Norton World

From TORONTO,
October 19th, 2015

So this was going to be my "I just turned 40" issue. Complete with hair, makeup and workout tips for the rapidly wrinkling set! (See pic above.) Stayed up all night on birthday eve writing notes and everything. And then I got real busy. Lazy. (...Bulazy?) Now it's been a whole MONTH since my birthday.  (Remember the Ides of September, remember!) What to do??!

I've decided it still works. And now I can comment from this wiser and loftier perch (Queen and Roncey), having spent thirty-three whole days basking in the glory of my fifth live decade. Seriously, those still in their thirties and younger: this shit is crazy. Like Mason-Illuminati-Skull and Bones level stuff I'm not allowed to tell you about. Can I mention that Helen Mirren figures prominently in the organization and that Don King is this quarter's treasurer? No? Oh well. Still working on my Mature Discretion Badge. And they make me sell my share of the charity apples on the shittiest corner on the coldest days.... But man, I see this really paying off by fifty-seven, fifty-eight.

Anyway...birthday or no (NO, you idiot!), late or not, I wasn't going to scrap yet another blague post. There are far too many unfinished ones getting wormy in notebooks.

And as I begin writing, I realize this can double as a wedding gift for my pal Jeff Irving, who marries the lovely Kristi Frank this Monday (TODAY, as this rolls off the interpresses!), and is not only one of the remaining steadfast Tourist fans (a decidedly strange but resilient breed), but the most persistent and annoying of them all. (Don't worry, Nathan Carroll; you're annoying too.)

I don't know whether it's the puppy dog eyes or the pathetic tone of voice, but whenever Jeff asks after the Tourist I always feel like I'm having to explain to a little kid where his beloved goldfish went, or why his crack addict older sister didn't make it to his hockey game. Which makes me feel really dorky too, come to think of it, because at least if I were a crack addict I'd have a pretty exciting excuse for not writing. Or if I were a goldfish! Nobody razzes goldfish about not posting on their blogs: they're all like, "Wow, you're a goldfish and you can write! That's so amaaaazing!" "Hey, remember that time you were a dead goldfish and you wrote a blog for ten years? Like wow."
Yeah yeah. Ooh la frickin' la.

Anyway, here I am, out of....shall we not say "retirement"? -- retirement sounds so old and weird and final -- shall we say... hibernation? Shall we agree that I was, what's the word -- pupating: going from a nasty, sarcastic, hairy wormy thing, to a beautiful, elegant butterfly with gossamer stained-glass-patterned wings, who will write generous, loving odes to the universe and the miracle that is all the living creatures in it. Or, well, not. Let's be honest: a butterfly is still a wormy hairy creepy thing. With wings.

WITH WINGS.

YEAH. THAT TOO.

SOOO....This one's for you, Jeff. Now you'll have something to read on your honeymoon. 'Cause that's what people do on honeymoons, right? Gimme a break, I'm just a goldfish, whuddoo I know? Or -- crap! -- what animal was I?

On that: I have a whole new animal kingdom role model. (Up yours, raccoons! Yeah, I said it.) One I didn't know existed 'til my friend Lyon posted this article on Facebook last week.

             http://www.wired.com/2014/03/absurd-creature-week-water-bear/

YOU THINK YOU HAVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS? WHAT THE HELL AM I???!

                     
I don't know if you read the whole thing about those things but those things are some crazy-ass things. They can survive for ten days in space vacuum conditions! Be practically dead for ages AND THEN YOU SPRINKLE SOME WATER ON THEM AND THEY COME BACK TO LIFE! And they have weirdo crazy suction faces! (Every lady's dream!) People call them Water Bears, but their scientific name is "Tardigrade": their real name is weirder than their nickname! I want to be that strange and that resilient! Like Jeff Irving! Tardigrade life starts now!
(I don't like the video on that page though. One lonely drunk Water Bear, writhing around, looking for the Tardigrade party. Bet that one's embarrassed: "Man! I finally make YouTube, and it's this clip that makes me look like a loser. Thanks a LOT, scientists. Now Courtney will never sleep with me!")

