me and write a me-themed song? Even if it's called "You Bitch You're Such a Bitch", I won't care, it'll be great. Although now I’ve put it out there it’s already too late isn’t it? Like when you're a kid and try to give yourself a cool nickname..."Yeah, you guys can just call me Edge, that's what they all called me at camp". “Nah, we're gonna call you Poopface. How's that?”

Dear Justin Bieber Singing Toothbrush… Why do you exist?
Dear Battery-Operated Candles… You’re even worse. Has human existence outlived its usefulness in every single way? Oh wait, you can’t answer that – YOU’RE A BATTERY OPERATED CANDLE. Excuse me while I kill myself for a minute.

Dear Supposed Grown-ups…Am I the only one who can’t manage to walk by any sign outside a fitness club, or rep cinema or the like exhorting people to "become a member", without giggling like a naughty eight-year-old? “Member”. Tee hee. THE SIGN WANTS YOU TO BE A PENIS. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET THAT. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one in this instance, but I’m Justin Trudeau's “friend” on facebook, and while I don’t normally exhibit strong stalker impulses, I just feel like sending him things, or making vaguely inappropriate comments. Nothing gross or sexual, just like, you know, “Heyyyyy… lookin’ good! Dyno-miiiiite” in response to a serious diatribe about Bill C-38. I fight daily urges to send him old disco songs and instructional gardening videos. And this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoqzettCoI

Dear Other Justin Trudeau Facebook Fans, what do you think?

I’m pretty sure he’d like it.

(As far as my actual political correspondence, I’m too lazy to write the involved, detailed letters to my MPs and MPPs which I’d like to and often even mean to…and who has time to click “like” on all those online petitions…so I’ve scaled things back to a reasonable level, whereby I still get to be involved in the democratic process but with minimal impact on my complicated napping/crossword puzzle schedule: I communicate with my federal representative, prominent NDP member Peggy Nash, through a series of emoticons based on how I’m feeling about the news of the day. If she receives, for instance, a sad face, she need only think back on the past few days, any articles in which she may have been quoted, anything she may have said during Question Period, any releases on her website, and interpret the sad face accordingly. In a good week she’ll get some winks and happy faces.  Sometimes this:  , which might just mean a lot happened that week.

Once I sent her this one , and now some nice fellows from the RCMP visit from time to time. 

Even I don’t know what to make of that last one, but I send it to Peggy all the time anyway. Hey -- do you suppose she’d like the video I just sent to Justin?

Then there’s this one:

…which, on the eve of the Toronto City Council vote on the plastic bag tax, I sent to my councillor, Gord Perks. The next day, reading the morning paper, I learned of my influence on that decision:

“One councillor handed around a flyer from Seattle on that city's bag ban... Another played a mock nature documentary, narrated by no less than Jeremy Irons, on the long life of the ‘majestic plastic bag’. A few speeches followed and then, boom, a vote.
“There was an audible gasp when the motion went through, stating council's determination to prohibit all City of Toronto retail stores from providing customers with single-use plastic carry-out bags, including those advertised as compostable, biodegradable, photo-degradable or similar effective January 1, 2013.” (Globe and Mail)

The gasp, I have it on inside authority, actually occurred when those sitting behind Councillor Perks caught a fleeting glance of my stunning profile picture on his Macbook screen. They didn’t actually hear the voting results; reporters had to fill them in.

So: Dear Anyone who – like me, in fact – questions the all-out ban (or at least the rashness of the sudden decision), I offer my apologies for being so patently irresistible and inadvertently influential. As I always say, with great power comes great…FACE-EATIN’! Mm Mmm YUM!

Sorry.

All this power gives me pause. I need to go to bed and recharge and consider my next move. And all these questions. Oh, Mister T. Sigh…

Yours, in a constant tornado of doubt and confusion – and FUN!

