July 17, 2008 - Thursday
trinidad & tobago: a jabbering travel advisory
I've seen a lot of incompetence in airports in the past little while. Ironically, the winner of the Golden Blumpkin Award for General Airport Stupidity has to go to the Ottawa International, aptly known as "YOW". Not only were they caught totally by surprise by my Delta DA466 flight coming in from Atlanta at 22.30 in the evening, they only had one person in the whole place that could "operate" the gate (they operated it like someone with palsy working a back-hoe), and they insisted that I had to apply for immigration to get into Canada. Which is odd, because I'm a Canadian citizen.
Again I was faced with the question I faced in the Czech republic many years ago; is it worse to be trapped in a country and not able to get out, or vice versa?
Yeah, I'm going with the latter.
Other Airports?
Negotiating JFK wasn't too bad considering my arrival and departure gates were in the same terminal. However, if you're amused by fat people running JFK is a barrel of laughs. It's roughly the size of Guinea, and about as organized. Which means that as a hub you often have to traverse huge distances to get to your departure gate. If (Christ forgive) you're arriving from an entirely different country than the United States –different countries that lacks US Customs of their own, which is everywhere except Canada– you are forced to go through the long process of incoherent people in uniform yelling at you to do things you're not sure you want to do. Namely, take off your shoes and belt and explain what you're doing in the States.
Interesting question, that last, considering all the people in the massive cue were trying to get the hell out again. On the Visa paper which you must complete in it's entirety under "Place of residence in the US" I wrote the address of the airport. The Customs official literally went cross-eyed reading it over the third time.
"Dis address heah, is the address of dis airport heah."
"Yes, it's where I'm staying the seven hours I'm in the U.S."
"Buh' dis address heah, is the address of dis airport heah."
"What else am I supposed to write there?"
"You funnah wit'me… bah?"
"What?"
"I say: you funnah wit'me bah?"
It is my suspicion that all airport officials in the U.S. must attend the James Brown School of Linguistics before they can qualify.
Oddly enough the least painful experience I had in all the airports I've been through was the one in Trinidad.
For point of reference Trinidad is the functioning half of Trinidad and Tobago. Not to be confused with Turks and Caicos, Curacao and Bonaire, or Gecko and Spleen. Trinidad and Tobago is a "Developing Nation". This means that sky scrapers are popping up like zits on a teenager with rent prices that no normal Trini can afford. It also means that they import far more cars than the infrastructure can handle. A friend pointed to a huge harbour in Trinidad's capital city of Port of Spain; in it were thousands of rows of white Mitsubishis parked and ready to be bought and driven on local roads –roads suffering from a 24 hour traffic jam. My thinking was that if people simply bought the cars and went and sat in them in the harbour they'd get more mileage out of them.
Anyway.
The only screw-ups in the Trinidad airport were myself and my friend Alex. We were both probably discombobulated from travel as he had an eight hour layover in JFK, and I inexplicably flew from Ottawa to Atlanta to New York to Port of Spain; literally travelling more of the US than Keruac ever did. I thought it best to wear a black "US Athletics" T-shirt in order ingratiate myself during my two pointless U.S. layovers. I need to do these things, you see, because I'm prime fodder for the U.S. Customs Banana-Republic-Checkpoint mechanism. Customs officials love to hassle me.
Somewhere along the way Alex and I had switched bags; my bag was on the trolley which he was pushing, and his was being pulled on it's wheels by me. I have no idea how this happened, like I say, we were travel stupid. At the final baggage check before we enter the country the security guard says, looking at my Dutch passport and then at me, "You not from the U.S., you not athletic, go stand ovah deah." pointing to an x-ray machine manned by a little Indian guy with the biggest mullet I've seen since Lethal Weapon II.
I dragged Alex's bag over to the x-ray and watched it go through the machine with trepidation. The guy looked at his screen and said, "You got some strange tubes in the bag. What's it?"
I hesitated, "I'm not sure."
"You don't know what's in your bag?"
"Well, ah…heh-heh…It's not my bag." Knowing that this is a cardinal sin in the airport community. Never taking his eyes off of me, he unzipped the bag and started rummaging around. He produced a poker set. The tube he saw were the chips for the game. He then proceeded to lecture me about appropriate travel etiquette, emphasizing that you do not carry someone else's luggage. All I could do was nod sheepishly until he let me go.
All things being said, had this happened in the U.S., I'd be in a black hood with electrodes attached to my testicles. Getting lectured by a tiny mulleted Indian was a cinch.
My travelling companion –an admitted Chilean, currently in remission– and I, didn't stay long in Trinidad. Within an hour we were catching the puddle jumper to Tobago. I immediately fell in love with the flight attendant on the 45 minute flight. Her dark swarthy complexion, the Trinny accent as she boredly told us the rules for flying, and the way she dully pantomimed blowing into the life jacket if the rip-chords don't work had my pulse racing.
Indeed most Trinny's hate their jobs. This is plain when one deals with service personnel. They resent the fact that you have the nerve to enter their store and start actually shopping for things. They are slow and languid, and they'll stare at you dumbly for a long time after you make a request. I actually walked into a store and was grimaced at by a guy who I'd awoken out of a deep slumber behind his counter.
My guide, and most coherently knowledgeable person, was my friend Trevor who was there to get married. He told me that there is zero percent unemployment in the Tobago. He added, "The jobs are there if people want them."
Me, I couldn't understand what half the people were doing. Every intersection had people just standing there. They watched cars drive by with blank expression on their faces. Sometimes there would be four people occupying all major headings on the compass doing absolutely nothing.
There were people wandering around with sticks. Others were sitting on curbs. People were staring at windows. People were staring out of windows. People were examining their fingernails. People were staring at each other. People were watching chickens from a distance. People were yelling at other people. People were sitting in bars. People were driving around in circles, their cars vibrating from loud music. Eventually, in Trinidad, we discovered one guy who literally was having a nap in the middle of the road. I thought he was dead.
"What are these people doing?" I asked Trevor.
"Nothing. They're Lymin'."
Lymin'
Looking up the word in the Urban Dictionary, here's what you get:
Lymin: Hanging Out, Chilling.
Basically, doing nothing. On the T&T Government Website you can find their motto: "Together we Aspire, Together we Achieve". Aspire to what? Achieve what? Total immobility? Able to outmaneuver a sloth in a combat situation? Here's a thought for a new national motto: "Trinidad & Tobago: Together we Aspirate, Together we Uh…" or more simply, "T & T: We Lymin'"
The only thing that Tobagans (Tobagians? Toboggans? Tomatoes?) do fast is drive.Picture angrily wrenching the tape out of a busted tape deck. The ribbons strewn across the floor? Those are the roads in Tobago –and about as wide. It's hairpin turns on mountainous cliff-sides, it's deep pot holes, it's one traffic light on the entire island, It's switchbacks, bottlenecks, and sphincter-clench stops, it's deep ditches on either side of the road, it's people screaming along at a 120km/hr on the straight-aways, and not much slower on the turns (of which there are more of than a bowl of spaghetti). And all this is done on the wrong side of the road.
