There are times when being single isn’t all beer and skittles… times when you can maybe imagine trading all those delightfully solo single choices for a duet and a compromise… even times when you’d consider sharing a bathroom with someone who would naturally expect you to get half your crap out of the medicine cabinet… times when you would actually do it.
Times like last night.
It all started with musings about high concept movies.
One of the highest high-concept movies of all time (right up there with Jaws and Eight Legged Freaks) is set to roll out this summer, with a title so “I get it” you might wish you’d thought it up yourself.
(And then went to film school and suffered through dozens of hack jobs, underappreciated, taken for granted – abused even – before getting just one tiny break and then another, then catching someone’s eye, then possibly having to do things you’d never tell your mother to get just one more tiny little freaking break, and another, then get to be First AD on some piece of crap picture so bad you’d never-tell-your-mother-and-it’s-not-even-porn, then get this crazy idea in the middle of the night and use every last little favour you’d ever built up just to pitch it to someone you don’t even respect and who’d steal your idea then take the credit and win an Academy Award. Or something like that. It’s a story as old as time…)
‘Snakes on a Plane’.
Do you even need to see it? I know you want to – who wouldn’t – but the whole plot just reels out before you and it doesn’t even matter if you get it right, because any movie about snakes escaping on an airplane (they’d have to be escaping – there’s no story in a bag or a box or a cage or a crate of snakes making it safely from one destination to the next) has got to be good. Or at least visually arresting or compellingly watchable – because if there’s one thing the average imagination has no trouble with, it’s imagining hundreds of goddamn snakes erupting, slithering, darting, coiling, springing, hiding, waiting to pounce or popping up out of a tiny airplane toilet just when you’d least expect it – or want to. At least my imagination has no trouble with it at all.
I was – for some reason – thinking about it last night and chose just that moment to go to the kitchen for something or other and right before my eyes, out darted a centipede. A huge, brown, revoltingly multi-peded, burnished copper-brown insect skittered between my legs (oh God – what if it had gone up my leg? Must… stop… thinking… about… a…centipede… in… my… panties…) and paused for a moment by the dog’s dinner bowl, just sort of hovering there while I went through all the usual reactions; a half wretch, involuntary itching and shivering, hopping from one foot to the next, looking for absent friends, then looking for something to whack it with (this happened in seconds – including imagining whacking it, then mentally backing up and having a quick debate in my mind about whether or not I could do it, then how I would pick up it’s hideous corpse and whether one (or more!) of its incredibly awful little legs (or feet! Do they have feet?) would brush against my hand or finger or arm and how I’d feel about that and whether I could ever enter my kitchen again without reliving the whole upsetting experience) before settling on the University of Toronto continuing education catalogue with which to do the deed.
(Because unless they’ve got a course on amateur extermination I’m not even going, so it’s no great loss if it ends up being coated with ex-centipede slime.)
But the little bastard made a break for it and scuttled (it took a moment to get his entire repulsive body going) under the dishwasher where as far as I can tell he remains holed up.
And now what am I going to do?
Centipede in My Kitchen.
And no, my kitchen isn’t some seldom used storage room for snacks and ice and dog food – it’s a fully operational, frequently entered, constantly used nook from which meals – from scratch and from recipes mind you – flow out with the speed and agility of a centipede wriggling under a dishwasher. Sesame crusted salmon? Check. Shrimp in garlic, peppers, parsley and white wine? Oh yes. Boeuf en Croute? Lamb with garlic and shallots in red wine vinegar? Yeah baby. Yeah.
But not last night. Last night I stopped wanting to go in there. Last night I didn’t want Coq au Vin, or Veal Sauté Marengo, or even so much as a tunafish sandwich on multi-grain; last night I wanted a man.
I wanted him to go in there and kill it. Step on it. Smash it. Squish it ‘til its guts splooshed out. Grind it into centipede hash and serve it to some unsuspecting bird.
Frankly? I wanted it gone.
There’s a lot I’ve learned to do for myself living alone – a lot I thought I’d never be able to do: making dentist appointments without being told, paying my taxes, getting regular checkups, cleaning the oven, amusing myself when the cable goes out or the internet connection fails, fixing the toilet, unblocking a drain, getting over a broken heart, sewing on a button, re-wiring a lamp. All of that I can and do do. But I cannot – and on this there can be no negotiation – I cannot handle centipedes.
I cannot live at the centre of my very own horror movie, even if the topic of that film would not sell a single ticket or frighten one single impressionable, sensitive, crybaby kid.
I feel itchy all the time now – the hair on the back of my neck is at permanent attention and my eyes are always darting, darting, trying to see where the bastard centipede might be coming from next. I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m typing this with one hand so I can grasp the continuing ed catalogue with the other. This is no way to live.
So I get a man – or I move.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Playback to the future
Did I ever tell you about how I got into radio?
I never meant to.
For most people who go into radio, the desire is deep and the dream is long cherished and passionately pursued.
They’re the people who’ll tell how they'd lay awake long into the night – night after night – pup-tented under the covers, transistor radios with the volume reduced to the softest whisper pressed against their adolescent ears. They’d listen to late night disc jockeys and radio programs tuned in from way down the AM or FM dial. Some tell of being able to tune in to far off cities (also part of the dream – the escape; getting out of their – hick, one-horse, crummy little - town) only accessible during particular seasons or as a result of unusual weather conditions, sounds of the exotic far away cities drawing them breathlessly further into their burgeoning fantasy.
They’ll regale you with how they listened to music programs or big city talk shows, drinking in the patter of (imagined, usually) cool and studly males and dream-goddess women speaking with voices so laden with sophistication and sexual growl that even years later (or so I’ve heard) a particular tonal quality can drive a man – or a woman – instantly hot with memory and desire.
If you ask, you’ll hear near-mythical tales of legendary announcers, whose voices stimulated something deep inside the future radio-head, planting the seed of the dream and verbally stimulating it to grow. It’s one of those professions – right up there with the church, the theatre and the space program – that draw adherents and ardent believers who feel as though this is the one way, truth, light or frequency that will satisfy their deepest and most passionate wishes. For them, it’s a calling.
But I wasn’t one of them.
For one thing, my parents didn’t listen to the radio, so it wasn’t really on my radar. For another, with so many moves to so many different countries, building the habit and the kind of dedicated fan commitment that's step one for a dedicated follower was nigh on impossible.
But by the time high school rolled around, I was, like my peers, addicted to AM hit radio. I loved Cat Stevens and Carole King and Pink Floyd and the Guess Who. I sniffed with disdain at Elton John, (until Too Low for Zero) and though too young for the Stones, the Who and the Beatles, came to appreciate them the second time around in the first wave of rock nostalgia.
But the deep, desperate ‘wanna’ had been missed, filled instead with dreams of acting, or veterinary school, or something, anything to do with horses.
That’s why, in 1981 when life dealt me a series of cards that meant folding my first dream (acting) as a result of an industry strike, the next dream had yet to be dreamt.
What would I do? With university courses in General Arts I wasn’t trained to do anything… seriously, anything at all. Obvious answer? P.R. .
(See ‘Alligator Pie’; August 9th, 2004.)
The first place I tried – a radio station in Calgary – had neither need nor use of my (nonexistent) abilities, but the Program Director who agreed to see me after I wandered in unannounced off the street saw – or heard –something else.
Here’s how it happened…
(And by the way, I was as shocked as anyone when the man offered to see me.)
I don’t think I even knew what a Program Director was, I certainly didn’t know who HE was, but his office was near the front door, so he saw and heard me make my enquiry, coming out to interrupt my increasingly muddled and pointless conversation with the receptionist before drawing me into his office, offering me a seat and a chat.
His long, long office. With a couch and coffee table at one end and his desk at the other. 10 yards apart? Twenty? A thousand? Almost as soon as we entered the room, the phone rang, so he directed me to the couch while he trekked down to the other end of the room to pick up the receiver.
I could barely see him – I certainly couldn’t see his fuzzy face, or make out for certain what looked (to my surreptitious squint) like nods and smiles directly at me. Should I nod and smile? Should I stare off into space as though I couldn’t hear his conversation, offering the faux privacy manners would seem to dictate in tight quarters?
I wasn’t wearing my glasses or the contact lenses that had recently been irritating my eyes. Vanity had driven me blind – and was making me far more embarrassed than sitting in a strange man’s (blob's) office under essentially false pretences. (As a total lack of PR training, experience or the most minimal knowledge almost certainly should have…) I was starting to perspire as I couldn’t gauge on just exactly which level I was potentially being rude.
I had an agonizing moment of two of indecision as his glance and gestures seemed ever more me-directed.
It was the social discomfort that was so excruciating; I had to take the initiative.
I got up from the couch, made the long, long walk down the length of his office, stopping once to pick up a chair placed against the wall before pulling it right up to his desk like it was a table in a cafeteria. Relieved to be operating within my limited visual range, I sat myself down, elbows perched somewhere amongst the papers and pen holders and other desky paraphernalia.
He told me later that was the moment. The moment he decided the kid had guts – there must be something special about the kid – maybe the kid had the kind of guts and initiative it would take to make it in the hard world of soft rock.
The truth is ‘the kid’ was myopic.
We talked for a bit. He told me they never had had and couldn’t anticipate a time when they would require a P.R. professional, but maybe with a voice like mine I’d like to be on the radio…?
This is the thing – for anyone who’s ever found themselves suffering the tortures of unrequited love, or smack in the middle of a really tough negotiation – you can’t ‘play’ hard to get; you can’t fake the ability to get up and walk away. (Well you can, but woe betide…)
You either are hard to get, or you really could walk away.
And I really didn’t care. The suggestion came from too far out of left field; it was something I had never dreamt of, nor even then, imagined I would ever particularly want to dream it. I was just weeks from having been signed to two of the top Hollywood agencies - William Morris and Norby Walters – and though I’d hated LA and the parts of the business I’d seen, I hadn’t entirely given up on acting. The P.R. thing was always meant to be a stop gap whilst waiting for the actor’s strike to end.
I told him I’d never thought about it… but, umm, gee, well… maybe, sure – why not – I’d take a crack at it... if he really wanted me to.
After the gesture of pulling the chair up to his desk, this was what made him certain I was the girl for him: raging ambivalence.
(That’s the other thing – the male ego; with dozens of young men throwing themselves at him, begging for a chance – they’d work for nothing, they’d pay for the privilege – it was likely intoxicating to offer the opportunity to someone who wasn’t all that impressed.)
And I wasn’t un-impressed; I would likely have had the same reaction to being offered the Presidency of the United States: I could see it was good position, I could imagine others wanting it – I just wasn’t all that sure it was something I was prepared for, or even particularly wanted to do.
Long story short, I was brought in that evening to sit in on the all-night show with the current disc jockey… brought in the next evening to do one or two cut- ins with him…brought in the next evening to try an hour or two on my own… offered the job the next day after the poor guy I’d sat in with had been dismissed.
(And for those of you hating me now, I beg to remind you that most of my most fervent desires and dreams have met with disappointment. And I didn’t know the other kid had been fired – I was told he was going to be ‘filling in’ for vacationing announcers; ‘filling in’ a euphemism for ‘filling in unemployment forms’ as it turned out…)
I did the all-night show for six months or so, then was brought in to do mid-days, which in turn became the afternoon program for a couple of years. Then after moving to Europe, stints at a Riviera radio station, an English rock station and the BBC World Service.
Then it was 1987 and I left Europe and radio for Canada and television, never to return.
But maybe…
I have a chance now to do something interesting with a very smart and funny guy. Talk radio – he said/she said – funny, informed, topical, part scripted/part improvised, call in – interview, you name it. We’re working out the details now. And I’m feeling something a little like what I felt in Bob Morris’ office all those years ago: a little unsure, a little inexperienced, not entirely sure this is the right thing for me, but this time with just a hint of a growing excitement.
Do I want to be on the radio? This time, I think I’ll say ‘yes’.
Maybe even passionately.
I never meant to.
For most people who go into radio, the desire is deep and the dream is long cherished and passionately pursued.
They’re the people who’ll tell how they'd lay awake long into the night – night after night – pup-tented under the covers, transistor radios with the volume reduced to the softest whisper pressed against their adolescent ears. They’d listen to late night disc jockeys and radio programs tuned in from way down the AM or FM dial. Some tell of being able to tune in to far off cities (also part of the dream – the escape; getting out of their – hick, one-horse, crummy little - town) only accessible during particular seasons or as a result of unusual weather conditions, sounds of the exotic far away cities drawing them breathlessly further into their burgeoning fantasy.
They’ll regale you with how they listened to music programs or big city talk shows, drinking in the patter of (imagined, usually) cool and studly males and dream-goddess women speaking with voices so laden with sophistication and sexual growl that even years later (or so I’ve heard) a particular tonal quality can drive a man – or a woman – instantly hot with memory and desire.
If you ask, you’ll hear near-mythical tales of legendary announcers, whose voices stimulated something deep inside the future radio-head, planting the seed of the dream and verbally stimulating it to grow. It’s one of those professions – right up there with the church, the theatre and the space program – that draw adherents and ardent believers who feel as though this is the one way, truth, light or frequency that will satisfy their deepest and most passionate wishes. For them, it’s a calling.
But I wasn’t one of them.
For one thing, my parents didn’t listen to the radio, so it wasn’t really on my radar. For another, with so many moves to so many different countries, building the habit and the kind of dedicated fan commitment that's step one for a dedicated follower was nigh on impossible.
But by the time high school rolled around, I was, like my peers, addicted to AM hit radio. I loved Cat Stevens and Carole King and Pink Floyd and the Guess Who. I sniffed with disdain at Elton John, (until Too Low for Zero) and though too young for the Stones, the Who and the Beatles, came to appreciate them the second time around in the first wave of rock nostalgia.
But the deep, desperate ‘wanna’ had been missed, filled instead with dreams of acting, or veterinary school, or something, anything to do with horses.
That’s why, in 1981 when life dealt me a series of cards that meant folding my first dream (acting) as a result of an industry strike, the next dream had yet to be dreamt.
What would I do? With university courses in General Arts I wasn’t trained to do anything… seriously, anything at all. Obvious answer? P.R. .
(See ‘Alligator Pie’; August 9th, 2004.)
The first place I tried – a radio station in Calgary – had neither need nor use of my (nonexistent) abilities, but the Program Director who agreed to see me after I wandered in unannounced off the street saw – or heard –something else.
Here’s how it happened…
(And by the way, I was as shocked as anyone when the man offered to see me.)
I don’t think I even knew what a Program Director was, I certainly didn’t know who HE was, but his office was near the front door, so he saw and heard me make my enquiry, coming out to interrupt my increasingly muddled and pointless conversation with the receptionist before drawing me into his office, offering me a seat and a chat.
His long, long office. With a couch and coffee table at one end and his desk at the other. 10 yards apart? Twenty? A thousand? Almost as soon as we entered the room, the phone rang, so he directed me to the couch while he trekked down to the other end of the room to pick up the receiver.
I could barely see him – I certainly couldn’t see his fuzzy face, or make out for certain what looked (to my surreptitious squint) like nods and smiles directly at me. Should I nod and smile? Should I stare off into space as though I couldn’t hear his conversation, offering the faux privacy manners would seem to dictate in tight quarters?
I wasn’t wearing my glasses or the contact lenses that had recently been irritating my eyes. Vanity had driven me blind – and was making me far more embarrassed than sitting in a strange man’s (blob's) office under essentially false pretences. (As a total lack of PR training, experience or the most minimal knowledge almost certainly should have…) I was starting to perspire as I couldn’t gauge on just exactly which level I was potentially being rude.
I had an agonizing moment of two of indecision as his glance and gestures seemed ever more me-directed.
It was the social discomfort that was so excruciating; I had to take the initiative.
I got up from the couch, made the long, long walk down the length of his office, stopping once to pick up a chair placed against the wall before pulling it right up to his desk like it was a table in a cafeteria. Relieved to be operating within my limited visual range, I sat myself down, elbows perched somewhere amongst the papers and pen holders and other desky paraphernalia.
He told me later that was the moment. The moment he decided the kid had guts – there must be something special about the kid – maybe the kid had the kind of guts and initiative it would take to make it in the hard world of soft rock.
The truth is ‘the kid’ was myopic.
We talked for a bit. He told me they never had had and couldn’t anticipate a time when they would require a P.R. professional, but maybe with a voice like mine I’d like to be on the radio…?
This is the thing – for anyone who’s ever found themselves suffering the tortures of unrequited love, or smack in the middle of a really tough negotiation – you can’t ‘play’ hard to get; you can’t fake the ability to get up and walk away. (Well you can, but woe betide…)
You either are hard to get, or you really could walk away.
And I really didn’t care. The suggestion came from too far out of left field; it was something I had never dreamt of, nor even then, imagined I would ever particularly want to dream it. I was just weeks from having been signed to two of the top Hollywood agencies - William Morris and Norby Walters – and though I’d hated LA and the parts of the business I’d seen, I hadn’t entirely given up on acting. The P.R. thing was always meant to be a stop gap whilst waiting for the actor’s strike to end.
I told him I’d never thought about it… but, umm, gee, well… maybe, sure – why not – I’d take a crack at it... if he really wanted me to.
After the gesture of pulling the chair up to his desk, this was what made him certain I was the girl for him: raging ambivalence.
(That’s the other thing – the male ego; with dozens of young men throwing themselves at him, begging for a chance – they’d work for nothing, they’d pay for the privilege – it was likely intoxicating to offer the opportunity to someone who wasn’t all that impressed.)
And I wasn’t un-impressed; I would likely have had the same reaction to being offered the Presidency of the United States: I could see it was good position, I could imagine others wanting it – I just wasn’t all that sure it was something I was prepared for, or even particularly wanted to do.
Long story short, I was brought in that evening to sit in on the all-night show with the current disc jockey… brought in the next evening to do one or two cut- ins with him…brought in the next evening to try an hour or two on my own… offered the job the next day after the poor guy I’d sat in with had been dismissed.
(And for those of you hating me now, I beg to remind you that most of my most fervent desires and dreams have met with disappointment. And I didn’t know the other kid had been fired – I was told he was going to be ‘filling in’ for vacationing announcers; ‘filling in’ a euphemism for ‘filling in unemployment forms’ as it turned out…)
I did the all-night show for six months or so, then was brought in to do mid-days, which in turn became the afternoon program for a couple of years. Then after moving to Europe, stints at a Riviera radio station, an English rock station and the BBC World Service.
Then it was 1987 and I left Europe and radio for Canada and television, never to return.
But maybe…
I have a chance now to do something interesting with a very smart and funny guy. Talk radio – he said/she said – funny, informed, topical, part scripted/part improvised, call in – interview, you name it. We’re working out the details now. And I’m feeling something a little like what I felt in Bob Morris’ office all those years ago: a little unsure, a little inexperienced, not entirely sure this is the right thing for me, but this time with just a hint of a growing excitement.
Do I want to be on the radio? This time, I think I’ll say ‘yes’.
Maybe even passionately.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Little Nell in the 21st Century
I’ve always thought that with a really good text book (thickly bound, with excellent, detailed diagrams and super-realistic drawings) and an extremely sharp steak knife I could probably take out an appendix. Possibly tonsils – maybe even a gallbladder. I wouldn’t try anything more demanding – heart transplants, bowel resections, grafts or limb reattachment; I know my limits – I am after all, technically, a complete and utter untrained, inexperienced amateur.
