From TORONTO
November 8th, 2007
LOOKING BACK ON THE SNATCH
Ten days since I left Sasnatchewan, Much-Neglected Reader.....and it's all like a distant prairie dream. There were elves, and hippopotami, and little green men.....
Actually there were green men, plenty of them, but they were more than usually big fat Roughriders fans, shirtless and painted despite temperatures well below zero. They were even bigger when driving around town in their humungous pickup trucks honking their extra-loud, custom-fitted victory horns. Seriously, these guys are nuts - like Leaf fans in Toronto, except their team actually wins stuff! Imagine that!
Football is the only professional game going in the whole province of Saskatchewan, and the Riders the only franchise. So you can imagine what a big deal they are. The neighbourhood I stayed in my first two weeks in town was near Mosaic stadium, which I discovered one day by riding around on my borrowed bicycle, following the huge roar of the crowd and the bang of fireworks until I was standing across from it. In profile I could see bodies hanging out over the upper level of the stands. Overzealous fans, or visiting B.C. Lions supporters being dangled, I couldn't tell from where I stood. Either way, all in good fun.
Surprising that there's no NHL team. Apparently Sask is the province that produces the highest proportion of Canadian players in the league. (You can look it up 'cuz I won't bother.) All that flat, all that cold (winter goes, oh, eighteen months a year) make for perfect outdoor practise rinks, yet there's no home team for any of these dudes to grow up and play for. Apparently there's a debate every few years over whether Regina or Saskatoon should get a team, with some people pushing for a franchise in the middle of nowhere halfway in-between. But that's retarded. Meantime, hockey-loving Saskatchewan-ers (-ites? -ians? I really have to look that up....research assistant? Where are you?) aren't sure who to cheer for, so they're split between all the other Canadian teams, with only the very bravest or most idiotic souls admitting to a love for the Leafs. One day I saw our Production Manager, who grew up in Ontario, walking around the office in a Leafs jersey, but he said he as yet had never ventured out of doors with it on. As long as he paired it with a "Real Men Eat Wheat" Riders hat, he might just survive.
Yes, there is the classic unimaginitive hate on for Toronto in Regina as everywhere else in the country - or maybe it's just a huge indifference. Two of us in the cast were native Torontonians, and the other two were from Ottawa and Nova Scotia. I learned this cool trick - at talkbacks and teatimes after shows, mingling with nice seniors who'd seen the play, I'd inevitably be asked where I was from. If I simply said "Toronto", I'd be met with blank stares and awkward silence. Or better yet, the oh-so-hilarious, "My condolences." If, however, I said "Toronto", and then immediately grabbed my castmate and said, "But Jody here is from a fishing village near Halifax", there would be sudden squeals of delight and friendly smiles. People would surround Jody and hug her and give her baskets of puppies, while I discreetly skulked off to a corner to cry while shoving free pastries into my mouth. Up yours, old people. (But thanks for your support. Please don't die and leave the theatres empty.)
COME BACK AND GET SOME
There's something weird going on in Saskatchewan right now. People can't seem to decide whether they're coming or going. First, all the young people started leaving to take advantage of the boom in Alberta. Some would go out there for jobs; some would go away to university and never come back. Then they started to realize that the cost of living in Alberta was insane, and got lured back. There's actually a big ad campaign telling people what a great idea it is to come home to Saskatchewan (don't know why I saw it in the Regina paper - they're already here, people! - but I did). So the young people have come back to realize that there's nothing here for them. The mass return has driven rents and house prices up, and there aren't enough jobs....so everyone's starting to leave again. Everytime I met a young person they would tell me about their plans to move to Vancouver, or Montreal.... "Or Toronto?", I asked, and was promptly slapped across the face.