The Tourist

tourist. unplugged.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Zombie Diarrhea Heart, or, On Surviving February (Working title. C’mon, like you can think of something better.)

Kitsilano, March 2012. Lisa Norton, last uninfected survivor of the Great Vancouver Zombie Plague, stands emaciated yet still alive in her darkened apartment, scanning her boarded-up windows for cracks of light, for signs of weakness. All seems secure. Supplies, however, are running low. And even if this weren’t her last eight dollar mulltigrain cracker from the local Capers Market (a proud subsidiary of Whole Foods®), even if she wasn’t down to licking the inside of the goat cheese package and actually eating those pickled beets at the back of the fridge, what hope would she have of survival? Very little - and perhaps it’s better that way; after all, what kind of existence is this? She’s out of wine, she’s running low on lip balm, and no one’s here to tell her how fabulously silky her hair is these days. Also she’s dying of starvation. The way she looks at it, there are three possible outcomes. One, she stays here and starves to death. Two, she ventures out in search of food, and the creatures tear her to pieces. Three, they come and get her.

Or…are there any other survivors out there?

Once again, she huddles under the blanket that obscures the glow of her computer screen and starts tapping out faint hopes of rescue, or if not that, at least of the comfort that will come from another human voice, across however many miles, saying, I am here. I am alive. They didn’t get me…

Granville Street, Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre, two weeks earlier…

Our heroine is – okay, I am working on Calendar Girls for The Arts Club Theatre (my first Vancouver stage gig!), which comes with the rare and exciting perks of working in an airless, previously flooded basement of a (beautiful) haunted old theatre, with some of B.C.’s finest and most contagious.

Our cast has, over the past month, been hit by strep throat, bronchitis, PNEUMONIA (kudos to Kerry Sandomirsky for trooping through a two-show day after spending the night in a hospital oxygen tent), various aches pains and viruses, and a stomach flu.

From what I gather, the latter is a particularly fascinating challenge for a performer who has to take her clothes off onstage. Gives new meaning to hoping you don’t have a shitty show. Har har. (Don’t pretend you aren’t impressed with the sophistication and subtlety of my humour.) Alternately, if properly harnessed, loose bowels may give one a power unknown to the common, healthy stage performer, as in, for instance, “If this is a lousy audience, so help me God, I’ll poop on them.” I envy you, Shirley, you silver-haired diarrhoenian goddess. (Who didn’t actually utter the above phrase, but odds-on thought it once or twice at the height of her symptoms.)

An “Inside the Tourist’s Studio” GLIMPSE INTO THE PROCESS: The Skeptical Tourist tells us, “While writing the above paragraph, I briefly struggled to find the right adjective to describe my castmate and her arguably enviable affliction. After a brief visit to the diarrhea (alt. “diarrhoea”) Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarrhea) looking for a suitable turn of phrase, I decided that A: there was nothing there worth quoting, and thus was inspired to invent my own word; and B: that the alternate spelling – avec “o” - lent itself far more readily to images of Greek mythology. Hence ‘diarrhoenian’.” Hey, kids, this isn’t all fun and games over here you know. I mean it wasn’t, even before the zombie apocalypse.)

Back to the backstage: you know things are bad when looking on the bright side consists of saying, “Hey guys, at least that lice scare turned out to be nothing.” (True story.)

I have somehow, inexplicably, miraculously, knock-on-wood-ulously, avoided all of this, other from a slight case of (likely non-show related, totally treatable) chlamydia and a (possibly Polar Bear Swim-related) head cold that I started rehearsal with in January, that I SWEAR TO GOD didn’t start it all. We’ve designated the youngest member of the cast (and official union scapegoat) Patient Zero, and we haven’t yet murdered him and buried him in the yard only because he’s pretty okay in the show. We keep him in a cage and let him out for his scenes and then poke at him with sharp objects from time to time. He doesn’t seem to mind.