But that’s why I was so pleased when a friend who’d recently had an operation allowed me to assist the nurse when the long line of staples that held her together like a crazy meandering zipper were taken out. I had fantasies of actually removing a couple, but the reality was I was allowed to stand by and daub the incision now and then with an alcohol-soaked sponge whilst providing gay banter (though not too gay – she still has a fear of exploding) to distract her from the not deeply painful, but genuinely uncomfortable experience.
It’s a start is what I’m saying.
The friend though – I’d love her even if she made me sit in the waiting room reading out of date Harpers and Maclean’s. She’s a peach – of that there is no doubt.
And through her and her fame as an actress, I’ve been able to experience a little of the celebrity lifestyle. I’ve been her date at awards shows and movie premieres and the odd special appearance (most recently the opening of a new Chanel boutique – at which neither goodie bags nor free samples were on offer I am devastated to report) as her husband really isn’t all that into the celeb scene. Truth be told, I’m not either – a more boring or creepily self-obsessed crowd you’d be unlikely to find – but it’s all grist to the mill… all events I’d otherwise unlikely experience without her personal invitation. And besides, when we go home, we laugh like drains.
But through things I haven't done with her, on the basis of friendship alone, I’ve also got myself a six degrees of separation (and often less) attachment to some truly famous folks.
In one degree, I can lay claim to Angelina Jolie, which means in two and three, I’m this close to Brad and Jen. And the new baby. And the old babies. (And in four and five, Gwyneth and Vince and the whole cast of Friends and so on and so forth.)
The list goes on and on. Colin Firth in one; ditto Keifer Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie (my personal fave) Sam Shepard, and Rocko, Cuddles, Bill and Buttons from Puppets Who Kill. There’s more, but you get my drift.
This is an entirely arms length (and were I try to get any closer probably electrified fence, razor wire and armed bodyguards-length) attachment, but true for all that.
But all on my own, all by myself, I have a connection to one of the most talked about men in Toronto this week, (maybe even the world) the head of the RCMP investigation into the alleged terrorists whose wicked (stupid, bone-headed, creepy, crappy) plan was to lay waste to some Canadian landmarks before decapitating our Prime Minister.
That’s right. If trouble were to stalk me I’d feel both comfortable and compelled to contact the Assistant RCMP Commissioner, Mike McDonell.
Back in 1999 when he was merely Inspector, Officer in Charge of National Security, Mike contacted me after reading a letter I wrote to the Toronto Star about my connection to the RCMP.
I’d written (and they printed – and sent out a photographer to snap an extremely unflattering photo of me) a letter in reference to a story they’d run about a little developmentally challenged girl, an American, who’d become enamoured with the RCMP as a result of her love of the TV show Due South. She’d identified with the main character who was a bit of an oddball but whose brave and honest portrayal gave her hope that she too would some day find her place in society, beyond the teasing and cruelty she’d experienced from the thoughtless, careless children she’d grown up amongst.
The Mounties apparently responded to her mother’s fan letter with an enthusiasm and joy that sort of knocked the kid and her mum sideways. According to the article, a slew of Mounties sent notes and pictures and video tapes and presents and personal letters thanking her for her kind words and encouraging her to keep believing in herself, as they intended to do so for her.
It was a touching story. I swear a genuine tear rolled out of my genuine eye and down my equally genuine cheek. I sat right down and wrote those Star folks a letter, explaining my experience and detailing my attachment to the men in red way back when I was a little girl too.
I wrote about how I had decided when I was ten years old to become an RCMP officer (after discarding movie star and veterinarian) because it was the only job I could think of where you got to ride horses.
So at the age of ten, as a sort of heads up to the then Commissioner, I wrote a letter describing my drawbacks (my age; my place of residence in England at the time) and my shining qualities (I could ride a horse, jump 3’ 6”, muck out a stall and clean tack) which I was sure would guarantee me a spot in the ranks.
Pretty cute eh?
My mother thought so, so she sent the carefully joined together printing and addressed the envelope and sent it off to the man in charge. She may have thought we would get a response, but I don’t think she imagined the then Commissioner himself would write back (including in the large envelope my original letter so that she could keep it) and congratulating me on my ambition. It was a very sweet letter. Though it informed me that as a girl I couldn’t be considered for the mounted ranks, he sent along a handful of brochures of other jobs I could do, and encouraged me to keep dreaming, as I was clearly exactly the sort of girl the RCMP was looking for.
(Presumably after they got their man.)
So this is the tale I spun the Toronto Star, and damned if Mike McDonell didn’t hunt me down, identifying me amongst all the other Jane Wilson’s (how did he do it? they have their ways I’m told…) and both telephoned me and sent me a handwritten letter to thank me for my story.
He wrote:
“Dear Ms Wilson,
Just a short note of thanks to let you know how much I appreciated your letter to the editor of the Toronto Star. That you took the time to share your experience and express your continued respect for the RCMP touched me. Your thoughts not only served to pique my pride in being a member of the RCMP, but they also helped to remind me of my responsibility to the people of Canada to carry on the fine traditions of the RCMP.
Your particular interest in equitation hit a personal chord as I was a member of the 1980 and ’81 Musical Rides and my interest in our Equitation section remains strong.
Know that your letter put some of the spring back into this Mountie’s step and I am sure that of others as well.
Gratefully,
Mike McDonell”
No ersatz six degrees of Kevin Bacon – my very own connection to my very own Mountie, (the man into whose step I placed a spring) and he’s the guy who is engaged – this minute – in saving us from the terrorist threat.
Who needs Brangelina or Kiefer or even Julie Christie or Buttons. I’ve got my man.
And I have no doubt that if I were tied to the railway tracks, Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell would come to my aid.
I’m grateful. It’s an increasingly scary old world out there, with the burgeoning threat of terrorism and violence even here in Toronto; threats from which not even the most famous movie star, the thickest textbook or the sharpest steak knife can protect you.
But that’s why I was so pleased when a friend who’d recently had an operation allowed me to assist the nurse when the long line of staples that held her together like a crazy meandering zipper were taken out. I had fantasies of actually removing a couple, but the reality was I was allowed to stand by and daub the incision now and then with an alcohol-soaked sponge whilst providing gay banter (though not too gay – she still has a fear of exploding) to distract her from the not deeply painful, but genuinely uncomfortable experience.
It’s a start is what I’m saying.
The friend though – I’d love her even if she made me sit in the waiting room reading out of date Harpers and Maclean’s. She’s a peach – of that there is no doubt.
And through her and her fame as an actress, I’ve been able to experience a little of the celebrity lifestyle. I’ve been her date at awards shows and movie premieres and the odd special appearance (most recently the opening of a new Chanel boutique – at which neither goodie bags nor free samples were on offer I am devastated to report) as her husband really isn’t all that into the celeb scene. Truth be told, I’m not either – a more boring or creepily self-obsessed crowd you’d be unlikely to find – but it’s all grist to the mill… all events I’d otherwise unlikely experience without her personal invitation. And besides, when we go home, we laugh like drains.
But through things I haven't done with her, on the basis of friendship alone, I’ve also got myself a six degrees of separation (and often less) attachment to some truly famous folks.
In one degree, I can lay claim to Angelina Jolie, which means in two and three, I’m this close to Brad and Jen. And the new baby. And the old babies. (And in four and five, Gwyneth and Vince and the whole cast of Friends and so on and so forth.)
The list goes on and on. Colin Firth in one; ditto Keifer Sutherland, Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie (my personal fave) Sam Shepard, and Rocko, Cuddles, Bill and Buttons from Puppets Who Kill. There’s more, but you get my drift.
This is an entirely arms length (and were I try to get any closer probably electrified fence, razor wire and armed bodyguards-length) attachment, but true for all that.
But all on my own, all by myself, I have a connection to one of the most talked about men in Toronto this week, (maybe even the world) the head of the RCMP investigation into the alleged terrorists whose wicked (stupid, bone-headed, creepy, crappy) plan was to lay waste to some Canadian landmarks before decapitating our Prime Minister.
That’s right. If trouble were to stalk me I’d feel both comfortable and compelled to contact the Assistant RCMP Commissioner, Mike McDonell.
Back in 1999 when he was merely Inspector, Officer in Charge of National Security, Mike contacted me after reading a letter I wrote to the Toronto Star about my connection to the RCMP.
I’d written (and they printed – and sent out a photographer to snap an extremely unflattering photo of me) a letter in reference to a story they’d run about a little developmentally challenged girl, an American, who’d become enamoured with the RCMP as a result of her love of the TV show Due South. She’d identified with the main character who was a bit of an oddball but whose brave and honest portrayal gave her hope that she too would some day find her place in society, beyond the teasing and cruelty she’d experienced from the thoughtless, careless children she’d grown up amongst.
The Mounties apparently responded to her mother’s fan letter with an enthusiasm and joy that sort of knocked the kid and her mum sideways. According to the article, a slew of Mounties sent notes and pictures and video tapes and presents and personal letters thanking her for her kind words and encouraging her to keep believing in herself, as they intended to do so for her.
It was a touching story. I swear a genuine tear rolled out of my genuine eye and down my equally genuine cheek. I sat right down and wrote those Star folks a letter, explaining my experience and detailing my attachment to the men in red way back when I was a little girl too.
I wrote about how I had decided when I was ten years old to become an RCMP officer (after discarding movie star and veterinarian) because it was the only job I could think of where you got to ride horses.
So at the age of ten, as a sort of heads up to the then Commissioner, I wrote a letter describing my drawbacks (my age; my place of residence in England at the time) and my shining qualities (I could ride a horse, jump 3’ 6”, muck out a stall and clean tack) which I was sure would guarantee me a spot in the ranks.
Pretty cute eh?
My mother thought so, so she sent the carefully joined together printing and addressed the envelope and sent it off to the man in charge. She may have thought we would get a response, but I don’t think she imagined the then Commissioner himself would write back (including in the large envelope my original letter so that she could keep it) and congratulating me on my ambition. It was a very sweet letter. Though it informed me that as a girl I couldn’t be considered for the mounted ranks, he sent along a handful of brochures of other jobs I could do, and encouraged me to keep dreaming, as I was clearly exactly the sort of girl the RCMP was looking for.
(Presumably after they got their man.)
So this is the tale I spun the Toronto Star, and damned if Mike McDonell didn’t hunt me down, identifying me amongst all the other Jane Wilson’s (how did he do it? they have their ways I’m told…) and both telephoned me and sent me a handwritten letter to thank me for my story.
He wrote:
“Dear Ms Wilson,
Just a short note of thanks to let you know how much I appreciated your letter to the editor of the Toronto Star. That you took the time to share your experience and express your continued respect for the RCMP touched me. Your thoughts not only served to pique my pride in being a member of the RCMP, but they also helped to remind me of my responsibility to the people of Canada to carry on the fine traditions of the RCMP.
Your particular interest in equitation hit a personal chord as I was a member of the 1980 and ’81 Musical Rides and my interest in our Equitation section remains strong.
Know that your letter put some of the spring back into this Mountie’s step and I am sure that of others as well.
Gratefully,
Mike McDonell”
No ersatz six degrees of Kevin Bacon – my very own connection to my very own Mountie, (the man into whose step I placed a spring) and he’s the guy who is engaged – this minute – in saving us from the terrorist threat.
Who needs Brangelina or Kiefer or even Julie Christie or Buttons. I’ve got my man.
And I have no doubt that if I were tied to the railway tracks, Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell would come to my aid.
I’m grateful. It’s an increasingly scary old world out there, with the burgeoning threat of terrorism and violence even here in Toronto; threats from which not even the most famous movie star, the thickest textbook or the sharpest steak knife can protect you.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The sunset of Tony Orlando
I saw another of those shrines recently. The homemade kind; the sort usually made for children killed by accident or predator, constructed of teddy bears and ribbons and corner store flowers, misspelled notes of shock and longing, bible verses and photographs, crudely drawn construction paper sympathy cards, candles, votives, and always some odds and ends inexplicable to the uninitiated – hats, t-shirts, stuffed animals – the detritus of lives connected to the deceased, crushed and made meaningless by terrible loss.
And you don’t have to be a high profile murder victim to get one. Car crash sites are popular, as are store front pavements or stricken family’s front lawns, or the drop off lane in front of the local primary school if the terrible, accidental moment happened there.
The shrines are simultaneously deeply moving and faintly ridiculous – so real and so surreal at the same time: how’s a teddy bear in a cowboy hat and a pair of plastic six shooters going to get us out of THIS agony you think.
Where are the rent garments and handfuls of hair torn from grieving heads, instead of this alter to the god Hallmark?
Still, it’s what people DO when they can do nothing else. It began long before, but reached a crazy peak when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris. The flower tributes dropped off in front of Kensington Palace (and in the Parisian tunnel, and at her ancestral home in Northamptonshire, and not a few in a nose-thumbing gesture directed at the Queen outside Buckingham Palace) soon rose up as high as an elephant’s eye before spreading wildly and widely sideways. The bizarre blanket stitched together from ribbon-tied bouquets and ‘Candle in the Wind’ songsheets, photographs lovingly clipped from magazines and newspapers, and with farewell notes sheathed in plastic as if the writers were well aware that their personal eulogies would be hanging around long after the Princess’s funeral cordon had passed by.
(And they were right and they did.)
Still, I don’t know how I feel about these crowd-created holy places. Do they honour the individuals or trivialize them somehow? When anybody can drop by and drop off a note that reads: “So long Sally – I didn’t know you, but I pray for your eternal soul” what does it mean? Do they continue to pray for Sally? Does the gesture signify anything beyond a 21st century knee-jerk reaction to a top of the local news type story that fascinates and horrifies for a moment, then is gone and forgotten with the requisite placement of a plush toy and a ribbon-anchored heart-shaped mylar balloon?
It’s really not for me to say. But from what I can gather, it does indeed comfort the family left behind. It has meaning and value and moment for them.
We need these public rituals, official rememberings and heartfelt (if sometimes weird – I saw a pair of frilly underpants placed at one of those shrines once and I still don’t know what it meant) messages sent into the ether in order to take final notice before moving on.
And heaven knows, as far as the war goes, it may remain virtually the only way we have left of paying tribute to the dead.
But maybe…
Steven Harper appears to be re-considering his no-press policy for Canadian soldiers’ bodies arriving home from the fracas in Afghanistan and Iraq, following the hue and cry that reached a crescendo when Canada’s first fallen female soldier arrived home unremarked upon by a banned media contingent. But his ‘no flags at half mast save Remembrance Day’ edict shows either a steely consistency, or an eerie blindness to a country’s need to publicly acknowledge ultimate sacrifice.
He has been resolute in insisting the decision is one made to offer the families of the fallen the privacy they need to mourn, but in the absence of families actually requesting such space and solitude, the command rings hollow. Hollower still when you realize no similar policy has been announced for police and firefighters killed in the line of duty.
It just doesn’t pass the smell test. It stinks.
It would be sickening to think it is simply a policy aping the American one – the one that fears too much reality may undermine an administration’s right to send soldiers to their deaths whensoever and wheresoever they please.
Because for Americans, outside of a few photographs released following freedom of information demands, the dissemination of images of flag-draped coffins are as elusive and rare as child pornography – and treated with pretty much the same eyes squinched shut disgust by the wartime White House.
A White House that would much rather tie a ribbon round an old oak tree than make the tough decisions that would make ribbon tying – save for those who die innocently and accidentally – a thing of the past.
We need a new tribute, a new official day and symbol aimed at educating world leaders in the desires of their citizenry – like red ribbons for AIDS awareness, or pink for breast cancer education.
A yellow no-more-yellow-ribbons ribbon.
Wear it with pride.
And you don’t have to be a high profile murder victim to get one. Car crash sites are popular, as are store front pavements or stricken family’s front lawns, or the drop off lane in front of the local primary school if the terrible, accidental moment happened there.
The shrines are simultaneously deeply moving and faintly ridiculous – so real and so surreal at the same time: how’s a teddy bear in a cowboy hat and a pair of plastic six shooters going to get us out of THIS agony you think.
Where are the rent garments and handfuls of hair torn from grieving heads, instead of this alter to the god Hallmark?
Still, it’s what people DO when they can do nothing else. It began long before, but reached a crazy peak when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris. The flower tributes dropped off in front of Kensington Palace (and in the Parisian tunnel, and at her ancestral home in Northamptonshire, and not a few in a nose-thumbing gesture directed at the Queen outside Buckingham Palace) soon rose up as high as an elephant’s eye before spreading wildly and widely sideways. The bizarre blanket stitched together from ribbon-tied bouquets and ‘Candle in the Wind’ songsheets, photographs lovingly clipped from magazines and newspapers, and with farewell notes sheathed in plastic as if the writers were well aware that their personal eulogies would be hanging around long after the Princess’s funeral cordon had passed by.
(And they were right and they did.)
Still, I don’t know how I feel about these crowd-created holy places. Do they honour the individuals or trivialize them somehow? When anybody can drop by and drop off a note that reads: “So long Sally – I didn’t know you, but I pray for your eternal soul” what does it mean? Do they continue to pray for Sally? Does the gesture signify anything beyond a 21st century knee-jerk reaction to a top of the local news type story that fascinates and horrifies for a moment, then is gone and forgotten with the requisite placement of a plush toy and a ribbon-anchored heart-shaped mylar balloon?
It’s really not for me to say. But from what I can gather, it does indeed comfort the family left behind. It has meaning and value and moment for them.
We need these public rituals, official rememberings and heartfelt (if sometimes weird – I saw a pair of frilly underpants placed at one of those shrines once and I still don’t know what it meant) messages sent into the ether in order to take final notice before moving on.
And heaven knows, as far as the war goes, it may remain virtually the only way we have left of paying tribute to the dead.
But maybe…
Steven Harper appears to be re-considering his no-press policy for Canadian soldiers’ bodies arriving home from the fracas in Afghanistan and Iraq, following the hue and cry that reached a crescendo when Canada’s first fallen female soldier arrived home unremarked upon by a banned media contingent. But his ‘no flags at half mast save Remembrance Day’ edict shows either a steely consistency, or an eerie blindness to a country’s need to publicly acknowledge ultimate sacrifice.
He has been resolute in insisting the decision is one made to offer the families of the fallen the privacy they need to mourn, but in the absence of families actually requesting such space and solitude, the command rings hollow. Hollower still when you realize no similar policy has been announced for police and firefighters killed in the line of duty.
It just doesn’t pass the smell test. It stinks.
It would be sickening to think it is simply a policy aping the American one – the one that fears too much reality may undermine an administration’s right to send soldiers to their deaths whensoever and wheresoever they please.
Because for Americans, outside of a few photographs released following freedom of information demands, the dissemination of images of flag-draped coffins are as elusive and rare as child pornography – and treated with pretty much the same eyes squinched shut disgust by the wartime White House.
A White House that would much rather tie a ribbon round an old oak tree than make the tough decisions that would make ribbon tying – save for those who die innocently and accidentally – a thing of the past.
We need a new tribute, a new official day and symbol aimed at educating world leaders in the desires of their citizenry – like red ribbons for AIDS awareness, or pink for breast cancer education.
A yellow no-more-yellow-ribbons ribbon.