It's easy to spot people new to the Tobago roads. Not only do they approach the cliff-side screw-neck turns like a blind man feeling for a precipice with his cane, but they don't honk when they're supposed to –which is whenever you make a turn, and whenever you pass anyone on the street. As a matter of fact, honking the horn while driving is a little like breathing while walking; it's done consistently and helps with forward momentum. That being said, the only time when someone mustn't honk is when someone else does something treacherous that endangers your life. Not that the foreign driver need worry about that. They have plenty of opportunities to end their own lives; usually by accidentally hitting the windshield wiper when going for the signal while turning the wrong direction near the edge of a cliff. These people can be dangerous, not only to themselves, but to others. Thankfully they can easily identified and avoided by the 'R' on their license plates. Presumably signifying "Rental" or, according to the locals, "Retard".
They love their cars. They pretty them up with black lights, ridiculous hydrofoils, and tinted windows the same way certain jack-asses do here. Many cars bear wistful and incoherent slogans splashed directly across the windshield. Things like: HEAD OF STATE, CHRIST FINGERED ME, THE LORD GUIDES US which is probably true considering how they drive, THE KING OF THING, DEPARTMENT OF CHILL, and my absolute favourite: TOTAL NICENESS.
They know the exact width of their cars down to the last layer of paint enabling them to thread the needle and defy basic rules of physics to squeeze though unlikely spaces with nary a scratch. Their heightened spatial sense shaves of the last millimeter when you pass them on a road one-lane-and-a-half wide beside a shear cliff wall clocking 95km/hr. They'll stop suddenly and park in the middle of major roads (by "major" I mean, "De chickens be wanderin' heah."). As a matter of fact, you can park pretty much wherever you want. Not that you could have a driving violation in Tobago seeing as there is no discernable police presence.
Which is probably why drinking and driving is so prevalent there.
When Trevor picked Alex and I up at the airport in Tobago he had an open bottle of Carib (the local beer) sitting in the drink-tray of his SUV. Being witlessly occidental after being so long in the oppressive confines of Canada I had forgotten that many countries are more relaxed about this taboo. From then on –despite the fact that I had never driven on the wrong side of the road before, nor piloted a car on such loop-de-loop street configurations– I always, always, had a beer in one hand while driving. As a matter of fact, I would have two or three for good measure before I even got in the car.
There are stories of people falling from great heights while drunk and barely getting a scratch because their bodies were so loose from being trashed. For the islanders something similar is at play; either being loose allowed one to easily circumnavigate the crazy cliff-edge hairpin turns, or if you did get into an accident you'd squirt through the windshield to drape over a tree like silly-string. If people asked you if you were okay you'd say, "I jes be lymin' in de twee mon."
There are a number of ways of getting wasted before you get behind the wheel of your car; my drink was beer.
Carib and Stag are the two most prevalent brews you can get on the Islands. They are fine beers with few additives so you can pound back many and not wake up feeling like you've been passed though a cow's digestive tract. Carib is the lighter beer of the two, and tastes better. Originally it was the beer to drink as it represented a certain refinement (which is a bit of stretch in a place where people fall asleep in the middle of roads) and couth. Stag, on the other hand, was drank by the lower order. A beer for apes and hooligans, much like Labbat 50 here, Branik in the Czech Republic, and American beer in America.
However, recently, Stag launched a marketing campaign with the positioning statement "Stag: A Man's Beer". So, Carib was relegated to a "woman's drink", and Stag, a man's.
Which says something about the power of advertising… Or the soft-mindedness of the Trinnis. I'm not sure which.
But Creeping Jesus the food was good. And not just the absolutely fresh tropical coconuts, mangoes, and papaya.
Although I grew up in a household where West-Indian cooking is the norm, there is nothing like eating the food at it's place of conception –like drinking beer in the Czech Republic, or having laser eye-surgery in Switzerland. The local food is fantastic starting and ending with Roti. The amazing thing is that all Roti is is curried chicken wrapped in a kind of pita bread. Other options for wrapping are curried pork, curried lamb, curried shrimp, and for the vegetarians; curried curry.
Although the Trinis –either due to laziness, or drunkenness– don't bother deboning the chicken before wrapping it up, it's a mouth-watering ensemble that's spicy, filling, and messy as hell. Because much of your time is spent unwrapping the thing to dig out the bones amidst the stew-like curry you end up covered in the stuff. Also, the bread has the holding power of one-ply toilet paper so it inevitably explodes. A nod to the locals for having the foresight to provide washing-up places in the Roti Houses.
Another popular food is so-called "shark and bake". It's essentially deep-fried shark jammed into deep-fried bread. Because shark is fairly tasteless a raft of condiments is provided to make it taste like something. There are so many toppings to choose from that, like snow-flakes, no two shark and bakes taste alike. Shark and bake is usually accompanied by very loud horrible music and the shaking of much booty by the beach.
I'm not sure when the "bake" part figures into it, except, perhaps, when you eat the stuff in the middle of a clear day
There is sharp racial divide on the Islands between the Blacks and the West Indians. Essentially the West Indians were imported from India as indentured labour to work on the sugar plantations. By way of encouragement the British guaranteed land to the Indians should they decide to make the commute to the Caribbean. The blacks in Africa got no such incentives. They were simply clubbed, chained, and sent to work as slaves.
With the abolishment of slavery the Indians ended up with land, the Blacks ended up with their loincloths.
The resentment ran deep.
To this day the chasm between the two is apparent. Trinidad is actually a pretty dangerous place with gangs and shootings and places you don't go after dark. The Blacks resent the Indians, and the Indians think the Blacks are fucking up the country. The two generally keep to their own and only mix tentatively.
Oddly enough this can be exemplified by the club Zen in the heart of Port of Spain; the capital and cranium of Trinidad and Tobago.
A friend working in the oil industry in Trinidad – by way of showing me that there were many beautiful girls on the Island– took me to Zen two nights in a row; Friday and Saturday.
Now, no matter where you go in the world dance clubs are pretty much the same; the ambience is designed to create maximum confusion, disorientation, and outright atavistic fear. The lighting in Zen was out of the "bridge scene" in Apocalypse Now with flashing staccato bulbs, and roaming strobes. Like many clubs Zen is multi-leveled, with the steps and sudden drops cleverly hidden by an overall black paint-job. This, in addition to the epilepsy inducing lighting effects, facilitates you falling flat on your face, or at least jamming you knee-cap into your hip-joint, which in turn facilitates you having to buy another drink to replace the one you just dumped on a beautiful woman. Of course, like most clubs, getting to the actual bar is like trying to skin a live wolverine with your teeth.