Anyway, I'm feeling relatively Water Bearish these days, relatively strong. My insomnia has shifted from the Lying in Bed Enumerating all the Things I Suck at and the Ways in Which I Suck at Them variety, to the rather more fun manic sleeplessness of Why Haven't the Workers Arrived and Started Work on my Self-Themed Amusement Park, and should I position the waterslides and the Lisa Norton Statue Garden near the east or west gates?

Look, all I'm saying is, if there can be a Norton Anthology of World Literature....why not a Norton World®? Saves three whole words and everything.

THIS, OR A ROLLERCOASTER? BE HONEST.

The bulldozers have yet to start digging; in the meantime, I can just be all I that can be and stuff.
My career, for one, is making great strides:

GIRLFIGHTING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE SINCE 1975

It's actually in all my contracts:
"Ms. Norton will only participate in stage fights:
1. As choreographed by a certified fight director
2. Featuring a lotta hot chicks
3. Wherein she ends downstage right having her hair pulled
4. In which she has her mouth open to its fullest extent for a minimum of eight seconds"

More evidence of creative progress:

"FUCK YOU, ASHLEY WRIGHT, I'MMA BASH YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH SOMETHING
AND THEN YOU'RE GONNA DIE IN THIS HERE FIRE I MAYBE STARTED" 

"FUCK YOU, LISA NORTON, NOW I GET TO BREAK YOUR STUPID NECK." 

See? I worked out some of that youthful aggression and matured into a victim, like all girls need to learn to do!
And yet more...

SQUARE-HAIRED MULLET MISERY, CIRCA 2012

Totally different from:

SQUARE-HAIRED MULLET MISERY, 1984

"LOOK HERE, NORTON, YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTRUN THE MULLET,
BUT I WILL FOLLOW YOU, EVEN ONTO THE TELEVISION."

"I'M CALLING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE."

Was I that (admittedly bad-assedly) miserable about the hair; about picture day in general, which was so sucky (i.e. for sucky babies); at Mrs Thielking, who held me for detention every day that year....or about the previous night's birthday Black Forest cake? Or was I still steaming because, during my weekend birthday party, at which my big sister had painstakingly put together a very cool backyard scavenger hunt for me and my friends, Kimberly Moonlight fell in the mud wearing my brand new argyle leg warmers, a gift I HAD JUST OPENED AND HADN'T EVEN WORN YET BUT LET HER PUT ON BEFORE ME??! Fell in the mud REACHING FOR A PRIZE THAT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE HER NAME ON IT! IT WAS ANITA YOON'S GOODY BAG, FOR CHRISSAKE!

I'll never trust again.

As for Black Forest cake. That weird kind from the Dominion cake counter -- with the radioactive goopy red stuff and the mounds of fake whipped cream and the plasticky cheap chocolate shavings and the maraschino cherries and some kind of rummy boozy flavour that we children didn't understand at all -- a huge one of which my mom never failed to present at my sis's and my birthdays with an enthusiastic, "Black Forest cake! Your favourite!" And we would kind of gag and politely eat a bite or two and she would have the rest.
"Whaaat? I thought it was your favourite! Whose favourite is it again?"
"Yours, mom! Yours!"
I found out years later that my Aunt Pat spent decades pulling this scam on her daughters too. Whole generations of Vieiras have spent their childhood birthdays bitterly weeping through mouthfuls of maraschino cherry, only to grow up and become their mothers, inexplicably beginning to love the stuff and forcing it on their offspring. But no more. We refuse to be made monsters. You wonder why you don't have grandchildren, ladies? The cycle of abuse ends here.