Wear it with pride.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Model of a modern Major General
I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one who read the AP newspaper story today and breathed a sigh of relief.
After all, when you see the headline: ‘U.S. mocks militant’s misfire’ over a picture of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi clutching a machine gun, then read on to discover the Pentagon has actual video footage of the Al Qaeda leader having trouble discharging his firearm, what can you possibly do but shoot a grateful prayer heavenward and mutter an admiring “talk about ‘mission ‘accomplished!’” before getting ready to count down the last days of the war?
It’s true: al-Zarqawi was videotaped about 20 miles south of the Iraq capitol trying to fix a jammed weapon before finally surrendering, forced to ask a friend to help him unblock the stoppage.
Not only that, but according to military experts who pored over the tape, examining every damning second, al Zarqawi was wearing New Balance tennis shoes – American tennis shoes – as he performed this pathetic stunt.
The ‘mocker’ identified in the headline is one Major General Rick Lynch, spokesman for the U.S. command and Baghdad-based bitch-slapper, who offered commentary on the fugitive film, interpreting each feeble attempt at firing, studying every awkward, incompetent gesture of aid from al-Zarqawi’s similarly befuddled cohorts.
“It’s supposed to be automatic fire,” Lynch explains. “He’s shooting single shots. Something’s wrong with his machine gun, He looks down, can’t figure out, calls his friend to come unblock the stoppage and get the weapon firing again.”
It doesn’t say in the newspaper report, but one assumes the Major General spoke in a tone dripping with the sort of contempt that would naturally accompany the discharge of such a distasteful duty.
(Having to look at a man unable to shoot a gun, is one thing… one hideous, hopefully never-to-be-repeated thing; to be called upon to provide narration for such an unmanly, testosterone-challenged spectacle must have been cruel indeed.)
“This piece you all see as he walks away, he’s wearing his black uniform and his New Balance tennis shoes as he moves to this white pick up,” Lynch continues, giving no indication whatsoever of the make or model of the evil Al Qaeda-mobile. “And his close associates around him… do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves.”
Ha!
The picture is clear: how can a guy with a jammed machine gun – a guy who cannot even fire his jammed machine gun and can’t fix it on his own – ever hope to win a war against the kind of guys who find stuff like this funny?
The strategy is brilliant.
The strategy is familiar…
Too familiar…
Re-cast with characters costumed in monochromatic, hooded terrorist garb and chic desert camouflage, and with a plot that though it sometimes meanders away from the central theme, still manages to capture the very essence of the film to which it pays reverent homage, the U.S. Army is reading from the script of Mean Girls.
Hollywood comes to the desert in a scene straight out of the teen queen comedy movie genre, as the popular girls (U.S. forces) take on the bumbling foreigner (al-Zarqawi) using gossip, innuendo and other hurtful torture techniques in order to humiliate and bring her (him) down.
Lindsay Lohan may be a more sympathetic heroine, and the popular girls would likely look better in short skirts and lip gloss than the U.S Army, but for planning, execution and follow through, the motivation and hopes for success read virtually the same.
Here’s where I’m nervous.
I don’t think they saw the last reel of the film. As any tween-something, gum-snapping Lohan-fan could tell you, the mean girls do not – could never – prevail in the end. The details are a little fuzzy to me (having regrettably never actually seen the movie) but the never-in-doubt happy ending is as familiar and predictable as the night follows day shtick.
Hell – Animal House, Stripes, Caddyshack and virtually every film save The Apple Dumpling Gang has much the same plot: meanies never prosper.
How about a cartoon for inspiration? Maybe they could tie al-Zarqawi’s machine gun barrel in a knot… or drop a ten ton weight on his head (or a piano or flower pot if those are more accessible in the Middle East) or get a giant Acme brand sling shot and…
I take back the sigh of relief. I don’t think images of the current Al-Qaeda leader fumbling with his machine gun is enough of a slam dunk humiliation to alter the course of the war in Iraq. What’s truly pathetic is the story Major General Lynch is telling America – and the obvious hopes he has that such a tale will provide comfort to their number.
Because even armies and animators must needs follow the story-telling rules as old as time: Wile E. Coyote could never defeat the Road Runner – even on rocket-powered roller skates – and neither will the U.S. triumph over the forces of evil reading from such a banal script.
After all, when you see the headline: ‘U.S. mocks militant’s misfire’ over a picture of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi clutching a machine gun, then read on to discover the Pentagon has actual video footage of the Al Qaeda leader having trouble discharging his firearm, what can you possibly do but shoot a grateful prayer heavenward and mutter an admiring “talk about ‘mission ‘accomplished!’” before getting ready to count down the last days of the war?
It’s true: al-Zarqawi was videotaped about 20 miles south of the Iraq capitol trying to fix a jammed weapon before finally surrendering, forced to ask a friend to help him unblock the stoppage.
Not only that, but according to military experts who pored over the tape, examining every damning second, al Zarqawi was wearing New Balance tennis shoes – American tennis shoes – as he performed this pathetic stunt.
The ‘mocker’ identified in the headline is one Major General Rick Lynch, spokesman for the U.S. command and Baghdad-based bitch-slapper, who offered commentary on the fugitive film, interpreting each feeble attempt at firing, studying every awkward, incompetent gesture of aid from al-Zarqawi’s similarly befuddled cohorts.
“It’s supposed to be automatic fire,” Lynch explains. “He’s shooting single shots. Something’s wrong with his machine gun, He looks down, can’t figure out, calls his friend to come unblock the stoppage and get the weapon firing again.”
It doesn’t say in the newspaper report, but one assumes the Major General spoke in a tone dripping with the sort of contempt that would naturally accompany the discharge of such a distasteful duty.
(Having to look at a man unable to shoot a gun, is one thing… one hideous, hopefully never-to-be-repeated thing; to be called upon to provide narration for such an unmanly, testosterone-challenged spectacle must have been cruel indeed.)
“This piece you all see as he walks away, he’s wearing his black uniform and his New Balance tennis shoes as he moves to this white pick up,” Lynch continues, giving no indication whatsoever of the make or model of the evil Al Qaeda-mobile. “And his close associates around him… do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves.”
Ha!
The picture is clear: how can a guy with a jammed machine gun – a guy who cannot even fire his jammed machine gun and can’t fix it on his own – ever hope to win a war against the kind of guys who find stuff like this funny?
The strategy is brilliant.
The strategy is familiar…
Too familiar…
Re-cast with characters costumed in monochromatic, hooded terrorist garb and chic desert camouflage, and with a plot that though it sometimes meanders away from the central theme, still manages to capture the very essence of the film to which it pays reverent homage, the U.S. Army is reading from the script of Mean Girls.
Hollywood comes to the desert in a scene straight out of the teen queen comedy movie genre, as the popular girls (U.S. forces) take on the bumbling foreigner (al-Zarqawi) using gossip, innuendo and other hurtful torture techniques in order to humiliate and bring her (him) down.
Lindsay Lohan may be a more sympathetic heroine, and the popular girls would likely look better in short skirts and lip gloss than the U.S Army, but for planning, execution and follow through, the motivation and hopes for success read virtually the same.
Here’s where I’m nervous.
I don’t think they saw the last reel of the film. As any tween-something, gum-snapping Lohan-fan could tell you, the mean girls do not – could never – prevail in the end. The details are a little fuzzy to me (having regrettably never actually seen the movie) but the never-in-doubt happy ending is as familiar and predictable as the night follows day shtick.
Hell – Animal House, Stripes, Caddyshack and virtually every film save The Apple Dumpling Gang has much the same plot: meanies never prosper.
How about a cartoon for inspiration? Maybe they could tie al-Zarqawi’s machine gun barrel in a knot… or drop a ten ton weight on his head (or a piano or flower pot if those are more accessible in the Middle East) or get a giant Acme brand sling shot and…
I take back the sigh of relief. I don’t think images of the current Al-Qaeda leader fumbling with his machine gun is enough of a slam dunk humiliation to alter the course of the war in Iraq. What’s truly pathetic is the story Major General Lynch is telling America – and the obvious hopes he has that such a tale will provide comfort to their number.
Because even armies and animators must needs follow the story-telling rules as old as time: Wile E. Coyote could never defeat the Road Runner – even on rocket-powered roller skates – and neither will the U.S. triumph over the forces of evil reading from such a banal script.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Bear market bull
Though she was not vouchsafed a heroine’s death – which would have been a neat trick for a car – Sylvia nevertheless didn’t let me down even up to and including her final journey.
She got me safely to the mechanic who thumbs-downed the plucky little Mazda 323’s future, gently suggesting that by investing some $4000 in repairs to make roadworthy a $2000 car (her purchase price more than ten years ago) I hadn’t thoroughly grasped the finer points of the law of diminishing returns.
The mechanic might have something there – I tend to hang onto things well past their sell by’s. Like the dog for instance; she too is somewhat less than roadworthy these days.
At nearly thirteen years old she’s starting to look a little rough around the edges. Her eyes are milky with cataracts, she has luxating patellas (her joints pop in and out with astonishing ease) she’s a little creaky with arthritis and the after-luxating effects, her teeth aren’t much to talk about and she has weird little cyst-like bumps springing up on her back like toadstools after a spring rain.
I just got her back from the groomer who cut and snipped the worst mats and tats off her, shaved her close, shaped her head, sluiced out her ears and trimmed her pad-hair. $59.98 thank you very much – and worth every penny (including the ten dollar tip) for being able to perform all these ablutions and cut her toenails – a feat my last vet would only do under sedation. (I’m almost sure it was for the dog.)
Six pounds of unhappy Yorkshire Terrier can be a surprisingly formidable article – she screams like a lost soul writhing in the pits of hell (seriously – you should hear it…) and squirms with an intensity that would put a boa constrictor to shame.
I know people are always writing these funny exaggerated little stories about their pet’s adorable foibles, but I am seriously not kidding. She’s a terror.
On the other hand, she doesn’t bite, she's cute as hell, and I love her more than money.
But talk about your diminishing returns; if I counted up all the hair-do’s, vet visits, airplane tickets, dog food, dog treats (I should buy shares in Milk Bone and Hartz Mountain) booster shots, collar and leash accoutrements, carry cases, dog medicine, vitamins, kennel costs and planned, as well as emergency operations (she’s missing her ovaries, six teeth, something benign that showed up on her tiny butt and at least a year of my life when she was afflicted with a pancreatic attack last year – that visit alone cost more than $2000) it would have to amount to several thousands of dollars – well into four or even five figures.
If I really did the math, she probably costs me as much as the car each year – gas, oil and insurance included – though with considerably less mileage, and virtually no convenience.
If I could cash in this investment, realize the returns so to speak, I might have my retirement taken care of – certainly a kitchen reno, a newer car, a holiday or two and enough lip collagen to rank me right up there with Melanie Griffith and the Bride of Wildenstein.
Not that I would of course – but I could.
But I’m not alone in being late in latching on to this ‘diminishing returns’ thing. Though I’m sure he considers himself as more of a ‘magic of compound interest’ type of guy than a capitol loss, the truth of the matter is that the President of the United States is a plummeting stock minus the stop/loss order – how low can he go?
It’s a bear market for Bush. Returns are (empirically) diminishing when you, a) find yourself still trapped in a war with no end in sight and bodies continuing to pile up; b) watch gas prices soar at the start of a busy summer; c) get your ass handed to you, hearing the unvarnished truth (though filtered through satire) face to face for the first time ever - through the conduit of a Comedy Central comedian.
Steven Colbert rocked that White House Correspondent’s dinner! He ruled – and he had the entire White House grinding their teeth into splintered stumps in silent fury as he told them truth after equally uncomfortable truth:
“Misery accomplished,” he said, then aimed his sites on a series of high profile pols.
John McCain? Wham! The Joint Chiefs? Whack! Rumsfeld? Kapow! Justice Scalia? Kee-runch!
George W. Bush? Slayed, sliced and served up for dinner, making a mockery of the shrimp cocktail and rubber chicken, himself looking more as though he was tasting and smelling something very, very bad indeed.
“The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady,” remarked the host of The Colbert Report. “You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man’s beliefs never will.”
And:
“I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only FOR things, he stands ON things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And he sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”
And the White House press corps for whom the dinner was ostensibly held?
“Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the affect of global warming,” said Colbert. “We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out…”
Ouch baby.
In the guise of his TV alter ego, the faux newsman with the right wing bias, Colbert probably didn’t need to add (though he most assuredly did): “I have nothing but contempt for these people.”
It was brilliant, it was pointed, it was satire at its finest. But at the end of the day, it was too true to be funny.
Diminishing returns.
Like Canada’s relationship with the Bush government, exposed now for what it truly is – from fits of pique and punishing language directed at our nation for not joining in the war on Iraq, to the myriad taxes, regulations and restrictions placed on goods and services we might have assumed fell under the heading of Free Trade, to the recent deal on softwood lumber (we took it because there was and never would be any other choice) – Canada has finally had our rose-coloured spectacles forcibly removed. Would that the citizens of the US had seen it sooner.
I’ll miss Sylvia the car – I’m hanging on to Lily the dog – but they both offered good value for money, whether through dependability or laughs.
The Bush administration offers neither.
She got me safely to the mechanic who thumbs-downed the plucky little Mazda 323’s future, gently suggesting that by investing some $4000 in repairs to make roadworthy a $2000 car (her purchase price more than ten years ago) I hadn’t thoroughly grasped the finer points of the law of diminishing returns.
The mechanic might have something there – I tend to hang onto things well past their sell by’s. Like the dog for instance; she too is somewhat less than roadworthy these days.
At nearly thirteen years old she’s starting to look a little rough around the edges. Her eyes are milky with cataracts, she has luxating patellas (her joints pop in and out with astonishing ease) she’s a little creaky with arthritis and the after-luxating effects, her teeth aren’t much to talk about and she has weird little cyst-like bumps springing up on her back like toadstools after a spring rain.
I just got her back from the groomer who cut and snipped the worst mats and tats off her, shaved her close, shaped her head, sluiced out her ears and trimmed her pad-hair. $59.98 thank you very much – and worth every penny (including the ten dollar tip) for being able to perform all these ablutions and cut her toenails – a feat my last vet would only do under sedation. (I’m almost sure it was for the dog.)
Six pounds of unhappy Yorkshire Terrier can be a surprisingly formidable article – she screams like a lost soul writhing in the pits of hell (seriously – you should hear it…) and squirms with an intensity that would put a boa constrictor to shame.
I know people are always writing these funny exaggerated little stories about their pet’s adorable foibles, but I am seriously not kidding. She’s a terror.
On the other hand, she doesn’t bite, she's cute as hell, and I love her more than money.
But talk about your diminishing returns; if I counted up all the hair-do’s, vet visits, airplane tickets, dog food, dog treats (I should buy shares in Milk Bone and Hartz Mountain) booster shots, collar and leash accoutrements, carry cases, dog medicine, vitamins, kennel costs and planned, as well as emergency operations (she’s missing her ovaries, six teeth, something benign that showed up on her tiny butt and at least a year of my life when she was afflicted with a pancreatic attack last year – that visit alone cost more than $2000) it would have to amount to several thousands of dollars – well into four or even five figures.
If I really did the math, she probably costs me as much as the car each year – gas, oil and insurance included – though with considerably less mileage, and virtually no convenience.
If I could cash in this investment, realize the returns so to speak, I might have my retirement taken care of – certainly a kitchen reno, a newer car, a holiday or two and enough lip collagen to rank me right up there with Melanie Griffith and the Bride of Wildenstein.
Not that I would of course – but I could.
But I’m not alone in being late in latching on to this ‘diminishing returns’ thing. Though I’m sure he considers himself as more of a ‘magic of compound interest’ type of guy than a capitol loss, the truth of the matter is that the President of the United States is a plummeting stock minus the stop/loss order – how low can he go?
It’s a bear market for Bush. Returns are (empirically) diminishing when you, a) find yourself still trapped in a war with no end in sight and bodies continuing to pile up; b) watch gas prices soar at the start of a busy summer; c) get your ass handed to you, hearing the unvarnished truth (though filtered through satire) face to face for the first time ever - through the conduit of a Comedy Central comedian.
Steven Colbert rocked that White House Correspondent’s dinner! He ruled – and he had the entire White House grinding their teeth into splintered stumps in silent fury as he told them truth after equally uncomfortable truth:
“Misery accomplished,” he said, then aimed his sites on a series of high profile pols.
John McCain? Wham! The Joint Chiefs? Whack! Rumsfeld? Kapow! Justice Scalia? Kee-runch!
George W. Bush? Slayed, sliced and served up for dinner, making a mockery of the shrimp cocktail and rubber chicken, himself looking more as though he was tasting and smelling something very, very bad indeed.
“The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady,” remarked the host of The Colbert Report. “You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man’s beliefs never will.”
And:
“I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only FOR things, he stands ON things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And he sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”
And the White House press corps for whom the dinner was ostensibly held?
“Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the affect of global warming,” said Colbert. “We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out…”
Ouch baby.
In the guise of his TV alter ego, the faux newsman with the right wing bias, Colbert probably didn’t need to add (though he most assuredly did): “I have nothing but contempt for these people.”
It was brilliant, it was pointed, it was satire at its finest. But at the end of the day, it was too true to be funny.
Diminishing returns.
Like Canada’s relationship with the Bush government, exposed now for what it truly is – from fits of pique and punishing language directed at our nation for not joining in the war on Iraq, to the myriad taxes, regulations and restrictions placed on goods and services we might have assumed fell under the heading of Free Trade, to the recent deal on softwood lumber (we took it because there was and never would be any other choice) – Canada has finally had our rose-coloured spectacles forcibly removed. Would that the citizens of the US had seen it sooner.
I’ll miss Sylvia the car – I’m hanging on to Lily the dog – but they both offered good value for money, whether through dependability or laughs.
The Bush administration offers neither.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Prime Minister Poodle
With temperatures swinging between the high hot teens and the warm, damp pre-teens (kids today…) there really isn’t much doubt: spring has arrived in all its burgeoning pulchritudinous glory, so I say, chances are summer will absolutely, surely, almost certainly likely follow.
I don’t like to be too definite about these things – global warming warnings aside, things are clearly changing out there. We may have to add a new season if only to acknowledge the truth of the heat.
What’s after summer and before fall? Based on the last few years, hell sounds about right by temperature, but hell being a permanent place rather than a transient season, more imagination is required.
Sahummer? Sort of halfway between summer and Sahara? ehn. But since it’ll be at least a couple of decades before we experience full-on desert conditions, I’m plumping for ‘simmer’: summer, almost at - but just off - the boil. Ask anyone who’s stuck their finger in a pot on the bubble – it’s still plenty hot enough to burn.
So it’s time to welcome warmth. Time to disrobe, peel off and strip down.
Most importantly, it’s time to change shoes. Discard socks, throw off hose – and dive into the blistery pleasures of open-toed shoes, sandals and flip flops. I’ve missed my flip flops.
But there are other flip flops I’ve been missing even more. The brave and the quietly, slowly bold – those of the sober second though – the human flip floppers.
If Canada’s newest leader and America’s current and arguably most destructive, the practice of changing one’s mind – or admitting one’s mistakes (or telling the truth) – will remain dead and buried along with those who have lost their lives at the whim of those who pride themselves on split-second decision making.