John explained to me that because the majority of the Indians live in the South of the Island (Port of Spain is in the North-East). He informed me that Friday night was a "Blackout" at Zen. Work finishes on Friday, and for most Indians, it's a bit of a long trek to the Club, preferring to do the commute on the Saturday thus leaving the place for the more local Blacks on the Friday. The racial divide is glaring if you compare the two nights.
On Friday the music is reggae on crack. The dance floor vibrates with the hop-skip-jump beat of tunes so insulting it would make Bob Marley violent. Thankfully, what the music lacks in quality it more than makes up in volume, causing you to walk funny days after you left the place. Wobbling tight black flesh abounds everywhere as the women try to outdo each other with outfits that would stop circulation in a toddler. The mode of dance is to shiver your ass like you're having a fit while keeping the rest of your body totally rigid. The whole thing looks the like the end of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special played at 120rpm.
The cartoonish music and dancing creates an arcade-like effect which is further enforced by the fact that women will take up stations throughout the club where they'll dance and wildly shake their booty. Men will find suitable booty with which they'll emulate the kind of doggy-style you can expect from small dogs on crystal meth. They'll carry on like this for a while and then move on to the next suitable booty –eventually making their way back to the exit, and then leaving. It looked like hard and draining work for both parties.
Nobody looked like they were having a good time.
Perhaps it's my West Indian lineage, or the fact that I was a different kind of drunk this time around (leaning towards whiskey rather than the rum of the night before), or perhaps it was just better; Saturday was a big improvement. The music was much more from Planet Earth in terms of what you'd expect in a club; deep house, progressive trance, and less of the DJ repeatedly asking if everyone is having a good time. On Friday one got the impression that the man was trying to reassure himself that fun was being had, rather than his audience. Although there was not a whole lot of rhythm amongst the patrons (illustrating another racial difference) the dancing was more relaxed and less of a "Look! Look at my ass freak-out!" kind of shuddering. It was more tame, more social, but still fairly cliqueish in terms of people not drifting away from their own cohorts. The outfits were still tiny.
And my eyes were saturated with woman of a particularly sexy kind of beauty: dark, sultry, and stacked like a teddy-bear with an elastic band around it's midriff. The shapes and forms of these women were almost exaggerated caricatures of what I was used to, and it was brilliant. Black, Indian, and everything in between, were hot.
One tall tanned Indian sauntered past me eliciting an, "Oh my God…" that my companions overheard, even with the loud music. After much cajoling they convinced me to go and talk to her. What ensued was a comedy of translation; she spoke English, I spoke English, but neither of us understood a word the other was saying. We both admitted linguistic defeat simultaneously, turned around, and went back to our friends. It was like being in the Czech Republic all over again, which is odd, because Czech is an entirely different language.
Which brings me neatly to this: I, and a few friends, had a profound experience with a huge turtle. Although with every telling of this tale the turtle grew to the size of a cube van, the one we saw was merely the size of a VW Beetle. She was a leatherback who had dragged herself out of the ocean at about midnight to lay her eggs in the sand as she does around the end of May every year.
Apparently these prehistoric beasts are very timid, so no flash photography, no yelling, no sudden movements, only lights with a red bulb, and, much to my chagrin, no riding the turtle. This being said, the local "experts" were giving me mixed messages on the thing. I watched one of these massive beasts emerge ponderously from the surf, walk directly into a beach chair, turn around, and head back to the water over the course of half an hour. When I asked what that was all about I was told they were blind when they came out of the water. I suppose the profundity of the scene precluded me asking what was the point in all the stillness and red lighting then? And if the situation was so fragile why did the "experts" have no problem tapping her shell, shining light into her face, measuring her length, width, and girth, and finally, lifting her tail and staring at the pile of golf-ball size eggs while jabbering excitedly?
Anyway. It was profound being near something so huge that was not in a zoo.
I didn't see much other wildlife except for many hummingbirds (whose feeder I accidently used as an ash tray), many lizards, and many stray dogs. For a while I was convinced it was one stray dog that was very fast, but I was assured otherwise.
Many bats, too.
I did, however, hear a lot of wildlife, usually at about 4.30 in the morning when the jungle kicked off in a frenzy of sounds directly outside my window. I am convinced to this day that the noises I heard were the locals throwing a rave in the jungle every morning to create a more "authentic" experience for the visiting whiteys. When you're woken up after three hours sleep by that kind of cacophony you listen closely to the sounds and try to figure it's source. Not that I'd be able to make the association if I could actually identify the thing in order to, say, whack the bastard with a cricket bat. Anyway, I'm convinced they weren't actual animals. It sounded more like midday at the market in Abu Dhabi.
Yes. And I finally got to see where my mom grew up in the South of the Trinidad. She hated me going there, telling me there were huge spiders everywhere and thus tapping into my primordial fear. I did see one big fucker, but you know what? It was sleek and beautiful.
Just like Trinidad and Tobago.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
December 13, 2007 - Thursday
December 13, 2007 - Thursday
captain weather, and the fool in school
Well, It's that time of year again:
Time to wonder what the sweet fuck the early settlers of Canada were thinking. Were they on crack? I mean, we have a central heating and fireplaces, they had beaver hats and breezy log-houses.
Romantics would say they made love to stay warm. I would say that by the time they got through all the smelly layers of fur coats, scratchy hides, and wooly long-johns, spring would have already rolled around and it would be time for a shower. As far as the smart ones who thought they'd get a head start by trying to shag in early autumn –have you ever tried to screw in the bitter cold? It's like trying to fit a shrieking ferret into a calzone.
"Oh, the early settlers of Canada were a hardy bunch." No. They were a stupid bunch. They were the pawns of the warring British and French who were jostling for position in the new world. They heard "free land" and freaked-out trying to get on the boats that headed across the Atlantic. They were shuttled down the St. Lawrence where they were arbitrarily dropped off with their luggage and told to "settle where ye may". If it was summer they only had to deal with hungry grizzlies, mosquitoes the size of Cessnas, and very angry tribes of Indians who couldn't resist shooting arrows at them because they were slow-moving targets.
Then winter came along:
(Insert North London accent)
"Wot?"
"Wot?"
"It's fackin' freezin'!"
"I know mate, it's fackin' cold!"
"They didn't tell us it was goin' t'be this fackin' cold."
"Fackin' Hudson Bay Company twats…"
"Fack me. Where did we park the fackin' boat?"
"I don't know mate, I can't see shit..."
"Well, we have to get the fack out of here, which way is south?"
"Don't know mate, my eyeballs have frozen shut."
"Fack…Yeah? My toes just fell off!"
