The Hangman Project

On HOMER SIMPSON

2009-05-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

March 27th

On HOMER SIMPSON

Okay, now it is time for my Top 5favourite TV comedy serieses of all time! These lists, from what I understand, are quite popular. No real surprises, I’m not a goddam TV archeologist.

1) The Simpsons

Parents of the world warned it against it, but it turned out to be hilarious. Thus parents of the world lost credibility. Family Guy is not as good, because it is like the Simpsons but with no soul. Futurama is too Sci Fi for my taste. South Park is sharp, but sometimes gives me a little scatalogical headache. No, Simpsons is the best – I own the first seven seasons and have watched all the DVD commentaries – very enlightening!

2) Arrested Development

These are all obvious, but some people don’t like this show because it is too cute and clever. If AD has a weak point, it is that, especially when Ron Howard’s narration gets a bit twee. Overall, though, dynamite., clever writing, characters you fall in love with despite their idiocy and despicability. Also, bad title. I wrote by first spec script on Arrested Development, and my favourite is the George Michael – Maeby forbidden romance. Now I want to wach this show again.

3) Flight of the Conchords

Is over!!! I am very sad. It was perfect? So relatable, especially as a wannabe performer sticking it out in the city. This one is too close to analyze, the series finale was last week. Matt and I just finished a spec script for it. Matt and I like to imagine we are like Flight of the Conchords, except without musical talent, but with hats. We’re a real hip duo, you know? Favourite song: Hurt Feelings.

4) Monty Python’s Flying Circus

This is the classic one. I haven’t seen all the episodes, and sometimes they can be hard to watch. Still nothing more challenging or more memorable on TV, always trying to stick a stick in your brain, and reality is always barely held together, sometimes not at all. They are my idols.

5) Saturday Night Live

SNL is also formative – it was fun to stay up and watch it as a kid, and my philosophy was always if it was good, it was funny, and if it wasn’t, I learned something about comedy. It’s the only TV show where you can watch people making mistakes. I don’t watch it much these days, since I went to comedy school and became a jaded insider, I’m too cool for the juvenile cast, and Kristen Wiig’s characters irritate me, and there are too many talk show sketches. And the best parts are all on video now (the digital shorts), so, not live. But great memories of the Farley era, the Ferrell-Kattan era, and the Horatio Sanz era. And Tracy Morgan. It’s like watching a reality show about comedy careers too, because you always hear about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Runners up – Late night: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, both great and very complementary. Conan O’Brien. That’s about it really. I don’t watch that much TV.

On GLADIATOR

2009-05-03T20:44:00.000-07:00

March 26th

On GLADIATOR

Five years later, Fred and Susan got married. Susan loved Gladiator, but she named him Gladiola, and pretended he was a girl. She also got a pug and named it Daisy, but Fred only had love for Glad.
Fred and Susan had four kids, which they named Iris, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, and L.A. Confidential.
Iris is a tall, willowy, pale, girl with a bob of brown hair, thick pink lips and an innocent look on her face.
Orchid is a teen that dresses like a punk vampire.
Chrys is way into sports, and always carries around with her a baseball glove and a basketball.
L.A.C. is a real nerd, with glasses and a portable laptop that he’s always carrying with him.
Together, they are the family Wallace, and they love taking their R.V. and their dogs and heading out to the great outdoors. They keep a big map of Ontario in their basement which Fred was given as a present at work, and whenever Fred and Susan get vacation time they get out the darts and start throwin’.
Once they get to the cottage they’ve rented in some part of Ontario, they let Glad out and he runs around the place, making it safe for fun. Iris yells out Glad’s name and laughs, Chrys throws him a ball, LAC tracks his progress with a computer program he invented, and Orchid draws a crazy artwork where day is night and Glad is a vampire hunter. Susan works in the garden and gets mad when Glad runs through her hard work, but she can’t stay mad at him for long. Fred smokes a pipe and takes in how great his life is ever since he got a dog. And Daisy rubs up against different family members, reminding them that it’s time to get the folds in his face cleaned out.
Eventually they have to leave the cottage they’ve rented so Fred and Susan can get back to work, and so that Iris, Orchid, Chrys and LAC can go back to school, and so Glad and Daisy can work on the internet startup they’ve started up. As they leave the cottage they all stare forlornly out of the back of their station wagon, except Fred, who has to keep his eyes on the road so they don’t get into an accident. Susan looks especially forlornly and the garden she planted. She always forgets they’re only renting. Fred sometimes wonders, are they only renting happiness, too? When Glad passes on, as will inevitably occur, will their teenage children rebel, and will Susan have an affair, and will Daisy get lost in the park, and will their family just get ripped apart?
Well, some dogs neve really die, and Fred had a feeling that Glad was one of them. Sure, he could collapse, physically, but Glad lived in all of the family members now, deep in their hearts, and that part of Glad would never die. Glad pushed his snout into the front seat and gave Fred’s face a big lick, and Fred laughed satisfactorily. Yup, it really was great to be Fred Wallace. He never got panic attacks at work anymore, and he was married to the hottest lady in the building! He had four beautiful kids with eccentric names, and a subscription to an informative newspaper. His life really had a happy ending.

On GERMAN SHEPHERD

2009-05-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

March 25th
On GERMAN SHEPHERD

Fred Wallace had a headache. He accessed his email, and there were five emails, all with a list of things to do, which he added to his list of things to do, which he put on top of his physical inbox, which was stacked with papers. He knew that at the bottom of this inbox was a letter from a starving child overseas, named Alejandro, whom he had to write to to support his financial support, but he had never gotten that deep in the inbox in seven years. God knew what project was down there with Alejandro, hopefully no one had died because of a project he had neglected.
Fred was in a grey cubicle in an 18th floor office in a major city. He turned to look out the window, but it was blocked by a cannonade of filing cabinets. He turned back to his computer terminal, and three more emails popped up. For the first time in seven years, he was really starting to panic.
“Fred drop what you’re doing and take a look at this!” yelled Fred’s boss, Harv.
“Aaaah!” yelled Fred, and then a big dog jumped up on Fred’s lap and licked Fred’s face. It was a German Shepherd. Fred knew what German Shepherds were from cop shows, but he’d never seen one up close.
“He’s so friendly!” smiled Harv.
“I thought… you were… coming… to give me… work to do…” said Fred, between licks.
“Ah, you needed a break,” said Harv. Harv was a tall man with a mustache, good looking.
Fred couldn’t believe such a noble creature, that he thought would be so vicious, or at least reserved, was so willing to openly display his affection for Fred.
“He’s wonderful!” said Fred, choking back a sob.
“You know what?” said Harv, “You keep him. I’ll get another one.”
“Really?” said Fred, lifting up his saliva-covered face towards his employer.
“Yeah, I got lots of money,” said Harv casually, “And the kids don’t like this one, they want a dog with a smushed-in face. Fair enough, who doesn’t, those things are cute.”
“Apparently you have to wash out all the folds in their face,” said Susan, while rushing past, not pausing for a response.
“That’s true,” conceded Harv, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. His name’s Gladiator,” he said, pointing to the German Shepherd, “after that movie with Russell Crowe.”
“Thanks, Harv,” said Fred, “I won’t forget this.”
“Take a lunch, and take Gladiator here out to the qudrangle,” said Harv, “I’ll get Susan here to tak over your desk for a bit.”
It was the greatest day of Fred’s life. He went outside into the quadrangle with Gladiator, who he nicknamed Glad, and they played fetch with a ball for three hours. When he came back into the office, his face was red and blotchy from dog tongue.
“What happened to your face,” asked Susan, who was wearing a pantsuit and had a deep voice for a woman.
“Nothing,” said Fred.
“I finished all your work for you,” said Susan, “Remember this later.”
“All right,” said Fred. He couldn’t believe his luck.
“You better get that guy tested for worms,” said Susan, walking back to her desk.
“That’s good advice,” said Fred softly, rubbing Glad under the chin, “I don’t want anything to happen to you!”

On CHESS TOURNAMENT

2009-04-11T21:08:00.002-07:00

March 24th

On CHESS TOURNAMENT

1: “So the Chess Tournament is ready to go, okay, and all these nerds are sitting around with their chess pieces, and then this big-titted broad comes in, right, and they all turn around and are poppin these huge nerd boners, right, and the coach says, ‘Are you here for the Chess Tournament?’ And she says, Oops, I thought you said, ‘Chest Tournament!’”

“Thank you, we’ve heard enough. Thanks for coming in.”

2: “A Chess player moves his piece and says, ‘King me!’ The other guy says ‘King you! I just met you!’”

“That’s checkers. And also, no,”

3: “So the chess tournament ends, and all the nerds are congratulating each other, guys are like, ‘You are the best of all of us!’ and then the poor schmuck who wins, looks around, and says, ‘Yeah, king of the nerds! I still don’t have a girlfriend!’”

“This is a commercial to promote Chess among teens.”

“Oh yeah. Funny, though, right?”
“No.”

4: “WE ARE THE KNIGHTS, WE ARE THE QUEENS, WE ARE THE KINGS OF ROCK AND ROLL! GO CHESS!”

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm No.”

5: “A board. An opponent. A bunch of pieces. Chess. Is it in you?”

“That is an old Gatorade slogan.”

“That everyone’s forgotten!”

“I remembered it, though.”

“Well, it’s one of those phrases that is just, it belongs to the common weal.”

“Good day.”

6: “Jim Carrey comes in. He does his thing, arms all over the place, yelling things, and then at the end, over the screen, it says, ‘you don’t have to be a nerd to like chess.’”

“Implying that Jim Carrey likes Chess?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a little nerdy though.”

“What?”
“He’s not the coolest guy I can think of.”

“Who’s the coolest guy you can think of?”

“Uh… Fifty Cent?”

“Please.”

“Looks like neither of us knows anything.”

7: “A basketball player makes this monster dunk, and it turns out that instead of a basketball, it’s a Chess piece. Then a deep voice says, ‘Chess. Is it in you?”:

“Weren’t you here before?”

8: “This nerd is teaching chess to this big-titted babe, and he’s like, ‘the bishop moves like this in chess’ and she says ‘did you say chess or chest?’”

“You were definitely here earlier.”

9: “We show all these wacked-out old soviet footage, right, with all these portraits of Stalin, people waiting in line for bread, and statues, hammers and sickles everywhere”

“And then?”

“That’s it.”

“No chess?”
“The connection between soviet chic and chess is implied.”

“Sort of cool. But we’d prefer that chess be mentioned.”

“THEN YOU WILL NEVER HAVE MY IDEA!!!”

“Alright, we’ll find another one.”

“Have a good one.”

10: “There’s all these fat kids, and we see them signing up for a chess tournament, and then they’re working out in the gym, eating right, they get skinny, they get girlfriends, and then the screen goes black, and the words come up: ‘Chess. Is it in you?’”

“We’re going to go for a chest-chess pun.”

“Ooooh, that is good.”

On SAN DIEGO ZOO

2009-04-11T21:08:00.001-07:00

March 23rd

On SAN DIEGO ZOO

The San Diego Zoo
Balboa Park,
San Diego, CA

Dear The San Diego Zoo,

I recently went online and saw your awesome video about wirking at the zoo. Although the film’s slow pace and soothing music made me feel a little sleepy, I still think I am the right fit for this zoo as an employee.
Anyway, how are you? My name is Dave, and this is my cover letter!! Hooray! I thought I’d lighten things up with a little humour.
My job goal is to eventually be the zookeeper for the whole park. But I understand that, to get there, I will probably have to work at one of the other jobs first, like Food Service Clerk or Merchandise Sales Clerk. That’s cool by me.
Here’s a list of animals I do like: Hippopotomus, Elephant, Tiger, Gorilla, Koala Bears, and Giraffes. Here’s a list of animal’s I don’t like: spiders. Please keep me away from the spiders. Thanks!
My previous job experience includes working at my dad’s bank. It’s called Scotiabank, and it’s here in Canada. PS, if I get this job you have to buy me a green card. Don’t worry, I’m worth it!
Another job experience I had was to start my own business, called Laughtrackers: people would send their writing or TV shows to me, and I would tell them if it was funny! Unfortunately it didn’t do that well, but at least it made me take the time to make a real nice home office in my basement.
The reason I want to work at the San Diego Zoo is that (as if you couldn’t tell) I love animals! It’s my understanding that the San Diego Zoo is the best zoo in the world, and that’s why I want to work there.
In terms of experience caring for animals, I have had one dog (run over by car) five cats (cat cancer, cat diabetes, cat osteoporosis, run over by truck, cat stomach cancer), two rabbits (neglect x 2), a mouse (still alive) and a hermit crab (accidentally buried alive). As you can see, I’ve learned a lot about taking care of animals! I sure know the way NOT to take care of them! Ha ha!
Thanks to my mom’s hard work, a sparkling resume is attached. She is great at helping me edit things, especially when dealing with the business world. She is a high school guidance counsellor, so I have a built in advantage when it comes to applying for jobs, colleges, and choosing courses, and also not taking drugs.
I don’t know a lot about San Diego, but I am a big fan of their football team, the San Diego Chargers. If hired, I think that my love of all things Charger could prove to be a key icebreaker in the zoo locker room.
In conclusion, I am happy to have had the opportunity of having the chance to write you with my request. Please consider it with the utmost seriousness.

Love,

David Barclay

On CUTE AS A BUTTON

2009-04-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

March 21

On CUTE AS A BUTTON

Chet stared at the tiny button on Marianne’s top and figeted with his club sandwich. She was much more mature than he remembered, and had really gotten it together, fashion wise.
“So you don’t want to get back together?” he asked Marianne.
“Aw, Chet, you’re so cute!” she said in an annoying voice, and made a few noises like she was playing the trumpet to try and lighten the mood. They were at their local Kelsey’s on Labour Day, catching up on the summer happenings. Chet hadn’t told her about Sherry, the girl he had kissed once while working at Disney World during the summer. She had ended up leaving him for a guy from the Italian Pavillion anyway, so that was all ancient history. Chet’s plan was to come home, go on this lunch date with Marianne, get back together so they would be boyfriend and girlfriend, and then proceed with their final academic year of high school. This plan was not working. In fact, it looked like Marianne was intentionally making Chet feel bad about himself.
“I’ve moved on,” she said pretentiously, “while you were at Disney World I couldn’t just wait here for you to come back, twiddling my thumbs, working at the pool and watching the View.” In fact, for June, July and half of August, that was precisely what she had done. Then, with Sally’s help, she had asked out the guy with spiky hair and a cool neck chain in the produce section at Bruno’s. Sally asked out his best friend, a video store clerk, and it turned out they were both big into theatre. The next thing they knew they were driving to Toronto and hanging out in all these cool theatre bars and seeing experimental pieces in black box venues.
“Chet, the world of the theatre is a different place. It has comedy, yes, but also heartache,” she explained to him. It felt odd to have Chet, a figure from her past life, take her to Kelsey’s like this. She was used to places like The Green Room now.
Chet thought to himself, ‘I think I know a little something about heartache,’ but didn’t say it out loud, because he didn’t want to act as annoyingly dramatic as Marianne was acting.
“So Sally and I are probably going to join the drama club, and focus on that as our primary extracurricular,” Marianne explained.
“No band?” choked Chet. Marianne played the clarinet and Chet palyed the tuba, and they had often passed notes between songs in previous years. The drama club was a dangerous place, where free expression reigned, and everyone was artistic and had inside jokes. It was a place Chet could not follow Marianne, except maybe as a techie, and even then, he would be invisible.
Marianne lifted Chet’s chin, and looked him straight in the eye. “I will always love you,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.
“Well it is,” she said, annoyed. She finished her salmon, and said, “this was a really good salmon,” pretending that she was totally cool with this whole conversation. Overall, it was a lot harder than she thought it was going to be, but at least she had said what she had come to say. The bill came, and she made sure to pay her half. She didn’t want Chet telling this story to President Michael French later, and finish it by saying, “and the worst part is I had to pay for her stupid salmon!”

On YOGURT

2009-04-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

March 20^th

On YOGURT

Here are some reviews of my Favourite and Least Favourite foods

Yogurt: Awesome. I prefer eating fruit at the botttom, and eating all the yogurt and then all the fruit. As a wise person once said, it’s like having two snacks in one. Also, if you are in Sweden, and all you have is some granola cereal and strawberry yogurt, that can go a long way. Still, I don’t buy yogurt and eat it as often as I’d like, because I can’t decide between individual sized and big sized, and then I forget about it and leave it in the fridge. A-

Raisin Bread: The best. Sometimes I just eat a few slices of raisin bread, and it hits the spot. When I moved from Walmer Rd to Crawford St, I went trough a few days when I just carried a loaf of raisin bread around with me for sustenance, because I never knew where my next meal was going to come from. Those were heady days. A

Swiss Chalet Quarter Chicken Dinner: Also the best. Every time we celebrated something growing up, our family would go to Swiss Chalet. The reason? It tastes great. A+

Mustard Ugh! The worst F

Green Peppers Bleeeech F

Red Peppers Ugggggh F

Any Peppers Deeesgusting F

Things I didn’t like as a kid but I like now: Mushrooms, broccoli, Salsa, Indian food, Chinese Food, Thai food., the skin of a baked potato (I was so wrong about that!)

Things that I officially do not like but I eat things with them in it and like it all the time: Mayonaisse, Cream Cheese, Sour Cream

Dill Pickles Krista loves dill pickles and eats them out of the jar. That is super gross. I like sweet pickles, but dill pickles are all blecchy and briny. FFF

Poutine I love poutine, especailly in theory, and then when I eat it I usually feel bad inside. We are going to a poutinerie for my birthday this year. B+

McDonalds Chicken Nuggets A Big Mac D- (no meat, all lettuce and bun) Angus Burger C

Zucchini The king of the green vegetables B+

Spaghetti Delicious, I like how my mom makes it with nice meat sauce. A+

Pizza Cowabunga! A

Anything my mother-in-law Barb makes So good. Table-groaning feasts every time. Then sleepiness. A+

Apples My mom used to give me apple skins as a kid when she was peeling apples. So good! I like to eat all the skin of an apple first, and then move on the the fleshy insides. A

My favourite fake flavours: 1. banana 2. cherry 3. Apple cinnamon 4. Strawberry. Last: Blueberry I don’t know, it doesn’t work for me.

Stouffers Lasagna The only frozen meal that deserves to be called Gourmet A-

A couple of fresh buns, a bag of baby carrots and a thing of hummus is sometimes what I have for dinner. A-

Hamburger Helper You know what I’m talking about!!!! It’s a special day when I make Hamurger Helper. A

Slushies Once I was in a Slushie Club as co-president Sir Slush-a-lot. My co-president was George W. Slush. I think that joke has some mileage. B+ (but on a really hot day, A)

Preferred Beers: Rickards Red or white, sleemans, creemores, Waterloo Dark.

On MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

2009-04-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

March 19, 2009

On MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

Chatting with the Stars

Starring John T. Nohands

And

Matthew McConaughey

JTN: Hello and welcome to Chatting with the Stars with John T. Nohands. I am John T. Nohands.

MM: And I’m Matthew McConaughey.

JTN: Matthew McConaughey, out of all the stars I have met, you are the most like people’s impressions of you. Does that make sense?

MM: All right all right.

JTN: It’s kind of you to say so.

MM: What’s going on with you Nohands?

JTN: Well, ever since my breakthrough interview with Uma Thurman where I almost got her to show me her breast, I’ve been given my own TV show called Chatting with the Stars with John T. Nohands.

MM: Way to go, buddy.

JTN: Thanks. So, it’s been about ten years since you were in a good movie.

MM: Cool, buddy.

JTN: Unless you count Tropic Thunder.

MM: I always do. Failure to Launch, Fool’s Gold, Tropic Thunder. Three movies.

JTN: We are really getting along well. Do you think it’s because I’m so cool and laid back?

MM: No man, I’m cool and laid back. You’re the one saying the last ten years of my life have been a waste of time.

JTN: I’m just trying to get a rise out of yah.

MM: Awww, yeah.

JTN: Matthew McConaughey, we’re best friends, right?

MM: Sure man, wanna play some fuckin’ naked bongos or something?

JTN: Whatever!!!!

JTN and MM take of their clothes, play some fuckin bongos and give each other non-gay hand jobs. Then they have some cheesecake.

JTN: This cheesecake is the fucking best.

MM: I know, man.

JTN: Hey, look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier about your movies sucking. Two for the Money was with Al Pacino, so I can understand why you did that.

MM: That’s cool, man. I only do these movies to support my addiction to sports gambling. Then I wrote that movie about it.

JTN: Two for the Money?

MM: No, We Are Marshall. Man, Hollywood can sure change a script around, am I right?

JTN: You are, man!

They laugh together.

JTN: Man, you’re like, Bob Dylan, man, but, like, without the negativity, you know?

MM: Man, that’s crazy! That’s not true at all!

They laugh together again.

JTN: Oh, man, sometimes I just wish all this stuff would just melt away and it would just be, like, what’s real, you know?

MM: I know, man.

JTN: Did you ever host Saturday Night Live?

MM: Yeah, with the Dixie Chicks five years ago.

JTN: Coooool.

MM: All right all right.

JTN: I hope this never ends. I feel like I’m heading for a big emotional crash right now, this is too good to be true. Any closing thoughts.

MM: Man, I just love being so laid back. I think I’m gonna keep going with that. It’s like I said in the movie Sahara, just keep living, you know?

JTN: You could have said anything just now and I would have believed you, because neither I or anyone I know has seen that movie, and I don’t know what it’s about.

MM: Cool.

JTN: If I knew someone who owned a DVD of that movie, I would wait till they left the room, steal their DVD, and throw it out.

MM: All right.

JTN: Sorry, I went way negative there.

MM: That’s all right. This was a good interview. Let’s do it again. Awesome show buddy.

JTN: Thanks!!!! (blushing)

On BACKYARD

2009-04-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

March 18th

On BACKYARD

In 1989, when I was nine years old, my family moved from the house where I had lived since I was one to another house a kilometer away. My old house, 1013 Vanier Drive, was closer to the highway, and had a great backyard. There was a big hill with a tree at the top, and the tree was divided between us and our backdoor neighbours. My sisters and I used to roll down this hill a lot – I remember drawing a picture of rolling down the hill in Grade One. I drew myself rolling down the hill from a side perspective, as three concentric circles: a small blond one representing my head, a larger red one representing a red shirt, and then the largest blue circle representing my pants. It almost makes sense if you see it, and I think really captures the whirlwind feeling of tumbling down a hillside.
The best part about the backyard, though, was the sandbox. I really loved my sandbox. Sometimes I would break through the plastic on the bottom of the sandbox to the soil below, and eventually worms would come up through the bottom and interact with our sandscapes. One time we had a whole nest of worms in our sandbox. It was super gross, but it lent an element of danger to the sandbox experience.
We moved to 1423 Tecumseh Park Drive. I wasn’t happy about the move because the new backyard did not have a sandbox. My mom likes to tell the story of how upset I was about the lack of sandbox at the new house. It had a big stepped garden, two levels of soil held up by railway ties. No hill to roll down, no sandbox. But, there were lots of places to get lost, and our dog, Crackers, used to have a good time running around the different levels. I used to spend hours in the winter trying to get my mittens back from Crackers as he would race back and forth on the different levels of our backyard. In the first summer in the new house, I spent hours in the yard recreating the 1989 American League Championship Series with a baseball bat and a tennis ball.
Krista and I are thinking of buying a house in the next year or so. I really haven’t concerned myslf with the backyards of all the places I’ve rented in the last nine years, but if I own a house, I’m gonna have to mow the lawn, and maybe someday have kids that will play in that yard, a yard which will be sort of an arbitrary decision on our part, but if we have a kid, it’s gonna be that kid’s whole world. Maybe I will make a sandbox, and look for a backyard with a hill. It makes me wonder what my parents thought when they had me and my sisters, and if they knew what it was going to be like, and whether they felt like they were prepared.

On POT OF GOLD

2009-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

March 17th

On POT OF GOLD

The Publicist – Chapter 3

The publicist, lugging a surprisingly light pot of gold on his back, strode easily down the dusty road heading out of Rock Pile, WY. Accompanying him was a small black child.
“What do you got in that pot, Mr. Getz,” asked the black child.
“Gold, my son,” answered the publicist, “Lots of wonderful gold.”
“Did you find it at the end of a rainbow?” asked the black child, “Are you a leprechaun?”
“Nope,” answered the publicist, “I found it by investing in constuction and remodeling companies, and reaping the profits when a publicity boom hit this fair town. But I am a leprchaun.”
“You’re pretty tall for a leprechaun,” commented the black child.
“That’s true,” remarked the leprechan publicist, “I’m the tallest in my leprechaun family. But because everyone expects Leprechauns to be short and angry, I get away with it.” Then he said, with an Irish accent, “That and I don’t speak in an Irish accent anymore.”
“So you scammed our town pretty good, huh?” scowled the black child.
“Not really,” smiled the publicist, “I invested, and then I worked to make my investments improve.”
“Isn’t that, like, insider trading?” asked the black child.
“No,” replied the leprechaun, “It’s more like investing in your own company.”
“But everyone in the town is dead, or broke,” countered the black child.
“Well I can’t help that,” evaded the publicist.
“Little Bob shot himself with a shotgun when his bar went a million dollars in debt by installing fountains that sprayed liquid gold,” said the boy.
“Well, I don’t know who would have told him to do that,” said the publicis huffily.
“And Big Bob’s Haggis emporium literally collapsed in on Big Bob when he took out the walls because they weren’t upscale,” the black child reminded the man.
“That was fairly preposterous,” admitted the leprechaun, “Still, nothing that can be directly tied to me.”
“What about the fact that because those bars were so popular, everyone in town spent up all their money buying drink?” asked the black child, “all that money was invested in renovations, which you got as dividends on your stock, which you changed at the bank for gold, and now it’s in your pot!”
“Well, you seem to have a handle on it,” said the publicist, “now why don’t you run along.”
“One last question:” posed the child, “What are you gonna buy with all that gold?”
“Cigarettes, of course,” answered the leprechaun.
“You don’t smoke a pipe?” asked the child.
“Nope,” answered the leprechaun.
“You are the least leprechaun-like leprechaun I’ve ever seen,” said the child.
“What about these sideburns?” asked the leprechaun.
“They could be bushier,” evaluated the child.
Five minutes later, the black child killed that leprechaun. No one knows why – it wasn’t for the gold, that pot is still there, full of gold, beside that dusty trail. Maybe it was revenge for destroying the boy’s hometown, although everyone in the town was awfully racist towards that boy. Maybe it was because the boy was disillusioned when he finally met a leprechaun, his favourite of all the faeries, and the leprechaun turned out to be a nasty, tall, Amercian-accented crook. Or maybe his teachers had emphasized the evils of tobacco a little too much, and the boy took the lesson too much to heart. Maybe it was none of those things. After all, kids these days are sociopaths more often than not, killing people and things for kicks, just as they’re told to in their video games. I guess we’ll never know.