As for me, so far I’ve gotten through with vitamins, a neti pot (that fascinating, perverse little device whereby you shoot hot saltwater through your nose and watch your snot run out), hard liquor, and a prayer. This week though, I’ve decided to switch things up and go with the experimental cold-prevention method of insomnia and long walks in the pouring rain.

SEE? THIS GUY LOVES HIS NETI POT!

I have family in town, but don’t blame the six-hour walks on them: as a conscientious host, it’s entirely my idea and moral obligation to drag them around town on “scenic” walks even if it’s cold and rainy and the views are obscured by fog. “Okay, look. I know you were supposed to visit me here last July, and that I ended up borrowing money from you to fly to Toronto for some auditions instead, and that you changed those non-refundable tickets to now, only to arrive in the rainiest week of the year…but we are walking on the motherfucking beach! There are mountains over there, I’m telling you! Squint a little and you can sort of make them out. Okay, just close your eyes and I’ll describe them to you. Honest to God last week was SO nice.

“All right. That’s it…

“Kerry spent the night in an oxygen tent, you lazy bitches! Shirley has diarrhea, for God’s sake! DIARRHEA! DiarrhOea, even – with an O! Did you catch that? Just in case you, or anyone reading my blog, missed it…diarrhea!!! Check the Wikipedia page; that is not fun. Now stop shivering, Private. I mean….um, Mom. And if you get stuck in the mud again, I’m leaving you behind.”

A strange side note: When I cancelled that afore-mentioned July visit to head off auditioning, it led, in a round-about way, to my landing the plum supporting role of Edith on Bomb Girls, the WWII show I shot that’s just been okayed for another season. But making that trip was not an easy call for our usually decisive Tourist: it was another long-shot that led me there, I was dead broke and trying to get catering shifts, and had just booked a radio spot for 7-11 which I would have to turn down. Plus, yes, I’d have to make that fun “Um, maybe don’t come visit…P.S. Can I borrow plane fare?” phone call, and take a trip that possibly led to absolute zero.

If that story in itself isn’t wildly fascinating and inspirational enough to make you puke…I recently came across the copy for the 7-11 ad I turned down and realized that the role I’d auditioned for and booked was EDITH THE CHICKEN. I’d out-clucked the competition, booked the gig, turned it down, agonized over it…and eventually traded Edith the chicken for Edith the Bomb Girl. Now is that weird or what? Or do I just look and sound like an obvious Edith? Okay by me.

Also on the recently-survived list: Valentine’s Day. Although I only say “survived” cause that’s how everyone else puts it, when referring to hideous single lepers such as myself. In reality, I don’t mind Valentine’s Day. I really hated it when I was in a relationship, truth be told, and discovered its true nature: Let’s Compare Our Boyfriends Day. “Sooooo…..what did your sweetie get you for Vaaaalentiiiine’s?”, they’d say, just itching to tell me what stupid thing their guy had gotten them, and I’d mutter something about us not really believing in it or making a big deal about it, that maybe we'd go to dinner or something but how he did nice things for me all the time (which was always at least mostly true with a slim majority of the men that I’ve been with) and they would manage a smile and say, yeah you’re right, it’s a Hallmark holiday anyway… and after the thought bubble appeared over their heads, clearly reading “Boy, is Lisa’s boyfriend ever a jerk, I give it a month”, they’d turn to each other and say, “Well MARK got me a diamond ring!” “Oh yeah? That’s sweet. MIKE got ME a live panda and taught it to dance my favourite ballet. Oh, and it’s wearing a diamond ring. AND he’s taking me to the Dominican. I love unicorns!”

Man, bitches is whack.

And when I have tried to play along it turned out I was doing it wrong, I guess ‘cause when I have exchanged gifts or done stuff with boyfriends for Valentine’s it’s always been of a more, uh, private nature. “Soooo, what did you and your sweetie do for Vaaalen-tiiiine’s?” “Oh. Well, first I got down on my hands and knees, and he put his –” And then they either didn’t want to hear any more, or seemed a little too interested. Perverts.