"Yer toes? Grab me one mate, I'm fackin' starved."
"Yer not eatin' my fackin' toes ye fackin spastic! Eat yer own fackin' toes!"
"'Ow the hell am I supposed to eat my fackin' toes if I can't feel them and I'm fackin' blind? Just give us a toe mate."
"Well…"
"Well, wot?"
"Fancy a quick shag first?"
Okay. I'll stop. I spent enough time last year griping about the cold so I'm just going to grin and bear it like a good little Canadian. Of course, last year it only started to get this cold in Mid-January when it was proper cold-getting time. This year it kicked off in November. Literally, in one day, it went from chilly autumn to three feet of snow and the kind of weather that Russians like to send their political prisoners to.
So I'll talk about other stuff. Like school stuff.
The first semester of my academic year has ended. I have learned many things:
It's possible to drink a pint of beer outside if you transfer it to an extra-large paper coke cup.
Algonquin College is a labyrinth that I wouldn't tackle without a map, compass and a fairly good knowledge of the stars.
The 174 bus only manifests itself once a day through the careful use of the dark arts.
As a matter of fact, trying to divine when any bus will show up anywhere requires some kind of knowledge that is beyond me. Trust me, I've tried everything from the internet to reading pig entrails.
College dorms look like sanitariums run by Desk-Nazis. Not that I live in one, but I've wandered through one in a drunken state and was met with Kubrick-like lines of repeating doors down very long, narrow, hallways. A tricky thing when say, your hat, umbrella, and scarf are all in separate rooms and you'd like to leave.
Beat-boxing is as un-cool as it was 15 years ago. Beat-boxing, by the way, is attempting to make drum-like sounds with your mouth by spraying spit on anybody standing within a meter of you. If you were watching someone beat-box with the sound turned off the impulse would be to pepper-spray them like a rabid dog.
The human brain has the consistency of crème brulée (actually it's not really a school thing. A neurosurgeon friend told me this last Saturday).
Some people, nearly half my age, can actually be pretty funny.
Some people, nearly half my age, watch too much television.
Some people, nearly half my age, are truly decent folk.
Some people, nearly half my age, need to sort it out.
Some people, nearly half my age, are quite bright.
Some people, nearly half my age, have crème brulée wobbling around inside their skulls.
Along these lines –and I knew this already– age is just a number. Take one particular soul who had a night of drinking and then continued it on for two weeks after... and dropped out. I am half that guys age. It's all relative and comes down to experience.
The phrase "…coming back to you in no particular order…" actually means stuff is coming back to you in a very particular order. Namely, alphabetical order.
"A" is not "Ay" it's "Ah", and It's not "kil-O-meter", it's "KILL-o-meter".
Singing Aqualung on air unhinges people.
People in radio do not have stupid hair.
People in marketing do.
The number 384 is a magical number. More so than 42. And like 42, nobody seems to remember what the question was.
The mic should be on when you speak.
The mic should be off when you swear.
My disdain for pop culture is narrowly outweighed by the overriding mandate that I need to understand it a little more. Trying to understand it is twisting my melon, man. Liking it is going to require a major mental re-adjustment. Like a lobotomy.
As far as writing news for the radio goes: I'm doing it wrong…The reasons will remain unclear.
The "On Air" light being on outside of a closed door is your cue to walk in and start talking very loudly.
I know less about breathing than I thought I did.
Some guys throw like girls, and vice versa.
Some people actually like the music they hear on the radio.
Along those lines, the music people like that's popular is unbendingly generic and steadfast: a lot more rock, a lot less roll. Same hip, same hop.
Some people actually care what Ottawa Mayor O'Brien is like in person.
It doesn't matter how many notebooks I have and what I have written on their covers, the notebook in my bag will never correspond to the class that I'm in. As such, studying is less studying and more of an 80's action movie.
With Adobe Audition I can have you saying anything I want.
A "Code Blue" is a tense time for medical personnel.
All the retarded people generally show up in the campus pub at about 11.30. Thankfully they keep to themselves.
The campus pub is owned and operated by twats.
Thus, it's a venue filled with retards and run by twats.
It could be the Canadian Government.
Asking yourself "What would Conan do?" does not always help in exam-type situations.
The term "flipping their shit" should not bring to mind a dude with a spatula over a toilet-bowl.In order to operate in the College I need to have in my head approximately 30 numbers, from computer login to Student I.D. For a numerophobic, such as myself, this is no easy thing. I often get a bad case of willies just opening my locker.
Timing is everything. Lateness; you should be shot and pissed on (I knew this already, but the point has been forced home).
A large man can be quite comfortable in a small space if he has all his stuff.
People shamelessly wear a baseball cap that has roughly the same shape as a cooking pot.
People shamelessly wear clothing with other people's names on them.Some people just need to learn how to operate a goddamned belt (shit, I am getting old).In many cases, intelligence can be measured in direct inverse proportion to the amount of time someone operates their mouth (mull over that one for a while).
Oh, I've learned a lot of other things; generally practical, technical, and theoretical things that I'm not going to bore you with. Needless to say a glaring light has been shed upon the radio industry. It's rather like an open cadaver: shocking and gross at first, and then interesting and alluring as you see how all the bits and pieces work.
Ideally the goal with school is to get the highest marks possible. In that sense I'm not doing too badly. This is a new thing for me. When I think about the last time I was in a scholastic environment I need to think in terms of a decade. A decade throughout which I spent most of my time whipping my crème brulée into tapioca in a place with cobblestones and a very weird atmosphere. I still miss that place, and all the people in it. That hasn't changed.
What has changed is that I live a lifestyle that is healthy, calm, and in word: "boring". I rarely get as twisted as I used to, and am not very good at it any more –out of practice. This can be illustrated by drunken argument I had outside of bar with a total stranger about the relative stupidity of our hats… Hats, for fuck's sake… I have unwillingly snapped back to a Canadian style of life with all the trappings: grinning about ridiculous weather, watching things move around on a large television set, stuffing my face like Caligula, and exercising. Which brings me to a strange point:
When does "exercising" become "working out"? I'm sore as hell right now. Did I just exercise, or did I just work out?
Well, whatever.
I suppose when you picture me, you should picture me sitting in a classroom hovering over a notebook. Any notebook. I won't be able to make heads or tales of those notes when I go over them later (if I can find them). Or I'm slouched in a semi-reclined posture listening intently. I focus on what the professor is saying and try to ignore the jack-asses whispering behind me. I'm getting old because I consider the whispering people to be jack-asses; there was a time when I cared what they had to say. I engage when I'm piqued. I avoid hypothetical questions. Just the facts.
What you see around me hasn't changed since many of you were wondering halls of academia many years ago. The walls are still hospital colours: pale blue, white, light grey. The bathrooms still stink and the toilets don't flush properly. The janitors still look annoyed and the dean still wonders how someone managed to get a dead elk into his office.