Personally, I respect flip floppers. Love ‘em with a passion equaled only by the passion of those with whom I disagree love singularity of thought. All my fears that Canada risked electing a leader who aped the worst of the US president’s qualities are gradually materializing.
Beginning with a cabinet and caucus-wide directive that threatens those who disagree publicly with the PM or diverge from any part of the conservative party line with firing or public humiliation, Steven Harper is the iron fist in the iron glove.
(Fully equipped with, according to some wags, a mid-section masquerading as his very own wrought-iron pot belly stove.)
Disturbingly, some journalists have identified these qualities of absolute control and naked power-wielding as responsible for the early perceived successes of the new government. If ‘success’ means appearing to be united without the boring, though necessary requirement of actually being united is the definition, well, then yes.
But how can that not suck?
And how sad must it be now for all those recently elected Tories, excited as kids at summer camp, rubbing their little hands together and chortling with glee as they imagined what they’d say if the voting public would just give them half a chance. Now they know. Nothing. At least nothing that hasn’t been, scripted, tested, checked, re-checked and sanitized for the convenience of conformity – and all that that implies.
One opinion now, and only one. Top down, single-minded, unchanging, unwavering, unapologetic.
Presidential even.
It’s this that confounds me. The immense pride these leaders take in announcing that unlike their rivals they always make up their minds at warp(ed) speed and once made, never change them. The very act of reconsidering a position or plan based on anything from new information to results is sneered at with the same contempt as is asking for advice, working toward compromise, or even letting experts, (let’s say for example, UN arms inspectors) complete their job and report on their findings.
A little slower decision making, a little more information gathering and possibly even a retreat from an erroneously held position and who knows how many wars could remain un-fought, how many more kids provided with safe affordable daycare, how many policies re-thought and polished. How much better, how much more flexible and unrestricted life could be.
The triumph of the new government is further demonstrated by the perceived success of the recent trips the PM and his erstwhile rival and current Foreign Affairs Minister Peter McKay took down south.
What’s been billed as a new closer relationship with the US is on closer examination what looks to be an exercise in flat out obsequiousness. Anyone seeing Peter McKay practically blush and flutter his eyelashes at US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (I was blushing at any rate) as he drooled over her career and accomplishments, shamelessly sucking up as he described a friendship so chemically, so karmically simpatico, and as he got precisely nothing (save a condescending smile) on Canada/US border restrictions requiring Canadians to carry either a Passport or some sort of identity card when traveling to the US, must have wondered what the hell price getting a US official to smile at one must cost.
The first installment was no doubt adding Canada’s voice to US calls for sanctions on Iran – despite the fact that such a position appeared to have arisen out of the clear blue sky; no discussion raised in parliament, no consensus building with cabinet, caucus or Canadians.
Even the Prime Minister failed at achieving any of the goals the close, understanding relationship with the US he promised his government would build would bring – his bravest posture was flying in the face of fashion at the walkabout in Mexico.
Not an inch was gained on softwood lumber, not a millimeter moved on border issues.
The tougher stance taken by the former liberal government may not have earned any friends or gained any ground with the Bush administration, but blind obeisance and awe-struck admiration doesn’t seem to be getting the job done either.
Just allowing someone to be your lapdog doesn’t mean you won’t be kicked to the curb or the doghouse just as soon as it suits your master.
And don’t expect it not to hurt – the President is more likely to be wearing pointy-toed steel-tipped cowboy boots than a pair of open, flexible flip flops.
I don’t like to be too definite about these things – global warming warnings aside, things are clearly changing out there. We may have to add a new season if only to acknowledge the truth of the heat.
What’s after summer and before fall? Based on the last few years, hell sounds about right by temperature, but hell being a permanent place rather than a transient season, more imagination is required.
Sahummer? Sort of halfway between summer and Sahara? ehn. But since it’ll be at least a couple of decades before we experience full-on desert conditions, I’m plumping for ‘simmer’: summer, almost at - but just off - the boil. Ask anyone who’s stuck their finger in a pot on the bubble – it’s still plenty hot enough to burn.
So it’s time to welcome warmth. Time to disrobe, peel off and strip down.
Most importantly, it’s time to change shoes. Discard socks, throw off hose – and dive into the blistery pleasures of open-toed shoes, sandals and flip flops. I’ve missed my flip flops.
But there are other flip flops I’ve been missing even more. The brave and the quietly, slowly bold – those of the sober second though – the human flip floppers.
If Canada’s newest leader and America’s current and arguably most destructive, the practice of changing one’s mind – or admitting one’s mistakes (or telling the truth) – will remain dead and buried along with those who have lost their lives at the whim of those who pride themselves on split-second decision making.
Personally, I respect flip floppers. Love ‘em with a passion equaled only by the passion of those with whom I disagree love singularity of thought. All my fears that Canada risked electing a leader who aped the worst of the US president’s qualities are gradually materializing.
Beginning with a cabinet and caucus-wide directive that threatens those who disagree publicly with the PM or diverge from any part of the conservative party line with firing or public humiliation, Steven Harper is the iron fist in the iron glove.
(Fully equipped with, according to some wags, a mid-section masquerading as his very own wrought-iron pot belly stove.)
Disturbingly, some journalists have identified these qualities of absolute control and naked power-wielding as responsible for the early perceived successes of the new government. If ‘success’ means appearing to be united without the boring, though necessary requirement of actually being united is the definition, well, then yes.
But how can that not suck?
And how sad must it be now for all those recently elected Tories, excited as kids at summer camp, rubbing their little hands together and chortling with glee as they imagined what they’d say if the voting public would just give them half a chance. Now they know. Nothing. At least nothing that hasn’t been, scripted, tested, checked, re-checked and sanitized for the convenience of conformity – and all that that implies.
One opinion now, and only one. Top down, single-minded, unchanging, unwavering, unapologetic.
Presidential even.
It’s this that confounds me. The immense pride these leaders take in announcing that unlike their rivals they always make up their minds at warp(ed) speed and once made, never change them. The very act of reconsidering a position or plan based on anything from new information to results is sneered at with the same contempt as is asking for advice, working toward compromise, or even letting experts, (let’s say for example, UN arms inspectors) complete their job and report on their findings.
A little slower decision making, a little more information gathering and possibly even a retreat from an erroneously held position and who knows how many wars could remain un-fought, how many more kids provided with safe affordable daycare, how many policies re-thought and polished. How much better, how much more flexible and unrestricted life could be.
The triumph of the new government is further demonstrated by the perceived success of the recent trips the PM and his erstwhile rival and current Foreign Affairs Minister Peter McKay took down south.
What’s been billed as a new closer relationship with the US is on closer examination what looks to be an exercise in flat out obsequiousness. Anyone seeing Peter McKay practically blush and flutter his eyelashes at US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (I was blushing at any rate) as he drooled over her career and accomplishments, shamelessly sucking up as he described a friendship so chemically, so karmically simpatico, and as he got precisely nothing (save a condescending smile) on Canada/US border restrictions requiring Canadians to carry either a Passport or some sort of identity card when traveling to the US, must have wondered what the hell price getting a US official to smile at one must cost.
The first installment was no doubt adding Canada’s voice to US calls for sanctions on Iran – despite the fact that such a position appeared to have arisen out of the clear blue sky; no discussion raised in parliament, no consensus building with cabinet, caucus or Canadians.
Even the Prime Minister failed at achieving any of the goals the close, understanding relationship with the US he promised his government would build would bring – his bravest posture was flying in the face of fashion at the walkabout in Mexico.
Not an inch was gained on softwood lumber, not a millimeter moved on border issues.
The tougher stance taken by the former liberal government may not have earned any friends or gained any ground with the Bush administration, but blind obeisance and awe-struck admiration doesn’t seem to be getting the job done either.
Just allowing someone to be your lapdog doesn’t mean you won’t be kicked to the curb or the doghouse just as soon as it suits your master.
And don’t expect it not to hurt – the President is more likely to be wearing pointy-toed steel-tipped cowboy boots than a pair of open, flexible flip flops.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Oh yes he did...
All the most interesting exchanges in my life right now seem to happen at auditions.
(And for those of you wondering if I got the Viagra singing gig, the answer is no. And to be honest, I’m puzzled; the singers I hear in the commercial sing rather well – and surely that wasn’t the direction the producers intended to go… or was it?! Crap. Déjà vu flop sweat all over again…)
So I’m waiting to go in – this is a spot that requires a male and female and we’re matched up to read together… I get one of the cute stars of the Canada/Russia Hockey movie (rowrr!) – and as I circumspectly listen in on various conversations going on around me, another male voice walks in.
“Bob,” squeaks some chick sitting to my right, reaching up to snag him with a powerful mitt and dragging him down before planting a noisy smooch on his cheek. (All names changed not to protect the innocent, but because I don’t remember them.) “You didn’t call me last Wednesday…” She pouts fetchingly, still gripping him vice-like by the elbow.
“No,” he replies, “I didn’t.”
And that, fellow amateur sociologists, was that.
Finis.
The end.
No further discussion took place.
I could hardly believe it – where were the excuses? The explanations? The broken ankles, dying relatives, accidental blows to the head? I didn’t know whether to cheer or throw rotten fruit. Where was the socially expected – nay, demanded – dishonest response to an obvious, embarrassing question?
Answer: nowhere. This guy apparently doesn’t do bullshit.
The rest of us (those who apparently still do) were shocked into silence for a few moments, though soon relieved (were we ever) by the producer inviting the non-caller in to read. The non-called woman remained in the outer office with us, talking to another auditioner a little too quickly, clearly acutely embarrassed by Mr. ‘No, I didn’t’; laughing a little too loud and a little too long at a comment about the change in the weather.
Soon enough the negative guy came out and I and my hockey-playing thespian partner went in. Whatever Act II was destined to bring, we weren’t fated to be part of it.
(Which one was it from the CBC conclusion-airing-tonight movie? Well, I’ll give you a hint: the one with the bad 70’s-style wig. Not helping?)
We didn’t need a lot of takes – the two spots (for barbecue sauce) were fairly simple: classic dopey man/long-suffering woman sarcastic exchanges – and hockey boy and I were out of the booth in two shakes.
(Which barbecue sauce was it? I’ll give you a hint: the one with the woman’s name. Not helping?)
To our mutual surprise, Dr. No was still in the waiting area, but Ms Pout had disappeared. Bathroom break? Humbled stumble away from the production company? The mystery continues to this day, unabated.
As the next two clichéd characters were called in, I, Canada ‘72 and the man with neither guile nor apparent need of prevarication left together, walking to the elevators as we hitched on coats and slipped on gloves. (The weather actually hadn’t changed that much yet. Hence, no humour.)
“So what was that about?” asked my ‘classic dopey man’. “Did you forget to call?”
“Was this a date situation,” I threw in, “or a friend-thing?” I wanted to know the extent of the crime.
“Well,” the accused replied, “I met her in a bar downtown and we hung out together and…” (He might just as well have inserted ‘yadda yadda yadda’) “I just didn’t call.”
“Wow,” said the TV movie star.
“And the legend begins,” said I with just a soupcon of sarcasm, getting off the elevator and scooting toward the door ahead of the guys, who were hanging back to talk.
I didn’t want to get into it any further; didn’t want to hear if he was going to boast or explain apologetically, didn’t want to know if he was as pleased with himself as I suspect most of the guys in the audition ante-room were with his solution to morning after (week later) interrogation.
I had just experienced a combination Seinfeld/Sex and the City/He’s Just Not That Into You moment and I needed at least another moment to catch my breath, pause and reflect.
I’m torn. There’s a part of me that gets his action (not calling) but rejects his delivery (point blank, no explanation in a room full of people) whilst simultaneously trying to gauge how I felt about her action (asking a question she really wanted an answer to) balanced against her delivery (point blank, no build up, in a room full of people).
Two crimes at cross purposes.
But much as I’m confused at how I feel about the communication, whether I like what I heard, how it was transmitted, received or overheard, I have no doubt what the non-message means and what it implies.
There is a simplicity of communication that is almost beautiful in its pared-down straightforwardness. He came, he saw, he didn’t call – and you can bet he isn't planning to in the future.
In a world filled with obfuscation, miscommunication and downright, bald-faced lies, the guy who says no and means it is a kind of role model.
We daily hear leaders make promises, commitments and pledges they have no intention of keeping; some rabbit on about ethics, then given a chance, do exactly the same (Stronach/Emerson – Martin/Harper … pot/kettle) whilst others impassively watch the murder of innocents in a war entered into on verifiable falsehood.
The most recent horror in the ongoing Iraq war horrors (besides the horror that calls for impeachment are still so faint and whispery) is the revelation in the filing by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case last week, reporting that Scooter Libby, assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney was given direct instructions by the President to leak information to reporters, bolstering the case for war – even as the information in question (that Saddam Hussein was building up stocks of uranium) was being denigrated by senior White House defence advisors including the then Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Following hard on the heels of the heretofore unreleased bombshell memo that revealed the President had told British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the lead up to the war that he was going to go ahead, UN Inspector’s verification reports or no, the Libby admission just piles on the facts, as the lies pile ever skyward.
The political equivalent of broken ankles, dying relatives and homework-snarfing dogs.
Where is the screaming, crying, garment-rending and pitchforks and torches parade on Washington? Where is even the slightest recognition on the part of the President or the administration that fairytales were told to sleepy citizens, some of whom remain, even now, comatose to the truth?
Oh for the elegant clarity of “no.”
No, there is no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Husseim.
No, there are no WMDs.
No, America is not going to war with Iraq.
And now, more than ever, we hope to hear: no, America is not going to war with Iran.
“No, I didn’t.”
Oh yes he did.
Meanwhile, neither I nor my mysterious TV movie voice partner have received a call back on the barbecue sauce commercial.
And I know what it means.
In a world full of ambiguity, it may not be pleasant, but it's helpful.
(And for those of you wondering if I got the Viagra singing gig, the answer is no. And to be honest, I’m puzzled; the singers I hear in the commercial sing rather well – and surely that wasn’t the direction the producers intended to go… or was it?! Crap. Déjà vu flop sweat all over again…)
So I’m waiting to go in – this is a spot that requires a male and female and we’re matched up to read together… I get one of the cute stars of the Canada/Russia Hockey movie (rowrr!) – and as I circumspectly listen in on various conversations going on around me, another male voice walks in.
“Bob,” squeaks some chick sitting to my right, reaching up to snag him with a powerful mitt and dragging him down before planting a noisy smooch on his cheek. (All names changed not to protect the innocent, but because I don’t remember them.) “You didn’t call me last Wednesday…” She pouts fetchingly, still gripping him vice-like by the elbow.
“No,” he replies, “I didn’t.”
And that, fellow amateur sociologists, was that.
Finis.
The end.
No further discussion took place.
I could hardly believe it – where were the excuses? The explanations? The broken ankles, dying relatives, accidental blows to the head? I didn’t know whether to cheer or throw rotten fruit. Where was the socially expected – nay, demanded – dishonest response to an obvious, embarrassing question?
Answer: nowhere. This guy apparently doesn’t do bullshit.
The rest of us (those who apparently still do) were shocked into silence for a few moments, though soon relieved (were we ever) by the producer inviting the non-caller in to read. The non-called woman remained in the outer office with us, talking to another auditioner a little too quickly, clearly acutely embarrassed by Mr. ‘No, I didn’t’; laughing a little too loud and a little too long at a comment about the change in the weather.
Soon enough the negative guy came out and I and my hockey-playing thespian partner went in. Whatever Act II was destined to bring, we weren’t fated to be part of it.
(Which one was it from the CBC conclusion-airing-tonight movie? Well, I’ll give you a hint: the one with the bad 70’s-style wig. Not helping?)
We didn’t need a lot of takes – the two spots (for barbecue sauce) were fairly simple: classic dopey man/long-suffering woman sarcastic exchanges – and hockey boy and I were out of the booth in two shakes.
(Which barbecue sauce was it? I’ll give you a hint: the one with the woman’s name. Not helping?)
To our mutual surprise, Dr. No was still in the waiting area, but Ms Pout had disappeared. Bathroom break? Humbled stumble away from the production company? The mystery continues to this day, unabated.
As the next two clichéd characters were called in, I, Canada ‘72 and the man with neither guile nor apparent need of prevarication left together, walking to the elevators as we hitched on coats and slipped on gloves. (The weather actually hadn’t changed that much yet. Hence, no humour.)
“So what was that about?” asked my ‘classic dopey man’. “Did you forget to call?”
“Was this a date situation,” I threw in, “or a friend-thing?” I wanted to know the extent of the crime.
“Well,” the accused replied, “I met her in a bar downtown and we hung out together and…” (He might just as well have inserted ‘yadda yadda yadda’) “I just didn’t call.”
“Wow,” said the TV movie star.
“And the legend begins,” said I with just a soupcon of sarcasm, getting off the elevator and scooting toward the door ahead of the guys, who were hanging back to talk.
I didn’t want to get into it any further; didn’t want to hear if he was going to boast or explain apologetically, didn’t want to know if he was as pleased with himself as I suspect most of the guys in the audition ante-room were with his solution to morning after (week later) interrogation.
I had just experienced a combination Seinfeld/Sex and the City/He’s Just Not That Into You moment and I needed at least another moment to catch my breath, pause and reflect.
I’m torn. There’s a part of me that gets his action (not calling) but rejects his delivery (point blank, no explanation in a room full of people) whilst simultaneously trying to gauge how I felt about her action (asking a question she really wanted an answer to) balanced against her delivery (point blank, no build up, in a room full of people).
Two crimes at cross purposes.
But much as I’m confused at how I feel about the communication, whether I like what I heard, how it was transmitted, received or overheard, I have no doubt what the non-message means and what it implies.
There is a simplicity of communication that is almost beautiful in its pared-down straightforwardness. He came, he saw, he didn’t call – and you can bet he isn't planning to in the future.
In a world filled with obfuscation, miscommunication and downright, bald-faced lies, the guy who says no and means it is a kind of role model.
We daily hear leaders make promises, commitments and pledges they have no intention of keeping; some rabbit on about ethics, then given a chance, do exactly the same (Stronach/Emerson – Martin/Harper … pot/kettle) whilst others impassively watch the murder of innocents in a war entered into on verifiable falsehood.
The most recent horror in the ongoing Iraq war horrors (besides the horror that calls for impeachment are still so faint and whispery) is the revelation in the filing by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case last week, reporting that Scooter Libby, assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney was given direct instructions by the President to leak information to reporters, bolstering the case for war – even as the information in question (that Saddam Hussein was building up stocks of uranium) was being denigrated by senior White House defence advisors including the then Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Following hard on the heels of the heretofore unreleased bombshell memo that revealed the President had told British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the lead up to the war that he was going to go ahead, UN Inspector’s verification reports or no, the Libby admission just piles on the facts, as the lies pile ever skyward.
The political equivalent of broken ankles, dying relatives and homework-snarfing dogs.
Where is the screaming, crying, garment-rending and pitchforks and torches parade on Washington? Where is even the slightest recognition on the part of the President or the administration that fairytales were told to sleepy citizens, some of whom remain, even now, comatose to the truth?
Oh for the elegant clarity of “no.”
No, there is no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Husseim.
No, there are no WMDs.
No, America is not going to war with Iraq.
And now, more than ever, we hope to hear: no, America is not going to war with Iran.
“No, I didn’t.”