If you're wondering why I'm a sudden expert on all things Sask it's because, between getting my hair cut and dyed (over two sessions) and my fake show nails done a few times, I had plenty of time with my Regina mole, Angie at the salon. She told me all kinds of interesting inside info, such as this juicy tidbit:
Top 3 places IN THE WORLD to get laid ever, according to some article I can't seem to find:
#3. Woodstock Festival, Bethel, NY
#2. Cancun, Mexico, spring break
#1. Craven Country Jamboree, Craven SK (a twenty minute drive from Regina)
Here's a hilarious article from the Leader Post about the sex fest that is Craven. http://www.melodytrip.com/MTNews/Default.aspx?NewsID=6370
Check out this awesome sentence, which is supposed to prove the writer's assertion that the fest is NOT just about hooking up: Of 50 people between 18 and 27 years old surveyed, only 23 actually admitted to having slept with someone they met at the festival.
Sheee-it! Only 23 out of fifty? Sounds like pretty good odds to me! Hell, a catch like you or me would be covered in incoherent drunken college students in no time! July 10th -13th 2008, people, mark your calendars. And pack your antibiotics.
SPEAKING OF YOUTH.....
Encountered one of the strangest things I've ever seen on the streets of Regina. Jody Stevens, Harry Crane and myself are walking home along 14th Street, sometime around eleven p.m., when we hear a whole lot of shouting behind us. We look back to see an approaching minivan, out of which are hanging several small children, I'd say between the ages of six and ten, all shouting , "Motherfuckers! Motherfuckers Motherfuckers Motherfuckers!" at the top of their lungs. They shout it at us as they pass, turn the corner and shout "Motherfuckers!" all the way down the street. We didn't get a good look at who was driving. Was it an adult? Was a parent driving his kids around residential neighbourhoods so they could hang out of the windows with no seatbelts, screaming obscenities? Was it a bullied babysitter? Or a ten year-old who'd found the keys? Which of these possibilities is more disturbing, I'm not sure.
At least we didn't encounter "The Smileys", a local gang of 12 to 18 year-old girls famed for dragging people out of their cars at stoplights and slashing their faces to give them a Glasgow (or, I suppose, Regina) smile. Shudder. You gotta wonder whose idea that was. Well, nothing to do again on a Friday night...Hey I know! Come on, girls, cheer up.....only seven months 'til Craven.
Regina is home to "Canada's Worst Neighbourhood" (Maclean's Magazine). It also has the country's highest per capita murder rate and the highest rate of STDs. It all goes hand in hand, as Jackie Francis, who was performing a show called "Rage" at the Globe pointed out: "Hey, if somebody gave me gonorrhea, I'd probably kill the bastard." Big poverty crisis in Regina right now. A lot of fucked up people. Scary repurcussions.
ON THAT NOTE.....
My stage manager Sarah and I went to the Saskatchewan Science Centre! It was fun! We tried out lots of experiments and she explained them to me because I am not smart! We saw beautifully shot but kind of annoying IMAX movies with lots of bad dramatic recreations in them! We whined because the dinosaur exhibit pretty much sucked! We learned about potash! We won Olympic medals in the Sports section! We made giant soap bubbles and stood in the recreated jaws of a prehistoric shark! Yaaaaaaay!!!!!!
I love science centres. Please get me one for Christmas.
HOW DUMB AM I? (Vote now.)
Went to a movie at the art-house cinema located in the basement of The Regina Public Library. Halfway through the film, a doc called When The Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan, we begin to smell smoke. Everyone starts to wonder if there's a fire in the projection room. The ladies behind me start freaking out and won't shut up, which I realize now is probably a natural and logical way to behave. At the time the rest of us kept ignoring them and trying to focus on the movie. Eventually we were evacuated by the fire department (turns out a vandal started a fire across the street) and the weight of my idiocy struck me. I mean, imagine the whole lot of us had been trapped in a burning basement because we didn't want to stop watching some stupid gypsy movie. That's exactly the way I'm gonna go - with people shaking their heads the next day over the newspaper headline "Artsy Morons Perish in Fire" and trying not to laugh. It was a good gypsy movie though. I wonder what happens in the end.