On LEPRECHAUN

2009-04-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

March 16th

On LEPRECHAUN

The Publicist, Chapter 2

“Ye can go and fuck yerself!” said Big Bob. Big Bob was a tiny man with bushy red sideburns and a garish green suit and hat. He was thematically matched to his bar, Big Bob’s Irish Pub. It had taken a while, but the ironically named Big Bob had convinced most of the townspeople of Rock Pile, WY to do their drinking at his bar.
“You’re not really Irish are you?” asked the publicist, who was sitting on a green stool, cross legged, with a fruity green drink in his hand and a smirk on his face.
“Whu? Ah course Ah’m fuckin’ Irish!” Big Bob yelled from behind the bar. He hopped up on the stepladder he had behind the bar and thrust his index finger into the top of the bar. “Ah’m straight from the olde country!”
He wasn’t, but the publicist didn’t press the point. Big Bob’s Irish pub was completely empty, and it was all because of Tyrone Getz.
“Doesn’t seem like your establishment is very popular. Maybe you could use some marketing help?” asked Getz innocently.
“Ah donna need no help!” exclaimed Big Bob emphatically, “Ah got a great marketing scheme right here. Or it was bafore everyone got up and went to your Gangland Gas House.”
“An Irish theme?” remarked Getz, “In Wyoming? What are you thinking?”
“It’s exotic!” retorted Bob.
“Looks more like tacky,” said the publicist, gesturing towards the shamrock festooned jukebox and nuclear green carpeting.
“Not more tacky than the Little Bob’s Gangland Gas House Grill, with its Tommy Gun fries and its Al Capone Ale!” said Big Bob.
“True enough, true enough,” said the publicist, taking a sip from his drink, his pinky pointed towards the cracked ceiling, “Little Bob’s place is tacky. But that’s the thing with gimmicky marketing: people will come to whatever the next big new gewgaw is. What you need to do is go up to the next level: class.”
“I’ve got lots of class!” said Big Bob.
“I won’t respond to that,” said Getz, “But I will tell you this: don’t charge me for this delightful drink – what is it?”
“A Tom Collins,” said the tiny man.
“Don’t charge me for this delectable Tom Collins,” said the publicist, “and I’ll tell you how to get your customers back from that dastardly Little Bob.”
“Ach! I hate that Little Bob and his ironical nickname!”
“So, get even,” said Getz.
“Ah don’t want to give you nothing! You’re the cause of all my problems!” shouted Big Bob.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Tyrone Getz dryly.
For a few moments, the large, black pupils of Big Bob quivered as he looked at the publicist. He had a tremendous amount of pride. Big Bob had travelled all the way across the Atlantic to find the most anonymous American town he could and make his fortune.
“All right, the drink is yours,” said Bob.
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Getz, finishing his drink and hopping off the stool.
“What? Y’eraint gonn tell me now?” said Bob, outraged.
“You’re too emotional right now. You aura is too intense,” said Getz, “I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early. And be ready to work.”
Big Bob scowled at the back of the publicist’s bowlered head. The publicist turned around.
“And your accent is Scottish,” he said, and left, the Western-style saloon doors swinging closed behind him.

On PUBLICIST

2009-04-01T21:48:00.001-07:00

March 14th

On PUBLICIST

The Publicist, Chapter 1

It was a quiet day in Rock Pile, WY, when the publicist came to town. He wore a pinstiped three piece suit with violet suspenders, and a blue shirt with a white striped collar. He had a long face, an easy smile with long teeth and long sideburns. He wore on his head a bowler hat, which fitted his head perfectly.
He strolled into Little Bob’s Bar and Grill, pushing the glass and metal door clouded with fingermarks. It was 4pm and the atmosphere was dusty, cloudy and squinty. The man behind the bar, Little Bob, was six feet tall and five feet wide, with a walrus mustache that curled over his lower lip and a red, shiny face.
“You must be Little Bob,” the publicist said, putting his elbow on the counter and crossing his right leg behind his left.
“That I am,” said Bob, “Who are you?”
“My name is Tyrone Getz. I couldn’t help but notice that your bar,” he said, drawing out the ‘a’ in bar, “needs some publicity.”
“It’s not that good a bar,” admitted Bob, “are you some kind of publicist?”
“That I am!” exclaimed the publicist, “Now we’re all on the same page. I’ll tell you what, Little Bob, I am awful thirsty. Terrible thirsty. Why don’t you sling me one drink, just one drink, and I’ll work my magic.”
Little Bob moved his head backwards and squinted skeptically. “Magic? What kind of magic can you do?”
“Why publicity of course! And here I thought we were all on the same page,” said Getz, shaking his head mournfully.
“Well, I guess one drink won’t hurt,” said Bob, pouring the publicist a beer. “I’m not much of a businessman, but one beer seems pretty cheap for a publicity deal. Is this going to turn out to be a big scam, like in ‘The Music Man’?”
“Nope!” said Getz, smiling widely, “No scam! Just leave it to me,” he said, taking a drink. “Ahhhh! What a refreshing drink. Why I think all of Rock Pile, if they only knew about this fine ale, would flock to this location.”
“Ah, they’re all over at Big Bob’s Irish Pub,” lamented Little Bob.
“Well, what’s Big Bob got that you don’t?” asked Getz.
“Customers,” said Little Bob.
“Not for long – trust me, I’m from the big city, and I know how people think. Back where I come from, they got whole big buildings of people figuring out what people are thinking when they want to go out drinking. And I’ve got everything they know up here in my head,” he said, pointing to his hat. “Now you just recommend me a decent hotel with no bed bugs, and first thing tomorrow, I’ll come over here and start working.”
“All right. You don’t want to stay for another drink?” asked Little Bob.
“Early to bed, early to rise.” Getz dismissed, “I’m not a drinker, I’m a thinker, and I’ve got a lot of thinking to do to make this bar the number one bar in this here Rock Pile of a town.”
“Well, there’s the Dude Rancher. Never heard anyone complain about that place,” admitted Little Bob.
“Good enough for me,” announced the publicist, hopping up out of his lean and waltzing towards the door. “You won’t forget, or regret, giving me a drink today, my friend. I tip my cap to you,” and he did, “and bid you good day.”

On SHAMROCK

2009-03-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

March 13^th, 2009

On SHAMROCK

Dear Marianne,

My summer of working at Disneyland is going well. I hope you are well too. I miss you and all the gang, and please say hi to everyone for me.

Today I was working in the Epcot Centre in the World Showcase. I was in the Ireland Pavillion, which is a gift shop that’s stuffed I between the United Kingdom Pavillion and the Canada Pavillion. The Celtic Rock Band, Off Kilter, often plays in front. My favourite thing to sell in the Ireland Pavillion are fake rocks shaped like shamrocks. “Sham rocks”, get it? I sell twenty of these a day, and I don’t know why. I have enclosed one in this letter.

I hope you are having fun with swimming instruction at the pool. If the kids in your class are anything like the kids that come through my gift shop, oh, man! Those are some pretty bratty kids. I hope I never have any kids, but if I do, I want twins, because then they won’t be an only child, but I’ll get everything over with in one go, you know?

We are called ‘cast members’ and are told we have to smile all day, every day, but really it’s not as bad as working at Blockbuster. At least here, we have nice weather. ~~My friend Sherry works at Spaceship Earth, though, and they have long lines and really angry customers. She tells me a lot of stories about jerky customers.~~

Speaking of Sherry, she and I are really hitting it off. I hope you aren’t jealous, because before I left for Florida in June, we suspended our relationship so that if crazy things happened while we were apart, we wouldn’t feel restricted. Technically, we were only going out for May and June anyway. We are both sixteen, so there’s no point in getting tied down, like we said back in June. Anyway, Sherry and I have been on a few dates in the Orlando area and it’s been a lot of fun.

So what’s new with you? I hope things aren’t too boring back in Forest Glen. I can’t believe we’re going into senior year together. I can’t believe Michael French is going to be class president! I wonder if he’ll still have time for us nobodies.

I am learning how to play tennis from a Moroccan guy who works in the Morocco pavillion. It’s a lot harder than video games would have you believe! Part of me wishes this summer would never end, but another part of me can’t wait to get home and see you, and my family, and your family, and Sally and Michael French. Please tell anyone who asks that I am having a great time. I have to go now, because I got to go to bed for a big work shift tomorrow. When I work nights, though, I get to see fireworks!

~~Love~~

Your friend,

Chet

PS I will be coming home on Flight AC 2343 on September 3^rd if you want to come and meet me at the airport. You don’t have to, but I thought I’d give you the info just in case.

On PENGUIN

2009-03-31T20:44:00.002-07:00

March 12th

On PENGUIN

Some Penguin facts

1) Penguin is the second largest English-language publisher in the world, after Random House. Can you imagine a Penguin living in a house that changes randomly every day? That's so Random! Call Nickelodeon!

2) "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random," is what the creator of Random house said in 1927. Now the side has become the main dish.

3) Penguin started publishing books in 1935. Its specialty was paperbacks, and not having cover art.

4) Penguin is famous for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, a book which I did not enjoy.

5) One of the first books published by Penguin was A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

-

6) The Penguin (the batman villain) first appeared in 1941.

7) The Penguin owns a night club called the Iceberg Lounge. That sounds like a fun place to hang out.

8) Apparently the Penguin has business connectons with Lex Luthor!!

9) The Penguin doesn't really have any powers. This wikipedia article isn't doing a good job at making the Penguin sound interesting.

10) Burgess Meredith as the Penguin appeared in the TV show The Monkees

11) In Batman Returns, the design for the Penguin is based on the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which I saw in film class once and did enjoy, unlike the book Lady Chatterley's Lover.

12) Politicians compared to the Penguin in comedy: Dick Cheney, FDR, John McCain, and Al Gore.

-

13) The largest penguin is the Emperor Penguin, and the smallest is the Little Blue Penguin.

14) SOME PREHISTORIC PENGUINS WERE AS TALL AS HUMANS!!!!!

Now that we know some facts about Penguins, we can start incorporating them into our everyday lives.

Need a butler? Hire a penguin! No one buttles like a penguin. Starts at $60/hr.

Penguins can officiate weddings for only $500 extra! 20% discount for having your wedding in our Antarctic Resort in Bracebridge by Santa's Village.

If you hire 3 or more penguins, 30% discount.

Penguin-sized tuxedo cost an extra $50 per.

Get your child to teach a Penguin to sing for only $700 for 10 sessions at our exclusive Antarctic resort, in Bracebridge, the premier town in Ontario for polar-themed resorts.

"If a penguin could fly,

would it die, would it die,

if a penguin could fly,

it would die...."

That's one verse from the song "Penguins" the hit album Moping About Penguins by Y.A. Yittle.

Other song titles:

"Penguins or Penguns?"

"I loved a penguin once, it died"

What if we all had guns that were pens? International Espionage experts, take note. No, not that pen! BOOM!

The penguins always win in the end. The penguins always win.

Penguin ninjas are more common than you might think.

Could you imagine eating penguins? Ugh, gross.

I wish those giant penguins from prehistory were still around, working in general stores and driving horses and buggies. That would teach the youth of today to respect their elders and keep their dicks in their pants.

On MONGOLIA

2009-03-31T20:44:00.001-07:00

March 11, 2009

On MONGOLIA

Mr. Garrow jumped off his horse and wiped the sweat off his brow. He felt exhilarated. He had just ridden for thirty minutes over the steppes of Mongolia. He looked out over the hills and felt they were too beautiful for his brain to really comprehend. The green, lush, valley, with a lazily winding river, that led up to the far off peaks that looked like folds in a giant rug. This is where he felt at home, he thought. No, that’s stupid. I don’t live here. This is where Mongolians feel at home.
He looked over at his beautiful, brilliant, wife, whose idea it was to honeymoon in Mongolia. She was tall and thin with long dark, hair an impish, lopsided grin. She was Vietnamese, and they had met as undergraduates at Queen’s University.
“I love you!” he yelled through the wind.
“I love you too!” she yelled back. He couldn’t hear her voice, but he could see what she was saying.
The only thing that Mr. Garrow wished was different right now was that he wished the whole thing had been his idea. Everything they had done since he and Vivian met had been her idea. And the fact was, that was the right course of action, because Vivian was always right when it came to what life-changing experience they would do next. She had shown Mr. Garrow that there was more to life than his limited imagination could conceive. He just wished that he could bring something to the table.
The couple led their horses down the hill towards the yurts where they were staying.
“I got some news I want to share with you,” said Vivian after the wind started to die down.
“Sure, what?” he said.
“I found out just before we left that I’ve been offered a job at McMaster University,” she revealed.
Mr. Garrow immediately smiled. “That’s great!” he said.
“Yeah?” she said, “Do you think I should take it?”
“Of course,” he replied.
“We’d have to move to Hamilton,” she said, “Is that okay with you?”
They were speaking in raised voices because of the wind.
“I can find a job,” he said, and he smiled again reassuringly. Inside, his heart sank a little. He wasn’t that attached to Kingston, where he was now. It was true, he would be able to find a job, he thought. He had finished teacher’s college and already got a couple of years’ experience at a school near Peterborough. He had no plan for the future, but he felt like he was passing up an opportunity he had never considered. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, but it wasn’t teaching high school in Hamilton, Ontario.
They tied their horses up and went into the yurt and made love for the second time that day.
“Sounds like you’re in the wrong line of work, Garrow” said Mr. Koslowski. Mr. Koslowski, Ms. Rattigan and Mr. Hendrickson were staring at him as he gripped his mug and held his hand on his hip. He had forgotten what he was talking about. Oh yeah, he had said that the students were filling time before getting on with their lives, and said no one likes French.
“Why don’t you quit you job before you ruin your students’ lives with your attitude?” suggested Ms. Rattigan.
“You know what?” said Mr. Garrow, “You’re right. Maybe I will quit. Because ever since I became a teacher, all I’ve learned is that teachers, who I thought were so smart when I was a kid, have turned out to be dumb, lazy assholes, just like everyobody else. I’ve lost all respect for teachers ever since I learned how easy it is to be one.”
Mr. Garrow put his cup down, and left the room. He thought he would feel better, but he didn’t.

On MASQUERADE

2009-03-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

March 10, 2009

On MASQUERADE

A History of Masquerades

By R. F. W. Achemedron

Masquerades have long been a way of having parties with the added excitement of hidden identities. If you would like to buy a mask, please call this number: 1-800-MASQRAD. We will sell you a green mask or a red mask.

Egypt

The first masquerade party happened when Pharoah Ptolemy IV was on his way to a sun-worshipping ritual and tripped and fell into a puddle of mud, which obscured his face. He refused to let any of his retainers touch him, and as a consequence arrived at the ritual and no one knew who he was because of his mask (“masque”). Everyone was relieved the pharoah wasn’t there, and started to party. The masqued pharoah joined in, drinks were served, and the pharoah was poisoned and died later that week.

Medieval France

Medieval France was dominated by the feudal system, which meant that the king had first access to any new masks to wear at masques. His old masks would then be handed down to nobles, and their masks would be given to knights, who would bequeath their masks to villeins (or “sans-culottes”), who would give theirs to peasants, who would wear them at “peasant masques”, which were another name for tilling the fields. The advantage of tilling the fields anonymously was that a farmer could till his fields over lunch to get an extra advantage over lazier farmers, without those farmers making catcalls at him. Those lazier farmers would, inevitably, sleep with the hardworking farmer’s wives over lunch.

18th century Vienna

From the years 1754-1760 in Austria, Emperor Joseph II ordered everyone in Vienna to wear a full-body mask. His intention was to eliminate social stratification, but this backfired as the rich were able to buy much more elaborate and jewel-encrusted masks than the poor. These were very cumbersome, being ten times the size of a standard mask, and provided much needed economic support to the city’s mask industry and the back pain industry. The rule was rescinded in 1760 when it was discovered that Joseph II had been murdered in his bath early in 1755 and been replaced by a man in a mask.

20th Century West End London

There is a song in the musical “Phantom of the Opera” called masquerade, and its right at the top of the second half. It has a bunch of people in masks at a masque on a staircase, and they all sang “Masqueraaaaaade! Lalalalalalalalalalalala!” It was one of the best parts, along with when the chandelier falls.

Present Day

Presently, masquerades lack the danger and social inversion of historical masquerades. They are primarily used as Charity Balls organized by the Social Committee in wealthy high schools and universities.

The Future of Masquerades

In the future, experts anticipate that entire planets will be host to “megamasquerades” parties that last for centuries or more, featuring bacchalias in which even nerdy historians will have sexual relations with beautiful ladies, because everyone will be wearing masks.

On ANGKOR WAT

2009-03-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

March 9th, 2009

Today’s game ended in failure, and I drew a sad face on my hangman.

On ANGKOR WAT

“David Davis,” said David Davis to his Busy Bee Time Travel machine.
“NAME REGISTERED” flashed on the display. The lucky thing for David Davis was, this time machine was about as easy to use as an average photocopier. This meant that things easily and frequently went horribly wrong, but at the same time, he could figure things out eventually. As long as it never shut down entirely, which hadn’t happened yet. Come to think of it, it was a lot easier to use than a photocopier, because it didn’t break. It was about the size and shape of a photocopier though. That was what had inspired the comparison in his mind. He shouted “1150” into what he had discovered was the microphone part, and there was a swirling flash, and they travelled in time.
Reggie looked at him in awe. “You did it again, you crazy bastard!” he said, drawing the attention of the Cambodians around him, who were finishing construction on Angkor Wat. Reggie laughed loudly and slapped David on the back.
“Well, I am very qualified,” David lied. He was not at all qualified, and was pretending to be another David Davis of the same name, who had either invented or knew a lot about time travel. Whoever had pioneered time travel, (secretly, because David was pretty sure he would have remembered if someone had invented time travel. It would have been front page news! Of course, David didn’t read the paper, so maybe it had passed him by), he had made it very easy to use this time travel machine, so easy that the fake David Davis had been able to scam his way through what would otherwise be a very embarrassing situation.
After a brief and confusing interview in a sushi restaurant, David had boarded a plane to China, travelled back in time, and with the help of Reggie (annoying), Gus (gruff), Angela (very pretty) and two scholars of ancient China from Bei Jing, they had travelled back in time, after some false starts, to when the Great Wall of China was being built and gathered some information about how the whole thing came about. They interviewed dozens of people, with the aid of their Ancient Chinese translators, from labourers to the emperor of China in 1456.
As far as David could tell, Busy Bee Enterprises was in the business of historical inquiry. But he suspected, based purely on his poor regard of human nature, that there was something else afoot. No movie or TV show that David had ever seen depicted time travel being used for strictly academic purposes, and although TV and movies were not always right about everything, David felt confident that TV and movies was right about time travel and the nefarious purposes it would inevitably be put towards. So David was on his guard for things to go horribly wrong. Especially with that shifty Gus. Gus wore a lot of camouflage, and that sort of wardrobe always made David suspicious. Gus also always had a 5 o’clock shadow, which David could not grow. David hadn’t figured out what Gus’s job was yet.
David was also suspicious of Angela, because she complimented him way more than he deserved. Angela was stunningly beautiful, short with short curly brown hair and huge eyes and big pouty pink lips. Angela was the prime historian on the expedition, and seemed to be in charge on that side of things. Reggie was in charge of the business side of things, keeping everyone on schedule, etc. David trusted Reggie, even though he didn’t like him, because Reggie said every thought he had ever had out loud.
They had two new Cambodian scholars from Phnom Penh, who were very professional, and David felt bad that he hadn’t really got to know them yet. Mostly David tried to stay out of the way while everyone else did their jobs, and when he was called upon, he yelled a year into the machine and there they went. And that’s how they had got to Angkor Wat in 1150, right before the death of King Survayarman II.

On BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM

2009-03-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

March 7th
On BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM

My most persistent memory of the film Bend it Like Beckham is of the main character sitting in her bedroom staring at posters of her idol, David Beckham. David Beckham I mostly remember for kicking that Argentinian in World Cup 1998 or 2002.
It did make me think of childhood heroes. I asked Krista what her childhood heroes were, and she said Lucy Maud Montgomery and Gordon Korman, who was a published author as a teenage boy. I never knew that Krista wanted to be a writer when she was a kid.
My posters as a child were of Kelly Gruber and Felix Potvin, my sports heroes. Now I have a mini hall of fame on the top of my desk with figurines of Joe Carter, Alex Rios and Jose Reyes (which I got free with a video game) also on this shelf is a baseball I got at batting practice before a Jays-Rays tilt last year. A Rays pitcher, whom I am pretty sure was “Big Game” James Shields, threw the ball up to me. The first time I bobbled it back down onto the field, and Shields dutifully tossed it back up to me. My sister-in-law, Tracey, stopped me from bobbling it again. Tracey and her boyfriend Lorne signed the ball, crossed out the stamp that said “practice” and wrote “game-winning ball” overtop. I also have my 2008 Toronto Star Jays Season Pass, my tickets from the Yankees game we went to in Yankee stadium last year, and baseball cards Krista made of Krista and I.
Also on my wall I have old show posters:
- Waiting for Godot, my first big show as an actor in high school, the start of my Beckettesque playwrighting style, and watershed in my high school life. On the poster is a murky black tree, and crumple lines because the copy of the poster my mom plaqued was in my locker for several weeks. It only ran for three performances, which seems crazy compared to the amount of work we put into it. If only I would put that much work into something now.
- Zastrozzi, my first big show in University that I auditioned for and starred in in my first few months at McMaster. Also a big deal. Central to the poster is a stylized Z. I played Verezzi, a mad artist.
- DOGS! The Musical!!, the first time we had a hit show at the Toronto Fringe Festival. The poster stars Zack, the MacIsaac’s family dog, with tie and briefcase in an elevator. In this one I played Mr. Tinklesberry, a Golden Retriever.
- A 3-D picture of the last supper, pilfered from the MacIsaac’s basement for use in the short film Finding Ferdinand. Given to the MacIsaacs by Grandma Fraser, who is on the religious side.
- a pinnie-sticker from the time I auditioned for Second City’s Next Comedy Legend, when I got to the second round. My numbert was 7084.
- Various photos taken by Tracey.
- a metal Queen of Spades card we won for coming second in the London Fringe Festival Poetry Slam while doing the show Science Fair!
- a painting of a Geisha my sister Sandra painted a long time ago.
- degrees! 2 from McMaster, 1 from Humber
- a photo of Winston Churchill, framed.
- 2 postcards of paintings by Whistler
- 2 postcards of paintings by Audrey Jolly. I forget who that is.
- a poster of e-dentity, a big show Krista assisstant directed.
- a flyer from Babies in Danger, the last Players Players show to date (Players Players being the group behind DOGS! The Musical!! And Science Fair!)
- a map of Krista’s Journey Across America
- postcards of an Ancient Swdish Map of the World, depicting trolls, dragons, sea monsters, the devil, etc.
- a poster of coquettes twirling umbrellas. Not mine.

On MECHANICAL BULL

2009-03-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

March 6th
On MECHANICAL BULL

Once upon a time there was a tiny village in Bavaria. In this village there lived the largest woman in the world and the smallest man in the world, who were due to be wed in a hilltop wedding on a summer’s day. Everyone in the village, whose population was 300, was invited to the wedding, and they had all made fine suits and dresses for the occasion in traditional Bavarian style.
When the day of the wedding came, the largest woman in the world, whose nam was Petunia, started walking down the aisle, with all the men and women and children of the village looking back at her from their out-of-doors chairs that had been arranged on the hilltop. The world’s smallest man, whose name was Gerald, was smoking a cigarette happily and remarking to the priest on how beautiful his bride was as she strode thundrously down the makeshift aisle.
All of a sudden, a mechanical roar was heard and people started to flee in terror. A 20-foot-tall mechanical bull, made of chrome steel with copper eyes, golden horns and bronze haunches, hurled itself into the wedding area, tossing people this way and that. It finally hoisted Petunia up; delivering her neatly into a compartment that opened up in its back, and ran off into the dark woods.
Gerald immediately ran after her and the bull, still wearing his best suit. And smoking a cigarette, so short that it threatened to set aflame his neatly trimmed moustache. The woods were very frightening to such a tiny man, but he was able to evade any passing dinosaurs by hiding under a bushel. Soon he came upon a gluten-free gingerbread house, where a witch lived.
The witch walked out of the front door of the house.
“Ahhh, Gerard, my sweet!” she cackled, “Come to fetch your fetching wife, I see?”
“You are the one who stole my wife with your mechanical bull?” said Gerard in a German accent.
“Yes,” wailed the witch, “I got a blacksmith/mechanic to make it for me when I kidnapped his wife!”
“Did you give him his wife back when he made it for you?” asked Gerard.
“Yes of course. I always keep my word,” replied the witch, “And have I got a deal for you. All you have to do to get your wife back is these three tasks: fetch for me the oldest bottle of wine in the world, the tastiest pizza in the world, but make sure it is gluten free, and also kill the world’s smartest dog!”
Gerard narrowed his eyes thoughfully. “I will do as you request,” he said.
“Good!” said the witch wartily, “I’ll wait here in my front yard until you return.
Gerard walked down the path through the woods, and then cut through the woods in a circular pattern so that he approached the gluten-free gingerbread house from the other side. He didn’t mind fetching the wine and pizza, but killing dogs was beyond the pale as far as he was concerned. Furthermore, if it was the smartest dog in the world, it might be on the brink of curing cancer or something, and he didn’t want that on his conscience.
So he snuck in through a gumdrop window on the back side of the house. True to her word, the witch was patiently waiting in her front yard. The mechanical bull was fast asleep in the centre of the cottage, and Gerard could hear his wife weeping inside of it. Gerard looked around the cottage, and found a rope, an oil can, several boxes of unopened Mentos, a gun, a wrench, a photo album, a jar of ooze, a hieroglyphics-to-German dictionary, a half-eaten gluten-free sandwich, eighteen jars of tomato paste, a old VHS copy of Eraser with Arnold Schwartzenegger, and a swastika armband. He took the wrench and loosened all of the nuts on the mechanical bull. Some of them he had to climb pretty high on the bull to loosen, but he was a good climber.
When he was done that, he pulled a bullhorn out of his pocket that he had brought to the wedding just in case, and sounded a mighty noise. The mechanical bull awoke with a start.
“I have three questions-“ the mechanical bull started to say before completely falling apart, allowing Petunia to escape. Gerard clambered up on Petunia’s back and Petunia walked right through the back wall of the gluten-free gingerbread house. They ran all the way back home to the village, and were married for good the very next day. They were married for 70 years, and to this day that witch is still in her front yard waiting for the return of Gerard, as good as her word.