Oh yes he did.
Meanwhile, neither I nor my mysterious TV movie voice partner have received a call back on the barbecue sauce commercial.
And I know what it means.
In a world full of ambiguity, it may not be pleasant, but it's helpful.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
WWPD (What Would Pete Do)?
I realize now that I’ve reached a sort of critical mass with my stuff.
There’s just one too many things on the blink, to the extent that I now have to kick, joggle, whack, shake or rattle several key pieces of equipment to get them to work.
This list includes – but is in no way limited to – my VCR (a series of sharp taps on the side with the remote to make the wavy lines subside) the right front headlamp on my car (a fairly firm kick up the side – pause – repeat as necessary ‘til the light comes on) the hard drive on my computer (I sort of gently whack the sides – dislodges dust I’m thinking) and my dishwasher, which after prolonged tinkering I’ve managed to stop (for the time being) from leaking all over the kitchen floor. Most of the time.
There’s more – plenty more – but whatever inborn obsolescence was built into my stuff, for whatever reason, everything seems to have decided to poop out at once.
I wish I was more like Pete Dougherty – erstwhile companion of coked-out supermodel Kate Moss, himself a disaster in a Rat Pack-style pork pie hat, careening from drug bust to drug bust, caroming off the sides of police officers, reporters and minders from New York to London, smoking his crack, snorting his horse, and just for a little variety one assumes, regularly getting pissed as a fart.
The guy’s an immature mess, which makes the name of his band so absolutely perfect it almost beggars the imagination – certainly one has to proffer a tip of the hat, or at least a salute with the crack pipe – being known as the frontman for ‘Babyshambles’.
But Pete now has a new addiction, one I get and one I wish I had the guts to mainline – buying old Jaguars, parking them illegally and then buying replacements when they get towed away.
For about $2000.00, Dougherty purchases beat up old Jags and drives them around until they fall apart, he does, or the London parking authority makes the decision for him. In a ritual reminiscent of hair-washing, instead of lathering rinsing and repeating, he buys, drives, parks and leaves, starting the cycle all over again at a rate that likely exceeds his schedule of hair-washing… or at least based on paparazzi photos, so it would seem.
A plan so simple it just might work.
I have dreams of doing the dishes just once more, then quietly and stealthily defenestrating my Eaton Viking dishwasher up and over in the dead of night.
Leaving Sylvia my car by the side of the road, (in the bike and taxi lane tee hee!) then running to catch the Red Rocket (Toronto has a great public transit system, so who really needs an automobile?) leaving the car, wonky headlight and steadily encroaching puddle of oil for someone else to deal with.
Don’t get me started on the VCR – long may it corrode in some far away landfill.
Everybody says we live in a disposable society, but how many people have the Pete Dougherty guts to actually throw things away?
About two years ago I wrote about a piece of cardboard I wanted to hang onto against the advice of a tidy boyfriend who wanted to throw it away (along with a raft of other things – let’s face it, the guy was clearly OC) since I wasn’t using it. Not at that minute I wasn’t, but come on. It was a nice, clean, beautifully flat (the secret to good cardboard) unmarked, glossy, shiny piece of perfect pristine cardboard. The type of cardboard you could only have prayed your mother would hang onto so you could use it for a million different craft projects; (when instead you really only usually got the kind of crappy card that came back with your father’s shirts from the dry cleaners) glue, paste, sparkles, stickers, poster paint, beads, bits of tinsel, felt, leaves, buttons – why anything would stick to it. And beautify it. The possibilities were endless. They still are.
Which is why I still have the cardboard, and the boyfriend, as I indicated back then, not so much.
But that’s only the beginning. I delight in wearing clothes I wore in high school – and not only for the thrill of still fitting into them. It’s true what they said: everything really does come around again and I’m one of those people who aren’t standing around moaning about their old platform shoes: I’m ready for virtually any fashion comeback from the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s.
Jackets with shoulder pads? Check. Skinny-ankle stone-wash Guess jeans? Check. Below the knee hippie boho granny skirts with matching tapestry vests? Check. Giant disco-era earrings? Check, check, and check!
I still feel sick about the pair of Frye boots I wore circa 1975 that I’m positive my father threw into a garage sale (along with my stuffed dog, pony books, board games – and heaven knows how much pieces of pristine cardboard) back in the 80’s when I wasn’t looking – and a similar pair of Frye boots (‘Campus’ style in ‘Banana’) that will now cost you in the neighbourhood of $253.00 – and that’s American – and before tax and shipping charges, so who’s sorry now?
(My father – the garage sale guy – is dead, so actually, we’re sorry on a lot of levels.)
I have a slight magazine habit that I’m trying desperately to quit. But how can I throw away a 1999 Allure with a photo of Heather Locklear on the cover (she and Richie Sambora, still so happy!) when there’s an article inside about the PERFECT ab exercises? I mean, when is an article about perfect ab exercises ever going to come along again? Or a turn of the century Cosmo with tips on how to REALLY please a man? That stuff is radio-active, once in a lifetime gold people!
But the laundry room in my condo has a sort of take a penny, leave a penny book and magazine swap area, and just when I think I know all I really need to know about Brangelina, along comes laundry day and in between cycles, I’m not only reading, I’m taking. And not leaving on the return trip either.
What would Pete Dougherty do? (After getting stoned I mean.) Why he’d throw it all away… and get more!
This is the part I have to remember as I fear filling garbage bags with treasures from the wardrobe fashion forgot… divesting of at least half of the paperbacks I readily admit I will never read…. and shipping any Vanity Fair published before the 43rd President of the United States took up politics (and I mean pre-Governor of Texas days) down to the laundry room to torture some other misbegotten packrat with more storage space and less sense: there’s plenty more stuff where that came from. More vintage clothing stores, more out of print bookshops, more second hand cars and smirky smug salesmen to sell them.
I have a new role model who seems to have got half the equation right – he’s adept at getting rid of stuff. But I worry about the other half. The re-acquiring habit.
Here’s where I can help: I could kick, joggle, whack or shake Pete Dougherty out of his built-in obsolescence, until he was so rattled he’d never touch another drug again so long as he lived.
And then we could pull together all my old magazines and books and fabric and beads and stuff… and do a little craft project together. A little scrapbooking maybe. I know where we could get a nice pristine piece of cardboard if needs be…
That’s what Jane would do.
So it’s all good.
There’s just one too many things on the blink, to the extent that I now have to kick, joggle, whack, shake or rattle several key pieces of equipment to get them to work.
This list includes – but is in no way limited to – my VCR (a series of sharp taps on the side with the remote to make the wavy lines subside) the right front headlamp on my car (a fairly firm kick up the side – pause – repeat as necessary ‘til the light comes on) the hard drive on my computer (I sort of gently whack the sides – dislodges dust I’m thinking) and my dishwasher, which after prolonged tinkering I’ve managed to stop (for the time being) from leaking all over the kitchen floor. Most of the time.
There’s more – plenty more – but whatever inborn obsolescence was built into my stuff, for whatever reason, everything seems to have decided to poop out at once.
I wish I was more like Pete Dougherty – erstwhile companion of coked-out supermodel Kate Moss, himself a disaster in a Rat Pack-style pork pie hat, careening from drug bust to drug bust, caroming off the sides of police officers, reporters and minders from New York to London, smoking his crack, snorting his horse, and just for a little variety one assumes, regularly getting pissed as a fart.
The guy’s an immature mess, which makes the name of his band so absolutely perfect it almost beggars the imagination – certainly one has to proffer a tip of the hat, or at least a salute with the crack pipe – being known as the frontman for ‘Babyshambles’.
But Pete now has a new addiction, one I get and one I wish I had the guts to mainline – buying old Jaguars, parking them illegally and then buying replacements when they get towed away.
For about $2000.00, Dougherty purchases beat up old Jags and drives them around until they fall apart, he does, or the London parking authority makes the decision for him. In a ritual reminiscent of hair-washing, instead of lathering rinsing and repeating, he buys, drives, parks and leaves, starting the cycle all over again at a rate that likely exceeds his schedule of hair-washing… or at least based on paparazzi photos, so it would seem.
A plan so simple it just might work.
I have dreams of doing the dishes just once more, then quietly and stealthily defenestrating my Eaton Viking dishwasher up and over in the dead of night.
Leaving Sylvia my car by the side of the road, (in the bike and taxi lane tee hee!) then running to catch the Red Rocket (Toronto has a great public transit system, so who really needs an automobile?) leaving the car, wonky headlight and steadily encroaching puddle of oil for someone else to deal with.
Don’t get me started on the VCR – long may it corrode in some far away landfill.
Everybody says we live in a disposable society, but how many people have the Pete Dougherty guts to actually throw things away?
About two years ago I wrote about a piece of cardboard I wanted to hang onto against the advice of a tidy boyfriend who wanted to throw it away (along with a raft of other things – let’s face it, the guy was clearly OC) since I wasn’t using it. Not at that minute I wasn’t, but come on. It was a nice, clean, beautifully flat (the secret to good cardboard) unmarked, glossy, shiny piece of perfect pristine cardboard. The type of cardboard you could only have prayed your mother would hang onto so you could use it for a million different craft projects; (when instead you really only usually got the kind of crappy card that came back with your father’s shirts from the dry cleaners) glue, paste, sparkles, stickers, poster paint, beads, bits of tinsel, felt, leaves, buttons – why anything would stick to it. And beautify it. The possibilities were endless. They still are.
Which is why I still have the cardboard, and the boyfriend, as I indicated back then, not so much.
But that’s only the beginning. I delight in wearing clothes I wore in high school – and not only for the thrill of still fitting into them. It’s true what they said: everything really does come around again and I’m one of those people who aren’t standing around moaning about their old platform shoes: I’m ready for virtually any fashion comeback from the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s.
Jackets with shoulder pads? Check. Skinny-ankle stone-wash Guess jeans? Check. Below the knee hippie boho granny skirts with matching tapestry vests? Check. Giant disco-era earrings? Check, check, and check!
I still feel sick about the pair of Frye boots I wore circa 1975 that I’m positive my father threw into a garage sale (along with my stuffed dog, pony books, board games – and heaven knows how much pieces of pristine cardboard) back in the 80’s when I wasn’t looking – and a similar pair of Frye boots (‘Campus’ style in ‘Banana’) that will now cost you in the neighbourhood of $253.00 – and that’s American – and before tax and shipping charges, so who’s sorry now?
(My father – the garage sale guy – is dead, so actually, we’re sorry on a lot of levels.)
I have a slight magazine habit that I’m trying desperately to quit. But how can I throw away a 1999 Allure with a photo of Heather Locklear on the cover (she and Richie Sambora, still so happy!) when there’s an article inside about the PERFECT ab exercises? I mean, when is an article about perfect ab exercises ever going to come along again? Or a turn of the century Cosmo with tips on how to REALLY please a man? That stuff is radio-active, once in a lifetime gold people!
But the laundry room in my condo has a sort of take a penny, leave a penny book and magazine swap area, and just when I think I know all I really need to know about Brangelina, along comes laundry day and in between cycles, I’m not only reading, I’m taking. And not leaving on the return trip either.
What would Pete Dougherty do? (After getting stoned I mean.) Why he’d throw it all away… and get more!
This is the part I have to remember as I fear filling garbage bags with treasures from the wardrobe fashion forgot… divesting of at least half of the paperbacks I readily admit I will never read…. and shipping any Vanity Fair published before the 43rd President of the United States took up politics (and I mean pre-Governor of Texas days) down to the laundry room to torture some other misbegotten packrat with more storage space and less sense: there’s plenty more stuff where that came from. More vintage clothing stores, more out of print bookshops, more second hand cars and smirky smug salesmen to sell them.
I have a new role model who seems to have got half the equation right – he’s adept at getting rid of stuff. But I worry about the other half. The re-acquiring habit.
Here’s where I can help: I could kick, joggle, whack or shake Pete Dougherty out of his built-in obsolescence, until he was so rattled he’d never touch another drug again so long as he lived.
And then we could pull together all my old magazines and books and fabric and beads and stuff… and do a little craft project together. A little scrapbooking maybe. I know where we could get a nice pristine piece of cardboard if needs be…
That’s what Jane would do.
So it’s all good.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Crappy Anniversary
It was exactly one month ago to the day – February 20th – that Right Wing hate historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in jail for his words – published and spoken – denying the holocaust.
It’s a serious sentence, but then David Irving was one heck of a serious denier; in a nutshell, through his books and in particular a couple of speeches he made in 1989, Irving has long claimed that the murder of some six million Jews in World War II was a hoax; that the crematoriums either did not exist or their use by the Nazis was wildly exaggerated, and that Hitler has been misunderstood and unfairly smeared by historians.
For most people Irving has long been thought of as a nutcase of the first water – a rabid Right Wing revisionist – whose opinions and qualifications to hold them were held in somewhat less than scholarly esteem.
He might have earned no more than a footnote in history as one of those flat earth-type creepy kooks who come along once or twice in a lifetime if it weren’t for the fact that his views became a rallying point, offering succor, comfort and quotable quotes to a legion of his like-minded anti-Semitic, holocaust-denying followers.
There are those (respected historians, literary figures, journalists, legal types and not a few regular folks) who are concerned that in a day and in an age in which comics can get you killed, we ought to be standing up far taller and straighter for freedom of speech, no matter how incendiary or hate-filled.
I find myself in agreement; a sentence like this – or worse – ought to be saved for far more dangerous instigators, those whose words were responsible for, say, the deaths or maiming or ruination of many, many thousands of people.
People like, say, President Bush, or Vice President Dick Cheney, or even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, all of whom were busy beavers this last weekend, celebrating the third anniversary of the war by impressing various and sundry with their positive, even cheery views on their successful Iraq strategy, despite escalating violence and the emerging threat of civil war.
Compared to this terrible triumvirate, David Irving (as repulsive as he unquestionably is) is a piker.
The President tossed in his two cents – with a two minute address to the press yesterday on arriving home from yet another relaxing retreat to Camp David – letting us know that despite the estimated 200 Iraqis killed in sectarian violence (translation: civil war) over the last few weeks, he himself was “encouraged by the process”.
The Vice President appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” yesterday, responding to questions that challenged his statement three years ago; a statement that suggested the American army would be greeted like liberators (complete with laurel wreaths and pelted flowers) and his more recent contention that the insurgency “was in its last throes”.
Cheney brushed off those concerns with trademark condescension.
“I think it has less to do with the statements we’ve made,” he replied, “which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than with the fact that there’s a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created because what’s newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad.”
In other words, the media did it.
Don Rumsfeld trumpeted his view from the op-ed page of The Washington Post. He likened the war in Iraq to two of the last three great conflagrations (inexplicably neglecting to mention Vietnam…) World War II and the Cold War, saying that to leave Iraq now would be “… the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet Domination.”
Which is it? A mission inches from success, working arm in arm with a delighted and enlightened Iraqi nation, or a nightmare scenario comparable to Nazi Germany?
The White House administration is in denial.
And while such a crime bought David Irving a three year reservation in an Austrian hoosegow, it seems a similar sentence is being passed for the atrocities in Iraq – the only difference being that those who must pay are the citizens of the United States (and indeed the world) who must endure nearly three more years of this administration and those who run it.
Oh – and most particularly those already dead or dying in service of the lies, and those still fated to do so.
It’s a serious sentence, but then David Irving was one heck of a serious denier; in a nutshell, through his books and in particular a couple of speeches he made in 1989, Irving has long claimed that the murder of some six million Jews in World War II was a hoax; that the crematoriums either did not exist or their use by the Nazis was wildly exaggerated, and that Hitler has been misunderstood and unfairly smeared by historians.
For most people Irving has long been thought of as a nutcase of the first water – a rabid Right Wing revisionist – whose opinions and qualifications to hold them were held in somewhat less than scholarly esteem.
He might have earned no more than a footnote in history as one of those flat earth-type creepy kooks who come along once or twice in a lifetime if it weren’t for the fact that his views became a rallying point, offering succor, comfort and quotable quotes to a legion of his like-minded anti-Semitic, holocaust-denying followers.
There are those (respected historians, literary figures, journalists, legal types and not a few regular folks) who are concerned that in a day and in an age in which comics can get you killed, we ought to be standing up far taller and straighter for freedom of speech, no matter how incendiary or hate-filled.
I find myself in agreement; a sentence like this – or worse – ought to be saved for far more dangerous instigators, those whose words were responsible for, say, the deaths or maiming or ruination of many, many thousands of people.
People like, say, President Bush, or Vice President Dick Cheney, or even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, all of whom were busy beavers this last weekend, celebrating the third anniversary of the war by impressing various and sundry with their positive, even cheery views on their successful Iraq strategy, despite escalating violence and the emerging threat of civil war.
Compared to this terrible triumvirate, David Irving (as repulsive as he unquestionably is) is a piker.
The President tossed in his two cents – with a two minute address to the press yesterday on arriving home from yet another relaxing retreat to Camp David – letting us know that despite the estimated 200 Iraqis killed in sectarian violence (translation: civil war) over the last few weeks, he himself was “encouraged by the process”.
The Vice President appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” yesterday, responding to questions that challenged his statement three years ago; a statement that suggested the American army would be greeted like liberators (complete with laurel wreaths and pelted flowers) and his more recent contention that the insurgency “was in its last throes”.
Cheney brushed off those concerns with trademark condescension.
“I think it has less to do with the statements we’ve made,” he replied, “which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than with the fact that there’s a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created because what’s newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad.”
In other words, the media did it.
Don Rumsfeld trumpeted his view from the op-ed page of The Washington Post. He likened the war in Iraq to two of the last three great conflagrations (inexplicably neglecting to mention Vietnam…) World War II and the Cold War, saying that to leave Iraq now would be “… the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet Domination.”
Which is it? A mission inches from success, working arm in arm with a delighted and enlightened Iraqi nation, or a nightmare scenario comparable to Nazi Germany?
The White House administration is in denial.
And while such a crime bought David Irving a three year reservation in an Austrian hoosegow, it seems a similar sentence is being passed for the atrocities in Iraq – the only difference being that those who must pay are the citizens of the United States (and indeed the world) who must endure nearly three more years of this administration and those who run it.
Oh – and most particularly those already dead or dying in service of the lies, and those still fated to do so.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Hard song
It surely shouldn’t be so surprising that the daughter of the man who taught Frank Sinatra how to sing and Gene Kelly how to dance (or was it the other way around?) is poised on the brink of musical stardom.
And why not?
Why should a complete and utter lack of ability, training, talent, pitch, range or rhythm preclude such a career move?
I’m poised I tell ya – poised.
It all began yesterday with an early morning audition for a radio commercial; I went in knowing neither the product nor the pitch. (Not as much of a drawback as you may imagine: they give you a script, they tell you how they want you to read it, they record it, they shout “Next!” Nothing simpler. Just keep moving. And forget validation for your parking… or your performance, frankly.)
But I was surprised yesterday morning as the receptionist at the studio handed me the script to see it printed on the page in what looked like stanzas.
“Poetry, eh?” I thought as I shrugged off my coat and sat down to read the script and await my turn at the mike.
But anyone could see it wasn’t poetry. It was a song. A song I recognized; two verses, a chorus and a ‘bring it on home’ flourish of a finish.
There had to be some sort of mistake.