LISTEN UP, CITY GIRL
People are very friendly in Regina. I had a surreal experience in Jestures Diner one day, when I popped in for some greasy diner food and felt a bit like I'd wandered into an episode of Corner Gas.
When I asked the waitress how she was doing, she plonked down in the booth with me and told me all about her brother-in-law, who does the dishes, having just had a seizure in the kitchen, about her finding him, the ambulance coming, the replacement guy having car trouble, the runaround her sister's been getting at the hospital, how she hadn't had a chance to have a smoke.....then she went off for her smoke, the cook came over, told me he wasn't gonna make me the hot turkey sandwich and fries I'd asked for, he refused, he was going to make me a chicken cacciatore and a side of pasta with homemade pesto and a baby greens salad by the way did i like pine nuts, told me all about his life, the restaurant-makeover he's trying to pull on these guys while he helps them out for a month, the place he's opening, his life story from Regina to Europe and back again.....meantime the sister comes in, tells me all about her husband in the hospital, the medication and socks she has to go home and get....the waitress comes back having finally gotten her smoke break but upset about having sat down on a soaking wet chair outside and gotten her ass all wet........ I was there for hours, and ended up telling my life story to the chef. I guess the thing is this: ask strangers in Toronto how they're doing, and they'll say, "Okay." Ask someone in Saskatchewan, and, well, she might just tell you. And if you sit and listen, you'll probably have a pretty good time. Not to mention a sitcom pilot you can use later on.
QUEENSLAND
It's an awfully Queeny town, Regina. And I don't mean it's full of gay men.....although who knows what those shirtless green-painted guys get up to. No, I mean frickin' Queen Elizabeth is everywhere (Hey, there she is in the park! She just ducked behind that tree!). Everything is named after her, and other royals. The city hall building is called Queen Elizabeth Court...two of the major streets are Victoria and Albert.....there's a statue of the young queen riding her favourite horse in front of the beautiful old provincial legislature, right by Lake Wascana, around which a bike path is marked with arrows encouraging you to ride on the left side......the Globe Theatre has a picture of one-time visitor Prince Edward placed in a more prominent position than the portraits of the founders of the theatre and the past A.D.s...... Okay, we get it already! Your town is called frickin' REGINA! The buck stops.....oh, who the hell am I to say where the buck stops? But it stops somewhere, let me tell ya. I just wish they'd buy that statue of Freddy Mercury that's out front of the Elgin in Toronto for We Will Rock you, the Queen musical, and add it to the mix. Maybe put it next to Queen Liz in the park.
That bike path around Wascana Lake is a lovely ride by the way. Wascana is a very impressive man-made creation. It was first made by damming in the 1880s and then, as a make-work project during the depression, 2100 men dredged and widened the lake bed and built two islands in it using only hand tools and horsedrawn wagons. And wishes, hopes and fairy dust. The park is 9 and a half square kilometres (bigger than NY's Central Park, apparently) and lovely, and I would have spent much more time in it had it not been for the goddamn bloody stupid terrible cold weather coming so soon after we got to town. (Can you tell that winter is my favourite season?) We did get snow before leaving on October 27th, FYI, though not much. And I rode my bike until the bitter end, which made me (usually) the only person in town on a bicycle, especially after all the other actors' bikes were stolen. Not a big bike town, Regina. You'd ask somebody if something was walking or biking distance and they'd say "Oh no, it's way too far", and it would turn out to be a five, ten minute ride. People often looked at me like I was an alien. And tried to run me over with their giant pickup trucks after Roughriders games. Hey I eat wheat, too! Ow! Stop hitting me! I'm not really from Toronto, I'm from Scarborough, I swear!
GOODNIGHT, GLOBE
I'd work at the Globe again anytime. There's a great staff and a sense that they really care about the visiting artists and the audience. The artistic director, Ruth Smillie, returns to the theatre ever single night at showtime to personally deliver the most comprehensive curtain speech I've ever heard, which covers everything from "Turn off your cell phones" and "Unwrap your candies" to "Always use a condom" and "Don't forget to floss." Amazing.