Back to aging, because it's late and I'm falling asleep but Jeff needs his stupid blague post goddammit! A few thoughts:

Is it only natural that I've developed a new phobia of slipping and falling in the shower? Is that just a proper self-preservation instinct as my hipbones begin their inevitable transformation into sand? Should I stop tempting fate by using coconut oil, thus making my tub into a Slip'N Slide?

Is it a fact that, were Bob Marley and John Lennon alive today, they would be collaborating on soundtracks for animated Disney princess movies? Would I snap along?

If I modify the resolution "don't eat brownies with every meal" to "stick a baby carrot in every brownie you eat", that constitutes a "healthy lifestyle choice", am I right?

Will I vote Conservative some day?

I finally threw away my last crop top and it felt great.

Does anyone my age remember how to do long division? Or know the combos to all these Dudley locks I seem to have all over the place? Why have I lost the ability to write in cursive? Why did I just use the word "cursive"?

I'm old and tired. Can I go to bed now?

....Ask the Water Bear. The Water Bear knows.

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

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

From VANCOUVER, British Columbia

March 17th, 2011

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

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

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

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

YUP. THAT’S ME NOW.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TAKE ME TO YOUR WINTERSLEEP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s twelve degrees”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

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

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

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

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

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

So that’s enough blarney outta me.

EXCEPT…

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

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

Yours, soggy and true,

The Tourist

go west, young tourist

From TORONTO,

December 29th, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet I didn’t write.

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

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

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

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

JUST LOOK AT ALL THOSE LIPS!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tourist

rumours of my death are slightly exaggerated

From LONDON, ONTARIO
October 25th, 2010

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

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

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

This gig also got me with that irresistable Norton kryptonite, the promise of travel – thus far, to exotic locales like Ingersoll, Ontario! Mississauga! Richmond Hill! Luxurious nights at the Hojo in London!
Ahead lie Texas and Florida and the midwest, where I plan to pick daily fights over abortion, health care and dirty Canadian Socialism. I’ll also claim that our version of So You Think You Can Dance is superior to theirs, which always gets those Yankee conservatives right where it hurts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I actually teach children about this kind of behaviour in our show every day. I’m hoping if Ford loses he’ll join our tour and take over one of my roles, that of the school bully. He would be amazing.
The most disturbing thing about this last clip, perhaps, is all the youtube comments commending this performance for demonstrating that at least he’s real and stands up for what he believes in. I’m terrified. But if he’s fleeced enough people to win this thing, I give the guy six months tops before he blows a gasket screaming at someone in a meeting and drops of a massive heart attack.
Orrrrr…

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

Oh God Oh God. Just got a call from my stage manager informing me that A: My call time is ten minutes earlier tomorrow morning, and B: That Ford is leading the count at fifty percent.
WHAT KIND OF NIGHTMARE AM I LIVING?????!!!!!

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

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

Blyth bonus issue! Now with 100% real Blyth!

From BLYTH, ONTARIO
July 16th, 2010

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

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

(Moonwalker edition coming soon, promise.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can think of worse problems to have.


See you all out there,


Lisa

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

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

the skeptical whatsit

From TORONTO,

May 25th, 2010

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

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

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

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

“GODDAMN PESKY ACTORS!”

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

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

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

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

THINGS I MIGHT YET BE (vote now)

Thing #1: A crazy old lady.

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

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

#2: A politician.

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

Thing #3: A Jedi.

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

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

Done. Damn but I look good in Jedi robes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get away from George, ‘cause he likes to gorge

and he might eat you (yea-ah)…

He gets to know you in a special way,

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

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

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

Get away from George (et cetera)…

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

Until you, Weird Al.

P.S. UHF sucked ass.

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

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

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

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

Then I’ll feel real tough and cool.

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

#10: A software engineer.

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

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

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

Thing #11: A left-wing Creationism lecturer.

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

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

Blight (blaIt), noun

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

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

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

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

Yours, on the cusp of everything,

The Tourist

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