You still get the guys in the mullets wearing biker jackets with the word "ANARCHY" written in studs across the back. You still get the dorks with their pants hitched up too high who play D&D and are really into Star Trek. You still get the gloomy slouchers dressed entirely in black, with black lipstick, and black trenchcoats, even in the hard burn of summer. They don't call them "goth" anymore though. No, apparently they're called "emo" because they feel really deeply about hating everything and are considering killing themselves. You still get the concept of "Valley Girl", kept alive by people that talk and think like them, only with more of an ironic slant. They still have nothing to say. The hippy/bohemian types still exist in full force, smelling of Indian incense and marijuana smoke. I fear they might hug me because when I wear certain clothing, under a certain kind of light, I look like a tree.
And then you get me: tall, bald, incongruous, and strange, in a strange land.
captain weather, and the fool in school
Well, It's that time of year again:
Time to wonder what the sweet fuck the early settlers of Canada were thinking. Were they on crack? I mean, we have a central heating and fireplaces, they had beaver hats and breezy log-houses.
Romantics would say they made love to stay warm. I would say that by the time they got through all the smelly layers of fur coats, scratchy hides, and wooly long-johns, spring would have already rolled around and it would be time for a shower. As far as the smart ones who thought they'd get a head start by trying to shag in early autumn –have you ever tried to screw in the bitter cold? It's like trying to fit a shrieking ferret into a calzone.
"Oh, the early settlers of Canada were a hardy bunch." No. They were a stupid bunch. They were the pawns of the warring British and French who were jostling for position in the new world. They heard "free land" and freaked-out trying to get on the boats that headed across the Atlantic. They were shuttled down the St. Lawrence where they were arbitrarily dropped off with their luggage and told to "settle where ye may". If it was summer they only had to deal with hungry grizzlies, mosquitoes the size of Cessnas, and very angry tribes of Indians who couldn't resist shooting arrows at them because they were slow-moving targets.
Then winter came along:
(Insert North London accent)
"Wot?"
"Wot?"
"It's fackin' freezin'!"
"I know mate, it's fackin' cold!"
"They didn't tell us it was goin' t'be this fackin' cold."
"Fackin' Hudson Bay Company twats…"
"Fack me. Where did we park the fackin' boat?"
"I don't know mate, I can't see shit..."
"Well, we have to get the fack out of here, which way is south?"
"Don't know mate, my eyeballs have frozen shut."
"Fack…Yeah? My toes just fell off!"
"Yer toes? Grab me one mate, I'm fackin' starved."
"Yer not eatin' my fackin' toes ye fackin spastic! Eat yer own fackin' toes!"
"'Ow the hell am I supposed to eat my fackin' toes if I can't feel them and I'm fackin' blind? Just give us a toe mate."
"Well…"
"Well, wot?"
"Fancy a quick shag first?"
Okay. I'll stop. I spent enough time last year griping about the cold so I'm just going to grin and bear it like a good little Canadian. Of course, last year it only started to get this cold in Mid-January when it was proper cold-getting time. This year it kicked off in November. Literally, in one day, it went from chilly autumn to three feet of snow and the kind of weather that Russians like to send their political prisoners to.
So I'll talk about other stuff. Like school stuff.
The first semester of my academic year has ended. I have learned many things:
It's possible to drink a pint of beer outside if you transfer it to an extra-large paper coke cup.
Algonquin College is a labyrinth that I wouldn't tackle without a map, compass and a fairly good knowledge of the stars.
The 174 bus only manifests itself once a day through the careful use of the dark arts.
As a matter of fact, trying to divine when any bus will show up anywhere requires some kind of knowledge that is beyond me. Trust me, I've tried everything from the internet to reading pig entrails.
College dorms look like sanitariums run by Desk-Nazis. Not that I live in one, but I've wandered through one in a drunken state and was met with Kubrick-like lines of repeating doors down very long, narrow, hallways. A tricky thing when say, your hat, umbrella, and scarf are all in separate rooms and you'd like to leave.
Beat-boxing is as un-cool as it was 15 years ago. Beat-boxing, by the way, is attempting to make drum-like sounds with your mouth by spraying spit on anybody standing within a meter of you. If you were watching someone beat-box with the sound turned off the impulse would be to pepper-spray them like a rabid dog.
The human brain has the consistency of crème brulée (actually it's not really a school thing. A neurosurgeon friend told me this last Saturday).
Some people, nearly half my age, can actually be pretty funny.
Some people, nearly half my age, watch too much television.
Some people, nearly half my age, are truly decent folk.
Some people, nearly half my age, need to sort it out.
Some people, nearly half my age, are quite bright.
Some people, nearly half my age, have crème brulée wobbling around inside their skulls.
Along these lines –and I knew this already– age is just a number. Take one particular soul who had a night of drinking and then continued it on for two weeks after... and dropped out. I am half that guys age. It's all relative and comes down to experience.
The phrase "…coming back to you in no particular order…" actually means stuff is coming back to you in a very particular order. Namely, alphabetical order.
"A" is not "Ay" it's "Ah", and It's not "kil-O-meter", it's "KILL-o-meter".
Singing Aqualung on air unhinges people.
People in radio do not have stupid hair.
People in marketing do.
The number 384 is a magical number. More so than 42. And like 42, nobody seems to remember what the question was.
The mic should be on when you speak.
The mic should be off when you swear.
My disdain for pop culture is narrowly outweighed by the overriding mandate that I need to understand it a little more. Trying to understand it is twisting my melon, man. Liking it is going to require a major mental re-adjustment. Like a lobotomy.
As far as writing news for the radio goes: I'm doing it wrong…The reasons will remain unclear.
The "On Air" light being on outside of a closed door is your cue to walk in and start talking very loudly.
I know less about breathing than I thought I did.
Some guys throw like girls, and vice versa.
Some people actually like the music they hear on the radio.
Along those lines, the music people like that's popular is unbendingly generic and steadfast: a lot more rock, a lot less roll. Same hip, same hop.
Some people actually care what Ottawa Mayor O'Brien is like in person.
It doesn't matter how many notebooks I have and what I have written on their covers, the notebook in my bag will never correspond to the class that I'm in. As such, studying is less studying and more of an 80's action movie.
With Adobe Audition I can have you saying anything I want.
A "Code Blue" is a tense time for medical personnel.
All the retarded people generally show up in the campus pub at about 11.30. Thankfully they keep to themselves.
The campus pub is owned and operated by twats.
Thus, it's a venue filled with retards and run by twats.
It could be the Canadian Government.
Asking yourself "What would Conan do?" does not always help in exam-type situations.