On ROCKET SCIENTIST

2009-03-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

March 5th

On ROCKET SCIENTIST

“What are you, some kind of fucking rocket scientist?”
Peter jerked his head up suddenly. “What?”
“What are you trying to do here?” asked John Fromme, the employee who had been assigned to teach him his job.
Peter looked up at the computer screen, bright white and blue. He had forgotten where he was for a moment. The memory of what he was trying to do squeezed past the headache that was lodged in his brain. He was…. helping… John… email. Even though John was teaching him how to do the job, Peter was helping him figure out his email.
“Oh I get it,” said John, eyes lighting up in recognition. Peter had fixed his problem without even thinking about it. Peter had just started to use John’s email naturally, like he would have his own email, and whatever John was too dumb to figure out had become apparent.
“No problem,” said Peter, before John could say thank you. Peter had been doing this job for three days, and he still had no idea what the purpose of this department was. It was called “lending”, and he knew how to make the numbers all work so that the people he called upstairs when he was done were happy, but he didn’t understand what it meant. Peter wondered how weird it would look if he went to the bathroom again. He had gone twenty minutes ago, and been chugging on his water bottle ever since.
“Thanks!” said John, “You’re a real tech wiz!”
Peter wasn’t a tech wiz. He was just surrounded by morons.
Just then Steve, their boss, stopped by. Steve was having a hard time figuring out what to do with Peter. Steve didn’t need anyone extra, but this boss’s kid or whoever he was had to go somewhere. He had rotated him, shadowing him with all the employees that weren’t sociopaths. After today, he was going to have to repeat shadow a job, or sit with Tim, who did his job well, but didn’t relate well with others.
“So, how are you two getting along?” asked Steve.
“Good,” said Peter.
“Good,” said John Fromme.
Suddenly Steve saw the entire next year, maybe two, of having this bright but uninspired kid lugging himself around the office, excusing himself to go to the bathroom every twenty minutes, fixing everyone’s email, playing video games and taking naps at his cubicle. Steve wondered why he was doing the job that he was, an acceptable job. Poor choice.
John Fromme was excited, because now he could use his email to email that girl he met last night at that meeting for timeshares! Who knows, a few dates, maybe they could get their own timeshare together!
“YOU’RE DOING A FANTASTIC JOB!” yelled John. Half the people in the office turned around and looked at John for a minute, and then turned back. Whoops, too loud. Another slipup like that and everyone would figure out that John was a total weirdo, who only liked girls with red hair! He felt so guilty! So many hours logged on red head websites! He didn’t want anyone to know!
“Whoa! Sounds like you’re fitting in well here, Pete,” said Steve.
“Sorry, I’m just really glad to have email back,” said John.

On GAS STATION

2009-03-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

March 4th

On GAS STATION

(or, as it’s known in the United Kingdom, a ‘filling station’)

A man driving a silver Cadillac was driving down a highway outside St. Louis, Missouri when he spotted a sign for a gas station. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and had a Burt Reynolds mustache. He was wearing a brown suit, orange business shit and a tie with a modern design. He had a huge cigar in his mouth, and the open window was allowing the breeze to flap through his shock of white hair. He had a ruddy complexion.
He pulled into the gas station, which had only two pumps. The pumps were located under a large white structure made of aluminum alloy, and had a swooping aspect to it that made it appear like a space saddle. The name of the gas station was ‘75’ and it was obviously an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the gas station ‘76’. The number ‘75’ was printed in blue on an orange sphere, which was on top of a pole 60 feet high so as to be seen from the highway.
The man in the cadillac drove up beside the first pump, and a youth in grey coveralls hopped up from the stool he was sitting on, reading a newspaper, and hurried over to the car. The man hadn’t realized it was a full-serve station. He didn’t see many of those anymore.
“Fill ‘er up, mister?” asked the youth. It was a tall youth, with a hunched over posture, short, spiky blond hair, a pale complexion with an array of pimples, and puffy, formless red lips.
“Yeah, I guess,” frowned the man. He put his cigar into the car’s ashtray. He watched the youth as he went about opening the gas tank on the cadillac, inserting the nozzle, and started pumping the gas. The man in the sunglasses leaned out the driver’s seat window.
“Hey, are you new at this job?” he asked.
“Just started today,” replied the gas jockey.
“You’re pretty good at it,” complimented the man.
“Thank you, sir,” replied the youth graciously, “I try my best.”
“Well, that’s all anyone can ask, ain’t it?” said the man, and smiled, showing a silver tooth. “Hey, you wanna know a secret?”
The youth’s face revealed hesitation and mistrust. “I guess so,” he said. There was a deep click, and the nozzle stopped releasing gas. The youth put the nozzle back on the side of the pump, where it rested like the arm of a short waitress.
“Come here,” said the mysterious man.
The youth looked back at the station office, but no co-worker was there to help him if this turned into something weird. Against his better judgment, the youth walked up to the driver’s side window, and leaned against the other pump.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Right down here,” clarified the man, motioning with his hand that he wanted to whisper in the youth’s ear.
The youth leaned down, pale pink ear right by the man’s tobacco-stained lips.
“This station,” said the man in a hissing whisper, “this station is more than these two pumps, this overhang, and that office. This station has a whole tank filled with gas underneath here, big as a fucking submarine. And that gas is just ready and waiting for someone to light a match and then – boom! – Arrivaderchi, amigo. You gone.”
The youth lifted his head back up and tried to take in what the man had said. None of the facts he had spoken were news to him, but the way he put it together scared the bejesus out if him. After a minute of looking around for miscreants who might be coming by with a lit match, he turned back to where the car was, only to find the man had driven off, without paying. What a tool.

On UMA THURMAN

2009-03-25T17:14:00.002-07:00

March 3rd
On UMA THURMAN

An Exclusive Celebrity Interview with Uma Thurman

By John T. Nohands

JTN: Hello, we’re here with famous actress Uma Thurman. Uma, it is clear, looking at your body of work, that three films stand out as masterpieces: Liasons Dangereuse (Dangerous Liasons), Pulp Fiction, and the Truth About Cats and Dogs.
UT: And Kill Bill.
JTN: I guess. What was it like, working with Janeane Garafolo?
UT: You think those were my greatest films?
JTN: You think maybe not Pulp Fiction?
UT: I think maybe not the Truth About Cats and Dogs.
JTN: What is the truth about cats and dogs?
UT: I don’t remember.
JTN: Let’s move on to another topic. When I was in high school, my friend Jonathan Corbin used to do a hilarious impression of you eatig a hamburger. Could you maybe eat a hamburger right now?
UT: I’m a vegetarian.
JTN: Hmmm. So you would never do this (swings his arms manically from side to side, desperately trying to bite a mime hamburger that he has in one of his hands.)
UT: Maybe with a veggie burger. I do have good control over my arms though.
JTN: You should be a model or something. You’re pretty.
UT: I am a model.
JTN: Slumdog or Milk?
UT: Both good films.
JTN: Copout.
UT: Did you have any questions about Quentin Tarnatino or anything?
JTN: Ah, what am I doing with my life?
UT: Are you okay?
JTN: I just had those two questions, the one about the three films and the one about my friend’s impression of you. The rest I made up just now.
UT: Well, those were good questions.
JTN: Not really. Thank you for saying so. I’m a terrible interviewer. I’m sorry you have to be here for this.
UT: It’s okay, it’s okay, we all go through moments like this.
JTN: I’m pretty sure my wife is cheating on me.
UT: You think so? Why?
JTN: She’s sleeping with some guy.
UT: That sounds like she definitely is then. How long have you been married?
JTN: Three years. Best years of my life.
UT: Why would she cheat on you?
JTN, Ah, my dick don’t work.
UT: What if I showed you one of my breasts?
JTN: Maybe. (awkward pause) Are you going to show me one of your breasts now?
UT: No. That was a hypothetical question.
JTN: Aaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuugggggh! What else can go wrong?
UT: I feel like this interview isn’t going well. Here’s some other questions people usually ask me: “What was it like growing up with such a weird name?”
JTN: (mumbling) What was it like growing up with a stupid name.
UT: What did you say?
JTN: I SAID WHAT WAS IT LIKE GROWING UP WITH NO HANDS?
UT: I did have hands. Still do.
JTN: Oh yeah. Nohands is my last name. Talk about weird names! Are we bonding right now over having weird names?
UT: If it would make you feel better to think so.
JTN: Even though I know you are being patronizing towards me right now, I appreciate the effort you’ve made to help me get my life back together.
UT: Good. I’m glad we had this talk. Now go divorce your wife. It’s better if you don’t let these things drag out.
JTN: Thant’s good advice.

On SYDNEY

2009-03-25T17:14:00.001-07:00

March 2nd

On SYDNEY

The camera pans down from space, downwards and to the right, for several seconds, towards the earth. On the earth is a large island, haphazardly shaped, and on the very Southeastern part of this island, which is more the size of a continent, are a mass of very bright lights. As we get closer and closer ever closer to our destiniation, we can see that we are in the centre of a sprawling city, and there is movement everywhere, rhythmic and sinuous. It is people, out on the streets, dancing, wearing fluorescet tube tops and acid wash jeans. Today is Party day, the day after Party Prep day, the day before Clean Up day, and the whole world is united as one. People are dressed in Crocadile Dundee hats and drinking Koala brand drinks.
This is Sydney, Australia, and the year is 2045. It is the eighties future.
-
A gent wearing a Duran Duran style suit jacket over a bright blue t-shirt with garish sunglasses (even though it is night!) approaches a lady. The lady’s jeans are pulled up very high, the tails of her blouse are tied into a knot, and her hair is crimped and pulled into a pony tail. They sing in unison, in synthesized voices:
“How are you?
How are you today?
Do you want to go see a movie?
Maybe one with Michael J. Foxoxoxoxoxoxox?”
The end of their conversation reverbs into the night and off the leotards and bangles of those dancing around them.
“Aren’t you gladadadadadad?
We live in the eighties future?”
They ask each other.
-
In 1993, a man named Kyle Turnblow realized that things were changing, that the fashions and the ideals and fads of the eighties were almost gone. So he did something about it: he travelled back in time to 1988, and constructed a machine that meant time went on but fashion stayed the same. Ronald Reagan lived forever, Saved by the Bell was always on and the Cold War was always on the brink of dying. It was the eighties future.
-
Turns out that man in the jacket and shirt and sunglasses was Kyle, and the girl’s name was Stephanie, and they were the king and queen of the world. They did cocaine for fun, because its addictive properties had been eliminated by science. They looked up through their skyroof as they made love, and saw Ronald Reagan floating by in a spacesuit, giving them the thumbs up.
Kyle had no regrets, the world was everything he wanted it to be. The environment was saved, apartheid was basically over, and he had saved the whales himself. Kyle had the gift of not changing, he stayed true to himself and that meant he didn’t care that he’d been listening to Milli Vanilli for sixty years, it was umpteen times better than finding out the awful truth. After Kyle was finished making love to his queen, he floated up, naked, through his skyroof and into the sky. He exploded into a million pixels, and lodged himself within every man, woman and child on earth.
And then, the earth smiled, and drank a Coke.

On CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

2009-03-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

February 28th
On CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

Chicken Noodle Soup – Nickelodeon, 7am, Saturdays

Chicken Noodle Soup follows the madcap, wacky adventures of Chicken, an appropriately named six foot tall chicken, and Noodle, his rodent companion.

April 4th Episode 2X04

In this episode, Chicken learns to use the letter S while building a soapbox derby racing car with Noodle, who is disqualified from the race for being a rat. Chicken goes on to win the competition by himself, an attempt to erase all evidence that Noodle existed, trying to claim credit for himself for all posterity.

April 11th Episode 2X05

In this episode, Noodle haunts Chicken’s dreams in return for betraying him in last week’s soapbox derby adventure. No matter how many times Chicken kills Noodle with a shotgun in his dream, Noodle keeps coming back night after night. Finally, one day, Chicken wakes up to find he’s eaten his pillow, and his cat Tabitha is a bloody mess in the kitchen, run through with shot. Also, Chicken learns about the letter L.

April 18th Episode 2X06

Chicken travels to Noodle’s hometown, Ratsburg, in attempt to reconnect with his old buddy and learn about the letter R and the number 1666.

April 25th Episode 2X07

Chicken is bedridden with the bubonic plague. He has feverish dreams where Noodle, Tabitha and the letter Q visit him and torment him with guilt.
May 2nd Episode 2X08

Noodle re-emerges from hiding in shame to find a post-apocolyptic wasteland where everyone except the rats and cockroaches has passed away as a result of the bubonic plague combined with smallpox. He discovers that he has the ability to see ghosts when he encounters Chicken, but cannot stab him. Also, the letter Z has enslaved the people of earth.

May 9th Episode 2X09

12,000 years in the future the ghosts of Chicken and Noodle, having reconciled their differences, observe a society of half-rat half-cockroach people, who, on the service, seem happy serving their letter-of-the-alphabet overlords. But are they?

May 16th Episode 2X10

12992499249593485834529323746827634871623919288729346491629319264726348791623987192642764297634912739163482764287364196239164827634876926373772619283791266129831987239612961926192639123491829

May 23rd Episode 2X11

After a fifteen year period where the letters of the alphabet are destroyed, the rat-cockroach revolution reaches its Thermidorian period. Letters are reintroduced into society on a temporary basis. Meanwhile, Chicken and Noodle make another soapbox derby racer.

May 30th Episode 2X12

Chicken wakes up and discovers it was all a dream! Noodle wakes up and realizes that Chicken is dreaming when he dreamed that it was all a dream, and wakes Chicken up. They continue to live as ghosts in a post-apocalyptic future.

June 6th Episode 2X13

In an episode-long homage to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Chicken and Noodle are led by the ghost of Grover from Sesame Street through Hell, Purgatory and finally into heaven, where they meet God.

June 13th Episode 2X14

God sends Chicken and Noodle to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West.

June 20th Episode 2X15

In a two-hour season finale, Chicken and Noodle are suspended in a bizarre world between worlds where they can only communicate to each other through blinking. After many silly attempts to communicate, they finally settle on a blink-language of their own invention, and discover the true meaning of friendship.

On NEW ZEALAND

2009-03-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

February 27th
On NEW ZEALAND
For a while after Lord of the Rings, New Zealand was the faddish place to go to discover one’s self, kind of like Machu Picchu is now. My roommate Jordan (a girl) went to New Zealand and sent me back a postcard with hundreds of sheep on it, and a joke that I think was along the lines of ‘we outnumber the humans 4 to 1!” My memory is hazy. She had a great time though.
My parents went to Machu Picchu last year, and now their house is Inca-themed (except for my bedroom, which is still African, and the children’s bathroom, which is Japanese. My parent’s house is like the Epcot Centre.) I have no inclination to go, as my travel ambitions these days are limited to Major League Ball Parks. Although I’d like to take Krista to Greece someday.

-

I used to go and watch the Lord of the Rings movies with my sisters the weekend they came out, in the early aughts. I was impressed more and more as the series went on at Peter Jackson’s ability to tell a story on so grand a scale. I eventually got the entire thing on DVD and watched all of the special features while I was living on Crawford Avenue, and working at the bank. Every day before work, I would watch a short documentary on makeup, or foley sound, or CGI, and every documentary had at least one ‘Wow!” moment. There were a lot of special features.

-

My favourite show on TV right now is Flight of the Conchords, and that’s true of everyone else in my demographic as well, apparently. When I heard they were playing Massey Hall this April, I tried to get tickets, and I almost got one online, but I gave it up because I wanted to try and get three tickets for Matt, Taralyn and I. Luckily, I work for Massey Hall anyway, so I’ll still be able to enjoy the show with only a mild risk of having to usher people. Krista will be seeing them in Vancouver, where she will be on her tour of different Arbys across America. We paid for that with our Stub Hub gift certificates. Stub Hub is a ticket resale website, where you can get hot tickets for only several times the price. We had received the gift certificates from my in-laws at our wedding shower.
I had severely underestimated the popularity of the Conchords. I thought that I was the only one who knew of thir brilliance, but when I went to work, everyone was talking about them and reserving choice ushering spots for their shows. Matt, my comedy partner, and I have written a spec script of Flight of the Conchords, and it is quite funny. Ask me to show it to you some time.
-
In conclusion, New Zealand is

a) a place I’ve never been, and possibly never will
b) where they filmed Lord of the Rings, a series of films I have enjoyed
c) was briefly a very popular tourist destination
d) where my favourites, the Flight of the Conchords are from
e) superior to Old Zealand, which may or may not be in the Netherlands

On SNOWFLAKE

2009-03-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

February 26th

On SNOWFLAKE
Whenever I think of my childhood, I feel sad. I didn’t have bad parents or live in a harsh environment – quite the opposite. We had everything we needed, but weren’t too spoiled. Some of the time I had few friends, and that made me sad, bitter and alone, especially in grade six and grade eight. When I think of me as a kid, though, I think of unfulfilled potential and feel ashamed.
When I was very young, my parents took me skating at the skating rink at Mississauga City Hall. Mississauga doesn’t have a real downtown, being a collection of suburban developments clustered around villages, like Port Credit, Clarkson, or Streetsville. City Hall is right beside Square One, the biggest mall in Mississauga and the biggest in Ontario. When it was built in the early 70s, before Mississauga existed, it was the second shopping centre in Canada, and it was surrounded by farmers fields. Then they formed Mississauga in 1974, and put City Hall, the Central Library and the Living Arts Centre next to the mall, Mississauga’s raison d’etre.
I didn’t last long skating. It was hard, and I wasn’t getting anywhere fast. Instead I went and played in the nearby snowbanks, imagining them to be castles that I ruled by tromping around the parapets in my boots, making tunnels
My mother later related this story as the reason se never enrolled me in hockey. When I was 13, I was struck with Maple Leafs fever and an idolization of Felix Potvin. I decided one day to make a last ditch attempt at becoming a hockey player, a goalie specifically. My mom suggested I start by taking skating lessons. I bought a Cooper hockey helmet, which I thought looked atrocious on me (I don’t know why, it was a normal hockey helmet). A lot of the other kids in the beginner’s skating class I took at the local arena didn’t speak English, and wore bicycle helmets. I was never completely satisfied with how tight my skates were, and my feet hurt a lot when I skated. I think I stuck it out for the whole class, but then I hung up my helmet. It was too scary, and all my hockey-playing friends were years and years ahead of me. I was never going to win the Stanley Cup, and play goal for the Leafs.
If I had consistently played and just wasn’t good enough, or had no interest at all in the sport, I would have felt better about it. It was just that I barely tried, and turned back at the first sign of adversity, that makes me sad. It makes me doubt (not all the time, but sometimes) whether I have what it takes to stick it out and follow my dreams.
I conclusion, I grew up in an extremely suburban setting, with suburban Canadian dreams, which I barely pursued. Another interpretation of the story, though, is that my real destiny is making snow castles, and that my mom was right to think I wasn’t a hockey player. That in a cookie cutter world, I, Dave, was a completely individual individual, who danced to the beat of a different drummer, and was my own unique snowflake. That’s why I am a comedian now, an outsider, laughing at the world, and using my pain for good. It’s open to interpretation.

On BIG BIRD

2009-03-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

February 25th
On BIG BIRD

Chet, Michael French, Marianne and Sally were eating their lunch together in the cafeteria. They were nostalgizing.
“Remember how everyone used to watch Sesame Street, but no one wanted to admit it to their friends?” Michael French laughed, “That was how we made fun of people, by saying they watched Sesame Street.”
“What was with Big Bird?” said Chet, who then turned serious. “You guys, do you think Snuffleupagus was real or not?” the whole table burst out laughing.
“I had a thousand barbies!” yelled Sally.
“And remember Hot Looks!” squealed Marianne.
And so on. In any situation with a passel of youths, Chet had discovered, the most surefire topic of conversation was always the Toys and TV shows of the past. Chet had cleverly steered the conversation this way by mentioning Tranformers. The reason that the conversation needed steering was because Marianne was about to bring up the fact that Chet and Sue Cantor were Dating. Chet didn’t want to talk about that because a) Chet was worried Marianne would be mad at him, even though she had no right to be because Marianne and Chet weren’t going out, and b) Chet was terrified of Sue Cantor and wasn’t sure how he felt about the situation. He had been avoiding Sue for days. Sue Cantor was new to the school, super tall, and had huge boobs. She had selected Chet within a week of transferring as her new boyfriend, and Chet was too flattered and scared to say no. It was only a matter of time before Sue realized Chet was a nerd, and dumped him. In the meantime, they had gone on no dates, and hung around awkwardly by the portables once. Sue had also made friends with Marisa, an obnoxious girl who had the aura of being from a broken home.
“I was so pissed when Ninja Turtles took the place of Transformers,” declared Chet, “I was like, but they don’t transform!”
“Totally,” Michael French said.
Chet suddenly wished that this moment would last forever. Here he was, three good friends, talking and laughing. They weren’t the most popular kids in school, Michael French especially, but they had carved out their own niche and no one really bothered them. Who knew where the future lay? In another couple years, they would graduate, go to university, and maybe never see each other again.
“Hey guys,” Chet said, suddenly solemn, “Let’s make sure we stay friends forever. No matter what happens, let’s always stay in touch.”
“Yeah!” said Sally.
“Deal!” said Marianne.
All four of them but their hands into the centre of the table, and did a spontaneous weird four-way handshake.
“Team forever!” said Michael French, a bit too loudly.
“Hey Team Forever,” said Sue Cantor, who had appeared out of nowhere, “I gotta talk with Captain Chet here.” Sue had an unnaturally deep voice.
“Hi Team Forever!” chirped Marisa, laying on the sarcasm thickly.
“Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of my friends,” said Chet in a high pitched voice.
“Okay, fine. I’m dumping you,” said Sue.
“You can’t dump him in front of everyone like that!” Marianne said, coming to Chet’s defense.
“Whatever, shut up, you can have him all to yourself now anyway everyone knows you like him,” Marisa said. This was turning into a debacle.
“Remember Thundercats?” said Chet weakly, at the same time that Marianne said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Go back to Greentree you fucking skank!”
And that was how a conversation about Transformers turned into a huge fight, and Sue Cantor ended up with a bloody nose, and Marianne got a black eye. Marisa and Sally got some scratches on their arms. Chet and Michael French decided to stay out of it, because they didn’t want to hit girls. They both agreed later though, that it was pretty cool that chicks were fighting over Chet. Michael French even worked it out somehow that he was a romantic object in the fracas too, which was an imaginative hypothesis, to say the least.

On HYBRID CAR

2009-03-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

February 24th
On HYBRID CAR
This is an urgent bulletin. Los Angeles has just been ravaged by a marauding group of Hybrid Cars. Half man, half car, all menace, these robocars are like Robocop but have no sense of responsibility. Already 57 old ladies have been run down. On observer described a hybrid car as having a normal human body but with a full sized car for a head. He said he was surprised the hybrid’s neck did not break under the pressure of holding up its car head.
“I was running away from the fire, and there she was. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me, a lady with a car for a head. That’s what we get for going too green too soon, I guess.”

-

We are on day 3 of the hybrid car story. The hybrid cars have spread out in waves from Los Angeles, their stronghold, and are now attempting to make it over the Mexican border into Tijuana. One particularly dangerous variety is a bus that has a hundred human legs, like a centipede. Few have lived to describe it. President Obama is developing new methods to counter the hybrid car insurgency, after the first efforts to bomb the shit out of them was prevented by their powerful grills, which kind of look like mouths.

-

In Day 37 of the Hybrid Car Crisis, the hybrid cars have taken over 23 of the 50 American states, and all of Mexico and Central America down to the Panama Canal. The hybrid cars have elected their own government, after an election last Tuesday where the Green party won an overwhelming victory.

-

In a tragic development, bands of non-hybrids (as normal humans are now called) have been foolishly wandering into hybrid territory, hoping to join what has been described by the hybrids’ press releases as a utopian society. While no non-hybrids have been able to witness this new and supposedly better society, the few survivors of these bands of optimists have described horrifying, bloody, massacres, typified by deafening horn honking and corpses with cartoon-like tire tread marks all over their bodies.

-

This will be my final broadcast. 154 days after the start of the Hybrid Care Crisis, the rolling thunder of horrifying man-cars has reached the broadcast studio where I have resided for the past month. As I speak, I can hear the vroom vroom vrooming of the monstrosities, and the bang bang bang of busipedes knocking down our doors like a battering ram. There are fires everywhere, as far as the eye can see. I have already seen my wife and children turned into horrifying grotesqueries, parodies of their former selves. Yes, if anyone listening does not know the terrible secret, it is this: the enemy is us. All humans that survive the car-men’s initial attacks have been transformed, borg-like, into hybrid cars themselves. But I will die before they turn my beautiful, rugged face into a rusty metal grill. Before they turn my masculine, fluid, deep voice into a wailing horn, I will sacrifice my life. It has been an honor to serve you. I am Bob Renfro. Good night.

On INTERNET CAFE

2009-03-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

February 23rd
On INTERNET CAFÉ

In Paris in the 1990s, Internet cafes were new and exciting. That was how Ms. Rattigan remembered it. As she was pretending to read her novel in the staff room, a wet floppy tear landed on the word ‘chest’, and she remembered the chest of the English man she had met in a Parisian internet café. His chest was very thin, and concave in the sternum. She remembered it bobbing up and down as they had made love in her tiny garret, he guzzling a mike’s hard lemonade and she wide-eyed, taking in the romantic power of the moment, feeling deliciously used by this slight Brit.
She had been drinking coffee, wearing sunglasses and looking up salon.com (there was a great article: ‘Why can’t a woman write the great American novel?’) in the internet café when the ‘bloke’ arrived, wearing a Union Jack t-shirt, no less, with a bunch of other ‘football’ hooligans. Ms. Rattigan had been 28 years old, having graduated from teachers’ college and teaching for several years, saving up for this trip to the capital of France.
The shouting Englishmen were on their way to a footy match, and were taking joy in the newness of the internet by yelling their email addresses at each other, so they could send each other electronic mail between terminals a few feet away from each other. They thought that no one else understood English, but Ms. Rattigan acted fast, memorizing the skinny lad’s email and sending him a flirtatious email. One thing led to another, and that evening, after watching England lose, the young Angle made love to her as consolation.
The rush of memories faded away and Ms. Rattigan returned to the fluorescent cinder-block humdrum staff room. This was the most far away place in the world from Paris, especially when she was forced to listen to two grown men argue about the pronunciation of the name of a whale.
As usual, no one noticed her tears. Mr. Hendrickson threw the textbook across the room and she screamed in terror. She had never seen Mr. Hendrickson this emotional. He loosened his tie, and his eyes were getting a little watery.
“That’s impossible! That means that every time I’ve read the word ‘Humpback’, my brain must have been correcting it to ‘Hunchback’” he yelled, “Why would I do that to myself?”
Mr. Garrow sat down and picked up his mug of coffee. After provoking him, he was now acting as if the entire thing was no big deal, making Mr. Hendrickson look even more ridiculous.
“Relax, Eddie,” he said, “those kids probably weren’t even listening to you anyway. They’re just here to fill time until they can finally leave.”
Ms. Rattigan audibly gasped. Was this really what Mr. Garrow thought? He was even more of a cancerous presence than she had thought.
“How can you say that?” she asked.
“What?” he replied, “How many of your kids are gonna say a word of French once they get out of here? The only reason they take French is to keep their parents happy. No one likes French.”
“I like French!’ she declared, tears running down her face, her jowls wobbling, “And if you had ever travelled to Europe, you would see why. You’ve probably never even been outside of Ontario.”