SO, now that I’m single, Valentine’s Day just slides off me like water off a duck’s back. For about half the day. And then everyone starts saying “Hey, Duck, how’s that water treating you, huh?” “Sorry about all that water all over you, duck, this must be really hard for you, being a poor lonely single duck and all.” And then I start to wonder…oh my god, maybe I AM upset. I thought I was okay, but maybe this Valentine’s is actually the hardest day OF MY LIFE. Maybe I’m the saddest, wettest duck that ever floated solo on the love canal.

I mean, duck metaphor aside, here’s my February 14th. Just past midnight, a friend in L.A. posts something on facef&*%k along the lines of “All right, who wants to shoot down that flying, arrow-shooting midget bastard, douse him in Jack Daniels, set him on fire and end this once and for all?” And I, swear to God, am so out of touch with Valentine’s Day that I think, wow, Los Angeles. Dave sure has some crazy-ass neighbours. Honestly: has it moved into weird denial territory when you mistake a Cupid reference for a description of an obnoxious midget living next door who likes to have loud archery parties? And can FLY, for some reason? I was, like, DAVE MAN, Peter Dinklage is a dwarf, not a midget. And how can you afford the house next to his?!

Later, I’m listening to CBC Radio 2 and ol’ Tom and Rich are playing lots of love songs and such (and being anti-love songs because you’re single would be like being offended by Christmas and living in the bible belt; you’d go insane), and you know, dedicating some to all the lovers out there, and that’s all good. But then in deference and sensitivity to their unattached listeners, they keep playing anti love songs and mentioning how much we must hate all this, and letting us know that that’s okay, too.

And just as I’m pondering that, looking deep within my duck soul (I just like the duck thing, all right?), AM I okay?, the weather comes on, and of all the regions of BC, the weather reporter is only interested in talking about frickin’ Victoria. And after a moment I’m just hearing “Lower than usual temperatures in that place where that guy lives, you know, the one you used to like so much?” and “Three centimetres of rainfall all over his gorgeous head but I bet he’s very sweet and cheerful about it and that his hair looks really nice anyway, and his eyes always were extra blue on rainy days” and “Winds up to two hundred kilometres an hour through the LONELY UNINHABITED CAVERN THAT IS YOUR HEART.”

And then one more minute of “moron moron/nice guy/moron” running through my head, before I got over it, made some banana bread and went off to my job of being adored and applauded by throngs of appreciative fans.

And diarrhea.

Poor duck.

Yadda yadda, funny stuff, zombie reference to wrap it all up. Also must add more pictures so the sole image in this issue is not of a dude pouring snot through his nose. Screw it. I’m tired. I believe 3:04 am is a late enough bedtime to stop me getting the plague.