I liked the crew a whole lot, and sure wish I'd gone out with them more. We went, on one of my last days in town, to see The Sadies (an alt country band from Toronto who made sure never to mention that fact in their set - I'm beginning to see a pattern here) at a nightclub called the Distrikt, which has been the Regina home for The Tragically Hip, Bad Brains, Blue Rodeo, Cowboy Junkies, stinky yet famous Nickelback, among others....and I had an excellent time. Turns out the crew had never asked any of our gang out because they had the impression at first we were all snobs thanks to, you guessed it, my wearing shades all through the first day of rehearsal. Thanks a lot, corneal ulcer! You ruined my life! Well....my Regina social life. But that sure counts when you're in a strange town with fuck all to do. One night I actually found myself watching the Coyote Ugly reality show on television (a bunch of impoverished Southern girls compete for the crown of best whore/bartender and cry when they get voted off) and I thought, Okay HERE! HERE is where the buck stops! And so I stopped it. Take that, buck!
A trip to Moosejaw, and a dip in the Moosejaw Spa mineral pool, was a much-needed relaxing getaway/cast bonding experience. Moosejaw is pretty and getting touristy but not yet fake and Banff-y, if you know what I mean. It still feels like a real old town. And Nit's Thai Food is the best Thai Restaurant I've ever experienced, and a lot of clever reviewers say it may be the best thai food in the country, so I'm not alone. Not such a hot idea doing the mineral spa and steam room and an enormous meal when you have to perform a comedy that night, though. I think we added twelve minutes to the show. And did the whole thing lying down.
Some of you know I'd been planning a jaunt to Vancouver and L.A. after the Globe gig was done. What, you may say to yourself, Caring and Inquisitive Reader, is The Tourist doing back in Toronto? Does a Tourist not tour? Hath not a tourist eyes? If you prick her, does she not bleed? (Well, okay, you're not saying all that, but a little Merchant of Venice never hurt anybody.) Anyway, A) The funds ran out, B) After a month and a half away I just had that homesick want-my-own-bed feeling, and C) I wanted to come home and get laid. So I came back to T.O. and promptly......
Split up with the squeeze. Not much clever or funny to say about that.
Except......that once again, all your smart, funny, charming, stylish, good-looking, single and, of course, rich friends are welcome to apply to P.O. Box Hottest Damn Chick in The GTA dot org. I'm also accepting suggestions as to what the fuck I'm doing in Toronto with no work lined up and winter coming on. Maybe I'll start a band. Or become a ninja. As always, your comments below are welcome - and may just change my life.
All the best up you and yours,
The Tourist
(everybody's) after my regina
my regina
EYE, TOURIST
Week three in The City That Rhymes With Fun, and I finally have stuff to report. It isn't that Regina gave me nothing to say, dear reader.....it's just that I didn't see much of it at first. Or of anything. This may come as a shock, especially to you, with your secret crush on me, but I NEARLY WENT BLIND OH MY GOD. Or sort of, anyway. (What, dramatic, me?) Here's the rundown, as best I can explain:
September 15th:The Tourist turns a healthy, happy, hot-ass thirty-two years of age. Plenty of fun is had by me, friends, family, and the delighted employees at the liquor store who have the pleasure of serving us and later cry when they remember they are not on commission.
September 16th, 3am: I wake howling in agony, sudden shooting pain all in my right eye. I am a right whiny bitch about it.
All that day: Tears, tears, constant tears. Pain, pain, constant pain. Light of any kind becomes the enemy. Running of last-minute errands before leaving the province while lurching around in sunglasses with a bandage covering one eye, yowling, alternately "Out of my way!", "Don't look at me, I'm hideous!", and "Well don't just stand there, help me up, motherfucker!!!!" I go home and have to pack my bags. Boyfriend comes over and says OH MY GOD YOU LOOK TERRIBLE. I kill him and then myself.