“There has to be some sort of mistake,” I said to the receptionist, my voice thin with rapidly growing anxiety. “I’m not a singer. Did they tell my agent they wanted a singer? I am not,” I paused for emphasis, “a singer!”
“No, no,” she calmed. “They want real people – people like you.”
I just looked at her. I didn’t know her – she didn’t know me – so how could she possibly understand just how ‘real’ I really am? How could she – or the casting agent – possibly gauge just how much ‘real’ the producer and recording engineer were prepared to be bombarded with when I went into the studio and started being ‘real’ at the top of my lungs?
No false modesty here. Besides writing, I pay the bills with voice recording. I was the voice of CTV for three years, the voice of the Life Network for another three, and over the years the voice behind countless hundreds of commercials selling everything from fried chicken to Fords. You have probably heard me tell you that if you know the extension of the person with whom you wish to speak, please enter it now, or press pound to return to the main menu, or nine to hang up. And thank you for calling.
Oh – and have a nice day.
I have a nice voice. Real nice.
But I cannot – not one note – sing. I mouth the words to Happy Birthday to You, rhubarb and mumble my way through hymns and Christmas carols, and never, ever sing in the car unless I’m alone with the windows tightly rolled up, saving any actual singing for the shower (where I do actually sing) grinding and creaking my way through the Top 40 with a sound approximating a cheap, untuned violin played by a toddler with a broken whisky bottle.
I’m really that bad.
I suck. I stink. There may be someone who sings worse than me, but if there is, I surely don’t want to hear them.
Whatever genetic talents were passed on to me by my father (who confided his musical mentorship of ‘ol’ blue eyes’ and ‘ol’ happy feet’ when I was six... and who would lie to a kid?) the actual singing gene was left unspliced, rendering me tune-free and tin eared – and happy that way. I’m fine knowing my limitations.
What I am not fine with is sharing them (recording them! for eternity!) with strangers. There’s knowing your limitations – and then there’s exhibiting them, loudly, with the potential for ‘sharing’ them with potentially millions of innocent citizens.
I could feel the flop sweat starting to trickle, I felt warm – too warm, open a window somebody, please! warm – and was just beginning to consider ways and means of getting out of there with the minimum of humiliation and the maximum of speed (I just couldn’t think how to credibly break my ankle without at least a stair or a step, or a reason to climb on a chair and deliberately fall off) when the producer came in and called me up and walked me back to the recording studio like a French aristo dragged through the streets of Paris to the guillotine.
(Curses – not a slippery area rug or even the teensiest of uneven floorboards from which to launch myself hospital emergency room-ward.)
I was feeling nauseous by the time he set me up at the music stand, adjusted my mike and handed me my headset. (Are you getting a picture of just how bad this was going to be?)
Back in his own safe (safe!) little booth, the producer told me he’d play the musical track for me a couple of times so I could hear where the verses began and when the chorus came in; I ignored it – I had just enough time to shoot a prayer heavenward before the engineer asked me for my levels and launched me musically hellbound.
After all, I didn’t need to listen to any lead track; I’d heard this tune a million times – each and every time I’d watched Singin’ in The Rain.
“Good mornin’, good mornin’,
It’s great to stay up late,
Good mornin’, good mornin’ to you!”
…and so on.
Singin in the Rain. Great movie. Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor and… Gene Kelly.
Gene Kelly!
Was it possible? Could this be a sign of some sort? Gene Kelly? Student of my father? (Odd, as my father was born more than 20 years after Gene, but – geez, have you never heard of child prodigies? Infant prodigies? Embryo prodigies?) And Gene, let’s face it, when compared to his dancing and acting was actually pretty crap as a singer.
And I am crap as a singer! (Granted, a whole different, appalling level of crap – but crap none the less.)
“When the band began to play,
The sun was shinin’ bright.
Now the milkman’s on his way,
It’s too late to say goodnight!
So……..”
I started to feel a little better. The nausea waned ever so slightly, my heartbeat regulated, the little hairs standing straight up on the back of my neck went from attention! to at ease.
I took a deep breath, adjusted my headset, nodded at the producer, waited for his hand signal, then I belted that song into that mike!
I experimented with key changes and tones and volume – I may have executed at tremolo – I sang like some warped, oblivious-to-their-abilities contestant on American Idol. I even, so help me God, stuck out my arms and waved them around a little bit.
I sang and I sang.
Then I sang it again. Three times altogether. And each time, my confidence grew. It was complete crap – but it was my crap. They wanted real – and they got it. And I didn’t care. And I brought it home with a flourish.
I wafted out of the studio and floated down the hallway to the reception area, where three other women were taking off their coats and staring at their scripts, and clearing their throats and fingering their collars like they’d suddenly gotten unbearably tight.
I smiled at the assembled women, slipped into my coat, grabbed my bag and as I was about to bid farewell to the receptionist, it occurred to me that I didn’t know what product or service this musical mess was supposed to be selling.
“So what was all that in aid of?” I asked – though I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got it, I just cared that I finally got it. I had discovered a new skill – one that could take me heaven only knew where. Singing badly – with verve! With passion and excitement and tremolos! Me! Singing!
“Viagra,” the young lady replied, looking up at me with a sly smile.
Oh. Okay. Now I want it. I want it bad. I won’t just be in on the joke – I will be the joke!
Viagra. Priceless. My cocktail party icebreaker requirements are taken care of for the next decade.
So it’s on fellow crappy singers. I’m sitting by the phone, waiting for my agent to call. Hoping and praying and humming “Good mornin’, good mornin’!”
And I’m thinking of taking up dancing…
And why not?
Why should a complete and utter lack of ability, training, talent, pitch, range or rhythm preclude such a career move?
I’m poised I tell ya – poised.
It all began yesterday with an early morning audition for a radio commercial; I went in knowing neither the product nor the pitch. (Not as much of a drawback as you may imagine: they give you a script, they tell you how they want you to read it, they record it, they shout “Next!” Nothing simpler. Just keep moving. And forget validation for your parking… or your performance, frankly.)
But I was surprised yesterday morning as the receptionist at the studio handed me the script to see it printed on the page in what looked like stanzas.
“Poetry, eh?” I thought as I shrugged off my coat and sat down to read the script and await my turn at the mike.
But anyone could see it wasn’t poetry. It was a song. A song I recognized; two verses, a chorus and a ‘bring it on home’ flourish of a finish.
There had to be some sort of mistake.
“There has to be some sort of mistake,” I said to the receptionist, my voice thin with rapidly growing anxiety. “I’m not a singer. Did they tell my agent they wanted a singer? I am not,” I paused for emphasis, “a singer!”
“No, no,” she calmed. “They want real people – people like you.”
I just looked at her. I didn’t know her – she didn’t know me – so how could she possibly understand just how ‘real’ I really am? How could she – or the casting agent – possibly gauge just how much ‘real’ the producer and recording engineer were prepared to be bombarded with when I went into the studio and started being ‘real’ at the top of my lungs?
No false modesty here. Besides writing, I pay the bills with voice recording. I was the voice of CTV for three years, the voice of the Life Network for another three, and over the years the voice behind countless hundreds of commercials selling everything from fried chicken to Fords. You have probably heard me tell you that if you know the extension of the person with whom you wish to speak, please enter it now, or press pound to return to the main menu, or nine to hang up. And thank you for calling.
Oh – and have a nice day.
I have a nice voice. Real nice.
But I cannot – not one note – sing. I mouth the words to Happy Birthday to You, rhubarb and mumble my way through hymns and Christmas carols, and never, ever sing in the car unless I’m alone with the windows tightly rolled up, saving any actual singing for the shower (where I do actually sing) grinding and creaking my way through the Top 40 with a sound approximating a cheap, untuned violin played by a toddler with a broken whisky bottle.
I’m really that bad.
I suck. I stink. There may be someone who sings worse than me, but if there is, I surely don’t want to hear them.
Whatever genetic talents were passed on to me by my father (who confided his musical mentorship of ‘ol’ blue eyes’ and ‘ol’ happy feet’ when I was six... and who would lie to a kid?) the actual singing gene was left unspliced, rendering me tune-free and tin eared – and happy that way. I’m fine knowing my limitations.
What I am not fine with is sharing them (recording them! for eternity!) with strangers. There’s knowing your limitations – and then there’s exhibiting them, loudly, with the potential for ‘sharing’ them with potentially millions of innocent citizens.
I could feel the flop sweat starting to trickle, I felt warm – too warm, open a window somebody, please! warm – and was just beginning to consider ways and means of getting out of there with the minimum of humiliation and the maximum of speed (I just couldn’t think how to credibly break my ankle without at least a stair or a step, or a reason to climb on a chair and deliberately fall off) when the producer came in and called me up and walked me back to the recording studio like a French aristo dragged through the streets of Paris to the guillotine.
(Curses – not a slippery area rug or even the teensiest of uneven floorboards from which to launch myself hospital emergency room-ward.)
I was feeling nauseous by the time he set me up at the music stand, adjusted my mike and handed me my headset. (Are you getting a picture of just how bad this was going to be?)
Back in his own safe (safe!) little booth, the producer told me he’d play the musical track for me a couple of times so I could hear where the verses began and when the chorus came in; I ignored it – I had just enough time to shoot a prayer heavenward before the engineer asked me for my levels and launched me musically hellbound.
After all, I didn’t need to listen to any lead track; I’d heard this tune a million times – each and every time I’d watched Singin’ in The Rain.
“Good mornin’, good mornin’,
It’s great to stay up late,
Good mornin’, good mornin’ to you!”
…and so on.
Singin in the Rain. Great movie. Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor and… Gene Kelly.
Gene Kelly!
Was it possible? Could this be a sign of some sort? Gene Kelly? Student of my father? (Odd, as my father was born more than 20 years after Gene, but – geez, have you never heard of child prodigies? Infant prodigies? Embryo prodigies?) And Gene, let’s face it, when compared to his dancing and acting was actually pretty crap as a singer.
And I am crap as a singer! (Granted, a whole different, appalling level of crap – but crap none the less.)
“When the band began to play,
The sun was shinin’ bright.
Now the milkman’s on his way,
It’s too late to say goodnight!
So……..”
I started to feel a little better. The nausea waned ever so slightly, my heartbeat regulated, the little hairs standing straight up on the back of my neck went from attention! to at ease.
I took a deep breath, adjusted my headset, nodded at the producer, waited for his hand signal, then I belted that song into that mike!
I experimented with key changes and tones and volume – I may have executed at tremolo – I sang like some warped, oblivious-to-their-abilities contestant on American Idol. I even, so help me God, stuck out my arms and waved them around a little bit.
I sang and I sang.
Then I sang it again. Three times altogether. And each time, my confidence grew. It was complete crap – but it was my crap. They wanted real – and they got it. And I didn’t care. And I brought it home with a flourish.
I wafted out of the studio and floated down the hallway to the reception area, where three other women were taking off their coats and staring at their scripts, and clearing their throats and fingering their collars like they’d suddenly gotten unbearably tight.
I smiled at the assembled women, slipped into my coat, grabbed my bag and as I was about to bid farewell to the receptionist, it occurred to me that I didn’t know what product or service this musical mess was supposed to be selling.
“So what was all that in aid of?” I asked – though I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got it, I just cared that I finally got it. I had discovered a new skill – one that could take me heaven only knew where. Singing badly – with verve! With passion and excitement and tremolos! Me! Singing!
“Viagra,” the young lady replied, looking up at me with a sly smile.
Oh. Okay. Now I want it. I want it bad. I won’t just be in on the joke – I will be the joke!
Viagra. Priceless. My cocktail party icebreaker requirements are taken care of for the next decade.
So it’s on fellow crappy singers. I’m sitting by the phone, waiting for my agent to call. Hoping and praying and humming “Good mornin’, good mornin’!”
And I’m thinking of taking up dancing…
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Driven to despair
On the front page of my newspaper today, the photograph of a smiling unarmed Canadian soldier mere minutes before he was attacked by an Afghani man who screamed “Allahu Akbar!” before plunging his axe into the officer’s head.
Tomorrow the front page of my newspaper will no doubt be imprinted with a photograph of the Canadian soldiers who died in the light armoured vehicle accident last week in Afghanistan and whose remains are being shipped home today.
It’s days like these when the revulsion for ‘Mission Accomplished’ reaches near-critical mass, and the impotence many feel at the prospect of being able to affect any change in the seemingly endless madness born almost exactly three years ago feels endless in itself.
The only subject that really captures my interest nowadays (apart from my own issues, actions, problems, obsessions, rejections, repressions, regressions, regrets, worries, compulsions, concerns, memories, fears, fantasies and finances – is it really so surprising I can’t find a moment to bathe the dog?) is the vast, oceanic reserves of anger against the Iraq war that appear to be building up and spilling over all around the world.
So far as I can tell, everybody lives wrong.
Trust me on this: they certainly drive wrong. Sometimes I wonder if this is where the anger is seeping out.
I’ve written before about my (to me) shockingly swift transformation from traditional ten and two, well in advance signaling, driving manual suck-up, and all-round world class rules-of-the-road obeying driver, to raging, red-faced, road-rage-aholic over the past couple of years. It’s become practically instantaneous.
I can be bopping along (singing a song) contemplating a job well done, or one imminently begun, happy as Colossal squid in a world full of the smaller Giant-variety, and in moments be near-apoplectic with fury if some other driver should attempt to cut into my left lane from his ill-conceived stuck-behind-a-parked-car position on the right.
(Don’t try to kid me; you knew there would be parked cars. You knew there would be bottle-necking at the traffic lights. You further knew that there would be some slow-moving, oblivious folks, complacently driving in the slower left hand lane, who would either inadvertently provide you with an entrée to squeeze in front of them, or graciously wave you on. Not today buster. Not here, not now – not me.)
I am one of those people. The ones who speed up when you try to cut in. The ones who watch the changing lights like a race car driver waiting for the flag to drop so should there be any advantage to changing lanes, I’ll have leapt off the start line and passed you before you could say ‘bitch on wheels’. I drive (when provoked) like a teenaged boy, or a bitter man with a small penis.
Or an American President armed with the kind of advisors and intelligence that have placed the world in the grim marathon of death that shows no signs of abating.
(Don’t try to kid us; you knew that the reports of Iraqi possession of WMDs were inflated if not completely wrong. You knew there would be anger if you drew the world into the war. You knew there would be death. You further knew that there would be some slow-moving, oblivious nations who would either inadvertently provide you with an entrée to squeeze them in with you, or graciously wave you on. So you did. Then, now – you.)
Not so long ago while waiting to turn left across a busy thoroughfare onto my own street, after flashing her lights, honking her horn, and revving her engine, the woman stuck behind me finally pulled out from behind, drove up beside me and with a look and in a tone that were chilling in their ferocity, let me have it.
“Why don’t you turn at the lights,” she screamed. “Bitch!”
With a zoom and a squeal she was off and gunning toward her next appointment with antagonism, and I would have followed her – chased her down – to explain in words of very few syllables (most of your best swear-words only ratchet up the syllabic quotient when compounded) exactly where I lived, expressly why I was turning precisely there, and explicitly where she could place her concerns if she didn’t like it.
Until I realized it would be exactly, expressly, precisely and explicitly like screaming at myself. Pointlessly.
The thing is, in virtually all other ways, in all other situations, I am as gentle as a kitten – or at least as passive aggressive.
(I won’t pee in your shoes, or drop small dead animals at your feet – the worst I’ll do is ignore you or treat you to a look of withering disdain – but I won’t even be catty behind your back.)
I am in all ways but the one, the very image of the average North American, taking it on the chin, accepting the government’s every concealment, cover up and outright lie with a “Well, what’re you going to do?” shrug and eye roll. Still.
Even though somewhere between 35,000 – 100,000 people have died since the war began on March 19th, 2003.
Those numbers are comprised of the civilian dead estimated between 28 and 32,000 individuals, (these are the numbers of people reliably reported dead – British medical journal The Lancet estimates the body count as closer to 100,000 Iraqi civilians) and the American dead now standing at 2,297. Add another couple of hundred coalition troop deaths, and you arrive at the population of a small city.
Only a few people would have to move out of Berkeley California, Pueblo Colorado or Charleston South Carolina to approximate the number of deaths the Iraq war has wrought, and not a few folks would have to move in to Sarnia or Sault Saint Marie in Ontario, or even Kamloops or Nanaimo BC in order to achieve the same results.
And the wounded. The wounded.
In numbers representing American wounded alone, the estimates stand at between 15 and 48,000 troops.
A further 8 to 10 percent of combat troops are said to have been treated for psychiatric or behavioral health issues.
The number of Iraqi wounded is impossible to assess. There’s no doubt the number is enormous. As for their psychiatric or behavioral problems, who could guess, when US general Mark Kimmet’s helpful advice to Iraqi citizens upset at seeing innocent civilians killed by collation troops on their own telelvision screens was: “Change the channel.”
Meanwhile, a Canadian soldier with a hideous head wound lies in critical condition in an army hospital in Landstuhl Germany, and, as the result of a road accident far from the treacherous streets of downtown Toronto, the bodies of two Canadian soldiers, victims of the road accident in southern Afghanistan last week are to be flown home for burial today.
Sometimes (all the time) I think my road rage is misplaced.
But sometimes I think it’s the only place I have to put it.
Tomorrow the front page of my newspaper will no doubt be imprinted with a photograph of the Canadian soldiers who died in the light armoured vehicle accident last week in Afghanistan and whose remains are being shipped home today.
It’s days like these when the revulsion for ‘Mission Accomplished’ reaches near-critical mass, and the impotence many feel at the prospect of being able to affect any change in the seemingly endless madness born almost exactly three years ago feels endless in itself.
The only subject that really captures my interest nowadays (apart from my own issues, actions, problems, obsessions, rejections, repressions, regressions, regrets, worries, compulsions, concerns, memories, fears, fantasies and finances – is it really so surprising I can’t find a moment to bathe the dog?) is the vast, oceanic reserves of anger against the Iraq war that appear to be building up and spilling over all around the world.
So far as I can tell, everybody lives wrong.
Trust me on this: they certainly drive wrong. Sometimes I wonder if this is where the anger is seeping out.
I’ve written before about my (to me) shockingly swift transformation from traditional ten and two, well in advance signaling, driving manual suck-up, and all-round world class rules-of-the-road obeying driver, to raging, red-faced, road-rage-aholic over the past couple of years. It’s become practically instantaneous.
I can be bopping along (singing a song) contemplating a job well done, or one imminently begun, happy as Colossal squid in a world full of the smaller Giant-variety, and in moments be near-apoplectic with fury if some other driver should attempt to cut into my left lane from his ill-conceived stuck-behind-a-parked-car position on the right.
(Don’t try to kid me; you knew there would be parked cars. You knew there would be bottle-necking at the traffic lights. You further knew that there would be some slow-moving, oblivious folks, complacently driving in the slower left hand lane, who would either inadvertently provide you with an entrée to squeeze in front of them, or graciously wave you on. Not today buster. Not here, not now – not me.)
I am one of those people. The ones who speed up when you try to cut in. The ones who watch the changing lights like a race car driver waiting for the flag to drop so should there be any advantage to changing lanes, I’ll have leapt off the start line and passed you before you could say ‘bitch on wheels’. I drive (when provoked) like a teenaged boy, or a bitter man with a small penis.