On REAL ESTATE AGENT

2009-03-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

February 21st
On REAL ESTATE AGENT
Sam Koslowski sat back in his chair and smiled at the embarrassment that Mr. Hendrickson was about to experience. He was wearing a grey T-shirt that said Forest Glen Athletics and red gym shorts. He had a red, ruddy face that seemed to be covered in stubble all the way up to the top of his shaved head. He didn’t like Eddie Hendrickson, who liked his job too much for Sam’s taste. Eddie was currently leafing through one of the science textbooks that were stacked in the corner of the room, seeking the elusive Hunchback Whale. He wouldn’t find it. Sam was just a gym teacher, but even he knew that. What was disturbing was how determined Garrow was to point out that Hendrickson had just spent over an hour lying to children. These kids, who knows, would take Mr. Hendrickson’s lesson to heart, and start raving to their parents about Hunchback Whales, which, Sam imagined, lived at the Aquarium of Notre Dame. Sam smiled at his clever joke.
The day before, Sunday, Sam and his wife had gone house hunting. Sam’s wife, Agnes, was 45, like Sam was, and ugly, like Sam was. It was a good matchup, and Sam loved her enough that sex was pretty good. But she was horrible to look at. Schrunched up face, all wrinkles and polyps. Really short too, you feel like you could play basketball with her. The total opposite of this real estate agent that was showing them around a dump that they knew, as soon as they saw it, was not for them.
The girl was very young, and taller than Sam, who topped out at 5’ 6”. She was willowy with big tits and a long face with big eyes and a delicate nose. She looked like she was from the eighties, and had a feathered haircut and wore one of those thin shirt dresses with a little sweater around it. Her voice was a lot more nervous than her walk. Sam guessed that it must have been one of the first houses she had ever had to sell. Sam got a real crush on the girl and probably embarrassed himself by asking lots of stupid questions so she would keep talking and moving around and gesticulating. Agnes, who was feeling sunny yesterday, didn’t notice or pretended not to. She knew that Sam had crushes on girls, and she wasn’t jealous or protective. Sam and Agnes had a very relaxed relationship because they both knew they other didn’t really have any other options, and so they would make the best of it. It sounded sadder than it was.
That was Sam’s attitude towards life, really: make the best of it. Enjoy your life with your ugly wife who wouldn’t cheat on you, and when circumstances bring you a pretty girl, get yourself an eyeful and move on with your life. No imaginings necessary, no obsessions, because nothing was gonna happen and Sam was happy with that. This Garrow, though, this new guy, was a real shit disturber. He was really out to embarrass Eddie Hendrickson. Hendrickson was a dummy, that was true, but Garrow wanted to rub it in the face of Sam and the French teacher who was always crying.
“Hendrickson, it is Humpback,” Sam said in his gravelly voice, “Garrow, stop bothering him about it.”
“I just can’t believe you know so much about Humpback Whales, but you don’t know what they’re called,” Mr. Garrow explained.
“Just leave him be, I’m trying to read,” said Sam, and he harrumphed and held up the newspaper in front of his face, flicking it out for effect.

On HUMPBACK WHALE

2009-03-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

February 20th
On HUMPBACK WHALE

Mr. Hendrickson bounded into the staff room, fresh off a fantastic Grade 11 Biology class. Today’s lesson had been all about the Hunchback Whale. How the Hunchback Whale used to be endangered, and had now graduated to the status of “Least Concern”, how the Hunchback Whale was related to the Blue Whale, and the Grey Whale, taking careful attention to avoid talking about the Sperm Whale, because he didn’t want to start a laughter riot. The Hunchback Whale wasn’t on the Grade 11 curriculum, but Mr. Hendrickson was ahead of schedule, and liked to add a few lessons of interest to every term, a couple of bonus topics that wouldn’t be on the test, but that the kids would clearly enjoy.
And enjoy they did! Looking around and seeing his class, hushed, hanging on his every word, ready for the next plot twist in the tale of the Hunchback Whale, that was what kept Mr. Hendrickson waking up each morning. The Hunchback Whales in the Indian Ocean don’t migrate like other Hunchback Whales – but why not? Because India gets in the way, of course! The children smile, and realize the answer was implicit in the question! Now we were having fun!
The other staff members in the staff lounge were not as perky as Mr. Hendrickson. There was Mr. Koslowski, the fat gym teacher, Ms. Rattigan, the clinically depressed French teacher, and Mr. Garrow, an English teacher who had recently been transferred from another school. Mr. Garrow’s wife was a university professor, and had just got a new job at the local university. Mr. Garrow, correctly assuming he could get a teaching job anywhere, had followed her. Mr. Garrow was a tall, thin man, in his late 30s, who looked like the sparkle in his eyes had gone out. He held his coffee mug tightly, and read the newspaper with a sense of detachment.
“Good morning, Mr. Garrow,” Mr. Hendrickson announced cheerfully, walking over to the coffee station.
“Good morning, Eddie,” Mr. Garrow replied civilly. “How was your class?”
Mr. Hendrickson’s eyes lit up more. “It was fantastic,” he said, “I did a lesson I cooked up on the Hunchback Whale.”
Mr. Garrow nodded while reading, and then looked up. “The what?”
“The Hunchback Whale,” Mr. Hendrickson continued, glad of the interest. “It’s not on the curriculum, but-“
“Did you say the Hunchback Whale?” Mr. Garrow asked, in disbelief. Mr. Hendrickson was surprised Mr. Garrow had never heard of the Hunchback whale. He gathered his thoughts, and prepared to give Mr. Garrow an encapsulated version of the lesson he’d just given his class.
“Don’t you mean the Humpback Whale?” Mr. Garrow asked. Mr. Koslowski and Ms. Rattigan were looking up from their sports section and romance novel, respectively, and paying attention.
Mr. Hendrickson paused. “The Humpback Whale?” he said, “That doesn’t sound right. It’s the Hunchback Whale.”
Mr. Garrow smiled sardonically. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the Humpback whale,” he said.
“I just lectured on the Hunchback Whale for seventy minutes, Mr. Garrow,” said Mr Hendrickson, “I know what it’s called.”
“And it’s called the HUMP,” Mr. Garrow enunciated, “BACK WHALE”

On FASHION SHOW

2009-03-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

February 19th, 2009

On FASHION SHOW

Miranda flipped through the channels on TV. On one was a reality show with a skank being interviewed. She was getting angry. On another channel was a fashion show, a thin model parading down the catwalk in a mildly ridiculous outfit. A commercial for a bank, a broadcast of a ski competition, a Seinfeld rerun, a energetically hosted talk show.
Miranda was doing nothing right now. Filling up time before the next something happened. But this too, would be a memory. The next time she flipped through channels, she would remember this time, and they would eventually be bundled up into a mass memory: Days Spent Watching TV.
Miranda turned the TV off, laid on her back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. She considered making a new rule for her life where she didn’t watch TV or read magazines, but she didn’t think she could do it. She closed her eyes. Her brain automatically made a list of Hollywood actors that were dating Hollywood Actresses. Every fashion show she’d ever seen on TV was exactly the same. She could have been watching the same one the whole time.
Miranda turned over and looked at the phone. She thought about calling her friend Melissa, but what would she say? Would it be weird? She hated talking on the phone. She hated people. She wished she was better than other people, and she wasn’t. She should read a novel. She should plan her wedding. She should find a boy. She should wash the dishes. She should do her hair. She should start a blog. She should look for a different job. Se should turn the TV back on. Why was TV failing her now? Her mind felt like a towel that had been wringed of all its moisture.
A voice entered her head: “Have you ever been to… Mexicoooo!?” It was like a commercial jingle. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the thought that would determine her destiny. She could see herself telling Melissa, “Well, you know, I’ve always wanted to go to Mexico.” She would get a second job, save up money, and finally appear on the tarmax in Mexico, and when she came back from Mexico, and the little voice in her head asked her, “Have you ever been to… Mexicoooo!?”, she would say, “Oh yes, I have, and it was fantastic!”
Naw, she thought. Mexico wasn’t for her. It wasn’t in the cards. If only she had more ENERGY!! She should work out.
Finally, she moved to her computer and checked her email. Nothing. Fuck you fuckers, she thought. Why wouldn’t anyone email her? “Have you ever been to… Mexicooooo!?” that voice was getting annoying. She must have heard it on the radio in a commercial for a travel company.
What could Miranda do to make this day more memorable? How could she write her own life, right now, so that it would be the day “I was bored, watching TV, checking my email, I had nothing to do, and then, BAM! The thing happened. What was the thing. She drummed her fingers against her desk, and looked around at her living room, at the pictures she didn’t see anymore, the outside noises she didn’t hear anymore, wafting through her window. Why was she here?

On GREAT WALL OF CHINA

2009-03-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

February 18th
I got this one with one letter! And it was O!

On GREAT WALL OF CHINA
The interviewer wiped his mouth with his napkin. He was halfway through his plate of sushi. David had managed to eat 3 of his sushis.
“I thought you knew what the job was already! You’re going to be going to China!” he said with excitement.
David’s eyes widened. No wonder the man thought he would enjoy Asian food.
“That’s funny that you didn’t know that already!” said the interviewer.
“Yeah, I guess I got to read the ads for job openings more carefully,” David sort of explained.
“You read what?” The man cocked his head to the side, and a gulf of misunderstanding developed between them. “We called you, buddy! You’re the best in the biz! We’re really excited to have you on board!”
David suddenly realized that he was not the person that the interviewer thought he was.
“Oh… yeah,” he said. He wanted to see where this was going.
“You really are crazy!” the man laughed, “Ahh well, that’ll keep things interesting. We got a long plane ride ahead of us, you and me.”
It was at this point that David thought about fessing up and admitting that he was at the wrong interview. The thought of sitting for sixteen hours and having his personal tastes corrected by this man was horrifying. Besides, he knew how this would end: the longer he kept going with the misunderstanding, the more awkward it would be when he was found out. No, this was a bad idea. He should try and find his real interview.
But wait, thought David. There probably isn’t a real interview. Whatever company he had sent a half-heartedly compiled cover letter and resume to hadn’t called him at all, just this guy. And there was always the very slim chance that this would lead to something that would give his life a little bit of meaning. And if not, he had been embarrassed before.
“When do we leave?” he asked, swooping up to sushi portions and stuffing them in his mouth.
The man smiled, “Tomorrow! We got no time to lose! I guess no one told you, but you’re an emergency replacement for the first guy we had. He got cold feet, couldn’t stay away from his wife that long.”
“Oh yeah, we are going over to China for a very long time,” David said without attempting to cover his food-filled mouth. He assumed that the irony in his voice would be lost on the man, and he was right.
“Well, yeah! Two years!” barked the man.
“Well, I certainly don’t have a wife to worry about!” David said, a little too loudly, and they laughed together forcedly, with a tinge of sadness. The interviewer’s eyes looked down at his laugh briefly, and David could tell that the man wasn’t married, but wished he was.
“How long have you been with the company?” David asked.
“About a year now,” said the man, chastened, “It’s a great company to work for, and you see a lot of places. I was in Peru last year, and I also got to do a stopover in Russia. Usually they have me just doing the business end though, this is the first time I’ll actually be able to go with you guys.”
“Who else is on the… expedition?” asked David, hoping that was the proper word for whatever it was they were doing.
“Uh, Gus Ferraro, Angela Reynolds, and a couple of Chinese guys I haven’t met yet,” the man responded. “They’re already over there, getting things ready. Oh, I’m so happy that you’re game for this. I was worried that you wouldn’t be able to do it. Ever since we started the Great Wall Project, it’s been nothing but snags and snafus. And look, you’ve eaten all of your sushis!”
David looked down at his now empty plate. He hadn’t realized that, in the excitement of trying to extend the lie as long as possible, he had eaten the entire loathed dish, washing it down with Tiger beer.
“Well, buddy,” said the man, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow. Did you have any other questions for me?”
“What is your name?” is what David wanted to say. “Where are you from? What job is this?” Instead he said, “Where should I meet you?”
“Here’s my card,” said the man, whipping out a yellow business card with a cartoon bee on it. “Just call me in the morning at six o’clock, and we’ll get a limo to come ‘round to your place and pick you up, take you to the airport. I gotta run, but this has been great, see ya buddy!” and he pushed open the glass doors of the sushi place and ran towards a waiting limo. David looked down at the business card. It said “Reggie Miller” in funky letters, and below, in smaller letters, “Big Bee Enterprises”, and a phone number. David turned the card over, but there was nothing on the back indicating what the company’s purpose might be.

on SUSHI

2009-03-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

February 17th
I am starting to feel a little tapped out. This project is hard!

On SUSHI
David looked at his plate of sushi in horror. There were 27 pieces of sushi on his plate, and if he was going to ace this interview, he was going to have to eat all of them.
“I just love sushi, don’t you?” asked his interviewer. David put on a smile that he hoped looked authentic. His interviewer was tall and thin, balding with tufts of hair on either side of his head. His eyes were close together and translucent blue, and his lips were floppy.
“Sometimes, I get some sushi on my way home, and eat it in front of the TV. It just hits the spot, you know?” smiled the man. David could tell that this is the sort of person who didn’t understand why different people had different tastes. And David and the interviewer had very different tastes.
When the man had called his house, earlier that day, he had explained to David that he just finished listening to the Dixie Chicks. David thought he would just let that go, but the interviewer asked him directly what he thought of the Dixie chicks. David was honest.
“I don’t… really… like them,” he excreted.
“Why not?” asked the man, in a voice that was barking and nasal. “They’re fantastic! And they’re big against censorship! Did you hear that song, Not Ready To Make Nice?”
“Yup,” David replied.
“That song almost singlehandedly brought down the Bush administration!” claimed the man.
David wanted to say, “I don’t think that’s true,” but he refrained. He had a feeling that this man encountered a lot of people biting their tongues.
David wished he wasn’t this desperate to get a job. He already knew this wouldn’t be a good job. David had seen this ad in the newspaper in the careers section, and was surprised to see something that he was qualified for, especially in these Turbulent Economic Times. David had graduated recently with a Masters in communication and a distaste for academia. He didn’t like how, the longer he remained in school, the more specific and irrelevant his studies became. He went home and moved in with his parents, who were nice people, but also a bit irrelevant. David hated how the word irrelevant came to mind to describe everything that he was thinking of. He was a bit lost as to what he thought was relevant in the first place.
“You better eat those up! I’ve got hungry chopsticks!” said the man, eyes bugging out, snaping his chopsticks together.
David stabbed a California roll and put it in his mouth, and mushed it against the top of his mouth. “Thanks for lunch,” he said, trying to move the roll to the side of his mouth with his tongue.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” smiled the man, “I don’t think I’m supposed to say this in an interview, but I think you’re in! I can just tell.”
David became suspicious. He had done nothing to indicate any aptitude for any kind of job.
“What does the job entail exactly?” he asked.

on GEORGE WASHINGTON

2009-03-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

February 16th

On GEORGE WASHINGTON

George Washington in a woodchipper:

One day George Washington stayed in bed.

George Washington is on the one dollar bill (American)

George Washington Carver knew Booker T. Washington

As presidents go, George Washington is #1

The Latino version of George Washington is Jorge Wachavez

George Washington did cut down that cherry tree, and he did not lie about it, but I don’t know why.

When George Washington became president, he had one real tooth. That’s why they called it president: presi, latin for “only one left”, and dent, latin for “tooth”.

George Washington killed 3 zombies with a chainsaw that he acquired in his time travels.

George Washington is also the name of a serial rapist in Georgia.

George Washington had the same first name as the president of Britain at the time. At that time, though, they called him “King” George, for legal reasons.

Although George Washington never told a lie, thousands have been told about him.

George Washington kept a picture of his wife with him at all times.

If you look at Washington, D.C. from space, it is in the shape of George Washington’s head winking.

George Washington married his wife, even though he was in love with another girl, who was married to his friend.

George Washington invented baseball and didn’t tell anyone about it.

On Washington’s Birthday, George Washington travels around America leaving Freedom under the Liberty tree for little girls and boys.

George Washington, when he saw the Great Wall of China, yawned.

George Washington’s favourite command on the battlefield was, “Shoot them in the face!”

George Washington once ate a British flag for breakfast.

George Washington had a false nose, false teeth, and false brain.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were the same person. Proof: Lincoln is taller because Washington spent all his time from 1799 to 1809 growing.

If George Washingon was ever depressed, he sang opera.

George Washington hated going for groceries.

George Washington was famous for predicting future railroads.

If George Washington were alive and to make his famous crossing of the Delaware today, he’d die of old age.

George Washington never travelled to Washington State, but he knew about it, and was flattered.

Georgina Wishington was a famous Faerie Queen. (i.e. a gay)

George Washington’s residence, Mount Vernon, was named after his dog, Vernon.

If George Washington could see America today, he’d shrug.

George Washington never wore suspenders.

For a brief period, the British tried to convince American rebels that George Washington didn’t exist.

George Washington’s final words were a three day monologue ripped from the popular play “Whose Bodice is in my Darby?”

If you google “George Washington”, 59,800,000 ‘hits’ come up. So you see, he was popular.

Washington George was considered as an alternate name for George Washington when he was born.

George Washington liked to spread rumours about himself to see how long it took for the rumour to get back to him.

George Washington patronized many of Richmond, Virginia’s popular ‘spanking clubs’.

George Washington often challenged children to duels, jokingly.

There will never be another George Washington. Not like George Washington, anyway.

On LOVE LETTER

2009-03-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

February 14th

On LOVE LETTER

This is the story of how Krista and I became boyfriend and girlfriend.
When I entered fourth year university, I had never really had a girlfriend before. There was a girl in Grade Nine who I was officially going out with, but we never went on any dates and I forgot to get her something for Valentine’s Day. In university I kissed two different girls, but one was clearly an experiment and the other broke up with me a few days later.
I had a pretty good idea how to get a girlfriend though, because I had a lot of experience watching my friends from kindergarten up to third year university. So in Dr. Graham’s 4th year seminar class on theatre and the meaning of the word theatre, I was sitting behind Krista MacIsaac, who I knew had a crush on me, writing her a note. The Note said, “Dear Krista MacIsaac: I like-like you. Do you want to go out with me?” And then I gave her three boxes which she could check (or ex): “Yes”, “No”, or “Maybe if _________________________”. I wanted to leave her a way to test my worth if that was necessary.
Anyway, I’m halfway through this epic note and Dr. Graham ends class early before I could pass it forward. Krista vamooses, and I’m left to figure out a plan B.
I go to lunch in the McMaster University Student Centre (MUSC), with some of my Drama Club pals, like Steve Pukin, possibly, and who should show up and do a crazy dance with her underwear but Krista MacIsaac, that girl I wanted to go out with. What a crazy broad. But shit! I still hadn’t finished writing that letter. I went to the bathroom and finished writing the letter in one of the stalls. I took a deep breath, and got ready to deliver my life changing note. Ah, but when I came out of that bathroom she was long gone. Maybe it was not ready to be.
Then I remember, oh yeah, I’d already made plans to get a ride with Krista that night, to the CD release concert for our friend Darren’s hot jazz combo, Hot Mustache. This day (September 14, 2002) was not over yet.
But by the time we were at the jazz concert, Krista was kinda getting on my nerves, and I was getting cold feet. This note thing wasn’t gonna happen, I didn’t even know if I liked her that much. I didn’t want to make a mistake picking my first real girlfriend. She was so outgoing and vivacious. What if she stole my laughs?
When she was driving me home in her blue neon, we were bickering about something inconsequencial, kind of joke fighting, you know? Something which led me to declare: ”Fine, then I’m not gonna talk anymore” She didn’t think I could do it, but I stayed silent the whole way home. And it was then, looking out the window at the dark city floating by, that I realized I still liked her, even though we were having the most annoying and immature conversation. We were both idiots together, and I liked that. We weren’t intimidated by each other and NOW WAS THE TIME TO DELIVER THE NOTE. I just knew that it was now or never, deliver that note or give up on chicks forever.
In my mind, it was going to go like this. I would silently give her the powerful note, cool as a cucumber. I would go into my house and she would drive home, she’d consider her options carefully and we’d have further discussion at a later date. What actually happened was that she turned towards me, I threw the note at her, ran out of the car, tripped on my way up my porch steps and fumbled with my keys for several minutes. I was surprised when she didn’t leave the driveway, and I thought maybe this wasn’t such a good move after all. I casually walked out and asked her what she was doing, and she yelled at me because she wasn’t done yet. I ran back in the house and watched her from the window as she put the note in my mailbox and went back to her car. I casually strolled out to my mailbox, and read the note.
She had picked maybe. Maybe, if the sun shines, pigs don’t fly, and this pen is blue. Luckily, that pen she was using was blue. I invited her into my house, and we planned the rest of our life together. No, seriously, we made out like bandits. No, seriously, we had an awkward conversation and I took her to a movie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) the next day. And now we are married. It’s the best.

On SEALED WITH A KISS

2009-03-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

February 13th
On SEALED WITH A KISS

6:35 pm – Sally and Marianne get ready for the 80s video dance by crimping their hair, trying on bangles and drinking gin. Josh is coming by in his older brother’s car (driven by his older brother, Jake) to drive them to the school, with Eric, who has finally agreed to date Marianne after a long campaign. This is going to be the best.

7:03pm – Chet checks out his bouffant hairstyle in the mirror, and pops the collar on his too-tight jean jacket with a Hard rock Café logo on the back. “Fuckin’ right!” he says to his reflection.

7:34pm – Sally calls Josh and asks him where they are. Josh says they haven’t come over yet because girls always take fuckin’ forever to get ready. Sally replies, “How do you fuckin’ know that if you don’t come over!” Josh says, “Are you drunk?”

8:00pm - Chet and Michael French arrive at the school gym where J. Geils Band is playing at a disproportionately large volume considering five people, including our heroes, have shown up already and no one is dancing. Also, Michael French is wearing clunky dark sunglasses with fluorescent coloured arms, and a Michael Jackson red leather jacket. Chet and Michael French are both a little surprised at how good their outfits are.

8:28pm – Sally and Marianne have consumed half a bottle of gin. After her last gulp, Marianne shakes her head wildly and almost lacerates her face with her star-shaped earrings. “Whoo!” She says. They are still waiting for the boys to show up. Sally smokes at the window.

9:13pm – The gym has about a hundred grade nines now, and Chet and Michael French are the life of the party. They are in the middle of a dancing circle and Chet’s jacket is coming off – it’s too hot in this jacket!

9:41pm – Jake and Josh and Eric pull up Sally’s driveway. Marianne and Sally see them from the bedroom window and squeal. They run down to the front door, and then coolly strut to the car. Josh and Eric wolf whistle. Jake says, “Alright, lets go already!”

9:42pm - Josh and Sally make out a little in the car already. Eric and Marianne look uncomfortable. Sensing this, Sally and Josh stop and pretend nothing happened.

9:59pm – Chet and Michael French are cooling off by the punch after some marathon dancing. They talk about how they’re not really good dancers, frankly, but sometimes the spirit of the 80s makes you flail your limbs around in invigorating ways.

10:01pm – After a detour to Jake’s weed dealer, the two couples are dropped off at the gym and enter arm in arm. Eric seems into it enough that it’s not completely embarrassing.

10:14pm – A slow song comes on. High on dancing, Chet confidently swaggers over to Marianne and asks her to dance. He is rebuffed.

10:34pm – Chet and Michael French are standing outside, cooling off. Michael French starts making noise about having to get up early in the morning. Chet yells at him, “Don’t you understand! This night can never end!”

10:43pm – After dancing all the fast dances in a perfect square, and sitting out the slow dances, Josh and Eric and Sally and Marianne sit down at a round table. Sally and Marianne start whispering in each other’s ear and giggling. Josh sees his chance, and takes Sally outside for a smoke on the bleachers. It is understood that they are going to make out. Eric and Marianne, who don’t smoke, are left behind. Marianne realizes she doesn’t even really know who Eric is. “What kind of things do you like?” she asks him, yelling over the music.

11:06pm – Chet and Michael French are offered some beer in the parking lot by some cooler grade nines who thought their dancing was rad. A particularly reflective boy, Reuben, says, “Hey, it’s grade nine man. Everything’s different, you know? That’s what I love about grade nine. And you guys are fuckin’ hilaaaarious!!” and he laughed and slaps Chet on the back, spilling his beer.

11:15pm – Marianne is now tearing up the dance floor, having abandoned Eric on the sidelines. She was a little bit scared of Eric, who had boasted to her, randomly, that he could take off a bra with one hand. She is super drunk.

11:25pm – Marianne is almost passed out, and has her arms slung around Chet’s neck and her head against his chest. It is the final song of the evening.

11:45pm – Michael French says goodbye as he walks down his street. “Good bye! Awesome dance!” yells Chet, and Marianne laughs annoyingly. When Michael French turns out of sight, she plants a kiss on Chet, says “Thanks for the lurvly evening,” and pukes into a snowbank.

12:06am – Marianne, having declared herself feeling better, does not need Chet to bring her into her house. She rings the doorbell for her mom, and Chet runs away, scared. Mrs. Goldstein takes Marianne to bed, with a mixture of concern and knowing bemusement.

3:47am – Chet finally falls asleep. What a great night, he thinks.