The term "flipping their shit" should not bring to mind a dude with a spatula over a toilet-bowl.In order to operate in the College I need to have in my head approximately 30 numbers, from computer login to Student I.D. For a numerophobic, such as myself, this is no easy thing. I often get a bad case of willies just opening my locker.
Timing is everything. Lateness; you should be shot and pissed on (I knew this already, but the point has been forced home).
A large man can be quite comfortable in a small space if he has all his stuff.
People shamelessly wear a baseball cap that has roughly the same shape as a cooking pot.
People shamelessly wear clothing with other people's names on them.Some people just need to learn how to operate a goddamned belt (shit, I am getting old).In many cases, intelligence can be measured in direct inverse proportion to the amount of time someone operates their mouth (mull over that one for a while).
Oh, I've learned a lot of other things; generally practical, technical, and theoretical things that I'm not going to bore you with. Needless to say a glaring light has been shed upon the radio industry. It's rather like an open cadaver: shocking and gross at first, and then interesting and alluring as you see how all the bits and pieces work.
Ideally the goal with school is to get the highest marks possible. In that sense I'm not doing too badly. This is a new thing for me. When I think about the last time I was in a scholastic environment I need to think in terms of a decade. A decade throughout which I spent most of my time whipping my crème brulée into tapioca in a place with cobblestones and a very weird atmosphere. I still miss that place, and all the people in it. That hasn't changed.
What has changed is that I live a lifestyle that is healthy, calm, and in word: "boring". I rarely get as twisted as I used to, and am not very good at it any more –out of practice. This can be illustrated by drunken argument I had outside of bar with a total stranger about the relative stupidity of our hats… Hats, for fuck's sake… I have unwillingly snapped back to a Canadian style of life with all the trappings: grinning about ridiculous weather, watching things move around on a large television set, stuffing my face like Caligula, and exercising. Which brings me to a strange point:
When does "exercising" become "working out"? I'm sore as hell right now. Did I just exercise, or did I just work out?
Well, whatever.
I suppose when you picture me, you should picture me sitting in a classroom hovering over a notebook. Any notebook. I won't be able to make heads or tales of those notes when I go over them later (if I can find them). Or I'm slouched in a semi-reclined posture listening intently. I focus on what the professor is saying and try to ignore the jack-asses whispering behind me. I'm getting old because I consider the whispering people to be jack-asses; there was a time when I cared what they had to say. I engage when I'm piqued. I avoid hypothetical questions. Just the facts.
What you see around me hasn't changed since many of you were wondering halls of academia many years ago. The walls are still hospital colours: pale blue, white, light grey. The bathrooms still stink and the toilets don't flush properly. The janitors still look annoyed and the dean still wonders how someone managed to get a dead elk into his office.
You still get the guys in the mullets wearing biker jackets with the word "ANARCHY" written in studs across the back. You still get the dorks with their pants hitched up too high who play D&D and are really into Star Trek. You still get the gloomy slouchers dressed entirely in black, with black lipstick, and black trenchcoats, even in the hard burn of summer. They don't call them "goth" anymore though. No, apparently they're called "emo" because they feel really deeply about hating everything and are considering killing themselves. You still get the concept of "Valley Girl", kept alive by people that talk and think like them, only with more of an ironic slant. They still have nothing to say. The hippy/bohemian types still exist in full force, smelling of Indian incense and marijuana smoke. I fear they might hug me because when I wear certain clothing, under a certain kind of light, I look like a tree.
And then you get me: tall, bald, incongruous, and strange, in a strange land.
August 23, 2007 - Thursday
August 23, 2007 - Thursday
review: andrew loyd webber’s phantom of the opera
Last night I went and saw the Phantom of the Opera here in the Nation's Crapital. It is my third viewing of it. The first was when I was about 15 with my father in Toronto, then about two years later with my girlfriend at the time and two other teens. I was a big fan of the musical; awed by the faux disco theme music, throbbing violins over a rock beat, the juicy organ, the cool story, and the neat stage effects. I had a small case of Phantom-mania back then; buying the album and cherishing one of those pricey glossy magazines with full colour pictures you get at Kiss concerts and Baseball games.
I never, however, got around to stalking girls in my high school with back corner lurkings, and notes signed 'O.G.' That was reserved for my dear friend, who, although was not a musician like myself, made a hell of a better beleaguered Phantom of the Opera than I did. He also made a pretty good Jim Morrison for a while too.
Anyway, as these things go, everything shiny and good is behind you. Happiness trails like a shadow at dusk. The rocky innocence of the past is tarred over with the jaded machines of the present. And blah, blah, blah –because I spent most of the three hour musical with my eyebrows screwed together trying to understand why I thought the thing was so amazing the two previous times I saw it.
Maybe it was the acoustics in the place. The orchestra was not loud enough; often being drowned out by the singing and clattering about on stage. Maybe it was the stage direction; large groups of actors seemingly milling around in confusion and drifting here and there on what was actually a pretty small theatre. Perhaps it was the actors themselves who were chosen for their particular physical mutation and lacked the chemistry to pull off love, friendship, and fear. Perhaps it was the myriad of set changes and the two-act format designed for people that, because of modern television, can't bear to watch the same thing for longer than 20 seconds. Maybe it was the music itself, essentially circling around three major melodic themes:
'The Phantom is Scary'
DUUUUUH! . . duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH!
'The Phantom Wants to Shag Christine'
Ding donggg, ding donggg, ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-donggg
'Christine Wants to Shag the Phantom but He Looks Like He Got Hit in the Face with Vanilla Pudding'
Do de do de do-dooo. Do de do deee
Or maybe, just maybe, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a pretentious twat.
Is there a similar rule about blowing the plot in musicals as there is for movies? Will you hate me for giving away the ending to the Phantom of the Opera as you would the ending to Fight Club? I'm about to. Besides, nobody reads these things anyway.
The Phantom of the Opera has two acts, helpfully entitled 'Act 1' and 'Act 2'.
ACT 1
(In which we meet the characters and the plot develops.)
The stage is set with many dark lengths of cloth hanging at weird angles. Thankfully, not too much singing going on here, just the occasional phrase or so. The actors are engaging in the slowest auction in history; trying to sell off left-over crap from the now-defunct Opera Populaire. They auction off item 665 (a music-box monkey) to an old Count in a wheelchair. The next item, 'Lot (gasp!) 666', is a restored chandelier in a shroud, purportedly related to the 'mysterious tale of The Phantom of the Opera'. With a bang the chandelier suddenly flashes, temporarily blinding and deafening the audience. Dimly we are aware that it's being hoisted to the ceiling while…
Overture:
DUUUUUH. . . duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Ding donggg, ding donggg, ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-donggg. . . Do de do de do-do. Do de do deee. . .