Oh no not I, I will Survive,


The Tourist

we are the fun percent

From TORONTO,
December 5th, 2011
Dear Talent Agency by which I am represented,
I recently sent a hopeful letter to my agent, who is a relatively recent addition to your company, asking whether there would be an agency Christmas party. The following was her unedited reply:
"No, they don't do those here."
I did not leave my bed in the week that followed.
Let me explain my position. Sitting on a chair in my living room, one leg tucked under me, rather grossly hunched over my keyboard; terrible posture, quite frankly.
No, not that position. This one:
I was self-represented for many years. I was so obviously untalented and unattractive that no one wanted to rep me. Or maybe it was the fact that I had a habit of cutting my own boy-short hair, and  agents were afraid I would be unmarketable, looking as I did like a crazed escapee from the Scarborough School for Worse Boys. Regardless.
When I did eventually grow out the bald spots and get an agent, she was a solo self-employed one, operating out of her high-rise one-bedroom apartment, her work mainly consisting of throwing her clients' résumés from the balcony and hoping they would land on the desk of an interested casting director. When she didn't opt to have a holiday party, there was a small sigh of relief from me and her other six clients, none of whom had relished the idea of singing carols on the couch with her Santa-hat-wearing cats and passing around a dusty bottle of Kahlua.
Meanwhile we heard rumours of the BIG AGENCIES and their BIG PARTIES; their wild-and-crazy goings-on, their open bars, their dressed-to-the-nines-ness and dancing. I dreamed of being invited as someone's guest, but it seemed everyone always brought a boyfriend or girlfriend or wife, and I was left out in the not-only proverbial cold, staring, in my threadbare parka, through a bit of fogged-up window, hoping that one of the guests would throw me a bit of a cheeseball or toss a dazzling smile my way.
Eventually the big agencies stopped allowing their clients to bring dates, a sensible austerity measure in the face of our struggling industry in those, as our friend Joe Cobden once put it, "hilarious economic times". Others joined me with their faces pressed against those windows. More still stayed at home and ate gruel and played at solitaire.
In 2005, I joined a medium-sized agency; only two agents but with plenty of impressive clients, an assistant in the front room, and an office that did not convert into a sleeping area at night. No cats. Hooray, I thought, this is my chance! December 2005, here I come! We may have to buy our own drinks, but just let me at those canapés!!!
Alas, Caldwell Jeffery had held what was to be its last Christmas party in 2004. The year I signed with them I remember them saying that they'd hopefully get around to planning a post-holiday gathering in January, which I believe they actually did. I was in Winnipeg, doing a play and dutifully sending home my commission, which may have paid for the streamers. I've never been sure whether to take that personally.
In 2010, as you know, Dear Agency, Shari Caldwell retired, and the Jeffery in Caldwell Jeffery went to work for you. A BIG FAT AGENCY, one of those whose parties I had shivered outside of, sniffing teary-eyed at their schmoozy good-cheer. Imagine my disappointment when I received Alicia's afore-quoted email.
I know it's not just you, Characters Toronto. I know it's not even our industry. I know that companies everywhere, in all business sectors, have cut back on perks like parties and dinners and gifts. My father, one recent Christmas, received as recognition for another profit-posting year of hard work, a Tim Horton's gift card in a red envelope. But at least he once — for a few decades, in fact — experienced the heyday of Christmas parties past. I was a KID in the eighties; those days passed me by! And now? What of the young actors born in the eighties or nineties, for whom, with fewer living witnesses each year, the legends of coked-up rehearsal halls and sex in the green room are becoming more and more faded and wan, less and less easy to believe? Do we bear no responsibility to them, or to the long-held traditions of our acting, singing, dancing and lampshade-wearing forebears?
What of the entire city, nay country, whose citizens should be able to look to their artists for examples of salacious gossip and hedonistic pleasure: who will the drones have to live vicariously through, if not us?
    
This one small outlet, but once a year: this is all I ask.
For, quite simply put, nothing happens anymore. I've taken to buying vintage gossip on etsy.com. It's just not the same.
 
Now and then we do hear of someone leaving her spouse and kid — but is she running off to live on an orgiastic, drug-filled commune; to smoke crack and sell guns and have rampant anal with underage hookers? Not usually. More likely, she's just amicably wandering off to find a new spouse and have another damn kid. Borrrrrrr-ring.
Gossip now:
 
“Did you hear? So-and-so and whats-her-name split up!”
"You're kidding! Was there someone else?"
“No, it just didn't work out and they're both very sad. I hear they're having trouble deciding who should keep all their stuff....he insists she should take everything, and she wants him to have it."
"Awww."
"In other news…I hear whos-his-face and whos-his-face are renovating their kitchen.”
“NO!”
"It's true!"