On BOUQUET OF ROSES

2009-03-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

February 12th

On BOUQUET OF ROSES

Marianne stood outside the flower store, considering. It was Chet’s birthday, and it would be appropriate to get him a present. But flowers? It would appropriately embarrass him, that was for sure. She could imagine his face going red right now. Chet was the best for being embarrassed. But was that what Marianne wanted out of this trip? Would it ruin her social trajectory?
“Come on, Marianne, we’re going to go meet up with Josh and Eric,” Sally said. Sally was pretty popular, and Marianne was pretty lucky to be hanging out with her. Sally was the type of girl that was popular, but not snobby; she went out of her way to take pity and say hi to the unpopular girls in the hallway at school. She smoked, but only socially. When they found out that they were roommates for the Quebec trip, they had miraculously hit it off. Mostly they talked about boys. They could even be described as boy crazy! The whole time they talked about Marty Chan and Fred Garrults, though, Marianne was thinking in the back of her mind that this was the end of her days of crying at night and being afraid to go to school. Sally would be her gateway to social acceptance.
Now they were in their free time period, and were heading down to meet some boys. When Sally suggested this, Marianne acted like this was something she did all the time. But really she was super excited and also wanted to throw up. She didn’t even think about whether she liked Josh or Eric. That was the last thing she had to worry about. What she was worrying about most was what part of this process she would be revealed as a complete fraud.
And what about Chet? Maybe she should try and buy him a new sports hat, or something silly from the dollar store. But a bouquet of roses just seemed right. Yeah, Chet probably liked Marianne. She had seen When Harry Met Sally, and knew the rule about guys not having platonic female friends. So it would say, hey, I’m leaving your social level, but here’s something you’ve always wanted: an expression of my love. No that sounded horrible. And what would it look like if Marianne showed up for their casual rendez-vous with Josh and Eric with a bouquet of flowers?
“Are you thinking of getting flowers?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know,” Marianne replied. “Probably not. Let’s go.”
“Who are you buying flowers for?” Sally said.
“Chet,” Marianne said, and blushed. “It’s his birthday.”
“Oh yeah! Get them!” Sally’s eyes lit up. She had huge eyes.
Marianne’s face scrunched up skeptically. Was Sally trying to torpedo her somehow? What was her game plan?
“Really?” said Marianne.
“Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” said Sally, in a sort of spaced out kind of way. “He’d love that! A girl buying a boy flowers? That’s cool!”
“But what about Josh and Eric?” asked Marianne, raising her eyebrows. Even though they had spent several days together, Marianne didn’t really think of Sally as a person until this moment. Maybe she was genuine; maybe she did think it would be cool.
“Fuck them,” swore Sally, “This is better! You can find guys like Josh and Eric anywhere.”
“You can find guys like Chet anywhere,” said Marianne, “Trust me.”
They stood on the street for a little while, Marianne thinking, and Sally waiting to see what she would do. Sally looked at her watch. Then, buoyed by Sally’s encouragement, Marianne went into the store, and bought the bouquet of roses.

On BOX OF CHOCOLATES

2009-03-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

February 11, 2009

On BOX OF CHOCOLATES

It was on his fourteenth birthday that Chet found himself in a Quebec City chocolatier store, by himself, looking over rows and rows of different chocolates. He was wearing a Washington Capitals cap and a Vancouver Canucks hockey jersey, and baggy jeans. Perched on his cap were sunglasses he had just bought that, when he put them on, made him look like a bug.
Chet was confused. He liked chocolate, a lot, but he knew mostly about Mr. Bigs, and Glosette Raisins, and Kinder Eggs, and Mars Bars. He was looking at truffles, lots of different kinds of expensive truffles. If it was up to him, Chet would have bought the cheapest kind of chocolate in the store, and save his money for other purchases. But Chet wasn’t buying chocolates for himself. He was buying chocolates for Marianne Goldstein.
Marianne and Chet were both on their class’s grade eight trip to Quebec, a rite of passage for all graduates of Greenmeadow Junior High School. The class of 54 students was staying in a tastefully appointed Best Western on the Rue de la Couronne, and Chet was staying with some boys on the top floor, and Marianne with a bunch of girls on the bottom floor. On the first night, Chet, and Michael French, another unpopular boy, found out they were staying in a room with two double beds along with Allan and Derek Brock, twin boys who were very popular. Allan and Derek had immediately claimed a double bed each for themselves and their slutty girlfriends, and they had all recently started smoking. The room reeked of cigarette smoke and sexuality, so Michael and Chet hung out in the lobby most of the time. Michael and Chet had decided to use their free time to go shopping today, and after listening to a few too many World of Warcraft stories, Chet decided to ditch Michael for a short time and get something for Marianne, who had been avoiding him the entire trip.
Even though Marianne had been avoiding him, probably in a last ditch attempt to rehabilitate her image with the popular girls, Chet had a feeling that Marianne would remember his birthday and embarrass him with a present. So Chet decided to act pre-emptively and embarrass her with a present that might be interpreted as a romantic gesture. He had planned on just grabbing a box of chocolates, and didn’t really realize how many options he would have. He thought back to one of the random pretentious comments Marianne had said this year: “Mmmm…. If I’m going to have chocolate, I have to have truffles. Everything else tastes like shit to me.”
Chet threw up a little in his mouth. Marianne had changed this year, and started wearing weird, colourful, attention-grabbing outfits, and making weird statements about truffles, cars, jewelry, and God knew what else. It was like she had started taking advice from a crazy person, or got a subscribtion to Shallow Teen Magazine. It didn’t seem to do her any good socially either, having created mostly confusion.
Chet took a deep breath, bought a box of truffles with a blue ribbon on it, and walked out of the store.

On ANIMAL SHELTER

2009-03-13T10:45:00.001-07:00

February 10th
On ANIMAL SHELTER
Memoirs – Part VII
Upon arrival in New York Penelope got a job with the F.B.I. and I looked up one of my old communist associates, B.F. Ingleman, who was now the CEO of a very large sugar company. While Penelope, on her first day as the F.B.I.’s receptionist, shredded and burned all the F.B.I.’s documents relating to me and my murder and arson charges, and we had had our faces changed in Denver to disguise ourselves, I still didn’t feel completely secure. I asked Mr. Ingleman to give me a job in the sugar factory, which I complemented by volunteering at the local animal shelter. At the factory I met one of the children I had befriended in the sewers below Washington, Stella Cruise-Cruz, who had run away from home at the age of sixteen. One of her eyes was twice as large as the other, as a result of the battle under the World War II Monument.
At the animal shelter I was surprised to meet Jorge Sanchez, the artist who had created the giant lizard’s foot in Central Park. He was creating a new art project by painting all the former pets in the animal shelter the same colour: a slate grey.
A wise man (who I assume lived in New York) once said “Everyone ends up in New York.” If these first two encounters with characters from my past hadn’t convinced me, the next dozen or so would. Many of them I had presumed dead: Wally, the Lambs’ hyperintelligent dog, had escaped the Lambs’ basement and travelled to New York, only to find himself in Jorge Sanchez’s animal shelter and painted grey. Gwendolyn, my love from my teenage years, was a co-worker of Penelope’s at the F.B.I., and they immediately became rivals. Gwendolyn didn’t know Penelope and I were common-law married, but her personality was naturally antipathetic to my lady love. The foreman at the sugar factory was none other than the man I had though died in the avalanche in the Rockies, who had offered to adopt me and whose house I had burnt down. The Mayor of New York was John Mortimer, writer of Rumpole of the Bailey and presumed dead. He was living under the alias of Willowcrisp O’Hara. Our next-door neighbour in our brownstone house was none other than the former Dean of the Constabulary University in Salem Oregon, who, unbeknownst to me, had only accepted my application because he had planned to murder me and eat me upon my arrival.
With all these former friends and enemies revealing themselves in different aspects of my life, it was only a matter of time before things came to a head. Seven weeks after we had been re-introduced to New York society, Gwendolyn, the former object of my teenage affections in Louisiana, who had meanwhile become a powerful witch, attempted to poison Penelope in her morning coffee at work. Penelope detected the poison and realized something was up. She immediately called my former secretary, Thea, who used her psychic powers to see that the old man from the mountains and Wally the dog were travelling to my house, where I was sleeping. They were disguised as motorcycle enthusiasts and accompanied by an army of middle-class dads who felt ripped of from buying “Bayou Treats” from me at the State Fair when I was young. They weren’t that angry themselves, but felt they had to prove something to their wives, who didn’t respect them. The former Dean of Constabulary University let them into the tunnel that led from his house to mine. Immediately Penelope phoned Stella Cruz-Cruise, and Stella lit a beacon above the sugar factory, calling all the former Spider Children from around the globe to assemble for war. Meanwhile, Jorge Sanchez got his army of grey-painted former pets to hunt and kill all the snakes that had been trained by the one-eyed Bolivian whom I had thrown from the top of the Metropolitan Opera house so many years ago.
Because Wally and the old man and their retinue were delayed by a series of traps I had lain in the tunnel to prevent this very occurance, the spider children were able to arrive in time and stop them. Penelope arrived home from the F.B.I. just in time to fight Gwendolyn to the death in our living room, where she had teleported. Soon, Willowcrisp O’Hara, the mayor of New York, arrived on the scene, just in time to stop Isabelle Devereaux, who had been my old boss at Salisbury-Wigginton, and coincidentally had run against me for mayor of Washington under the name Teapot Faraday. I didn’t even know she disliked me, but she wanted to kill me. The battle continued in this way, in a series of lethal duels, to an incomprehensible level of complexity.
When I woke up from my mid-day nap that day, I walked down to my living room to find the corpses of all of my most dread enemies, and several of my friends. There was much weeping, and conflicting stories, and it was impossible to sort out who had been trying to kill me and who had been defending me, mostly because so many whom I thought were my friends were my enemies, and vice-versa. It’s one of those moments where you feel the need to sit down and take stock of your life, and so I did, composing my memoirs, which you are holding in your hands. I am pleased to say that Penelope and I are still together, and, due to an 11th-hour conversion on his part, we have adopted Wally the dog. We have renamed him Benedict Arnold, for obvious reasons.

On PAUL McCARTNEY

2009-03-13T10:40:00.001-07:00

February 9th
On PAUL McCARTNEY

The longer Paul McCartney lives, the odder it seems that he was ever in a band with John Lennon. If John Lennon hadn’t been killed, would he be playing the Super Bowl? Would he be making new albums that are increasingly irrelevant, like Bob Dylan? Or would he still be an important voice, speaking out against the establishment?
Has Paul McCartney changed as he got older, or has he always been the side of the Beatles that made beautiful, wonderful, music, but was willing to go with the flow and stay non-political? I watched Hard Day’s Night, and McCartney was the one who was witty in and in control. John Lennon appeared more like a jerk, who wanted to piss off squares. It was clear that he was anti-authority, but it came off as petulant, and McCartney wasn’t a sell-out, just funny.
I read a newspaper article about the economic downtown, about the Boomer generation (Note: two things I hate – 1) the term Zoomers – just get over the fact that you’re old, you can’t give yourself a nickname like that, it’s stupid – 2) Zoomer Magazine) and how they all of a sudden got real interested in finance during the stagflation period in the late 70s. This is also when the protests were ending, hippies disbanding for good, and John Lennon was assassinated.
And also, I was born. The Beatles are emblematic of the mixed legacy that we have received from the previous generation, the aging Baby Boomers. As elucidated in the Smashmouth song “Walking on the Sun,” it’s bizarre to hear stories of a generation that used to be about protest, Bob Dylan, peace, drugs and rock and roll, and is now about business, divorce, hovering parents and complaining about traffic. Did the people change, like Paul McCartney, or did the radicals fade away like John Lennon, leaving the moderates behind? Usually the answer to this kind of question is both.

-

Ah, well, that’s all water under the bridge now. My generation is at its own 1970s now, and while we are more ironical, I’m sure this economic problem will affect us as a generation as well. Not me though! I’m not changing one bit! Fuck all the financiers and their stocks and bonds, all my money’s in a savings account. I’m selling laughs, and that’s always in season! I really hope I keep both of my jobs! Until then, I’m not gonna worry about it. That was my attitude in 1991 and that’s my attitude now. Like a wise man once said, ‘You can’t buy me looooove!’ Also, “All you need is love!” and “Help!” No wait, I mean, “I wanna hold your haaaaaand!” You can’t take away my hands! My holding hands! You know, Paul McCartney seems like a great guy. Shame about his second wife. Maybe should cut his hair. I know he’s heard that before. But now it symbolizes nothing. Maybe it symbolized nothing then too. Just four kids who didn’t wanna cut their hair.

On NEVER SAY DIE

2009-03-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

February 7th
On NEVER SAY DIE

In the summer of 2003 there was a blackout on the Eastern seaboard. I was at work when it happened, working for Scotiabank in the sub-basement in “lending”. I still don’t know what the purpose of my job was.
I walked to union station and took one of the last functioning GO trains to Burlington, where Krista and I embarked on a drive to Ottawa to visit her sister Tracey. I had been feeling depressed a lot recently, and had even seen my family doctor and told him I was depressed. He prescribed me a book and told me to let him know if it started affecting my sleep habits or my appetite. I had taken to making dramatic statements to Krista, mostly along the lines of “I don’t like myself very much.” It felt pretty dumb to say, but I had a hard time expressing myself otherwise.
On the long dark trip to Ottawa, my self loathing increased. It was a trippy ride, because there were no lights on anywhere except for headlights and taillights and the stars, and we felt like we were driving into space. I had a snarky conversation with Krista. She had seen a raunchy, bad standup comedian a few years back at McMaster, our alma mater, and that had inspired her to consider becoming a comedian that worked with only clean material. I was skeptical, partly because I thought a lot of Krista’s funniest stories were dirty ones, and I thought she’d be throwing out a lot of her best material. That’s what I wanted to say, anyway, but it came out like I thought she was stupid for even considering the idea.
After jerkily pursuing my line of argument, I was overcome with remorse and self-hatred, and I asked Krista to stop the car. She pulled over, and I walked about twenty feet down the road and started throwing rocks from the side of the road into the dark trees. I hated my stupid job, and my stupid ambitions to become an actor, and Krista didn’t deserve a stupid asshole like me, who couldn’t get out of his funk and be the interesting and supportive person she had been dating before that summer. I had changed entirely from the cool guy I was in university, and I didn’t know who I was or what I was trying to do. Krista came over and asked what was wrong, and I apologized and cried. She said I didn’t have to apologize, but I really felt like I had to apologize, and was angry at her for not letting me. It was not a little bit ridiculous, me sobbing “I’m sorry,” and Krista telling me I had nothing to be sorry for. I guess that’s not ridiculous.
Eventually I calmed down and we continued on our way. That was my lowest point, and things have gone a lot better since then. I’m glad I kept going despite my doubts, and I’m thankful to Krista for not giving up on me.

On AUTHOR

2009-03-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

February 6th

On AUTHOR

About the Author

Dave Barclay was born to Robert and Janice Barclay on March 30th, 1980. Bob Barclay was an accountant and is now a successful bank executive with Scotiabank. Jan taught high school History and Geography, and retired soon after Dave’s birth to look after her children. In 1981 his family moved to Mississauga, Ontario, a large sprawling suburb outside Toronto. He was raised as a suburbanite, with two sisters, one of whom is teaching English in China and the other is training to be a vet tech (aka animal nurse). In 1991, his family moved to London, England when Dave's father was transferred. In 1993, they moved back. In 1996 he appeared in a high school production of Waiting for Godot as Estragon. That was his big break into high school drama. Upon graduation, he attended McMaster University and took a degree in Arts and Science and Theatre and Film. He averaged about an A minus, and was very smart. He was a teaching assistant for two years, first in Western Civilization and then in both Theatre and Film classes. His teaching style has been described as 'like a stand-up act'.
While at McMaster, he continued acting in several plays, and decided to follow his dream to be an actor. He also met his first girlfriend, Krista MacIsaac, from Burlington, Ontario, who was in the Theatre and Film program with him. They were longtime friends before finally connecting in September of 2002.
After graduating in 2003 Summa Cum Laude, Dave started working for Scotiabank full time and figuring out a way to achieve his dream. He made a sheet of paper listing “Ways to Avoid the Pit of Despair.” The first way was to move out of his parents’ house in Mississauga, which he did in September 2003 by moving into a Forest Hill apartment in Toronto. The second was to quit his soulless bank job, which he did three times: first he transferred to a part time customer service position at the same bank in 2004, achieving his goal only in the most literal way. Then in 2005 he quit that job to attend Humber College for their Comedy Program. He had applied to the National Theatre School for acting and the George Brown Acting Program (twice), and the Guildhall acting program in London in an effort to move on with his artistic career, but had auditioned unsuccessfully. He thought the comedy program would be a good idea because his most successful roles were always funny.
After graduating with a certificate from Humber, he had a shitty job at a self-serve video store, and decided to try the bank one more time. He lasted two months in a branch in the Portuguese area of Toronto at Bloor and Salem before quitting for good in November 2006.
In August 2007, Dave married Krista in a beautiful ceremony at the Credit Valley Golf and Country Club in Mississauga.
The third item on Dave’s list was to become a professional artist. He appeared in five different Fringe Festival shows since 2003 with a company he started with his friends at McMaster called Players Players. He also started a vaudeville duo with his friend from Humber Matt Kowall called Parker and Seville, which is gaining popularity. He has an acting agent, and has settled into two flexible part-time jobs, at Massey Hall as an usher and at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People as a box-office employee.

On GONE WITH THE WIND

2009-03-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

February 5th

On GONE WITH THE WIND

“You know a movie is good because they don’t say the name of the movie in the movie. You don’t hear ‘This truly is Gone with the Wind!’” – Dylan Gott

I spend a large amount of time making projects in my mind and then worrying about if I will follow through. I can’t remember when it was I made a list of the books I had to read – as long as I can remember, I’ve made a list of books to read of varying scope and ambition. Now, I have a long list of books that I’m getting through of books that I already own, which is actually several lists: A list of books that I received this Christmas that I should read right away because I am excited about them Right Now!, but I can only start that list when I am finished reading the Two Noble Kinsmen, the penultimate piece in my project to read the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This project was started in 2003, after I graduated university, because my mother gave me a book about Shakespeare’s plays, which would not have been very interesting if I didn’t read all of Shakespeare’s plays along with it. This mini-project (The Shakespeare Project), is part of the larger project to read all the unread books I own, which I think started in 2003 as it featured many of my school textbooks. Technically, the project to read all of the books I got for Christmas 2008 should take precedence over the Shakespeare Project, which is part of the 'read all the books I already own' project, but a new rule was instituted at some point that I can’t start a new book while in the middle of an old one, because I found myself leaving books in the middle and not returning to them for several years, which meant that I had to start them again.
These projects only cover, of course, the books that fall under the category of Portable, and I am able to carry around with me and read on the train or subway. I have a different set of books that are non-portable, which consist of the textbook-sized books that my mom likes to give me for Christmas every year. These books I read at home, often just before bed, with a reading light because my wife is sleeping. Having finished National Geographic’s Visual History of the World (Christmas 2005) last February, I moved on the HUMAN (Christmas 2006). Finding it a bit of a slog, I decided to read alternate sections of HUMAN with GOTHIC (Christmas 2007). Now it’s moving along a lot quicker. When I finish HUMAN I can alternate GOTHIC with 1001 Days that Shaped the World (Christmas 2008). I tell my mother not to buy me these books, because I’ll only try and read them, but she does not listen to me.
If I ever finish my List of Books given to me for Christmas 2005 thru 2008, portable and non-portable, and the List of Books I own but have not read, then I will know that it is time to delve into The Big Book List, which I have assembled over the last few years and last year put into electronic form. On this list are all the winners of the Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, the Pulitzer Prize (Fiction [including Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind] or Drama), the Governor General’s Award (Fiction or Drama), the Nobel Prize, all 50 books on the Globe and Mail’s 50 Greatest Books list, all the books on the Globe and Mail’s Buried Treasures list, all the books listed in Harold Bloom’s 100 Geniuses book, and all the books Yann Martel has been sending Steven Harper. Speaking of Yann Martel, I started this list of lists when I read Life of Pi (given to me by my mother, of course) and learned it had been awarded the Booker Prize. A prize? I thought. For books? What a novel idea! What other books have won this prize? What other prizes can books win?
I also have books that I have set aside for reading on the toilet, books that I read whenever I am killing time in a bookstore, and sometimes a book appears and I have to drop all the lists and just read it. I long for books but remember that I must be disciplined and stick to all my lists that I have tried to use to accommodate all my reading desires. For it would be terrible to have to accept that I couldn’t read my entire list, even though the evidence suggests that the list is growing faster than I have time to read. I recently have had to come to terms that I will never complete my project to visit all of Toronto’s subway stations, draw a map of their floorplans, take 3 pictures of them and rate them on a scale of 1 to 15. After all, I have at least two jobs and a career, plus two separate Oscar projects (To watch all the Best Picture winners [including 1939’s Gone with the Wind] and at least one best acting winner from each year, and also to watch all the Best Picture nominees the year after the are nominated.) No wonder I get stressed out sometimes. And I have so many other projects I haven’t even mentioned, ongoing, abandoned, in the conception stage. Sometimes I wish I could harness this power for good, not evil. This writing project is an example of that – how can I not get better at writing by writing 500 words every day? But it is a struggle, and I think overall it is counterproductive to restrain myself so. But the pleasure I get when I finish a book, and realize that progress is being made, that the system is working, and I have the comfort of a thousand books to enjoy still ahead of me, that I can compare the 2002 Giller Prize winner with the work of the 1902 Nobel Prize winner, ah, it’s a huge, nerdy, rush.

On FROSTY THE SNOWMAN

2009-03-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

February 4th

On FROSTY THE SNOWMAN

Chet was a little bit embarrassed to be over at Marianne Goldstein's house. He had a bunch of acne, for one thing, which was something he didn't think about too much except when he was at a girl's house. Of course, since the beginning of Grade Seven, Marianne had braces, so they were sort of in the same boat. Marianne and Chet had become sort-of friends lately, mostly united in a new found sense of sarcasm. They had both become outsiders this year, commenting snarkily on the soap-operatic goings on of the more popular kids in their school.
In that ironical vein, Marianne had invited Chet over to watch a marathon of Christmas specials, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 styles, anticipating many sarcastic jokes at the expense of Frosty the Snowman, Charlie Brown, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (who, really, had it bad enough already). So far, Frosty the Snowman hadn't really had his feelings hurt. Marianne and Chet had launched a volley of insults in the first twenty minutes, from "Yeah right, like that would ever happen," when Frosty magically came to life, to "Nice Hat!", offered four separate times by Chet. After a while they both seemed to realize they were trying a little too hard, and for a while didn't say anything at all. This was especially weird, as it became apparent that they were now watching Frosty the Snowman on its own merits.
Marianne's basement had been redone in the late eighties, and had hundreds of knicknacks and pictures of the Goldstein family in different vacation spots, often in costume. The focus of the room was an L-shaped brown couch that Marianne was lounging on in her pyjamas, which she declared to be 'the most comfortable couch in the world'. Chet was relaxing, at a comfortable distance, in a lime green armchair.
Right about the time when the policeman hollered 'Stop!', Mrs. Goldstein entered the basement and announced that she was driving Marianne's younger sister to karate practice. For some reason Chet felt like he had to justify his presence there. Mrs. Goldstein had not been around when Marianne had taken him down to the basement via the side door.
"Hi, Mrs. Goldstein," said Chet, attempting to sound cheerful and carefree.
"Hello Chet," smiled Mrs. Goldstein. Chet wasn't sure if Mrs. Goldstein thought this was a romantic date or not. As dates went, it was pretty lame, but all the same you can never tell, when a girl and a boy were in the same place at the same time, alone together. Chet thought about announcing the lack of romantic intention in this encounter, but correctly surmised that that would have brought the awkwardness of the situation right out into the open.
Mrs. Goldstein left, and it occurred to Chet that he and Marianne were now truly alone. It hit him with an intense panic that if he wanted to do anything of a romantic nature, now was the time to do it. Worse, if Marianne was expecting him to do anything of a romantic nature, if there was any ulterior motive whatsoever in her invitation, no was the time she would be expecting him to make some kind of move. He wasn't even sure himself of he was interested in that sort of thing with Marianne. If so, what would he do?
Chet looked over at Marianne, who was curled up with her bum facing him, watching the screen intently with a look of bored interest on her face. She was wearing her glasses, which she never did in school. She was comfortable. Chet could even see her pink undies creeping up over the top of her pyjama pants. Never would she be so bold if she wasn't completely secure in the idea that he was completely harmless. Chet decided to do nothing.
"The long arm of the law," Chet proclaimed, sort of sarcastically, referring to the policeman who was stopping Frosty's march. "The long arm of the law."

On ANNIVERSARY

2009-03-09T21:43:00.001-07:00

February 3rd

On ANNIVERSARY

Chet opened his locker with some difficulty. He still hadn't gotten used to these combination locks, and even though he thought it was great to have a locker, he could never remember how many rotations and in what direction he was supposed to dial his standard lock, even though it was October already. On his fourth try, after looking around self-consciously, he finally hit upon the right combination and opened his locker. On the inside was a picture from the Toronto Star of the Toronto Maple Leafs losing their first game of the season to the New York Islanders. In the yellowing photo, a hapless Maple Leaf was in mid-pratfall, and Chet had scotch-taped the score of the game (Isles 3, Leafs 1) diagonally over the corner of the photo. Originally, Chet's plan was to tape the photo and score of every Leafs game as the season went on, but after the first game he kind of forgot, so his locker accidentally became a shrine to that season-opening ignominious loss.
Chet was considering whether to abandon the project when Marianne Goldstein approached. His face went a little red, and his breathing a little more controlled.
"Hey Chet, do you know what day it is today?" Marianne asked.
"No, what day is it?" said Chet.
"It's our anniversary," said Marianne.
Chet blushed, and was confused. He didn't know quite what Marianne was talking about, but he did remember that it was around this time last year that Marianne had decided to make Chet into some kind of project. She would come to his locker every day and talk about other girls in their class that she hated. He had gotten the sense that she was sort of interested in him, but instead of expressing it directly, she would eliminate the prospects of other girls through slander, leaving herself alone as the only one worthy of any attention.
"I don't know what you mean," said Chet weakly.
"Yeah, I think you do," Marianne said mysteriously. Marianne had been one of the more popular girls in Grade Five, and wasn't bad looking, with her long blonde hair, dimpled cheeks and slim figure. But Grade Six, with its move to a new school and a reshuffling of the social order, had not been kind to Marianne's social status. Puberty had thrown all sorts of different factors into the mix, and Marianne was now short and flat-chested compared to a lot of the other girls. She had fallen way behind, and still wore last year's fashions too. Chet had never been popular by any stretch of the imagination, but when you had few prospects, as Chet had, you ironically got unrealistically high standards. He was conflicted between being completely desperate for female attention, and having developed detailed opinions on what made a Grade Six girl hot, and Marianne didn't qualify.
"Remember," continued Marianne, "when you said I was your girlfriend?"
"That was just to get those Grade Threes to stop bothering me at recess," rebuffed Chet. The origins of the incident were murky, but it was true that he told a gaggle of Third Graders that he and Marianne were going out, in response to a deluge of taunting.
"Anyway," he explained, "You told everyone afterwards that we weren't."
"That was just damage control," said Marianne.
"Well we never went on any dates," Chet said. "People who are boyfriend and girlfriend go on dates." The longer this conversation continued, the more uncomfortable Chet got. It wasn't like Marianne was asking him out, and he could think about it and say yes or no, he had to re-evaluate what had happened last year, and it really sounded like he didn't want to be dating anyone, which may not be the case. Why was she even bringing this up now? Why had she kept track? What was the game here? Was she making fun of him?
"Well, whatever," she said, "Here's this heart I made, you, I don't know why, I guess you don't want it. Good day." And then she left, walking down the hallway in her crocs. Chet looked at the heart - pretty simple, it said "Happy Anniversary Chet" in black marker on a red construction paper heart, with no embellishments, as if to make sure it communicated nothing more or less than what it said. He placed it on the top shelf of his locker, closed and locked it, re-opened it, grabbed his math text, re-closed and locked his locker, and walked to class.