September 17th: 5am trip to St. Joe's emergency. Hell of a way to spend your last morning with your main squeeze before leaving for months. Am told that my expired health card is probably still okay. Doctors look at me, look at each other and shrug, walk away. One holds my eye open with a light shining into it (which, in my state, makes for the closest thing to hell I've ever experienced) and scrapes my eye with a sharp pointy metal thing. Shrugs, walks away. Sit listening to a man down the hall scream his head off in pain. Wonder briefly what would happen if I did that; if instead of flinching politely while they poked around in my eye, I let loose with "AAAAAAAAARGH! I'M DYING!!!! OH GAAAAWWWWD!!!" Ponder whether that would be liberating and fun. (As it no doubt must be for the man down the hall.)
7am: Say goodbye to the squeeze in a waiting room full of hacking, dripping, oozing people. Make out on a gurney next to an old lady with one lung who keeps wheezing, "I have to go to the bathroom." HOT. Wait some more for a referral.
8:30: Can't wait any longer. Walk home (directly into the horrible, burning, full-on sun) and finish cleaning my apartment for my subletter.
12noon: Pearson Airport. Almost get bumped from my flight, thanks to Air Canada's standard policy of booking eight thousand people per flight and then being really, really surprised when they all show up. Decide to play the emergency/sympathy card by lifting up my shades and showing the gatekeeper my puffy, blood-red, hideous eye and telling him I need to get to a hospital in Regina ASAP. He passes out, comes to, and gets me a seat, on the condition that I never subject anyone to such a thing ever again.
2-6pm, Saskatchewan time: Regina General Hospital. Sit, wait, weep, get told jokes, eat a sandwich, fall asleep in a chair. Make out with an old lady on a gurney who keeps saying "I have to pee" (not as into it this time, but whattya gonna do?).....Get diagnosed with a corneal ulcer, caused by all the stress of having to look at things all the time. I knew I should have hired someone to do that for me!
September 18th: Globe Theatre, first read of The Melville Boys, at which I wear huge sunglasses, making all the wonderful staff there think I am some egotistical cunt from Toronto who thinks she is a movie star. I tell them all to kiss my ass and go do some coke in the bathroom. First visit to ophthalmologist Renatta Varma, who explains the ulcer: I scratched my cornea with a damaged contact lens or some such thing....then, as I slept, Evil Goblins crawled into my eye and danced around and had a germ party, causing an infection and eventually cultivating a hard white crust on my eye as a tasty Goblin snack. This happens to people like me from time to time, I am told, who lead a generally unchristian lifestyle (drinking, screwing, doing drugs out of wedlock...). I am given a bible and some eye drops and welcomed to Saskatchewan.
September 19th to now: I develop a close, intricate, and pleasingly kinky relationship with Doctor Varma, whom I see once every two or three days, and who is now the person in town I know best. The two-hour wait times at her office fill me with a tantalizing anticipation. Our visits leave me shaky and excited. She gives me eye drops; I try to get her to wear a sexy nurse costume. She says things like "Well, you're lucky it wasn't a little lower or you could have gone blind"; I say, "Yeah, bitch? You're lucky my fist isn't up your nose!" We make out. On a gurney next to an old lady yelling "I'm peeing!"
ACTUAL PICTURE. OF SOMETHING.
FYI: On the third floor of Regina's Pasqua hospital, where Doctor Varma practises on Mondays and where I therefore spend half of every day off, there is a department called the "Hair Care Centre". So this is where they do all those scientific studies on Pantene Pro-V, I thought. I peeked in the door and saw several statuesque beauties flipping their hair around while people in lab coats shouted, "Four in five doctors say you look FANTASTIC!" Weird. But we all have a right to universal hair care.
DYE, TOURIST!
Speaking of hair care...jeez. If my eye wasn't enough trouble....
A little before I left town I got bored and wanted to do something with my hair. I was going to take it to Canada's Wonderland and let it ride some roller coasters, but nooooo. I decided to dye it instead. I had an audition to play the grown version of some stupid kid in a movie of the week, and the kid has light brown hair. I thought "A-ha! This is what I'll do! I'll lighten my hair so at least they won't have that particular excuse to not hire me." (Turned out my ass was too fat. I'm having it removed next Tuesday.)