Or an American President armed with the kind of advisors and intelligence that have placed the world in the grim marathon of death that shows no signs of abating.
(Don’t try to kid us; you knew that the reports of Iraqi possession of WMDs were inflated if not completely wrong. You knew there would be anger if you drew the world into the war. You knew there would be death. You further knew that there would be some slow-moving, oblivious nations who would either inadvertently provide you with an entrée to squeeze them in with you, or graciously wave you on. So you did. Then, now – you.)
Not so long ago while waiting to turn left across a busy thoroughfare onto my own street, after flashing her lights, honking her horn, and revving her engine, the woman stuck behind me finally pulled out from behind, drove up beside me and with a look and in a tone that were chilling in their ferocity, let me have it.
“Why don’t you turn at the lights,” she screamed. “Bitch!”
With a zoom and a squeal she was off and gunning toward her next appointment with antagonism, and I would have followed her – chased her down – to explain in words of very few syllables (most of your best swear-words only ratchet up the syllabic quotient when compounded) exactly where I lived, expressly why I was turning precisely there, and explicitly where she could place her concerns if she didn’t like it.
Until I realized it would be exactly, expressly, precisely and explicitly like screaming at myself. Pointlessly.
The thing is, in virtually all other ways, in all other situations, I am as gentle as a kitten – or at least as passive aggressive.
(I won’t pee in your shoes, or drop small dead animals at your feet – the worst I’ll do is ignore you or treat you to a look of withering disdain – but I won’t even be catty behind your back.)
I am in all ways but the one, the very image of the average North American, taking it on the chin, accepting the government’s every concealment, cover up and outright lie with a “Well, what’re you going to do?” shrug and eye roll. Still.
Even though somewhere between 35,000 – 100,000 people have died since the war began on March 19th, 2003.
Those numbers are comprised of the civilian dead estimated between 28 and 32,000 individuals, (these are the numbers of people reliably reported dead – British medical journal The Lancet estimates the body count as closer to 100,000 Iraqi civilians) and the American dead now standing at 2,297. Add another couple of hundred coalition troop deaths, and you arrive at the population of a small city.
Only a few people would have to move out of Berkeley California, Pueblo Colorado or Charleston South Carolina to approximate the number of deaths the Iraq war has wrought, and not a few folks would have to move in to Sarnia or Sault Saint Marie in Ontario, or even Kamloops or Nanaimo BC in order to achieve the same results.
And the wounded. The wounded.
In numbers representing American wounded alone, the estimates stand at between 15 and 48,000 troops.
A further 8 to 10 percent of combat troops are said to have been treated for psychiatric or behavioral health issues.
The number of Iraqi wounded is impossible to assess. There’s no doubt the number is enormous. As for their psychiatric or behavioral problems, who could guess, when US general Mark Kimmet’s helpful advice to Iraqi citizens upset at seeing innocent civilians killed by collation troops on their own telelvision screens was: “Change the channel.”
Meanwhile, a Canadian soldier with a hideous head wound lies in critical condition in an army hospital in Landstuhl Germany, and, as the result of a road accident far from the treacherous streets of downtown Toronto, the bodies of two Canadian soldiers, victims of the road accident in southern Afghanistan last week are to be flown home for burial today.
Sometimes (all the time) I think my road rage is misplaced.
But sometimes I think it’s the only place I have to put it.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
President McCheese
Today’s New York Times features an editorial so ‘duh’ in its subject matter, the only reaction I had upon reading it was “Uh, right. And?”
Coming out against selling junk food to toddlers – hardly blowing the lid off misanthropic advertising – was the theme for the editorial that once again reiterates the message: healthy food, good… unhealthy food, well, bad.
Maybe.
“Many health professionals now fear that junk-food advertising to toddlers and pre-teenagers is contributing to soaring rates of obesity and diabetes among the young.”
Gee, ya think?
And if so, where were you last Wednesday?
Over a couple of weeks when the Vice President shot a man point blank in the face, when Brownie, the erstwhile Director of FEMA appeared to tesify at the senate hearings and took precisely no responsibility for the disaster that was the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina – even blamed his boss and the guy who hired him, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff – and when death by cartoon has reached an all-time high, perhaps it’s not so surprising that the President’s speech on health care delivered at the headquarters of one of nation's leading saturated, hydrogenated, and trans fatty acid-pushers went walkies as far as the media were concerned.
It’s come to this.
Where was the editorial breast beating and finger wagging?
Where was the sarcasm and amused horror emanating from Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich at the NYT?
Where (oh where) was Jon Stewart?
Out to lunch one suspects. How else to explain such a dropped donut.
The day: last Wednesday, February 15th.
The place: Dublin Ohio, headquarters of hamburger chain restaurant Wendy’s.
The agenda: President Bush’s speech unveiling the value for lower-income Americans in choosing ‘Health Savings Accounts’ (HSAs) over traditional health insurance in which employee and employer each contribute monthly co-payments.
The breathtaking irony seems to have escaped Bush, his handlers and even the media; either that, or they’ve simply become so deeply and everlastingly cynical, that the notion of promoting health care alongside one of the root causes of what is universally considered to be the nation’s biggest health challenge (sky-rocketing obesity rates linked to the consumption of unhealthy, processed fast foods) isn’t worth the trouble it takes to grimace and shake one’s head.
That same breathtaking irony is further stretched to near-suffocation when one attempts to tot up the product placement value of setting up the President of the United States as a shill not only for a new corporate health care dodge, but for hamburgers, fries and shakes.
Further, people were so caught up in salivating over the Vice President’s accidental shooting of a friend – a red herring if ever there was one; despite the wow factor of envisioning a gun-toting Cheney so transfixed by blood and murder he couldn’t even pause long enough to miss a human as he fired away at the penned quail, the real issue was when, how, and by whom the facts were disseminated – that other news items quickly fell by the wayside.
Much as I find the veep loathsome, corrupt and, frankly, simply terrifying to look at (I really don’t think life gives you a phiz like that unless you actually earn it) the shooting was clearly an accident; had Cheney owned up to it, apologized for it and reported it to the President and the country, why need anything more be said?
(The fact that the facts were immediately obscured, shrouded, laundered, spun-dry and rendered sanitized for our listening and viewing consumption was the angle that finally hoisted the correct outraged eyebrows some days later. It is in fact the real achilles heel of this administration; obsessing over the way in which information is delivered to conceal what is actually being delivered should be forever remembered as the hallmark of this presidency. That and the fact that they can actually make a wounded man apologize to his attacker; what, is he like, Canadian or something?)
But how on earth does the New York Times expect to rescue even a single babe innocently gumming a ribless McRib into submission when they allow such a patronizing exercise in contempt by the President to slip by?
To an audience full of Wendy’s employees, describing America’s health care system as “The best in the world” and pushing health savings accounts aimed at the poor and underemployed (and designed to remove the onus for making health care contributions from corporate America) the President took the well known, tried, true and trodden tact of setting himself alongside the average Joes – in direct opposition to the big-time, big hat, citified democrat critics who would likely oppose his plan – in encouraging minimum wage workers to sign on.
“It’s kind of basically saying ‘If you’re not making a lot of money you can’t make decisions for yourself,’ Bush told the Wendy’s staffers. “That’s kind of a Washington attitude, isn’t it? ‘We’ll decide for you if you can’t figure it out yourself.’ I think a lot of folks here at Wendy’s would argue that point of view is simply backwards and not true.”
I think the folks he’s talking about are the ones wearing the thousand dollar loafers – not the ones in the paper hats and hairnets.
The President went on to make the analogy that HSAs were really no different from the Wendy’s menu – that in the same way they offered choice: “At Wendy’s you can choose between a quarter-pounder and a salad” the President pointed out, (in one fell swoop both confusing Wendy’s with MacDonalds and making the single reference to healthy eating that was made that day) whereas the HSAs offered Americans the opportunity to purchase their own health care account.
The President chose not to mention that the high-deductible catastrophic coverage would require an individual to spend at least $1050 and a family at least $2,100 on medical expenses before the coverage actually kicks in.
The fact that such an initiative benefits Wendy’s more than its employees is apparently just so much more ketchup on the fries; since 2005, Wendy’s has already reduced its health care spending by inducing some 9000 of its 40,000 employees to sign on for the accounts.
Bush’s position is that the accounts will make people more conscious of the money they’re spending for health care, which will ultimately help drive down the nation’s health care costs through competition.
The trickle-down (ooze down?) theory designed to save the nation’s bacon (double cheeseburger) on the backs of those who can least afford it, once again.
The saddest fact is that in order for the poor to participate in a high-deductible plan like HSAs, they’ll need to carve even more off already stretched budgets, necessitating economies in spending, resulting in cheaper groceries, less fruits, vegetables and fresh – expensive – healthy foods, driving them back into the gaping maws of the cheap and fast junk food joints where accumulations of fat, salt, chemicals and empty calories will contribute to clogged arteries, heart attacks, cancer, diabetes and obesity.
I think the New York Times is wrong. I think advertisers and their agencies are pikers compared to the real danger threatening the wellbeing, health and lives of Americans – you’ll recognize him: he’s the one in the thousand dollar loafers selling hamburgers at Wendy’s.
Coming out against selling junk food to toddlers – hardly blowing the lid off misanthropic advertising – was the theme for the editorial that once again reiterates the message: healthy food, good… unhealthy food, well, bad.
Maybe.
“Many health professionals now fear that junk-food advertising to toddlers and pre-teenagers is contributing to soaring rates of obesity and diabetes among the young.”
Gee, ya think?
And if so, where were you last Wednesday?
Over a couple of weeks when the Vice President shot a man point blank in the face, when Brownie, the erstwhile Director of FEMA appeared to tesify at the senate hearings and took precisely no responsibility for the disaster that was the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina – even blamed his boss and the guy who hired him, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff – and when death by cartoon has reached an all-time high, perhaps it’s not so surprising that the President’s speech on health care delivered at the headquarters of one of nation's leading saturated, hydrogenated, and trans fatty acid-pushers went walkies as far as the media were concerned.
It’s come to this.
Where was the editorial breast beating and finger wagging?
Where was the sarcasm and amused horror emanating from Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich at the NYT?
Where (oh where) was Jon Stewart?
Out to lunch one suspects. How else to explain such a dropped donut.
The day: last Wednesday, February 15th.
The place: Dublin Ohio, headquarters of hamburger chain restaurant Wendy’s.
The agenda: President Bush’s speech unveiling the value for lower-income Americans in choosing ‘Health Savings Accounts’ (HSAs) over traditional health insurance in which employee and employer each contribute monthly co-payments.
The breathtaking irony seems to have escaped Bush, his handlers and even the media; either that, or they’ve simply become so deeply and everlastingly cynical, that the notion of promoting health care alongside one of the root causes of what is universally considered to be the nation’s biggest health challenge (sky-rocketing obesity rates linked to the consumption of unhealthy, processed fast foods) isn’t worth the trouble it takes to grimace and shake one’s head.
That same breathtaking irony is further stretched to near-suffocation when one attempts to tot up the product placement value of setting up the President of the United States as a shill not only for a new corporate health care dodge, but for hamburgers, fries and shakes.
Further, people were so caught up in salivating over the Vice President’s accidental shooting of a friend – a red herring if ever there was one; despite the wow factor of envisioning a gun-toting Cheney so transfixed by blood and murder he couldn’t even pause long enough to miss a human as he fired away at the penned quail, the real issue was when, how, and by whom the facts were disseminated – that other news items quickly fell by the wayside.
Much as I find the veep loathsome, corrupt and, frankly, simply terrifying to look at (I really don’t think life gives you a phiz like that unless you actually earn it) the shooting was clearly an accident; had Cheney owned up to it, apologized for it and reported it to the President and the country, why need anything more be said?
(The fact that the facts were immediately obscured, shrouded, laundered, spun-dry and rendered sanitized for our listening and viewing consumption was the angle that finally hoisted the correct outraged eyebrows some days later. It is in fact the real achilles heel of this administration; obsessing over the way in which information is delivered to conceal what is actually being delivered should be forever remembered as the hallmark of this presidency. That and the fact that they can actually make a wounded man apologize to his attacker; what, is he like, Canadian or something?)
But how on earth does the New York Times expect to rescue even a single babe innocently gumming a ribless McRib into submission when they allow such a patronizing exercise in contempt by the President to slip by?
To an audience full of Wendy’s employees, describing America’s health care system as “The best in the world” and pushing health savings accounts aimed at the poor and underemployed (and designed to remove the onus for making health care contributions from corporate America) the President took the well known, tried, true and trodden tact of setting himself alongside the average Joes – in direct opposition to the big-time, big hat, citified democrat critics who would likely oppose his plan – in encouraging minimum wage workers to sign on.
“It’s kind of basically saying ‘If you’re not making a lot of money you can’t make decisions for yourself,’ Bush told the Wendy’s staffers. “That’s kind of a Washington attitude, isn’t it? ‘We’ll decide for you if you can’t figure it out yourself.’ I think a lot of folks here at Wendy’s would argue that point of view is simply backwards and not true.”
I think the folks he’s talking about are the ones wearing the thousand dollar loafers – not the ones in the paper hats and hairnets.
The President went on to make the analogy that HSAs were really no different from the Wendy’s menu – that in the same way they offered choice: “At Wendy’s you can choose between a quarter-pounder and a salad” the President pointed out, (in one fell swoop both confusing Wendy’s with MacDonalds and making the single reference to healthy eating that was made that day) whereas the HSAs offered Americans the opportunity to purchase their own health care account.
The President chose not to mention that the high-deductible catastrophic coverage would require an individual to spend at least $1050 and a family at least $2,100 on medical expenses before the coverage actually kicks in.
The fact that such an initiative benefits Wendy’s more than its employees is apparently just so much more ketchup on the fries; since 2005, Wendy’s has already reduced its health care spending by inducing some 9000 of its 40,000 employees to sign on for the accounts.
Bush’s position is that the accounts will make people more conscious of the money they’re spending for health care, which will ultimately help drive down the nation’s health care costs through competition.
The trickle-down (ooze down?) theory designed to save the nation’s bacon (double cheeseburger) on the backs of those who can least afford it, once again.
The saddest fact is that in order for the poor to participate in a high-deductible plan like HSAs, they’ll need to carve even more off already stretched budgets, necessitating economies in spending, resulting in cheaper groceries, less fruits, vegetables and fresh – expensive – healthy foods, driving them back into the gaping maws of the cheap and fast junk food joints where accumulations of fat, salt, chemicals and empty calories will contribute to clogged arteries, heart attacks, cancer, diabetes and obesity.
I think the New York Times is wrong. I think advertisers and their agencies are pikers compared to the real danger threatening the wellbeing, health and lives of Americans – you’ll recognize him: he’s the one in the thousand dollar loafers selling hamburgers at Wendy’s.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Pussy footing
Another red letter day for the forces of disinformation (uninformation?) as Toronto radio station CHFI (98.1 on your FM dial) announced they will not be running advertisements for breakthrough playwright Eve Ensler’s latest offering The Good Body.
It seems said advertisements in quite logically promoting the author as the creator or the much lauded The Vagina Monologues, necessarily makes mention of the word ‘vagina’.
Vagina.
Quoth station manager Julie Adam: nevermore.
Turning down some $20,000 in advertising revenue to guard the tender sensibilities of her listening audience, Adam, Program Director and General Manager of CHFI said that though she had heard the event was fabulous, and that she, herself, personally, was a woman who had no trouble saying “that word” (taking enormous care to not actually say ‘that word’) the mandate she claims she is charged with – family friendliness – makes it impossible for her to put anything on her radio station that parents might feel uncomfortable with.
“You use a word like that,” explained Adam, “and the next thing you know they’re asking, ‘Mommy or daddy, what’s that mean?’
“If you want safe,” she continued, “CHFI is your station.”
Really Ms Adam?
Safe?
Safe from the danger of marauding sexual organs? Rampaging penises? Breasts set on taking over the world? Vicious vulgar vaginas?
As scandalous as a Victorian piano leg obscured by neither drape nor pantalette, it would seem that the mere mention of the word ‘vagina’ is enough to arouse unspeakable dread in the heart of a radio station manager circa 2006.
What nameless fears are aroused by the word vagina? Is it the word? Is it the vagina itself?
Is there something wrong with vaginas?
If we’ve learned little else in recent years, we must have at least grasped that children need to learn about their bodies to learn about themselves. Telling a little boy he has a penis or a little girl that she has a vagina is but the very first step in giving them the words they need to know themselves, their bodies and their boundaries.
Implying there’s nothing shameful or disgusting or embarrassing about their bodies by making the words acceptable empowers children to use those words, to tell anyone who might wish to touch them or hurt them or take advantage of their youth or their innocence or their ignorance that they know what they have – and they know it is fine and good and it is theirs.
Telling someone not to touch your wee wee or your pee pee or your hoo hoo carries somewhat less power than telling a molester to take their hands off your vagina.
Educators agree how important it is to teach children as young as toddlers – at whatever age they are able to say the word vagina – the appropriate names of their body parts; parents and children need to have a shared vocabulary, if for no other reason than that children will be able to explain exactly and explicitly whatever happened to them should such a tragedy take place.
If a child is too shy or ashamed or ignorant to even describe what happened to them, that’s not safe.
Using real words shows respect for a child – and for their body. Using the appropriate words distinguishes between sexuality and silliness and shame. Using the appropriate words is, what’s the word… appropriate.
I don’t expect CHFI to teach children about sex or sexuality or what they should know, or how they should be told or when. But neither do I expect them to take a stand that sends a message that has another meaning altogether. A message that essentially says that the word ‘vagina’ is unfit for public discourse.
It’s that constant message – the one that tells little girls that the most intimate parts of their body are something secret, something hidden, something wrong.
It’s not absence of message – as a vagina is not an absence. It’s a presence – as a vagina is a presence. But unlike a vagina, it’s a nasty, dirty presence – a message of shame.
Vagina, vagina, vagina.
Oh say it radio station manager. Or if you can’t say it, at least don’t take part in hiding it and implying there’s something wrong with the word by refusing to allow it to be said publically in an entirely appropriate context.
Go see The Vagina Monologues. Go see The Good Body. Learn something about the vagina. About the body. But quit suggesting you protect your audience by being part of what makes children unsafe.
There's something shameful here, but it's not a vagina.
Let’s make vaginas safe for everybody! Step one: say it.
Vagina.
VAGINA!
It seems said advertisements in quite logically promoting the author as the creator or the much lauded The Vagina Monologues, necessarily makes mention of the word ‘vagina’.
Vagina.
Quoth station manager Julie Adam: nevermore.
Turning down some $20,000 in advertising revenue to guard the tender sensibilities of her listening audience, Adam, Program Director and General Manager of CHFI said that though she had heard the event was fabulous, and that she, herself, personally, was a woman who had no trouble saying “that word” (taking enormous care to not actually say ‘that word’) the mandate she claims she is charged with – family friendliness – makes it impossible for her to put anything on her radio station that parents might feel uncomfortable with.
“You use a word like that,” explained Adam, “and the next thing you know they’re asking, ‘Mommy or daddy, what’s that mean?’
“If you want safe,” she continued, “CHFI is your station.”
Really Ms Adam?
Safe?
Safe from the danger of marauding sexual organs? Rampaging penises? Breasts set on taking over the world? Vicious vulgar vaginas?