On PHILADELPHIA

2009-03-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

On PHILADELPHIA
Gangs of Philadelphia
Benjamin Franklin looked out from the portico of Independence Hall and saw the city of Philadelphia in flames. This was the dark side of the people that he had always heard about. He grabbed his shooting pistol and walking boots and strode out into the streets of Philadelphia.
He ran into a policeman who was looking fearfully at the flames, striding aimlessly under a lamp post.
“What is your name, officer?” Benjamin Franklin asked.
“What’s it to you?” retorted the man.
“Aren’t you going to go and put a stop to this nonsense?” demanded Franklin.
“ I ain’t going in there. That’s Gang part of town. If you’re smart, you won’t go either,” said the cop. “Who are you?”
“Benjamin Franklin,” he replied.
“There ain’t no Benjamin Franklin.” Said the man, scowling. “He long dead, and this town gone to shit since.”
“Well alright. I’ll see you another time, officer,” said Franklin, and he pushed past the policeman into an alleyway, past drunks and slums and onto the outskirts of town. He knew enough not to travel into the riot area, not now. A horse ran into view, having bolted from the fire, and Franklin leaped up onto the horse, calming it down and directing it west. He had an appointment in the village of Haddington with Mr. Tex Samuels.
Ben Franklin reached the industrial hamlet of Haddington and hitched his horse outside the Whitesides Inn. He walked in through the main door and sat down in the first table he saw. Soon a man with a handlebar mustache sat down opposite him, silently.
“How are you?” asked Benjamin.
“Very bad,” drawled Tex. “A group of vigilantes are reckoning themselves up to do away with us.”
“How many?”
“I reckon about ten or so?”
“Tombstone Allen?” asked Ben, arching an eyebrow.
“Yup. Sounds like you’ve got the long and short of it. Now what can you do for me?”
Ben looked around the tavern. There was hardly anyone down in the main room, most had holed up in their rooms, afraid the violence might spread from the downtown. There was a young woman in a bonnet, pecking at a plate of potatoes, and disheveled gentleman in a shapeless hat and a mostly unbuttoned shirt. He had a couple of bottles of beer in front of of him, and had the air of someone who wanted to get drunk, but didn’t have a lot of experience doing so. Who he didn’t see was Eddie the Shooter, with his narrow, lined face and dark eyes. Either Shooter was off on another assignment, or he was remaining hidden. Either way, Tex wasn’t going to meet with anyone without a backup watching from somewhere.
“The sherriff here, McCoy, is a friend of mine,” Ben said.
“I bet he is,” answered Tex skeptically.
“I have a few friends in town. I know that you and the Bummers aren’t the real problems in Philadelphia county, I know you and Eddie and the rest didn’t start what’s happening downtown. But I know you know who got killed last night at South and 4th.”
“Why would you say that?” asked Tex.
“Tell me more, and I’ll get Bones McCoy to lay off you boys for a while.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks,” said Ben. We wasn’t sure it would be enough.
“That’s all you can do, huh,” said Tex, leaning back in his chair. “I figure as much. Look, I’ll tell you whut. You do what you say you can do. Get Bones to walk out on Chestnut Street, look me in the eye and give me a nod. Get him to show me a little respect that way. Then, I’ll give you whut info I can gather tonight and you’ll have a clue to your mystery. I can tell you what I know right now, though: Italians and Blacks. Don’t have to look much further than that.”

On Great White Shark

2009-03-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

January 31st
Ironically, I lost two legs looking for the Great White Shark. Just like Jaws.

On GREAT WHITE SHARK
I was lounging poolside at a posh Miami resort, sunglasses on and a spicy novel lying on my lap, which I had just put down because I was falling asleep. My head lolled to the left and a Great White Shark was lounging in the chair beside me. He had his fins up behind his head – it was clear he was relaxing. He smiled at me, not at all self-conscious about showing me all three rows of his gross, bloody teeth. There were some bits of flesh still stuck in between his serrated chompers, and he reached up to his mouth and picked out a particularly large morsel as he addressed me.
“Hey, have you been watching that show, Lost?” he asked. I said nothing, but turned on my side to face him, intrigued.
“Fantastic show. I know a lot of people who gave up on it in the second season, when it started getting weird, but for me, that’s when it started getting good. Now I can’t get enough of it. Turns out it’s all about time travel!” He took a sip of his Caesar that he had by his deck chair.
“Yeah, a brother of mine lives up near Hawaii, that where they film it, he’s into it even more than I am. Now I like to be surprised, I don’t want to know anything ahead of time, but my brother, he’s always peeping in on the set, seeing what they’re shooting. He tries to tell me what’s coming up and I tell him no way!” The shark shook his head exaggeratedly and put his fins out in the universal sign for ‘I want no part of this conversation!’
“He doesn’t get a complete picture of what’s going on anyway,” the shark continued. “Still, I hate it when people try and spoil it for you like that. Who cares? Watch the damn show!” The shark smiled and shook his head in disbelief that people could ruin their own enjoyment.
“Yeah this is a good place to relax. What are you reading there?” I noticed that the shark was wearing sunglasses, but from my perspective it looked like he was wearing them on the back of his head, where his eyes were. He had been looking at me with just one eye, which was shielded by a reflective lens, which was attached by a thin wire to his other eye, which was on the other side of his head that I couldn’t see. The arms of the glasses were taped to his body with scotch tape, because he had no ears. If you had told me that an anthropomorphic shark was wearing sunglasses, that would have made sense to me, but in execution it was depressingly awkward. Still, it must have reduced the glare.
I showed him the cover of my book.
“John Grisham, eh? Can’t beat him for lawyer shit,” he laughed. “Naw, I like that stuff too. Guilty pleasure. I should be reading War and Peace or something, if I wanted to improve myself, but who has time for that? On a hot day like today, you want to just relax and let the writer take you where he wants you to go.”
My eyes fluttered a bit, as the sun was making me drowsy.
“I’m not keeping you up, am I?” asked the shark. “Ah, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind. I’m getting a bit sleepy myself. I reckon I’ve got about an hour before I got to get back to work. Just enough time for a little shuteye.”
At that point I drifted off. I woke up an hour later, a little sunburnt. The shark was gone, his empty glass still on his side table with a celery stalk resting inside. ‘That’s Miami!’ I thought to myself, and chuckled.

On SUPER BOWL PARTY

2009-03-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

January 30th
On SUPER BOWL PARTY
Super Bowl Preview
This year, we’re all gathering at Tim’s house for the Arizona Cardinals against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Who will you be cheering for?
Arizona Cardinals
PROs
-Heavy underdogs. Everyone loves an underdog and this team hasn’t won shit in almost 70 years. You might think that the poor people of Chicago and St. Louis, former homes of the Cardinals, are crying with envy right now, but since the Cardinals moved, both of those cities have won the Super Bowl. So, no harm, no foul.
- Show Me The Money! The Arizona Cardinals’ most famous player before this year is Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character in Jerry Maguire.
-Kurt Warner is an all-American hero. And everyone loves America, thanks to Barackobama!
- Sharp logo, Arizona. Verrrrrry nice.

CONS
-If they win, we’ll have to look back on this year as that weird year the Cardinals won the Super Bowl. Because you know they’ll never be back here again.
- I haven’t seen this many dreadlocks since I accidentally wandered into that Hemp and Mustard fair. Zing!
- I affectionately call them the Card-i-nals, drawing out that third syllable, which gets on everyone’s nerves.
- I doubt there’s a lot of Cardinals in Arizona. They should have renamed them the Cactus Owls.
- Arizona? John McCain country? Home of the retirees and golfers? Florida for aquaphobes? I don’t like it. These people are poorly dressed and deserve nothing. What, are they going to have a parade through the GRAND CANYON?

Pittsburgh Steelers

PROS
- Pittsburgh is the Hamilton of America, which makes the Steelers the TiCats of the NFL, except successful. And we all love the TiCats, even us Argos Fans. (The Argos of the NFL? The New York Giants. No one loves the Giants.)
-If they win, it will make sense, and reaffirm our view of the world. I don’t want to go changing my worldview over a football game.
- I kind of like their corporate-looking logo. You know? Seventies-ish. Full of hope for capitalism.

CONS
- Why cheer for the favourites? You’ll either be happy but unsurprised if they win, or Super disappointed.
-Pittsburgh isn’t a real steeltown any more. Frauds.
- That Ben Roethilsberger seems like a real dink.
- They seem like lovable blue-collar gents, but it turns out the Pittsburgh Steelers have won more Super Bowls than the 49ers, the Cowboys, the Redskins, the Patriots, the Packers – than ANYONE! Why do they need another one? What is this, Costco?
- Remember ‘One for the thumb’? Only ingrates would wear rings on their thumbs. Ingrates.
-They beat my beloved San Diego Chargers.

Conclusion:

I’m going for Arizona in this one, mostly for the underdog factor. Krista is cheering for the Steelers, though, because she was born in Hamilton, and likes the idea of Steelers. I also hope it’s anywhere near as exciting as last year’s Patriots-Giants game, where we all lost our shit at the end of the game. It was the best Super Bowl Ever!

On SNOWMAN

2009-03-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

January 29th

On SNOWMAN
Profile: Mr. Snow
HANGMAN PROJECT: You are the seventh Mr. Man in Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men series.
MR. SNOW: That’s right.
HP: All the other Mr. Men are named after a character attribute, like Mr. Messy or Mr. Strong. Not you. Why is that?
SNOW: Well, I was an ordinary snowman, and then Father Christmas made me come alive. So maybe the point of each of the books is to teach the kids a lesson, like not to be nosy, for example. The moral of my story is that be careful when you are making a snowman.
HP: Why is that?
SNOW: Because Father Christmas might make them into a real man!
HP: How does this moral apply to children’s lives?
SNOW: Well, it fucken happened with me, so…
HP: But does this lesson have a wider application?
SNOW: Well, to a certain extent it teaches children to put a full effort into everything they do, because even if it doesn’t seem important at the time, maybe it will be at some point in the future.
HP: You wear a bowler hat and scarf. Thoughts?
SNOW: Well, I was dressed by some English kids. They were pretty nice to give me a hat. I kind of like it.
HP: How much contact do you have with the other Mr. Men?
SNOW: I had lunch with Mr. Messy the other day.
HP: How is he doing?
SNOW: Bad. Mr. Neat and Mr. Tidy tidied and neatened him so much he doesn’t know who he is anymore. He’s undergoing a real identity crisis, and drinking a lot.
HP: Do you feel as if Mr. Christmas is horning in on your territory?
SNOW: Yes, definitely. I used to help Father Christmas deliver the presents, and now his stupid nephew is helping him. Personally I think Father Christmas would rather have a man made out of snow help him, but he feels an obligation because Mr. Christmas is family. Thanks to nepotism, I’m out of a job.
HP: Have you tried looking for other work?
SNOW: I gave acting a shot, but I started to melt under the lights. Plus, I was typecast.
HP: As a snowman?
SNOW: Yes. My agent got me this audition for a western once, but I think it was some kind of mistake. There was no way I was gonna get cast in that film. I gotta fire my agent.
HP: What are your plans for the future?
SNOW: Well, I’m between projects right now. A lot of people in my situation would say, hey, I wish Father Christmas had never magically created me and then fired my ass. But that’s not my philosophy. I got a few things on the go, you know, and I think about a year from now you’re going to be hearing my name a lot more often. It’s like I always say: in anything you do, always try your best and do a good job. You never know how things are gonna end up.

On THEATER

2009-03-01T15:53:00.000-08:00

January 28th

That last one was hard to finish. Lesson learned: pop culture lists are easy to start, hard to get up to 500 words. Especially late at night.

On THEATER
Ah, theater. Nurturer of my youth, provider of after-school social time, current employer, object of envy and derision. Of course, that should be ‘theatre’, but that’s my American calendar for you. And all anti-Americanism is put in a different light in the Obaman age.
I met my wife in the theatre. Back in second year university, when I was a member of the Elite Arts and Science Programme, and deigning to join an acting class with the Drama majors, local yokels from Hamilton and Burlington who couldn’t get into farther away, more advanced programs. In Arts and Science, you see, everyone had a 90% high school average or above, but anyone could get into the McMaster Drama program.
But it ended up that most of my friends were from the drama program, as my arts and science buddies eventually factioned themselves away, as personality conflicts developed as was inevitable with a small group of intense people travelling off in all directions. Now I have married one of my drama classmates, and others have accompanied me to Toronto to try and achieve the Dream. Maybe if I had focused on my more arts and sciencey side, I would have been a doctor or lawyer by now, but who wants all of that money? I could go and pick it up anytime. I’d rather stick it out in the theatre, or, I should say, the comedy world. You see, after I graduated from McMaster, the theatre world wouldn’t have me. I got rejected from National Theatre School for Acting once and George Brown College twice, and travelled all the way to London, England to get rejected by Guildhall there. Finally, two years after I graduated I was accepted by the Humber School of comedy. Of course! Comedy was my destiny all along! I had always specialized in funny roles anyway.
Since then I have doffed the mantle of ‘struggling actor’, a phrase which rightly makes most actors want to vomit. Now I am a semi-successful comedian, and even made money a couple of times. I have an acting agent, but really, I’m a comedian.
I work in the box office of the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, and sometimes I feel a little resentful seeing the actors for the shows go by, living the life I had dreamed for myself. But fuck ‘em, I usually say. I’ve moved on now to bigger and better things. I’m a writer too, and a good one. I perform every week, how many actors can say that?
I remember having an encounter with a female acquaintance of mine in St. Clair West subway station. I can’t even remember who she is now, but we were having the standard catch-up conversation, where you haven’t seen someone in years, and you have to consider everything you’ve done since you last talked, and summarize it in a sentence or two. I think I must have told her I was acting and now I considered myself more of a comedian. Or maybe I said more of a writer. She laughed and said that’s what happens to most actors: everyone starts off being an actor, and then they give up and turn it into something else. I laughed and she summarized whatever she had done with her truncated acting career. I turned over what she said for a long time, livid because it was so true. My friend Steve was an actor-turned filmmaker. Krista, my wife was an actor-turned-stage manager. My cousin Peter took a year off to act in University, and was a doctor now. I had become part of the army of former actors, pooh-poohing their formed lives and claiming to have moved on to something better. Still pained to see films depicting the crushed dreams of wannabe thespians, from the nobly comic (Withnail and I) to the derisively comic (Waiting for Guffman).
Still, I’ll prove all the doubters wrong. Just you wait and see.

On DONALD DUCK

2009-03-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

January 27th
On DONALD DUCK

How to Succeed in Life While Still Being Lazy (A list of Mostly Cartoon Characters)

1) Donald Duck
How many of us have not wanted to put their pants on in the morning? The much beloved Donald Duck never has. Sure, other people like Bugs Bunny don’t wear pants, but Donald throws it in your face by wearing a shirt and hat. It’s clear that he gets up each morning, puts on a shirt and hat, looks at his pants and says to himself ‘eh, not today’. Then he walks out his front door to face the world.

2) Pig Pen
Why bathe? You can still make millions as a minor character in a major comic strip. If pig pen was a clean large headed child like the rest of the peanuts, he would have no distinguishing features and quickly vanish from posterity. He has the most one-dimensional character in the strip, except for Franklin, who is black.

3) Karl Marx and Charles Darwin

‘I can’t shave! I’m thinking of theories that charge the world!’ Honorable mention: Albert Einstein, get a haircut!

4) Peter Jackson
This guy let himself go. Oh wait he lost all that weight! Take him off the list!

5) Jughead Jones
Now we’re getting real. Jughead Jones became famous because he was lazy, and raised it to an art form. And he eats so many hamburgers, and never gains weight! What metabolism. But what of his mysterious past, with that S-girl we sometimes hear about that broke his heart? That was when he learned that to be lazy, c’est divine. Jughead also shows that laziness is just intelligence in another guise.

6) Andy Capp
All time couch sleeper. Also, you don’t have to raise your hat above your eye level. Keep em down there. What are you gonna look at, your wife? What a harridan! Watch out for that rolling pin!

7) Marmaduke
Marmaduke! Get offa there!

8) What about that sheepdog that was in those Wile E Coyote cartoons? He looked like he was asleep, but oh ho ho, he knew exactly what was going on. He know when to save his strength. Which is what lazy people call what they are doing.

9) Beetle Bailey
What separates Beetle Bailey from his contemporaries is that, by being lazy in the army he is, in some ways, a force for peace. I salute you, Beetle Bailey.

10) Drabble, the dad on Hi and Lois, Dagwood, Al Bundy
The husband squad!! Very realistic couch sleeping, Dagwood.

11) Homer Simpson
Obvious. What am I making here, a volleyball team?

12) Casper the Friendly Ghost
You’d be surprised how much energy you can free up by not breathing, circulating blood, what have you.

13) Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He could have walked if he wanted to. Didn’t you see Pearl Harbour?

And there we have it. Thirteen successful individuals who are lazy. Let our inherent laziness never hold us back, let us never say ‘I’ll never become a famous cartoon character – I’m too lazy’ Or you can become president instead.

On BLIZZARD

2009-02-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

January 26th

On BLIZZARD

It snowed again today. The last two winters have been especially snowy. Living in Toronto, snow is more of an annoyance than a work of magic, although I still enjoy watching the cityscape consumed by white torrents, especially downtown. But it makes public transit erratic and driving near impossible. Whenever I go out to shovel the front walk, it’s guaranteed that I will observe someone parked across the street get stuck in the snow, and serenade me with squealing tires for about fifteen minutes. Sometimes I offer help, sometimes I turn around concernedly, but decide they have the situation under control. In previous years I would ignore them entirely, but I am trying to be friendly this year, it’s one of my new year’s resolutions, along with writing every day and confining myself to three meals a day (which is not a diet, it’s a strategy)
Our street, Benson Avenue, is about twenty-five houses long. These houses are all on the north side of the street, and we (my wife Krista, and I) live in the second floor of number 16. In number 14 lives a retired teacher, who often plays the guitar on the front porch, and his bitchy wife. I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken with the wife, but my wife has had a few bitchy encounters with her. I don’t remember why I know that he’s a retired teacher, and it’s a distinct possibility that he is not, and I am transplanting the memory of a teacher that lived beside me on Haddon Road in Hamilton. Or did he live across the street?
In number 16 lives Aaron Zimmerman, who wears a long beard and colouful painter’s caps, and is an artist. He lives with his girlfriend Izzy, and they are very nice. They have two dogs, one of which is named The Captain, and I forget the name of the other one.
When we moved in, on the south side of the street there were abandoned buildings, which used to be transit barns where streetcars would converge. In fact, the street perpendicular to Benson on the east side, Wychwood, has a streetcar track running down it that goes to nowhere, which I found quite exciting when I discovered it, long before we lived here, when I first moved to Toronto. Wychwood is such a small street, it seemed ridiculous that it would ever have a streetcar track.
Soon after we moved to Benson Avenue, the buildings became a construction site. It was very annoying to be woken up to jackhammering. I frequently joked that the seemingly endless construction would be completed the day we moved out of our house (which we inevitably will – our apartment is so small!), but lo and behold, two months ago the Green Arts Barns opened, with artist live/work areas, a ‘covered street’ that has farmers markets every Saturday, artistic offices, a playground, and who knows what else. Which means our sleepy little street has become quite a hot spot, with several articles written about the new project in major newspapers and arts mags.
Right now it means that parking is a sore spot amongst the locals, who also have sent out notices requesting that we petition the city for speed bumps, notices which featured a cartoon which Krista and I found quite funny. It is a picture of a very angry man driving his car, which is too small for him, and yelling at some children that he is about to run over, “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M ON THE PHONE!?!” In winter, Benson avenue becomes a one-lane street, which means that inevitably a car will stop, trying to park, and traffic will be held up behind them, resulting in honking and tire squealing and getting out of vehicles and exchanges of words, and the issue being blamed on the Arts Barns.

On THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

2009-02-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

January 24th

On THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
People that worked on the Golden Gate Bridge:

Joseph Strauss

Joseph Strauss designed a 55 mile long bridge over the Bering Strait as his graduate thesis. He created the initial design for the bridge, but was very inexperienced. He was born in Ohio to a musician mother and artist father. He personally campaigned for many years to have the bridge built. He was an amateur poet. He asked that a net be constructed during the creation of the bridge, which saved 19 lives. He downplayed the contributions of the other engineers working on the project, wishing to take the credit for himself. A statue of Strauss stands near the bridge.

Irving Morrow

Irving Morrow designed the towers, lighting and decoration of the bridge. He decided to paint it international orange. He was schooled at Berkeley and in Paris, was a resident of the bay area, and was relatively unknown. He created the bridge as much as a sculpture a roadway.

Charles Alton Ellis

Charles Alton Ellis was the principal engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. He was a Greek scholar and mathematician who became a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, and wrote the standard textbook of structural design. Fired in 1931, he continued to work full time on the project for no pay. In 2007 he was given major credit for design of the bridge. He collaborated extensively with Leon Moiseiff.

Leon Moiseiff

Leon Moiseiff was born in Latvia and came to the U.S. at the age of 19. He designed many famous suspension bridges, including the Manhattan Bridge. He designed the basic structure of the Golden Gate Bridge, working with Ellis from afar by telegram. He is most famous for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which fluttered itself into disaster in 1940, given too much leeway to be flexible and twisting violently in a storm. He was the most famous of the designers, and later the most notorious.

STRAUSS: Ellis, I’m taking you off the project.
ELLIS: What? Why?
STRAUSS: You’ve been making too many telegrams to this Moiseiff character.
ELLIS: Moiseiff? He’s the greatest suspension bridge designer in America! He laid out this whole bridge! Of course I’m gonna wire the guy, every chance I get!
STRAUSS: I laid out this bridge, I tell, ya! Not Moiseiff! Moisieff is a Rusk! He’s as pinko as this sunburned hand!
ELLIS: Look, Joe, you and I both know that Leon Moiseiff has got nothing to do with this. You want all the credit for this damned bridge to yourself.
STRAUSS: Ridiculous. You’re out, Clifford Paine is in.
ELLIS: Clifford Paine can’t finish this bridge without my help. He doesn’t got the knowhow. I wrote the book on bridges!
STRAUSS: Look you. I don’t care what you wrote, you fraud. I’m sick of you acting like I’m some kind of amateur. When people look at this bridge, one name is gonna enter their heads: Joseph Strauss! I’m gonna have a statue of me built, and my words are gonna be splayed all over this bridge, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it!
ELLIS: Hey, Joe, come on. I don’t got no job after this, I can’t do anything else. It’s a nightmare out there, it’s the depression. If you fire me from this job I’m gonna come back every day until this bridge goes all the way from here to Marin county, whether you wanna pay me or not. If you can live with that, if you can see my wife and kids starve, then go ahead, fire me. Put up your statue, you’ll get a great view of it from Hell.
STRAUSS: GET OUTTA HERE!
ELLIS: ASK MOISEIFF! He’ll tell you I’m the only one who can build this bridge!
STRAUSS: I SAID GET OUT!
ELLIS: ASK MOISEIFF!
STRAUSS: Don’t make me throw you out of this office with my bare hands! I’ll throw you right into San Francisco Bay!
ELLIS: All right I’ll leave. But fuck you! Fuck you and your fucking bridge! It’s ugly as Hell anyway.

On HOCKEY STICK

2009-02-27T13:49:00.000-08:00

January 23rd

On HOCKEY STICK

Nine sticks clattered onto the parking lot pavement, and Brad’s stick was tossed by one of the other kids, a curly haired blond, into a pile of five. Brad thought about asking to be goalie, but thought again that it might be better to not speak. The dark green old tennis ball was dropped, and the game began. Goals were frequent, and Brad soon lost track of what the score was. It didn’t seem important to this group of pinch faced, freckled boys that were his neighbourhood chums. Brad dutifully ran back and forth along the parking lot, keeping a bead on the puck but quickly running out of breath. Sometimes he would stop and hit the ground with his stick, calling for a pass like he’d seen other kids do. Then he would stand and wait, and another kid would have placed his stick just under his, so when the ball traveled in his direction his stick would suddenly be lifted up, seemingly of its own accord, and his face would go red with embarrassment, his heart rising to his throat and his temples pounding. He would run after the ball, which had traveled all the way to the other end of the parking lot and into a snow bank. He thought he would impress the other boys by making the extra effort to get the ball, maybe redeem himself in their eyes. The boys talked a lot during the game, but Brad didn’t really register what they were saying. It seemed like a mixture of taunts and hockey jargon, with the names of several NHL players dropped.
Later, the tennis ball would hit Brad in the face when he wasn’t looking and give him a bloody nose. He cried awkward tears that he was trying to hold back but came out in choked sobs. He ran home but came back out half an hour later. None of the other kids said anything. Later on, he and a bunch of other boys surrounded one of the goalies, the younger brother of the blond-headed kid who owned his own goalie mask and a goalie stick but had no pads and used a baseball glove. The kids whacked at the goalie with their sticks until the tennis ball spurted out from beneath one of his shins. Brad touched it, and threw up his arms in celebration, a little too loudly for such a chintzy goal. It was ruled that it had already crossed the line when Brad touched it, so it wasn’t his goal.
Brad went home that night and told his mom he wanted skating lessons so he could join a hockey team, maybe as the goalie. His mom grabbed the Parks & Rec catalogue and they found a good beginner-level skating course at the local arena. Brad had been to the arena a couple of times before to watch some of his friends play. It was cold, dank and loud in there, with a seemingly endless series of dressing rooms filled with loud, sweaty kids. Brad’s mom set a date to go shopping for some skates and a helmet. He played video games for a few hours and then went to bed. He cried a little bit. It had been an emotional day.