Scene 2 (many years in the past):
Here we meet Carlotta. She is singing in a loud warbling voice and looks like a Gaudi building wearing a circus tent. We clearly don't like her as she is engaging in more postulating and prissing about than the rest of the cast. She is obviously not the love interest either, as there is a silly fat man doting on her who is an Important Baritone rehearsing Hannibal, along with approximately eight or nine ballerinas with excellent legs. . . And one extremely annoying topless ballet dude who prances around in a figure-eight formation and keeps cracking his whip against the stage thus drowning out the dialogue.
This is also where we meet the two new owners of the Opera Populaire. Think of Dupont et Dupond, the two bumbling detectives from the Tin-Tin comics. Failing that, think of Bush and Cheney, in terms of their excellent administrative prowess. These guys are also the comic relief.
Three things are going on at the same time here. Firstly we are learning to like Carlotta less and less. Secondly the former owner of the Opera is trying to explain that the 'Opera Ghost' demands 20,000 francs payment a year (which Dupont et Dupond think is extortion, which, in effect, it is) and thirdly, we meet Christine Daaé who is supposed to be a Swedish chorus girl, but in fact looks like Sarah Jessica Parker if she were Jewish. We also learn that, aside from having excellent legs, Christine can sing Mezzo Soprano.
When asked, how is it possible she can sing? She replies that she's been taking lessons. When asked, from who? She replies, "I don't know."
Huh?
Anyway, after the cast sings the odd phrase here and there a large piece of set falls out of the sky nearly braining Carlotta who then stalks off the stage with her silly fat man. Now we meet Christine's friend whose name is –after meeting Carlotta Giudicelli, Monsieur Richard Firmin (Dupont), Monsieur Gilles André (Dupond), Ubaldo Piangi (silly fat man), Joseph Buquet (stagehand), and Monsieur Lefèvre (previous owner)– 'Meg'.
Meg's job throughout the performance is to be cute (with excellent legs) and further the plot. In this instance she furthers the plot by convincing Dupont and Dupond to let Christine sing the lead in Hannibal. . .
Which she does at the actual performance with great success, despite the distractions of a huge plastic elephant being wheeled around a stage space that's already cramped with eight or nine ballerina's with excellent legs, one prancing shirtless ballet dude with very white teeth, a bunch of other miscellaneous set, and some guy cutting in with lines of his own while she's trying to sing.
This is how we meet Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, who probably just narrowly avoided being called 'Jeff' by Webber. As it turns out Raoul is dashing, has wonderful hair, and is generally a nice guy. Not only this, but he knew Christine as a young girl when her name was 'Lotte' (Huh?) and still finds her hot.
This is indicated by the lines:
Can it be?Can it be Christine?Bravo!What a change!You're reallynot a bitthe gawkish girlthat once you were...
Apparently personality does not go a long way with this guy.
After the show we see Christine in her dressing-room in front of a very large incongruous mirror. People walk in and out congratulating her and keep leaving her door open. This struck me as redundant because her room is missing one entire wall. Meg, unsatisfied with Christine's "I don't know who my music teacher is", asks Christine how she got to be so good. Christine then launches into a hairy-fairy song about how when she was called 'Lotte' her dad promised her an Angel of Music. A Honda Civic might have been a bit more realistic, but hey, it's the opera.
Meg sings the operatic equivelant to 'Yeah, whatever.' and leaves.
Christine, now alone, aside from an audience of about 2,000 people, sings:
Father once spoke of an angel . . . I used to dream he'd appear . . . Now as I sing, I can sense him . . . And I know he's here . . . Here in this room he calls me softly . . . somewhere inside . . . hiding . . . Somehow I know he's always with me . . . he - the unseen genius . . .
This is how we learn that the Phantom is less of an 'Angel of Music' and more of a 'Pervert of Playgrounds'.
Lights dim and someone in the orchestra pit starts playing a single note on a bass guitar.
And there, there! In the mirror –the Phantom of the Opera! The mirror opens, smoke billows out. . . Actually wait. . . This is a problem I had throughout the whole production: there was not enough smoke. I know there was supposed to be more smoke in many key scenes, but either the smoke guy had the day off, or he was skimping on the dry ice. So a few whiffs of smoke trail out and the Phantom takes Christine's hand. The mirror closes behind them just as Raoul walks into the room, again using the door instead of just walking in through the missing wall. Now we get. . .
DUUUUUH. . . duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! DUUUUUH. . . duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH! Duh duh duh duh DUUUUUH!
. . . Except with a disco beat on the drums and some electric guitar. Frankly, the drum kit was not loud enough; too much Simon and Garfunkle and not enough Bee-Gees for the effect Webber was going for.
Through the use of clever stage design we see that The Phantom and Christine are descending into the bowels of the Opera House. Smoke (but not enough) and candles are used to indicate an underground lake. The Phantom, while poling through the lake with Christine in what appears to be large, half-sunken sombrero, sings about himself. Eventually they arrive at his gloomy abode where there are many large nine-prong candle holders. Jews would probably recognize these as the menorah used on Hannukah (which raises all sorts of questions about the denomination of the Phantom, and may explains the Jewish appearance of Christine, but not her name). They sing to each other until the Phantom uncovers a mirror in which there is a mannequin decked out to look like a bride. This scares the beejesus out of Christine who passes out in the sombrero.
Abruptly Christine is awoken by the Phantom who is very loudly and very badly playing an organ. Clearly annoyed and grumpy by this rude awakening she sings a bit and then rips off the Phantom's mask. The Phantom covers his face and starts screaming at her; calling her things like a 'prying pandora', a 'little demon', a 'lying delilah', and a 'viper'. Both of them, now exhausted from all the quarrelling (you can just tell this relationship is off to a bad start), settle down a bit. The Phantom tells Christine he hopes she can love him despite having a face that looks like it's covered in vanilla pudding. She looks pretty unsure, even from twelve rows back. He tells her to leave.
Meanwhile up in the Opera House Dupont, Dupond, Carlotta, and Raoul are puzzling over some notes they've received, presumably from the Phantom. This is when we learn that –even though the Phantom is a sociopath, and aside from being a lousy poet– he's got a pretty good sense of humour.
The notes read:
"Dear Andre,
what a charming gala!Christine enjoyed a great success!We were hardly bereftwhen Carlotta left -otherwisethe chorus was entrancing,but the dancing was alamentable mess!"
Another, focused more on the extortion side of things:
"Dear Firmin,just a brief reminder:my salary has not been paid.Send it care of the ghost,by return of postP.T.O.:No-one likes a debtor,so it's better if myorders are obeyed!"
And finally he abandons any modicum of rhyme and meter and writes:
"I shall watch the performance from my normal seat in Box Five, which will be kept empty for me. Should these commands be ignored, a disaster beyond your imagination will occur."