Gossip after an office holiday party:
“Did you hear? So-and-so left whats-her-name!”
“Well, after all those people eating her out on the bar at the agency party, I gotta say I'm not all that surprised."
”Oh yeah! I think I was there for that!”
”There for that?? You were handing out the limes and salt!”
”Oh YEAH. Well, what happens under the mistletoe—”
”—Stays under the mistletoe.”
“…Speaking of which - have you seen my watch?”
(Dear Agency, I can't believe I just made the ol' watch-in-vagina joke. Do you see what you've driven me to?! Things are more dire than even I had realized. Save me from myself.)
Listen, I hate to sound paranoid, but should I be taking this personally? Do you fear that I’ll dance on the tables and make a fool of myself? In that case, it might be a good time for this confession, Dear Agency:
At age 36, I have yet to actually dance on a table. I did once, very recently (EXHIBIT A), wear my first lampshade, but that was not in a burst of drunken, party-down idiocy: it was merely punishment at the hands of my asshole friends for having lost too many hands in a row of "Stoned Bastard". We weren't even stoned at the time. In fact, it was the most boring experience of my life. I hate you, Andy and Jeff.


                    EXHIBIT A. MAN, THIS EXHIBIT SUCKS.

In any case, the lampshade thing is not likely to happen. Most bars don't have proper lamps with shades on them, for one thing. And no one's gonna dance around with a halogen bulb on his head.
As for table dancing, my opportunities are thinning out. How much do I actually leave the house, to begin with, let alone to land in an environment with A: enticingly high tables, and B: People who will encourage such behaviour? If not at an office Christmas party, when and where will my chance present itself?
Please, I'm begging you, provide the opportunity now, lest I, desperate and determined at age fifty, clamber onto the table of a local, half-empty drinking establishment, only to be quietly helped down by an embarrassed young barkeep who then discreetly confiscates my glass of cheap cabernet. Please let this happen where at least one person will whoop and where at least Shauna Black will join me.

Have your lawyers warned you of liability issues related to office Christmas parties? Are you concerned about possible drinking and driving? Where, I ask, are we all driving to? And in what? We're actors: three of us have cars, and only one of those three can afford gas. And in a week or two that will no longer be the case, so you needn't concern yourselves about that. (Besides, there are even actors who don't drink who can function as designated drivers. I know they exist: when I joined the union I had to promise to drink enough to make up for anyone who quit. I'm currently up to five.) So at worst we may spill into the streets and be loud and obnoxious in cabs and on streetcars. But it has been well documented that actors are on average 80% better looking and 22% more charming than your typical drunk, and in 96% more dialects. Our Irish accents alone will delight and entertain our fellow TTC travelers from The Beaches all the way to Parkdale. And back, should we get lost or fall asleep.
You have rosters packed chock-a-block with attractive, charismatic single (or, you know, not strictly monogamous) people. Together we have the potential to make one helluva party and some very sweet love; why would you want to keep us apart? Are you afraid of the nuclear-grade celebratory power that would potentially be unleashed? Or. Dare I ask...?
...Does the Harper government have something to do with all this? Does our fearless federal leader suspect that a tightly-packed communion of so many arty pinkos with nothing to lose could create something akin to a merry yuletide terrorist cell? Or, that in our inevitable pairings-off, one fateful couple with one fateful hole in one fateful condom may just create the next great magnetic leader of the left? RISE UP, Dear Toronto branch of the Characters Talent Agency, RISE UP! Don't pander to the PMO; don't fear them! We're the cool kids! Or we could be! Stand with us! We are the fun percent!
Have you learned nothing from the worldwide Occupy movement? One of these days, Dear Agency, if one is not provided, we may just storm the office and make our own party. Sit on the floor and drink egg nog and play spin the demo.
Oh, and we'll need the photocopy code so we can replicate this bum-Xeroxing thing we've all heard about from old reruns of Rhoda and Newhart. Party animals, we are. Come on, you were all there in the eighties. You had all your hair and your desks were full of blow and you partied your shoulder pads right off. Show us the way.

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

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

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


Lisa Norton

Skepterminator 2: Judgment Day

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.