On NEWS ANCHOR

2009-02-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

January 22nd

On NEWS ANCHOR

The words ‘News Anchor’ immediately made me think of Anchorman, which I often cite as the Greatest Movie of All Time. I don’t know if it is, it’s something I say to get people to watch it. But it made me think of what could possible be my five favourite comedies of the last 15 years (since 1993). These are the ones that had the greatest influence on me, in no particular order:

Anchorman (2004)

Ron Burgundy was the voice in my head for several years whenever I tried to make anything funny. My sketch group, Players Players, also stole Will Ferrell’s baritone for our classic businessmen sketch. It was also a key bridge – the apex of the Will Ferrell era (which made all other Will Ferrell sketches and films forgivable), but also the start of the Judd Apatow era. Also my introduction to actors Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, who all have a spot in may heart along with catchphrases.

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

This movie, reviled at the time by reactionary middle class types who couldn’t imagine liking a film with this title, and loved by my generation of high-school geeks, was overall super hilarious, but what set it apart from also great and loved Jim Carrey roles in Ace Ventura and Batman Forever (a great movie whose reputation was sullied in retrospect by association with the vomitorious Batman and Robin) was my identification with Lloyd Christmas’s crush on Lauren Holly’s character. Through high school and university I had crushes on dozens of girls and my fantasy was always modeled on Lloyd’s dream sequence set to The Cowsills.

Office Space (1999)

Like most of the world, I first caught this on video. In university I wrote a major paper comparing its liberation ideology to that of Fight Club and American Beauty. Its empathy got me through and eventually out of the Scotiabank office years, and also inspired a desire in me to think and act independently, as the main character does in the movie, and I truly believed that the respect I would gain from being my own man would outweigh the benefits of sucking up to my superiors. I haven’t always been able to act on this belief, and it’s something I still think about.

I Heart Huckabees (2004)

This movie epitomized the undergraduate experience for me in a way that Old School, a movie that I despised, did not, even though Huckabees was not set on a campus like Old School sort of was. The best part of Huckabees was how Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg (who, like Will Ferrell, have received criticism-free passes from me to do whatever they want in past or future because of this movie) float from idea to idea and are so galvanized by each one that the stakes of each scene go through the roof. Key moments: Scwartzman makes love to Isabelle Huppert in the filth, and Mark Wahlberg beats the fire truck to the fire with his fire bike (“I’m at the fire, where are you guys?”)

Tommy Boy (1995)

Far and away Chris Farley’s greatest achievement, he was a good to my high school friends and I. It was a major event when he died. He embodied physical comedy and giving everything to every moment. And he was perfectly contrasted to David Spade’s small sarcasm. One of the best comedy setpieces of all time: Chris Farley destroying a model car and lighting it on fire trying to demonstrate the importance of brakes. Reenacted by my friends and I dozens of times, this sequence is hardwired into my brain.

Honorable Mentions: 3 Wes Anderson movies (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, the Royal Tenenbaums), School of Rock, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Tropic Thunder, Josie and the Pussycats. Also Austin Powers, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

On SPINACH DIP

2009-02-25T20:17:00.000-08:00

January 21st

On SPINACH DIP

Memoirs - Part VI

It was right around the time when I was killing the Lambs that I got into Spinach Dip and was reading this fascinating biography of Abraham Lincoln. Funny how, once you settle down in the suburbs, your life becomes largely about other people.

I first discovered a recipe for Spinach Dip on the internet when I was looking up how to reconfigure the Lambs' billiards room into a gas chamber. It may seem obvious to the seasoned suburbanite that spinach dip can be served in a pumpernickel bread bowl, but at the time this was quite a revelation to me.

I had no job at this time, so I spent my days balancing experiments in spinach dip with plotting to kill the neighbours and reading an excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln. Everyone knows that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin, but few know the logs were from silverbirch trees, and the bark was left on the logs to give the cabin a glowing, futuristic look. I was also surprised to learn that Lincoln's wartime cabinet included a dog, three antique compasses and the President of Chile.

I developed a good relationship with my local baker, who made extra round pumpernickel loaves for me, enabling my new obsession. The main problem I had was that, after a day of eating spinach dip form pumpernickel bowls and reading about Lincoln, I would reek of spinach, which almost gave me away when I was in the Lamb's basement and boobytrapping their rec room. I had to bribe their dog, Wally, with enticing sports magazines which he would calmly read while I went about my business, despite the fact that my stench must have been overwhelming to his sensitive nose.

Like all personal fads of this nature, my addiction to experimenting with Spinach Dip petered out. The last dip I attempted to make was the difficult spinachless spinach dip, which I made while reading the final chapter about Lincoln's assassination, in which the author concluded that, based on new information he had unearthed in the course of his research, the assassination was not conducted by John Wilkes Booth but instead by a trained frog in a top hat that was paid by the President of Chile. As I read these words I looked up to see Mr. Lamb emerging from his basement into his living room, which was visible to me through a bay window that faced my kitchen. He was screaming very loudly and clutching his face, which was melting. Mrs. Lamb and Wally were already dead. Penelope later asked me why I had killed the Lambs, and I told her that I found their way of life insulting. It wasn't the real reason, but the one that made the most sense to me at the time. In retrospect, it was clichéd.

With the Lambs killed, my book on Lincoln finished and my spinach dip enthusiasm lost, I decided it was time to move on. This life didn't agree with me, and a wider world beckoned. We left our house under the cover of nightfall and traveled to a plastic surgeon's in Denver, who changed our faces so that we could move back to New York without anyone recognizing us.

On CHILE

2009-02-25T20:15:00.000-08:00

January 20th

On CHILE

Ladies and Gentlemen, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

"People of Earth, imagine being me. Imagine growing up in a country barely wide enough so that two people can pass each other. Imagine being a women president in a country of sexist latinos. Imagine what it must be like for me, the president of Chile, whenever I am in America, people make jokes about chili dogs, chilly weather, and California Angels baseball player Chili Davis.

No, it ain't easy. But neither was my upbringing. Spending every day deciding whether to talk to people in Spanish, English, German, Portuguese or French, founding a theatre group/musical band called Las Clap Clap. And then I was tortured by Pinochet.

Look everyone, I could go on about myself all day, but that's not why we're here, is it? The real reason is to celebrate the opening of the Great Chilean Movator. As I mentioned before, it has always been frustrating living in a country where we only have just enough room to walk single file as we go North and South through our country, Argentina on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. We always have to say, "Oh, excuse me Senor Alvarez, I was trying to walk North and you are walking South. Let's squeeze past each other. Otherwise we'll end up in the Pacific Ocean, or, worse, Argentina." It caused a lot of pickpocketery and casual groping.

But look here! You know those moving sidewalks, like they have in big airports? We built one going South on the ground here, and then another one going North on top of it. It goes the entire country, from Peru in the North to the end of the world in the South. Not only do you not have to squeeze past anyone any more, you don't even have to walk anymore! This movator will just take you anywhere you want to go! As long as it is North or South, and why would you try and go anywhere else? What, are you gonna go West, and walk around in the ocean? Don't be stupid. And if you change your mind, and want to switch direction, all you have to do if you are travelling North is climb over the raiing here and jump down to the lower level. If you are travelling South, you have to wait until you get to the end, where there is a staircase to the top level.

Some people say, "Hey! If everyone is always on a moving sidewalk, how are you gonna get exercise?
Everyone's gonna turn real fat!" Look, don't worry about it! If you are getting fat just run on the movator! Or walk in the opposite direction! No one's stopping you! Or go take a swim in the Pacific Ocean. It's right over there!

My fellow Chileans, this is the best day in history. Now we can go back to our super tall skinny houses in or long, skinny cars and make love to our skinny spouses in our long thin beds, where we sleep in single file. Long live the age of convenience! Long Live the Movator!

On DIGITAL CAMERA

2009-02-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

January 19th

On DIGITAL CAMERA
I have a sister-in-law who is a photographer named Tracey. Here are some exciting things about Tracey:

1) Tracey was the maid of honour at our wedding, and took almost as many pictures as, maybe more than, our photographer.
2) Tracey is often described as a ‘firecracker’. She has very little respect for law and order, and is a corrupting influence. This is why we like her. For example, one time I was sitting in the all-u-can-eat section of the skydome and she wasn’t and she made me sneak two hot dogs and a box of popcorn down to her. Our first attempt, where she came up the ramp to my level and pretended that I had her wallet, didn’t work, but the second time, where I just put the food in my backpack and walked down, did work. And she also had alcohol in her pop cup.
3) Tracey gave us a hermit crab for Christmas one year. I later accidentally murdered it, but that is a separate and heart-rending tale.
4) Krista keeps a messy room, but Tracey keeps a catastrophe. In her house where she lived in Ottawa, she would live in one room until it became too messy to exist in, and then move on and sleep in another room, like the aliens in the hit movie Independence Day.
5) Tracey recently bought a house with her long term boyfriend Lorne in Oakville on Cobbler’s Lane, in a neighbourhood where all the streets are named after medieval professions (Silversmith Way, Merchant’s Gate, etc.)
6) The first time I met Tracey she came to a party with Krista before we were going out and fell asleep on the couch within half an hour of arriving.
7) Tracey really likes making and eating funnel cakes. They are her new specialty, along with margaritas that she makes in her new Margaritaville margaritamaker.
8) Tracey has excellent photography skills. She has done my headshots and our Parker and Seville publicity shots. Check them out!
9) One time Tracey made hamburgers for our 11-person cast and crew when we were touring in Ottawa.
10) One time Tracey fell off a giant fiberglass bulldog and seriously hurt herself.
11) If you have a secret, don’t tell Tracey. She delights in blurting out incendiary facts in the middle of dinner table conversations.
12) Tracey likes meat. When Krista and Tracey were little, Krista would trade her meat to Tracey in return for her vegetables.
13) Tracey is an avid softball player. Pretty talented too, from what a gather. A real leader on the field. Steals pitchers from Boston Pizza off the field.
14) Krista and Tracey used to share a bed together and hated each other.
15) Tracey’s favourite photography subject is her and Lorne doing something mildly sexy.
16) The only ‘item’ on Tracey’s facebook page is called “Tracey wins beer drinking competition”
17) The name of one of Tracey’s best friends is Stacey.
18) Tracey is, at heart, a considerate, loving and awesome sister-in-law.

On THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

2009-02-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

January 17th

On THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Memoirs – Part V

Once again in hiding, I travelled to Des Moines, Iowa and adopted the name Jacksonville Florida. I got a job as a tax advisor and took up with a 39-year-old widow named Penelope and moved into a quiet suburban neighbourhood. Our next door neighbours were Adam and Trudy Lamb, an architect and a housewife, respectively. On our first day in our new neighbourhood, the Lambs invited us over for a dinner party.
Soon after we sat down to dinner, which was pork tenderloin, the Lambs initiated a conversation.
“Now do you two plan on having kids?” asked Mrs. Lamb, innocently.
At the same time, Penelope confirmed and I denied our desire to procreate.
“I had a recent bad experience with children,” I added to support my assertion.
“Yeah, they’re nasty, huh?” agreed Mr. Lamb. “We had a couple of our own, but they’re all grown up now.”
“Ever heard of Rumpole of the Bailey?” asked Mr. Lamb.
“No,” I replied, “That sounds like a string of nonsense words.” I knew what Rumpole of the Bailey was, of course, but I didn’t want to blow my cover.
“It’s a British TV show,” explained Mr. Lamb.
“We love British TV,” explained Mrs. Lamb.
“Anyway,” continued Mr. Lamb, “the guy who wrote that, John Mortimer, had two wives named Penelope. Isn’t that weird?”
“And he cheated on both of them,” added Mrs. Lamb, “and the first one used to write books about it. He didn’t care though, he just shrugged it off. Although they did divorce, so maybe not. The first Penelope was a lot older than him, and married when they met. They had to hire a private investigator on her husband’s behalf, and then give him evidence of their…”
She paused, partly searching for the word, partly for effect.
“Philandering!” She concluded, “Anyway, what could she expect, right? He clearly had no respect for the institution of marriage in the first place. What an odd way to go about living your life.”
Mr. Lamb stepped in, “The reason I brought it up is because your name is Penelope, isn’t that right?”
Penelope nodded.
“Not that I’m suggesting either of you is an affair-haver. It just brought that to mind, your name, which was the same as the guy’s wives names,” Mr. Lamb overexplained. “Maybe it’s more common in England. Are you English, Penelope?”
Penelope shook her head.
“And what was your name again, sir?” Mrs. Lamb asked me.
“Jacksonville Florida,” I answered.
The Lambs said nothing. They wanted to say many things, like “That’s not a name, it’s a city,” or “That is a bizarre name!” or “That sounds made up to me,” But they didn’t. They didn’t want to offend the new neighbour, even though any of these questions may have started a conversation much more interesting than the one we’d just had about John Mortimer’s wives. These conversation would have had stakes, implications, would have raised the possibility that I would someday soon murder the Lambs in their sleep. If they had called attention to the fictitious nature of my name, Jacksonville Florida, then they may have considered moving after that dinner party, which would have saved their lives. Instead the Lambs were silent. And the silence, as they say, was deafening.

On SNOW LEOPARD

2009-02-23T12:31:00.000-08:00

January 16th
Only one miss.

On SNOW LEOPARD
La News Francaise 19th October 2007

THE SNOW LEOPARD
By Kyrgyz Antropov
Reviewed by Pierre LaPlace
Review translated from French by Oldovai Henderson

In each fledgling nation there comes a time when they realize they lack founding myths (Unless they already have a really good founding myth). For example, Canadian Paul Gross recently released the painfully earnest World War I film Passchaendale, and as bad as it is to watch for non-Canadians, for literate Canadians it must be an embarrassment.
So too is Kyrgyz Antropov’s new book of poetry, The Snow Leopard. Most of the poems contained in this ‘book’ are complicated analogies, where the nation of Kazakhstan is represented by a Snow Leopard and other countries are represented by other animals. The analogies are rarely effective, however, and often are glaringly transparent; for example, the poem ‘The Snow Leopard is birthed from the stomach of the Wild Bear’ and ‘The Snow Leopard is mocked in the Eagle by a native of the Lion in hit film’
Worse is the language of the poetry, which is repetitive, banal, excrutiating, inconsequential, and has little to do with the actual Kazakh character. Alarmingly, this illiterate tablet scratcher has been named Kazakhstan’s poet laureate, which leads me to believe he is the only one is this populous nation with access to a writing implement.

-

Dear La News Fancaise,

Thank you for your article on the book of poetry, “The Snow Leopard” by Kyrgyz Antropov that appeared in La News on October 19th. However, I found it very offensive and think that maybe you should go find all the existing copies of your newspaper that still exist and cut the article out of it because I found it very derogatory of the poetry that was described, and it made many Kazakhs upset.

Thank You
Kyrgyz Antropov

PS I have attached a new poem that I wrote that maybe you will publish in your newspaper.

The Snow Leopard by Kyrgyz Antropov.

A Snow Leopard crouches and waits

For the bushel badger* to trundle past.

It jumps out and catches him

With its snow teeth.

* The Bushel Badger represents Turkestan.

Thanks Again,
Kyrgyz.

-

La News Francaise 16th December 2007
Dear Mr. Antropov,

We regret to inform you we will not publish your poem, “The Snow Leopard”, as you requested. It is of poor quality and would not be at home on a dirty piece of toilet paper.

Apologies,

Pierre LaPlace, Ed.
La News Francaise

-

Dear La News Francaise:
How bout this one?

The Leopard of Snow

Rawrrrrarrrrawararaaarrrr flesh flies from a warthog* that the snow leopard eats rawwrraara

* the warthog is the kurds

Love,
Kyrgyz Antropov

-

La News Francaise, 3rd January 2008
Dear Mr. Antropov,
This has gone far enough. Your persistence depresses me. I am really going to snap here. Very angry.

Pierre LaPlace, ed.
La News Franciase

-

Dear La News Francaise,

I have just be selected Poet Laureate for all Central Asian Former Soviet Republics. This is good because I receive more money. I am sorry you are sad. Maybe you should look at life more positively, or more like a bunch of animals that represent countries. I won’t bother you again.

Kyrgyz.

on LET FREEDOM RING

2009-02-23T12:29:00.001-08:00

January 15th
Although confused at first, I eventually figured out this distinctly American phrase. First the Liberty Bell and now this – I think January has two themes: patriotism and winter. I’m excited to see what the answer is on inauguration Tuesday. Maybe Barackobama!

On LET FREEDOM RING
I looked up ‘Let Freedom Ring’ on Wikipedia and a Jazz Album by Jackie McLean, and a book by Sean Hannity came up. I also put ‘Let Freedom Ring’ into google, and a bunch of right-wing websites popped up. Eventually I discovered that it comes from the patriotic song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”
Sean Hannity is on a show that, until recently, was called Hannity and Colmes. What I just discovered through Wikiresearch is that Colmes is supposed to be Hannity’s liberal foil. I had always thought they were two crazy conservative guys, but then again I only have seen them through the Daily Show and Colbert Report.
Alan Colmes was also on my favourite ever episode of the Colbert Report, where he became co-host for one episode, criticized Colbert for putting Watership Down in his non-fiction section, and turned into a bat at the end of the show.
I was recently down in Florida and, for fun, we would listen to the right wing radio and laugh at the crazy things they would say. I was a bit worried that my parents knew what station it was, and I’m not sure if they listen to laugh or listen to listen. But mostly they seem like normal liberal Canadians.
When I write things like that, I can’t help but feel I am playing into the hands of the provocateurs. I’ve ushered at Massey Hall for a bunch of comedy concerts, and even though I agreed with him, Bill Maher’s pandering to his liberal lefty crowd seemed just as lazy as Jeff Dunham and Artie Lange with their boorish right-wingers. I’m not saying anything original when I say right wing crazies are crazy, wrong and hurtful. They treat important issues like they are players in a team sport that they have to rah rah to victory. They are tremendously frightened that people will impinge on their Christmases and hunting and military. They sound like children who have been given two sides and their reasoning for believing in something is because it is their assigned side.
Anyway, I hope these people are on their way to becoming obsolete. After watching a bunch of youtube clips of the ‘culture wars’ I kind of want to barf a little, even though it seems interesting at the time, like candy.
Soon Barack Obama will be inaugurated, and we’ll be doing comedy that night. Of all the promise that Obama has, it’s the promise that he’ll somehow be able to stop the fear and hate and pandering which makes me hope hardest. Listening to people say things that don’t make sense like it’s perfect sense is only so funny.

Let Freedom Ring!
Let our muscles relax.
The pinched days are done
No more talk of facts.

Trust is welcome
Let’s all take a nap
America, America
Is a place on a map.

God Bless! He said sarcastically?

On MITTENS

2009-02-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

On MITTENS
Memoirs – Part IV
The night after the day I was officially ousted from office as the mayor of Washington, D.C., I was walking the street and trying to think of what to do next, and I saw a pair of tiny pink mittens lying in the street, wet and old and disgusting. They were in the middle of a gasoline and urine filled flow that travelled along the street and into a nearby ravine. I thought of Gwendolyn and the children I’d never have. Just then I heard a faint cry, and I followed the stream into the ravine and into a long concrete tunnel. The cries grew louder, and after another fifteen minutes of wading through filth I found a tiny girl curled up by a grate and weeping.
She told me her story: her parents had traded her to a pawn shop for a new television set. The pawn shop owner flipped her over to a illegal darkroom using child labour to mass-produce photos of puppies to be placed in keychains. She had run away and this is the farthest places she could get to. I vowed to protect her, and we established a lair down in the Washington sewers. My long legs served me well in wading through the dreck, and I constructed a pair of stilts for her that she never took off and she soon felt like they were a part of her body. She made new ones for her arms as well, and would travel around the sewers using all four of her elongated limbs.
More abandoned children joined us over time, and we gave them stilt limbs and taught them how to move through the underground tunnels that covered the underside of the city. The more talented children were soon able to move up and down vertical shafts, and one particularly talented boy appended his stilts with claws that affixed themselves to the gunk that hung on the top of the tunnels.
Soon rumours spread through Washington of the Sewer King and his army of Spider Children. An initial reaction of curiosity and excitement soon gave way to fear, and inevitably a mob was gathered to go down into the tunnels and flush out the oddities.
A triad of girls that we had labeled Listeners was crouching under the grates in the Mall, where they overheard the mob gathering. They quickly travelled to my lair and all of the children were called together. A plan was hastily concocted and, through a series of traps and misdirections, the mob was led on a wild goose chase around the underbelly of the city until they finally trapped us underneath the World War II memorial. Several of the children died when the police condoned the use of a flame thrower, but then the ground collapsed and the golden eagles and stars of the monument mixed with the tar and the sewage and the bodies of dead children.
I hoped to see Jesus again, but he left me to figure out the situation on my own. Some of the children, including the first girl I had discovered all those weeks ago, had protected themselves from the destruction by removing their stilts and creating a canopy out of discarded ceramic tiles that fused with a trove of “I Heart DC” t-shirts to create a strong web. When these children were discovered, they had lost their spiderlike quality with their stilts and were recognized as human children. They were all adopted by Hollywood actors. I got away.

On SKATING RINK

2009-02-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

January 13th

On SKATING RINK
I used to be a really huge hockey fan, but I’ve pretty much abandoned it for baseball. Even though they are mostly in different seasons, and I still feel a little weird being excited for the 2nd month of baseball while the Stanley Cup Playoffs are still on. My friend Paul Frank dislikes hockey solely because it takes attention away from baseball. That’s how much I love baseball. I first turned to hockey when I came back from London, England in 1993 and I had missed the hoopla around the Blue Jays World Series run in ’92, and thus was a little heartbroken. I was totally with baseball in 1989 and 1990, and then they won without my help. They never needed me at all!
The Leafs needed me though – they were on the brink of success, just like the Jays were in 1989 (As seen in the classic film Sky High: The story of the 1989 Toronto Blue Jays). This promise of Leaf success proved to be misleading, and over time my disappointment grew. I still stuck with hockey and ignored baseball, though, mostly because my friends were all big hockey fans, and my favourite video games were hockey games. Then I went to university, and abandoned sports for having a life. Now I don’t like hockey any more for these reasons:

1) Felix Potvin doesn’t play for the Leafs anymore.
2) Now that I look at it, goaltending seems more like luck than I thought it was. I used to love goalies, now it seems like they just stand there and get hit with the puck.
3) I HATE the rule which gives the overtime/shootout loser of a game a point, because it makes overtime less exciting because the stakes are lowered, it screws up historic statistics by inflating the value of points (because some games are worth 2 points and some are worth 3), and it is obsolete because now, with the shootout, all games have a winner no matter what. The whole point of the rule was to reduce the amount of ties, and now there are no ties.
4) I have gone back on my belief that franchises in the South, especially Stanley Cup franchises in Tampa, Anaheim and Carolina, are as worthy of existence as more traditional markets. That seemed to make sense as long as fans were coming to all the games, and it seemed like hockey was going to grow as a sport, but it looks like that ain’t happening. Contract the league! Move North!
5) Up until this year, the Leafs were a collection of free agents going nowhere fast. I’ll cheer for winners or losers, but they have to be lovable losers. This year’s are more lovable, but also more anonymous.
6) There are so many different ways to score in baseball!
7) All my comedian friends love baseball.
8) I can go to 26 baseball games in a year for $114. I can only go to Leafs games if I am lucky enough to get tix from my parents.
9) Baseball games are a party.
10) You don’t feel bad if you fall asleep during a baseball game
11) All the stadiums are different in baseball. It used to be that way in hockey, but not anymore. I miss Maple Leaf Gardens.
12) Baseball is a game for stats geeks. I am a stats geek.
13) Baseball links me to when I was nine. Hockey links to me when I was fifteen. I was cooler at nine than fifteen.

I’m glad I was able to get that off my chest.

On LANCE ARMSTRONG

2009-02-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

January 12th

On LANCE ARMSTRONG
An interview with Lance Armstrong
Every week here at Biking Weekly, we like to interview one of our biking heroes. This week, cyclist Lance Armstrong!
BW: When you won the Tour de France eight times, were you using steroids?
LA: I won it seven times.
BW: Quit avoiding the question!
LA. Yes. Wait, no.
BW: (shakes head in disapproval)
LA: Anyways……
BW: When you won Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year in 2001, were you on steroids?
LA: No, but I was surprised because very few Americans care about cycling.
BW: But you are American. Don’t you care about cycling?
LA: Yes, a few people, like myself do. That’s why I said ‘very few’ and not ‘no one’
BW: Choosing your words carefully, I see.
LA: Can I have someone else interview me?
BW: Were you disappointed you never won Time’s Man of the Year?
LA: I did, in 2006.
BW: That was the year they made everyone man of the year.
LA: No, just the people who read the cover of Time that week.
BW: Still, a real pandering move by Time.
LA: Anyway, George Bush, Joseph Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini were all men of the year, so….
BW: Also Pierre Laval, who later in life was executed by a firing squad for high treason by the French, because of his participation in the Vichy government.
LA: I didn’t know that.
BW: I’m reading all this off Wikipedia.
LA: (shrugs)
BW: It says here you have cancer.
LA: Not anymore!!!
BW: Oh! You beat it! Well done!
LA: How long have you been writing for Biking Weekly?
BW: It’s Bike Weekly.
LA: No, I think it’s Biking Weekly.
BW: Look, I just made up that magazine so I could come and interview you. I’m a big fan.
LA: But you didn’t know I had cancer?
BW: I respect people’s privacy.
LA: But I told everyone. It was a big thing.
BW: Okay, really, I have no idea who you are. I am a secret agent from SMERSH.
LA: Isn’t that the Russian Spy Agency in James Bond?
BW: I love James Bond!!
LA: This is the second worst interview I’ve ever been interviewed in.
BW: Mm hmmm. (tapping pencil against mouth, thoughtfully) and what was the first?
LA: The first worst?
BW: Yes.
LA: This one.
BW: But you just said it was the second worst.
LA: I know, but it got worse since I said that.
BW: What was your third worst?
LA: With that French magazine, Paris Match.
BW: What was so bad about that?
LA: It was all in French, and I suspect mostly about Sheryl Crow.
BW: One of the Counting Crows.
LA: No, my ex.
BW: Your X. What does that mean?
LA: We used to be engaged.
BW: Ooo hoo hoo hoo! Salacious!
LA: (silence)
BW: Well, are you going to tell me more about that?
LA: She’s got a great singing voice, and lots of stamina in bed. Also, I think that song “Every Day is a Winding Road” is about bicycling. I love winding roads! I like to bike on them. So it’s a song about how great everything is.
BW: That wasn’t my interpretation.
LA: Really. What do you think that song is about?
BW: It’s about how every day sucks, because you want to be on a straight road and get where you’re going, but there’s all these goddamn winds in the road that fuck up your life.
LA: I never thought of it that way. Maybe… we’re both right?
They kiss.