As scandalous as a Victorian piano leg obscured by neither drape nor pantalette, it would seem that the mere mention of the word ‘vagina’ is enough to arouse unspeakable dread in the heart of a radio station manager circa 2006.
What nameless fears are aroused by the word vagina? Is it the word? Is it the vagina itself?
Is there something wrong with vaginas?
If we’ve learned little else in recent years, we must have at least grasped that children need to learn about their bodies to learn about themselves. Telling a little boy he has a penis or a little girl that she has a vagina is but the very first step in giving them the words they need to know themselves, their bodies and their boundaries.
Implying there’s nothing shameful or disgusting or embarrassing about their bodies by making the words acceptable empowers children to use those words, to tell anyone who might wish to touch them or hurt them or take advantage of their youth or their innocence or their ignorance that they know what they have – and they know it is fine and good and it is theirs.
Telling someone not to touch your wee wee or your pee pee or your hoo hoo carries somewhat less power than telling a molester to take their hands off your vagina.
Educators agree how important it is to teach children as young as toddlers – at whatever age they are able to say the word vagina – the appropriate names of their body parts; parents and children need to have a shared vocabulary, if for no other reason than that children will be able to explain exactly and explicitly whatever happened to them should such a tragedy take place.
If a child is too shy or ashamed or ignorant to even describe what happened to them, that’s not safe.
Using real words shows respect for a child – and for their body. Using the appropriate words distinguishes between sexuality and silliness and shame. Using the appropriate words is, what’s the word… appropriate.
I don’t expect CHFI to teach children about sex or sexuality or what they should know, or how they should be told or when. But neither do I expect them to take a stand that sends a message that has another meaning altogether. A message that essentially says that the word ‘vagina’ is unfit for public discourse.
It’s that constant message – the one that tells little girls that the most intimate parts of their body are something secret, something hidden, something wrong.
It’s not absence of message – as a vagina is not an absence. It’s a presence – as a vagina is a presence. But unlike a vagina, it’s a nasty, dirty presence – a message of shame.
Vagina, vagina, vagina.
Oh say it radio station manager. Or if you can’t say it, at least don’t take part in hiding it and implying there’s something wrong with the word by refusing to allow it to be said publically in an entirely appropriate context.
Go see The Vagina Monologues. Go see The Good Body. Learn something about the vagina. About the body. But quit suggesting you protect your audience by being part of what makes children unsafe.
There's something shameful here, but it's not a vagina.
Let’s make vaginas safe for everybody! Step one: say it.
Vagina.
VAGINA!
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Girl Without a Pearl Earring
Running completely counter to my normally unerringly accurate political predictions, the Liberals have lost the election.
I can relate; I lost an earring today.
Beautiful. Got the pair in Barbados – a long swirl of delicate spiraling silver ending in a lovely little Mabe pearl – and I lost just one of them.
It drives me crazy because apart from the grrr factor, I still have the one sitting here solo on my desk, becoming ever more precious and valued by the moment, teasing me with its smug, self-satisfied thereness. Somewhere is its mate – in the middle of the road, crushed under some careless boot or oblivious car, lying obscured under some restaurant table, or perhaps glinting delicately (and oh so beautifully and preciously and finally) in a trash bin at the Business Depot where I stopped in this afternoon (happy – I was happy then) to mail a letter and look at the pens and pencils.
(I like looking at brand new pens and pencils. I rarely have any at hand. Can you guess why?)
And it also drives me crazy because in the larger sense, this is what I do; I lose things, I break things, I bump into things, I knock over things (usually glasses – full, natch) I crash into things (five broken baby toes tell the sad, sad story) and I forget things, usually crucial sorts of things. Important directions, appointment dates if made more than a week in advance, people’s names (hideously rude and embarrassing) and ‘where did I put my keys?’. The phrase itself should have a trademark symbol next to it, so ubiquitous and classic it is to my daily perambulations.
(This is why I’m fit; it’s not the five day a week workouts or the relatively healthy diet. No, it’s running around, back and forth, up and down the parking lot steps, into each closet, rifling through coat pockets, looking for those stupid, stupid keys.)
My friend (with whom I traveled to Barbados) crashed headlong into the glass door that separated the lanai from the living room on Monday, shocking me into silence. I neither comforted her, nor fetched ice, nor looked for blood or bruises – I was too busy staring at the offending glass door, wondering what she was doing in my place. Wondering why she had suddenly taken on my job, doing the comical Three Stooges/Marx Brothers pratfalls, banana peel slips and crashes headlong into closed, unforgiving doors that has been my inadvertent shtick since first I tripped over a roller skate and fell headlong down the concrete steps outside our house at the age of five.
(Really, you should see these earrings – correction: earring – never before have I possessed anything so poignantly, perfectly lovely. I realize it now. And unless I get a call from the restaurant or the office supply store, chances are, I never will again.)
This isn’t the first single earring I’ve lost. The first I remember was a diamond stud I lost about 20 years ago when I was living in the South of France; it must have rolled under the bureau, or down the drain in the shower, because I know I had it when I went to bed the night before. But even so, for years after, in countries all over the world, I would fumble through purse linings and coat pockets (winter coats!) thinking: maybe, maybe my fingers will light on it one day and bring it gleaming and twinkling and back into partnership with the single stud I still own and still keep tucked away in the back of a jewelry box. Maybe – maybe in Bizarro world! Surely not in this one.
I lost two single earrings in the backs of cabs on the same visit to New York a few years back. In one of those cabs, I also left my burgundy paisley wool Ralph Lauren scarf that went with everything I ever owned and a few things I still aspire to. I think about that scarf. And I occasionally look at those two lonely, single earrings – the intaglio that made me look at least two levels more sophisticated than I really am, and the small silver burnished silver Me & Ro dangly earring that still makes my stomach churn thinking how perfect two would be.
I was taller wearing those earrings. Prettier and smarter and the sort of person who doesn’t lose everything that isn’t nailed down or too heavy to lift.
I missed an appointment once that can still make me quiver with loss and mortification more than 20 years later. (My mother used to call them: "those moments so shameful, they can keep you warm on cold winter nights.")
I had written some segment ideas on spec for a breakfast television show in London when I first arrived in town and couldn’t get arrested as a disc jockey. Nothing new now, but back in 1984, my makeover segments and fashion and decorating tips (designed to be packaged and sponsored) were still pretty fresh. To my surprise – seriously, I didn’t know anybody… I got the producer’s name off the credit roll at the end – the production secretary called to say the Big Name producer would be happy to meet with me within the next 10 days on a specific day and at a specific time. I was dizzy with excitement and anticipation, imagining the future that lay before me, practically decorating my new career girl corner office in between selecting and rejecting dozens of outfits to wear on the day of The Big Meeting.
The day before The Big Meeting I got very grown up and decided to call to confirm my appointment and was surprised to receive such a frosty reaction from the production secretary who took my call.
“Yes, hello, this is Jane Wilson – I’m just calling to confirm my interview with Mr. X tomorrow at two?”
“I’m sorry Ms Wilson,” said the chilled to below zero voice of Ms Production Secretary. “But that appointment was for today at two. We were wondering where you were.”
“But, no, wait, that’s impossible! My appointment is for Wednesday the 22nd. I have it written down here…”
“Today is Tuesday the 22nd,” replied Ms P.S. “Today was the day.”
“But – oh my God – I’m so sorry! This is horrible!” I was beside myself with embarrassment and remorse; I couldn’t tell the days of the week? “Please – may I please re-schedule the interview? Any time – I’m just so sorry, I can’t think how…”
“I’m afraid Mr. Big Name doesn’t have any time available for the next few weeks,” she said with total lock-down finality. “And we’re not taking any meetings for the next few months. I’m afraid you’ve missed your chance,” she added, her voice suffused (or so I imagined) with contempt and patronizing dismissal.
Then she hung up.
I wrote the producer the most craven, apologetic, spineless begging letter I could compose, and sent it off, expecting nothing and receiving just that.
It was hard to forget or put out of my mind. It was just so clownish and pathetic and stupid and there was no one – no one – I could blame besides myself. The memory was cringe-worthy and to this day I can conjure up those feelings of futility and sheer gobsmacked horror at having blown such a great opportunity so completely and thoroughly.
(There is a footnote to all this though; about a year later while I was living and working in the South of France, a note from the Big Name was forwarded to my mailbox. In it he apologized for being so late in replying – he was only now going through his correspondence he said – as he had been fired from Channel Four a few weeks after our proposed (and disposed) appointment. They were good ideas he said; keep working on it, though sadly, he wouldn’t be the one who would produce them. Nice eh? I still feel sick about it though…)
Since then I’ve lost a pair of unusual pink cotton casual pants I picked up for a few bucks on a weekend trip to Montreal. (I called them my happy pants. They were. Happy. Then. Not so much now.) I’ve misplaced a black Benetton cardigan that was totally ordinary but fit perfectly. Perfectly I tell you! I’ve lost at least a half dozen more single earrings, a crazy hat (vivid purple crushed velvet on one side, poisonous chartreuse printed silk on the other – and it’s reversible!) a couple of love letters I can still more or less quote from memory, a handful of boyfriends and two parents.
It’s amazing I still have so much stuff left.
And despite the occasional painful twinges of frustration I feel at each of the losses and accidents and disasters (I am now thinking of tracking down the lady at the tiny, anonymous little jewelery kiosk in Holetown Barbados to see if she can send me a replacement earring – damn the cost!) I am truly conscious of the importance of being able to let go of things – of not letting material stuff control my emotions or upset my equilibrium.
My mum taught me that.
A few months before she died we were celebrating what would be our last Christmas together. I remember she was wearing the pretty cream coloured blouse with the ruffled collar I had given her that morning and apart from looking tired and much too thin, she was enjoying the dinner and the family and the fireplace and all the beautiful twinkling gleaming family heirloom stuff that came out on only very special occassions, admiring the table we had set while she was napping earlier just the way she would have set it: the large balloon wine glasses, the red bordered hunting print place mats, the best silver and the china she had inherited from her mother. 1900’s Limoges china, simple and beautiful, with just a narrow strip of burnished gold bordering the dinner plates. She treasured that china – we all did – as one of the few really nice things her mother had been able to pass down to her.
I was clearing the table, hurrying to get it done so we could all sit down again together, shoes off – as is my toe-smashing tendency – and as I went to go down the two carpeted steps that led from the dining room to the kitchen, my stockings slipped on the rug and I went down with a bang and a gigantic crash. Seven dinner plates were shattered beyond repair.
I just sat there, the wind knocked out of me thinking how devastated – maybe even angry – my mother would be. So careless! So stupid! So precious.
I was already crying when she reached me. She just knelt down and said:
“Don’t cry – don’t be upset. They’re just things. It doesn’t matter – they’re not people. Come on, get up, let’s see if you’re okay.”
I was. And so was she.
I have what’s left of the china and I haven’t broken another plate, though the few chips they’ve acquired over the years don’t upset me as much as they might. I’m okay. They’re not people.
I hope Mr. Martin is okay too.
I can relate; I lost an earring today.
Beautiful. Got the pair in Barbados – a long swirl of delicate spiraling silver ending in a lovely little Mabe pearl – and I lost just one of them.
It drives me crazy because apart from the grrr factor, I still have the one sitting here solo on my desk, becoming ever more precious and valued by the moment, teasing me with its smug, self-satisfied thereness. Somewhere is its mate – in the middle of the road, crushed under some careless boot or oblivious car, lying obscured under some restaurant table, or perhaps glinting delicately (and oh so beautifully and preciously and finally) in a trash bin at the Business Depot where I stopped in this afternoon (happy – I was happy then) to mail a letter and look at the pens and pencils.
(I like looking at brand new pens and pencils. I rarely have any at hand. Can you guess why?)
And it also drives me crazy because in the larger sense, this is what I do; I lose things, I break things, I bump into things, I knock over things (usually glasses – full, natch) I crash into things (five broken baby toes tell the sad, sad story) and I forget things, usually crucial sorts of things. Important directions, appointment dates if made more than a week in advance, people’s names (hideously rude and embarrassing) and ‘where did I put my keys?’. The phrase itself should have a trademark symbol next to it, so ubiquitous and classic it is to my daily perambulations.
(This is why I’m fit; it’s not the five day a week workouts or the relatively healthy diet. No, it’s running around, back and forth, up and down the parking lot steps, into each closet, rifling through coat pockets, looking for those stupid, stupid keys.)
My friend (with whom I traveled to Barbados) crashed headlong into the glass door that separated the lanai from the living room on Monday, shocking me into silence. I neither comforted her, nor fetched ice, nor looked for blood or bruises – I was too busy staring at the offending glass door, wondering what she was doing in my place. Wondering why she had suddenly taken on my job, doing the comical Three Stooges/Marx Brothers pratfalls, banana peel slips and crashes headlong into closed, unforgiving doors that has been my inadvertent shtick since first I tripped over a roller skate and fell headlong down the concrete steps outside our house at the age of five.
(Really, you should see these earrings – correction: earring – never before have I possessed anything so poignantly, perfectly lovely. I realize it now. And unless I get a call from the restaurant or the office supply store, chances are, I never will again.)
This isn’t the first single earring I’ve lost. The first I remember was a diamond stud I lost about 20 years ago when I was living in the South of France; it must have rolled under the bureau, or down the drain in the shower, because I know I had it when I went to bed the night before. But even so, for years after, in countries all over the world, I would fumble through purse linings and coat pockets (winter coats!) thinking: maybe, maybe my fingers will light on it one day and bring it gleaming and twinkling and back into partnership with the single stud I still own and still keep tucked away in the back of a jewelry box. Maybe – maybe in Bizarro world! Surely not in this one.
I lost two single earrings in the backs of cabs on the same visit to New York a few years back. In one of those cabs, I also left my burgundy paisley wool Ralph Lauren scarf that went with everything I ever owned and a few things I still aspire to. I think about that scarf. And I occasionally look at those two lonely, single earrings – the intaglio that made me look at least two levels more sophisticated than I really am, and the small silver burnished silver Me & Ro dangly earring that still makes my stomach churn thinking how perfect two would be.
I was taller wearing those earrings. Prettier and smarter and the sort of person who doesn’t lose everything that isn’t nailed down or too heavy to lift.
I missed an appointment once that can still make me quiver with loss and mortification more than 20 years later. (My mother used to call them: "those moments so shameful, they can keep you warm on cold winter nights.")
I had written some segment ideas on spec for a breakfast television show in London when I first arrived in town and couldn’t get arrested as a disc jockey. Nothing new now, but back in 1984, my makeover segments and fashion and decorating tips (designed to be packaged and sponsored) were still pretty fresh. To my surprise – seriously, I didn’t know anybody… I got the producer’s name off the credit roll at the end – the production secretary called to say the Big Name producer would be happy to meet with me within the next 10 days on a specific day and at a specific time. I was dizzy with excitement and anticipation, imagining the future that lay before me, practically decorating my new career girl corner office in between selecting and rejecting dozens of outfits to wear on the day of The Big Meeting.
The day before The Big Meeting I got very grown up and decided to call to confirm my appointment and was surprised to receive such a frosty reaction from the production secretary who took my call.
“Yes, hello, this is Jane Wilson – I’m just calling to confirm my interview with Mr. X tomorrow at two?”
“I’m sorry Ms Wilson,” said the chilled to below zero voice of Ms Production Secretary. “But that appointment was for today at two. We were wondering where you were.”
“But, no, wait, that’s impossible! My appointment is for Wednesday the 22nd. I have it written down here…”
“Today is Tuesday the 22nd,” replied Ms P.S. “Today was the day.”
“But – oh my God – I’m so sorry! This is horrible!” I was beside myself with embarrassment and remorse; I couldn’t tell the days of the week? “Please – may I please re-schedule the interview? Any time – I’m just so sorry, I can’t think how…”
“I’m afraid Mr. Big Name doesn’t have any time available for the next few weeks,” she said with total lock-down finality. “And we’re not taking any meetings for the next few months. I’m afraid you’ve missed your chance,” she added, her voice suffused (or so I imagined) with contempt and patronizing dismissal.
Then she hung up.
I wrote the producer the most craven, apologetic, spineless begging letter I could compose, and sent it off, expecting nothing and receiving just that.
It was hard to forget or put out of my mind. It was just so clownish and pathetic and stupid and there was no one – no one – I could blame besides myself. The memory was cringe-worthy and to this day I can conjure up those feelings of futility and sheer gobsmacked horror at having blown such a great opportunity so completely and thoroughly.
(There is a footnote to all this though; about a year later while I was living and working in the South of France, a note from the Big Name was forwarded to my mailbox. In it he apologized for being so late in replying – he was only now going through his correspondence he said – as he had been fired from Channel Four a few weeks after our proposed (and disposed) appointment. They were good ideas he said; keep working on it, though sadly, he wouldn’t be the one who would produce them. Nice eh? I still feel sick about it though…)
Since then I’ve lost a pair of unusual pink cotton casual pants I picked up for a few bucks on a weekend trip to Montreal. (I called them my happy pants. They were. Happy. Then. Not so much now.) I’ve misplaced a black Benetton cardigan that was totally ordinary but fit perfectly. Perfectly I tell you! I’ve lost at least a half dozen more single earrings, a crazy hat (vivid purple crushed velvet on one side, poisonous chartreuse printed silk on the other – and it’s reversible!) a couple of love letters I can still more or less quote from memory, a handful of boyfriends and two parents.
It’s amazing I still have so much stuff left.
And despite the occasional painful twinges of frustration I feel at each of the losses and accidents and disasters (I am now thinking of tracking down the lady at the tiny, anonymous little jewelery kiosk in Holetown Barbados to see if she can send me a replacement earring – damn the cost!) I am truly conscious of the importance of being able to let go of things – of not letting material stuff control my emotions or upset my equilibrium.
My mum taught me that.
A few months before she died we were celebrating what would be our last Christmas together. I remember she was wearing the pretty cream coloured blouse with the ruffled collar I had given her that morning and apart from looking tired and much too thin, she was enjoying the dinner and the family and the fireplace and all the beautiful twinkling gleaming family heirloom stuff that came out on only very special occassions, admiring the table we had set while she was napping earlier just the way she would have set it: the large balloon wine glasses, the red bordered hunting print place mats, the best silver and the china she had inherited from her mother. 1900’s Limoges china, simple and beautiful, with just a narrow strip of burnished gold bordering the dinner plates. She treasured that china – we all did – as one of the few really nice things her mother had been able to pass down to her.
I was clearing the table, hurrying to get it done so we could all sit down again together, shoes off – as is my toe-smashing tendency – and as I went to go down the two carpeted steps that led from the dining room to the kitchen, my stockings slipped on the rug and I went down with a bang and a gigantic crash. Seven dinner plates were shattered beyond repair.
I just sat there, the wind knocked out of me thinking how devastated – maybe even angry – my mother would be. So careless! So stupid! So precious.
I was already crying when she reached me. She just knelt down and said:
“Don’t cry – don’t be upset. They’re just things. It doesn’t matter – they’re not people. Come on, get up, let’s see if you’re okay.”
I was. And so was she.
I have what’s left of the china and I haven’t broken another plate, though the few chips they’ve acquired over the years don’t upset me as much as they might. I’m okay. They’re not people.
I hope Mr. Martin is okay too.
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