Anyway, the drugstore bottled brown looked pretty good, but a few weeks later, in Regina, my dark roots were starting to show and I thought my natural colour would go better with my costumes. So - and here is where I went wrong - I bought some dark Nice N' Easy in SOFT NATURAL BLACK to get my hair back to what it had been. Now I don't know what part of "soft", or "natural" the nice people at Clairol do not understand, but I'm thinking they're missing the whole concept. My hair came out Ugly Goth Chick Black instead, which is the new name I propose they put on the box. That way, If ladies are strolling the aisles at their local drugstore thinking, "You know, I just look too good. If only there was something I could do about that...." - there it will be! Ugly Goth Chick Black to the rescue! Never be hit on again, except by pimply boys in the park and people online who can't actually see you! Live your life alone! In the dark. Drunk and full of Mars Bars.
THE NEW ME
Seriously, it looked pretty bad. And it turns out there is nothing nice nor easy about getting black hair dye out of your head. You can't just colour over black dye with another shade - it won't take. I went online and typed in a few key words and found about a million horror stories of women who had done the same stupid thing, and their methods, both successful and not, of trying to tone down the goth. Hot oil. Dish detergent. Laundry detergent. Head and Shoulders. Prell Shampoo, which I think you can only get in the States, and which, from the sound of it, could strip a car. Dude, I tried anything I could get my hands on. Actually washed my hair in Tide. Let a dog poo on my head. (That wasn't on the list, I'd just always wanted to try it.) Invited a voodoo priestess over for tea. She liked the look....but did teach me some handy curses to use on people I don't care for. Finally thought, oh YEAH....the salon.
Luckily, Scarth street, on which the Globe Theatre is situated, is lined with about twelve salons per block. Downtown, my castmates and I have noticed, has a suspicious proliferation of hair salons and travel agencies. Because everyone in Regina just wants to look good and then get the hell out.
I settled on Snax. "The World's Coolest Hair Salon", says the sign - they can't even bother changing the fluorescent lighting inside, they're THAT cool. Angie, who is cute as pie (gives Doctor Varma a run for her money, though she doesn't have that same bitchy, spicy edge) has returned my hair to its -ohthankgod - normal-looking state. So I won't need the hospital's Hair Care Centre after all. Although it looked like fun. Don't know if I'm tall enough.
DRY TOURIST
A trick I learned last year in Calgary:
Any of you Ontarians who visit the prairies and find your skin gasping for moisture.....just go to the steam room at the YMCA for a half hour once in a while. Close your eyes and it's like Toronto in July. Especially if you make loud honking noises and shout in a variety of languages. Which people at the gym will love you for. Dye your hair black too, and you are guaranteed a wide berth.
I just moved from a temporary billet - on Athol Street, the name of which makes me giggle as it always puts me in mind of someone with a lisp saying "asshole"- with a really nice guy who does the morning show on the talk radio station, into a place of my own. My new pad, in a colourful neighbourhood conveniently around the corner from the Arts Board and The Schizophrenia Society of Saskatchewan, boasts a humidifier, so between that and constantly slathering myself with olive oil, I'm coping.
And the show goes well. I'm having fun, which is easy since I don't carry too much responsibility in this play. My role is mainly to prance around being flirty and generally threatening to take off my clothes and bang everyone. Looking forward to the post-show talkbacks to see what the fine people of Regina think of that. I await the acquisition of a few more bibles. At least I'm not actually in my undies this time around. By now I've achieved such a level of implied sluttiness that I don't need to strip down anymore. Fully clothed Norton is like naked anybody else. Hey, that's why they pay me the medium bucks.
Promising more actual Regina news next time, and, one of these days, the long-awaited Random Crap Issue (I know, I know, what's everything else been?).....
Your girl in Snatch City,
The Tourist
Your comments below. Please. It's lonely out here.