On VETERANARIAN

2009-02-15T19:55:00.001-08:00

January 10-11th

On VETERANARIAN
(Memoirs will return. In its place, Veterantarian Hospital)
Veteranarian Hospital
Dr. Hutchison was very handsome, all the female pet owners agreed. But from Patches’ perspective, he was hideous. A hideous man with a well-tended Caesar cut, who jabbed Patches with needles and touched him in odd places and, when it was done, wrapped a pink bandana around his neck. Patches kind of liked the bandana part, but hated how he liked it. It was a good looking bandana, don’t get Patches wrong, but when he wore it at the dog park, it was a public manifestation of the shame he felt for being molested by this tall man with classical features and a sunny disposition. A perversely sunny disposition.
Stranger were some of the other dogs in the vet’s office who had their tongues out and their tails wagging, leering at Patches as he ashamedly walked out of the vet’s office, his hair neatly trimmed. At first he thought the other dogs had never been to the vet before, but as he saw the same dogs again and again, he realized they perversely liked going in the room with the fascist steel table. Patches wondered what kind of sick dogs looked forward to such treatment. They probably had terrible home lives.

-

Mr. Hutchison hated his own life, and he didn’t know why. Ever since he was seven years old, he wanted to be a veterinarian. He achieved his goal with minimal effort, finishing in the middle of his class, set up shop in a suburban location, and hired two very attractive vet techs, both of whom he had since slept with, with hardly any complications. Sometimes he thought that maybe he should be a sculptor – he looked at things and saw other shapes beneath the surface, and wanted to chip away at their exteriors until something beautiful, or perhaps beautifully ugly, emerged. He had this feeling most of all when he looked at himself in the mirror, and imagined chipping his own body away until it was a conservatively dressed, fat midget. He threw up a little in his mouth about fifteen times a day, usually when he met a new client and their pet. Maybe a career path based on what he wanted when he was a seven-year-old boy was a bad decision. After all, he never asked seven-year-old boys for advice regarding anything else. Because they were stupid, they were missing a lifetime of experience that told them what was really fun to do.

-

The owner of Patches, a pregnant teen named Heidi, exuded a sense of wisdom that was completely unrelated to the amount of wisdom she actually had. Something in the way her features rested on her faces allowed people to trust her when she gave them flowers, or asked for a dog, or said it would be okay to have unprotected sex. Really, Heidi had no idea what she was doing in life, and tried not to think about it. Most of her friends reflected on that all the time, how they thought they had no idea where their life was going, but really, they had a general idea, and what was happening was a minor variation on their plans, and they were reflecting on the slight dissonance on where they thought their life was going, and how it was actually going. Heidi really didn’t know what was going to happen in her life, and when her teachers said she had an equal chance at winning a Nobel Prize, flaming out and dying in another few months, or living an anonymous life as an office worker, it was true. This was terrifying, so Heidi didn’t think about it because it was like trying to direct a storm. Heidi had freckles, and blond pigtails, and when people looked into her eyes, expecting the eyes of a seventeen year old girl with freckles and pigtails, they saw the eyes of an ancient bird of prey crossed with mother earth.

On GODZILLA

2009-02-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

January 9th

On GODZILLA
Memoirs – Part III
For the next eight years I associated with the Jewish and Latin American communist communities in New York City. I started writing freelance articles for the two communist newspapers in the city, The Little Havana Hammer and the Hebrew Sickle. All of this was under the cover of complete secrecy, according to the police I was an employee of an imaginary water treatment plant known as Water Treatment Plant 801. I had to pay off the police to keep my identity secret, we all did. We would raise money for our bribes with coffee houses where we would read poetry that were thinly disguised analogies of economic ideas. Then we would pass the hat around, also a lot of money was donated by the Irish community by mistake, because we named our coffee house events “IRA”, which stood for International Revolution Association.
My first assignment for the Little Havana Hammer was an article on sculptor Jorge Sanchez, who worked in large scale papier mache. When I interviewed him he was creating a full-scale papier mache statue of Godzilla in Central Park, and he had created a giant lizard foot that was ten feet tall. It was meant to represent capitalism, but it was never finished, and he ended up living in the foot for several years.
A few years later I got an assignment from the Hebrew Sickle to go to different factories in New Jersey and interview factory workers who moonlit as musicians. I met a chemical plant worker who played the tuba, and a textiles worker who sang falsetto. I introduced them to one another, and they became the communist community’s most popular jazz duo until they both died in a lightning storm caused by a nuclear plant in Hoboken.
Eventually I became vice-secretary of the Manhattan chapter of Comintern, after a brutal struggle with a 60-year-old Bolivian man with one eye. We both had gangs of thugs who we indoctrinated in communist theory by day and set upon each other by night. 305 men and women died in the street war until I threw the Bolivian off of a catwalk at the Metropolitan Opera House.
When I reached the age of 24 I became disillusioned with communism and started work in the mail room for Salisbury-Wigginton, an investment firm on Wall Street. I started in the basement and every year I was promoted to the floor above me, like clockwork, until I was 35 years old and the vice-president of marketing on the ninth floor.
At that time the F.B.I. had gathered enough evidence to convict me for arson and the murder of the old man in the Rockies. As they came up the elevator, my assistant Thea warned me using her extra-sensory perception, and I escaped using the back stairs. I caught a cab and traveled to Washington D.C. where I disguised myself by running for mayor. Under the pseudonym Hatter Johnson, I was mayor for three years until I had to resign as a result of a corruption scandal. It turned out that the Narcotics division had been paying Columbians to import cocaine into the city to increase the department’s budget, which was foolish because those drugs would have been imported without the illegal incentives provided by the police. I was the one who took the fall.

On HOT COCOA

2009-02-12T19:46:00.001-08:00

January 8th

On HOT COCOA
Memoirs – Part II
It turned out I was the only passenger on the train to Salem. The Baton Rouge-Salem line was only created as an economy-stimulating make-work project in the 1930s, and train service continued because a corrupt politician had a mistress that he would train in from Oregon. She wasn’t on the train that day.
Somewhere in the mountains between Utah and Colorado, on the ninth day of my trip, and unbeknownst to either the train engineer or me, the train derailed. It was late January and a heavy snowfall had reduced visibility to zero. The train travelled for another half hour on ice formations that, by odd chance, had naturally taken the form of rails, until finally the train tumbled into a small gully. The train engineer died instantly, but I was thrown from a window and then into a twenty foot snowdrift. I made a makeshift sling out of snow and pine needles for my broken arm, and walked for 78 miles until I came upon a small cabin on top of a ledge.
An old man in a top hat answered the door. His eyes were red and watery, and he was quite stout. He took pity on me and gave me warm clothes, which were large in the torso and short in the leg, and a blanket. He made us both a mug of Hot Cocoa. On my mug was the official logo of the 1904 World’s Fair/Olympics in St. Louis, and on his was the face of a sad clown.
“What is your name, son?” asked the gentleman.
“Jack Rabbit,” I answered.
“Jackrabbit?” He asked.
“No, Jack,” and I paused to indicate the space, “Rabbit.”
“Like John Updike?” he said, confused.
“No, that was just ‘Rabbit’.” I would have said, if I had known who John Updike was. In reality I said, “What?”
We had gotten off to a bad start, and it got worse when he offered to adopt me. One thing led to another and by the time the cocoa was finished, a fire had started that would consume the entire house. For the next three days I wandered through the mountains while the old man followed me with a gun. To disguise myself, I rolled in bird dung on some bare rocks, making my black cloak white. Finally we were both caught in an avalanche, and I watched a large falling tree decapitate the old man and I was trapped in a small cave. I slept for four hours, exhausted.
When I opened my eyes Jesus was before me, a two-dimensional Jesus that looked like it had been literally ripped from an illuminated manuscript, with edges of torn paper. When Jesus spoke to me, his mouth moved up and down like a Steinbach nutcracker, and sunbeams emerged from the square void between his teeth. He blurted out a series of nonsense words which at the time I thought were Aramaic and I wrote them down on a piece of parchment I had kept in my cloak for emergencies. Later, when I researched the meaning of these words, I found they corresponded to no known language. After about five hours, He started to sing the Alphabet over and over. That lasted for another seven hours, and then he disappeared and I was lying in a gutter in New York City, completely naked.

On JACKRABBIT

2009-02-11T19:08:00.001-08:00

January 7th
Hanged again. Fuck this game.

On JACKRABBIT
Memoirs – Part I
Dear reader, I was not always the man you see handsomely displayed on the dust jacket of this book. If you flip to that photo, you’ll see a man in a violet valeur cape tied above the sternum, a cigarette holder tightly wedged between 30 foot teeth, with facial hair that looks like it was drawn on with a calligraphy pen, a top hat precariously perched on his head like a medieval tenement, his eyes burning red like smouldering embers at the bottom of black pits. Even my name, proudly emblazoned on the cover of this memoir, is not the moniker I was given when I was born.
When I was born, I was named Georges St. Pierre Beaulieu Clemenceau IV, in the Louisiana Bayou. But because of my unusual physical features, I was known as Jackrabbit. My shins were twice as long as my thighs, which were twice as long as my torso, and my knees were bulbous fists, looking like bloated, pus engorged cysts. My arms were normal sized. My hair was a brown mop of curls like Terry Fox, and I was always wearing green short shorts with bright yellow piping. My parents were taken away from me when I was four years old by a mysterious mist. I survived by selling raw hot dog wieners at the state fair, calling them “Bayou Treats”. I could only attend school on days when the tide was low enough for me to cross the Bog. I taught myself to read using three issues of Playboy from 1959.
When I reached the age of 12 puberty struck with the urgency of a careening cement truck. I grew a full beard in one day, and lost my virginity to the daughter of the owner of the Riverboat Gambler, a local saloon. She was blind in one eye and had seven fingers on one hand, which she would run through my overgrown chest hair. I refused to shave and by the age of 13 I looked like a young Rasputin and took to wearing black robes. I changed my name from Jackrabbit to Jack Rabbit. I was accepted with a full scholarship to Constabulary University in Salem, Oregon, but deferred my acceptance for two years in order to finish a Popsicle stick art project that I gave to Gwendolyn, a local girl that I had fallen in love with.
She asked me why I was wearing robes when it was 120 degrees out. She said she missed the old Jackrabbit, and that if I was trying to hide my unusual shins and knees, I should show them proudly, for they were given me by our Lord our God. She thought the popsicle art piece was an oil refinery, but I had intended it to be a sewage treatment plant, after the treatment plant where we had first met, hiding from a gang of marauding toughs who were posing as racists but were really just homophobes.
I flinched when she misidentified the piece, and walked to the train station without speaking to her. I boarded the 10:23 train to Salem, Oregon, and never saw Louisiana again.

On MADRID

2009-02-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

January 6th
Today I was legitimately hanged for the first time. The odds were stacked against me, as the word was six letters long, and two of those letters were D, which I did not try until I had already placed a shoe on the foot of the poor dead man I was trying to save. The cruel dictatorship’s reign of terror continues, try as might to stop it with my powers of vocabulary.

On MADRID
Speaking of longtime dictatorships, here’s some fast facts about Madrid:

1) Madrid is the third largest city in the European Union, bigger than Paris, France (and Paris, Texas).
2) In Spain, they call counties Autonomous Communities. Madrid is in the Autonomous Community of Madrid.
4) Originally, Madrid was known as Ursaria, which means “Land of Bears”.
4) The town motto of Madrid is, “On water I was built, my walls are made of fire. This is my ensign and escutcheon.” Presumably one would say this while displaying the town escutcheon (and ensign). A rule of thumb that applies to any situation, really.
5) An escutcheon is a different thing depending on the context you’re using the word in. In heraldry, as the Madrilenos are using it in the above motto, they mean the shield in a coat of arms, which in their case depicts a bear trying to knock down a strawberry tree. On a boat, an escutcheon is a plate on the stern of a ship with the boat’s name on it, i.e. the H.M.S. Strawberry-Eating Bear. In a doctor’s office, the escutcheon refers to the male or female distribution of pubic hair. As in “Mrs. Johnson, your escutcheon is a bushy as a strawberry bush the top of a strawberry tree! Lucky there are no bears around.”
6) The capital of Spain was moved from Seville to Madrid in 1561 by Philip II. Take that, Seville!
7) Madrid was the first city to have its civilians targeted by bombs dropped from airplanes. As depicted in the painting, Guernica. (The lesser-known painting Madrid is a picture of cows quietly eating grass in the town of Guernica.)
8) Madrid is sister city to New York, but partner city to Paris. Big difference. You see, Madrid loves New York (and wears a T-shirt to prove it), but it has sex with Paris.
9) In the Soviet Union, they call sister cities brother cities.
10) Apparently, Terminal 4 at Madrid’s airport is really something to see.
11) Drinking in public is a popular pastime for the youth of Madrid.
12) Madrid is the world centre of bullfighting! That makes sense.
13) The fans of Madrid’s poorer soccer team, Atletico Madrid, are known as The Sufferers, or The Cubs Fans.
14) Madrid’s subway system is the second largest in Europe now, after London. (What happened, Berlin?) Its subway lines appear to have been created haphazardly in broad, looping strokes.
15) My sister recently spent time in Madrid, but I do not recall her mentioning anything in particular about it.

There you have it – the jewel of the Iberian Peninsula. The closest I have personally come to Spain is Portugal, and I have also worked in a bank in a Portuguese neighbourhood in Toronto. I had the impression the people there did not like me. The Portuguese women would fight amongst each other to be the one to get the Portuguese-speaking teller, backing away from me and pointing at each other, like children trying to avoid going off the high-dive. Perhaps someday I will have an understanding with those who speak foreign tongues. But right now, we both have a deep-seated fear of one another.

On HARRY POTTER

2009-02-10T14:04:00.001-08:00

January 5th
No fooling – no hanged limbs. Perfect score!

On HARRY POTTER
Look everyone, Harry Potter is the best! I first met Harry Potter in his first year at wizard school and was a good friend all the way until he dropped out of school to fight evil. Come to think of it, did Harry Potter ever graduate? He’s the Bill Gates of wizardry. Probably very rich. How do wizards make money? Besides owning shops in Diagon Alley! I probably knew how it all worked when I was reading the books. Maybe everyone in Wizardry works for the government. The wizard government.
I remember the first sitcom writing class at Humber College, where I went for Comedy School, our legendary (crazy) teacher Lorne Frohman was talking about ideas, and how angry he was that he had not come up with the idea of a school for wizards. “Wizard School!” He would say, shaking his head. As if that was the secret to J. K. Rowlings’s success. This is how a Harry Potter book by Lorne Frohman would go.

“Wizard School!” yelled Professor Snape. “Why didn’t I think of that? Hey, did I ever tell you how I wrote a sitcom for Dolly Parton? I’m Lorne Frohman. I mean, Professor Snape.”

Lorne Frohman also told us about an idea he had for an Umpire School movie, which had the exact same plotline as the movie Stripes, starring Bill Murray. The lesson was you don’t need to come up with a plotline on your own, just follow one from an already existing film. Which, seriously, is a good idea. That’s how Airplane! Was written. Another good idea: Umpire School! I would watch that movie, should it exist, immediately. I should write Lorne Frohman and ask him if I can lift it from him. He never used it. He either never finished the script or no one was interested in it. And then, when I make millions, it will be me that Lorne Frohman will curse to his students. “Umpire School! That was my idea! I’m Professor Snape! I mean, Lorne Frohman!”

UMPIRE SCHOOL
By David Barclay

Our hero’s sidekick, Sanchez, enters the classroom. Our hero, Hoagie Carmichael, is already seated with several other students. They are waiting for the teacher to arrive.

SANCHEZ

Sorry I am late boss!

HOAGIE CARMICHAEL

Sanchez! Get over here before Professor Snape sees you! Oh, why is my life so much like the movie Stripes, starring Bill Murray, and his romantic interest, played by Sean Young?

Enter Professor Snape.

SNAPE

Late again Potter! Wha-wha? This isn’t wizard school! It’s umpire school!

A spitball from an unseen source lands on his forehead.

SNAPE

Weasley!!!!!!!!!!!

Very irreverent. Hoagy Carmichael, it turns out, was a songwriter with the best name! And his real name is Hoagland Howard Carmichael.
Krista and I went to a Slytherin party for the launch of the sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was down at the Harbourfront, and I bought myself a Gryffindor tie. We heard the first chapter read aloud of the new book, and then a band called the Wyrd Sisters played. Is it strange that I want to be in Gryffindor, but kind of wish I wanted to be in another house like Ravenclaw? But not enough to officially want to be in that house? There’s a true-to-life analogy there somewhere.

On SNOWBALL FIGHT

2009-02-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

January 3-4
Got it with only three misses!

On SNOWBALL FIGHT
I have a never-fail technique in a snowball fight: make two snowballs, one in each hand. Approach your victim. Lob the snowball in your non-throwing hand up in the air. When they look up at the snowball, nail them in the face! Works every time. For some reason, this improves my aim. Maybe I’m not thinking about aiming as much.
I hit Krista in the eye this way once and it made it go red and bloodshot. She didn’t speak to me for a while. Sometimes it’s disorienting when you’re in a state of warfare with girls and they take themselves out of the war and get offended. It’s a girl way of getting revenge, moving from the physical battlefield to the social.
Onetime my friends Allan, Bob, Amy, Sonia, Meera, Eileen and I went on a McMaster Outdoors Club trip to Bark Lake, which is Up North. The first night we arrived we played cards and made blunts until three or four in the morning, and then we put the four girls to bed before moving to the boys cabin. When we were in the girls’ room, Bob duct taped the door so it wouldn’t lock when we left. He didn’t have a plan, sometimes Bob just did things because he could.
Allan, Bob and I had to do something with our hidden advantage. Allan suggested we get up real early, run into their room and dump a bunch of snow on their bed. Bob and I thought this was a bit extreme, and would get us into Real Trouble. Bob suggested we go into their room and leave a note saying we could have woken them up, but we didn’t. Ha ha! Allan and I agreed that this was too lame, or at least too creepy. I struck upon a compromise.
We went into their rooms (how did we get in there? No questions were asked) and roused the girls for a sunrise hike! What is more Outdoors Club than a sunrise hike? The girls, on about three hours sleep (as were we), did not want to go. Half of them (Meera and Sonia) submissively agreed and forlornly started preparing, whereas the other two (Amy and Eileen) really made a stink. We told them we’d meet them out front. When they finally got up, put on all their outdoor gear, and got to the front door of their dorm, we had left them a note saying “Sunrise Hike Cancelled!! Love, The Boys xoxoxoxox”
What a great prank! What a great start to our trip! But the war had only just started. The boys had no time to lose as we rushed back to our cabin, retrieved our stockpile of filled supersoakers, and barricaded the door to our room with furniture. Then it was the waiting game as we prepared for the inevitable revenge attack. But it never came. When we saw the girls later, they refused to talk to us. It was the girl form of revenge, which is effective, but not very much fun. Not very pranky. These were girls we liked too, so it was a real blow to not have them talking to us. It was Allan’s birthday too.
We learned later that while we were barricading ourselves in our room, they went on a sunrise hike on their own. What a bunch of jerks. The moral of this story is that revenge is tenfold, but in kind. No fair switching battlefields.

On THE LIBERTY BELL

2009-02-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

January 2nd
I figure out the puzzle before being hanged, having only a head and two arms in the noose.

On THE LIBERTY BELL

I know two twin brothers, Steve and David Pukin. Steve lives in Toronto, like me. David lives in Chicago now, taking forensics at a college there, but in 2005 Steve and David lived together in a big pink house on Bellevue Avenue in Kensington Market in Toronto. Steve and David are from Winnipeg, Steve was part of our group of friends at McMaster in the drama program, and we met David through him. They don’t like to play it up that much, but both Pukins really like the Smashing Pumpkins. Steve, at least, is well known in the online Pumpkins community, and has organized several tribute concerts.
So, when we were out at our local pub on the Pukins’ birthday, we ended up talking about the Billy Corgan concert tour that was going on that summer. Steve and David were bummed because the only show that would have fit into their schedule was in Philadelphia, which was eight hours away. I was a bit drunk (others would tell you I was very drunk) and suggested a road trip. Well, I told them that I would drive them to Philadelphia as a birthday present, and told Krista she would be coming too. When Steve called the next day I told him I always keep my drunken promises, and so I arranged procurement of the Barcmovan (my parents’s minivan) and picked up Steve, David, and their Pumpkins friend Erin, and off we went towards Philadelphia, PA.
The first incident we had on ‘the road’ (before we had left Erin’s driveway), was when I backed into a wooden porch and broke the right taillight. Krista spent the next little while taping the plastic shards of the taillight together with duct tape, I think because she thought it would help explain the whole ‘taillight situation’ at the border. Sometimes my wife (girlfriend at the time) has a logic that is all her own. We trundled along, Erin sleeping in the back and only waking up to complain, and the Pukins chirping in the middle seats about Philadelphia and the Smashing Pumpkins. It became clear that Krista and I would be the parents on the road trip. When we got to the border, Krista turned around and told the twins to stay cool and say nothing.
We pulled up to the customs officer and she asked us where we were going. We told her, to the Billy Corgan concert in Philadelphia. She responded, in customs officer deadpan, “Did you hear the Smashing Pumpkins are getting back together?” Steve and David jumped out of their seats with excitement, responding with a torrent of rumour and hearsay that they had picked up online. David tried to open the side door to the van to talk more freely with the border guard, but the Barcmovan doesn’t allow doors to be opened while the engine is on, so the van just beeped angrily, and David tried to stick his head between the driver’s headrest and the window as we pulled away.
Shortly after Krista started her driving shift (we split the duties into 3 shifts, Me, Krista, and then Steve, because David didn’t have a license) we were pulled over and Krista got a speeding ticket. Not only was that bad for the obvious reason that we now had to pay a speeding ticket from a foreign nation, but it also turned out to be a lesson Steve and David really took to heart. Which is why, during Steve’s shift, we ended up driving five miles under the limit at three in the morning on a Pennsylvania highway with no cars for miles around. I gently suggested we could drive a couple miles over the limit, and the fuzz probably wouldn’t bother us. The fuzz is what we all called the cops the entire trip. I said it first as a joke, and then Steve and David started yelling ‘The fuzz!’ anytime we saw a car that looking like a police car. So whenever Steve got a little brave and started creeping up his speed, David would remind him that the fuzz were probably watching and he’s slow back down. Krista was asleep.
Once we got into Philadelphia, we did usual touristy things: we climbed up the Rocky steps and had our pictures taken at the top in celebratory poses (except for me, I feigned exhaustion), had cheesesteaks from Jim’s Steaks (which is one of at least three places which were ‘the famous one’) and went to the Liberty Bell. I wanted to spend longer reading the accompanying exhibit, but we had to run to try and catch the Duck Boat tour, which we didn’t make. It’s true, though, the Liberty Bell does have a crack in it.
We drove back after a lovely night with a few more ridiculous incidents, and we all agreed that it was a road trip for the ages, and we would have to do another one soon.

On NOISEMAKER

2009-02-09T18:14:00.000-08:00

January 1^st

I played the first puzzle with Krista (my wife) at around one in the morning on January 1^st, and even though the sheet shows that we got hunged, I want the world to know that I knew the answer before she lost it for us while I was playing my turn at Wii Bi Brain Academy. I could have turned it into a big fiasco, especially because it was the first game of the year, but I nobly let it go.

On NOISEMAKER

I’ve never really liked New Year’s Eve celebrations, and in recent years it has turned into a conscious antipathy. I can’t say exactly what it is about December 31^st; when I was in high school I didn’t drink, but I went to some drinking parties. In university I would always be back in Mississauga with my family, but I would have some university friends over and it would be an awkward collision of worlds. But there were no horrifying, scarring memories, but no great coming-of-age memories either.

The real reason I don’t like New Year’s Eve parties is because I get excited about New Year’s Day: I like starting new calendars and throwing out the old ones. I’m a little neurotic about it – last year I had five day-by-day calendars and one wall calendar. So in my mind, I wake up on New Year’s Day fresh and new, my entire year a blank slate ready for me to get to work, armed with several calendars to help me keep track of my progress. A hangover and sleep-in ruins that fantasy, it lets the old year with all its anxieties and disappointments seep into the new.

The last few years I have had what seems like a good excuse to not go to New Year’s Eve parties. I work at Massey Hall as an usher, and there is an annual Yuk Yuk’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza that I sign up for every year. Whenever people ask me what I’m doing, I am working, sacrificing one of the great party nights of the year to be loyal to my employer. The problem is the shift ends at around 11pm, allowing a little bit of time to go to a party.

Last year was the worst – I somehow agreed to host a New Year’s Party at my house, even though I wouldn’t be home? My old high school friend Snel called me up a few days before, and asked what I was doing New Year’s Eve. I confidently told him that I would be at work and so…. And he said that he and our friend Troup would stop by at 11:30, thus foiling my plan and surprising me into agreement. The show went long and Snel and Troup ended up sitting on my porch in the cold for half an hour, and I got home at 11:55pm, just in time for the perfect New Year’s! That’s what I told everyone anyway.

This year I went to Adam Walker’s apartment on the Danforth near Chester. Krista and I were both working at Massey, and it was where all the other ushers were going, so it was a pretty painless decision to go along, attempt to mingle and mooch some wine off some friends. Krista had to work at Roy Thomson Hall in the morning, so we didn’t stay long. And I had a good time, about 50-50 division between awkward and engaging conversations. No noisemakers or hats were used. On New Year’s day I watched the director’s commentary for Michael Clayton (recommended) and went to my Nana’s house in Hamilton for a turkey dinner. Even though I wasn’t fresh and new, 2009 started anyway, and I got to tear off the first pages of my new calendars.

Now a blog!

2009-02-09T17:53:00.000-08:00

That first post, called intro, I wrote on January 2nd, but I am creating this blog on February 9th. Today I decided to post my entries on a blog because some people were curious and it looks like I will be able to follow through on this cockamamie idea. Also, my wife has started a blog, and whatever she does, I do, because of our wedding vows. I'll be putting up about two entries a day starting from January 1st, I would put it all up at once but that might be overwhelming for my many readers. Plus I will edit a couple of them, just in case I said something I didn't expect would be made public. The point of this is to improve my writing, so any feedback is welcome, and don't worry, I am aware that many of them are stinko. Hopefully they will improve as the year goes on. Thanks for reading.

Intro

2009-02-09T16:57:00.000-08:00

For Christmas this year I received a day-by-day calendar from my Mom. It is a Hangman Lift-a Flap calendar, and every day I get a new game of Hangman. I get to lift the flap of whatever letter I think is in the word – if it is in the word, it tells me what numbered space I fill in, if not, I get a thumbs down and fill in part of the man being hanged from the gallows. On January 2^nd, I have decided to use it as a tool to practice writing, by writing at least 500 words every day on the topic, provided by the answer to the hangman puzzle.