They decide to do the exact opposite of the Phantom's intructions and cast Carlotta as the Countess and Christine as the mute page-boy in Il Muto, they don't pay the Phantom his twenty grand protection fee, and they put Raoul in Box Five.
This causes the Phantom to heckle the performers like the two old guys in the gallery seats of the The Muppet Show. He tells Carlotta she sings like a toad, which she does. He says her singing is so bad it's messing with the chandelier, which it does. He laughs loudly at innappropriate times, doesn't turn off his mobile phone, takes pictures with the flash on, and constantly clears his throat of a phlegm ball the size of a toaster throughout it's duration. Actually, that last was the guy sitting next to me.
Everyone freaks out. Raoul and Christine freak to the roof of the Opera House where they declare undying love and make plans to hang out after the show. The Phantom overhears and –in what has to be the winner of the Guiness Book of World Records category of Worst Audience Behaviour– brings the chandelier crashing down. Again the audience is temprorarily blind and deafened by the effect so that we are bumping into each other during intermission and can't find the bathroom.
A thing about the chandelier crashing down: This is actually a climactic point in the musical. One that I look forward to every time I see the show; the chandelier flashes and then drops like a rock towards the actual audience, swooping above our heads at the last minute before landing on the stage with a crash.
To put it in the words of my companion that evening, "The chandelier fell too slowly." And it did. It kind of flickered a bit and then lazily lowered towards the orchestra pit where it did an abrupt gravity defying change of direction and landed casually on the stage. Then there was a flash.
Not very impressive.
ACT 2
(In which arin starts drinking beer and is grateful he doesn't have to work today)
It's a year later and everyone including the ballerinas with excellent legs are partying at the annual New Years Eve Masquerade Ball. Christine and Raoul are engaged, and they have repaired the chandelier (Chandelier Repair People, not Christine and Raoul). Everyone is generally having a good time until the Phantom crashes the party.
Everyone is bummed out when he starts talking business at a social event. He's been busily writing an opera called Don Juan Triumphant (irony intended) and wants them to perform it. This causes chaos at the party and everyone starts singing completely different songs at the same time which drowns out the orchestra whose maestro is desperately trying to keep everyone in line by waving a little white stick (note to the conductor: bring a taser next time). It's at this point that a matronly lady with a big stick who had been somewhere on the stage throughout the whole performance and whose purpose I couldn't devine explains that the Phantom is an escaped fairground freak with a brilliant mind, who was presumed dead.
Everyone sings, "Ah?"
This chaos continues to the next day when the Phantom shuts everybody up by leaving a few notes lying around, again illustrating his power as a comedic writer with bad timing:
"Dear Andre,Re my orchestrations:We need another first bassoon.Get a player with tone -and that third trombonehas to go!The man could not be deafer,so please preferably onewho plays in tune!"
And:
"Dear Firmin,vis a vis my opera:some chorus-members must be sacked.If you could, find out whichhas a sense of pitch -wisely, though,I've managed to assign arather minor role to thosewho cannot act!"
Carlotta –bringing to mind the wistful thinking of the type of girl one meets in bars around here– refuses to perform on the grounds that the Phantom might capture her. That's when Raoul gets the brilliant idea of using the performance to trap and shoot the Phantom.
Christine, meanwhile, has been pining away about the 'Angel of Music' her dad promised her. She visits the grave of her father to try to sort herself out. There, the phantom creepily disguised as her father's ghost, starts offering her the proverbial 'stranger's candy'. There ensues a kind of Fatal Attraction mindfuck in which everybody keeps calling everybody else 'Angel':
PHANTOM Wandering child So lost, so helpless Yearning for my guidance
CHRISTINE Angel or father Friend or phantom Who is it there staring?
PHANTOM Have you forgotten your angel
CHRISTINE Angel, oh speak What endless longings Echo in this whisper
PHANTOM Too long you've wandered in winter Far from my fathering gaze
CHRISTINE Wildly my mind beats against you
PHANTOM You resist PHANTOM/CHRISTINE Yet your/the soul obeys....
PHANTOM Angel of Music! You denied me Turning from true beauty Angel of Music! Do not shun me Come to your strange Angel...
CHRISTINE Angel of Music! I denied you Turning from true beauty Angel of Music! My protector.... Come to me, strange Angel...
PHANTOM I am your Angel of Music... Come to me, Angel of Music
Christine is starting to get suckered in again when Raoul studs onto the scene and shakes her out of her reverie. The Phantom, pissed at this interruption (seriously Phantom, next time: chloroform), declares war on them both while unleashing four or five roman candle fireballs from his walking staff in a generally Stage Left direction. Raoul and Christine flee. Even more enraged the Phantom declares war on both of them.Later, during the actual performance of Don Juan, the Phantom switches places with the silly fat man and takes over the lead role while wearing a really big hoody. It dawns on Christine that while the Phantom is really ugly he is actually quite buff –as opposed to the silly fat man who is just. . . well. . . fat. The incongruity, despite the clever hoody disguise, does not escape Christine who wrenches off the hood exposing the Phantom in his mask. She then wrenches off the mask too, which shocks the audience because we learn that it's not just a mask, it's a mask and wig. The phantom is no longer the menacing cloaked figure looming around throughout the musical. He is, in fact, a Mr. Potato Head covered in vanilla pudding. His embarrassment is evident as he grabs Christine and flees back to the caverns beneath the Opera House.
Raoul, in a righteous fit of originality, declares war on the Phantom (Can you do that? Can you declare war on somebody that has already declared war on you? Aren't you already at war?). With the help of the matronly lady with the big stick he finds the underground lake that doesn't have enough smoke on it and jumps though a trap door in the stage.
In his lair, the Phantom forces Christine to put on a wedding dress while he watches. Christine puts it on with much soulful singing and trepidation. He says, you don't love me because I'm ugly. She says, I don't love you because you're an asshole. Once again Raoul shows up, interrupting what was about to be a very interesting exchange of thoughts. Distracted by his fiancée, who is in a wedding dress, he isn't aware of the Phantom who sneaks up behind him and drops a noose around his neck. Despite the tightening loop of rope around his throat Raoul sings the operatic equivalent to 'Oh shit.'
The Phantom then makes his ultimatum: Marry me or Le Viscomte de Manliness will spend the rest of his short life with the kind of long necks attributed to certain rare African tribes. He repeats his demands several times and is saved from becoming redundant by Christine grabbing his Mr. Potato Head and planting a deep operatic kiss on his lips. She repeats this again until the Phantom is utterly flamoozled because he's never been tenderly touched by another person, let alone tongue-battered by a hot Jewish bird.
He's so befuddled and frazzled that he proceeds to make the largest leap of logic since 'Jesus died for our sins.' and frees Raoul and Christine, telling them to get the hell out of there and to stop screwing around with his mind. He then takes a seat on his big chair and pulls the shroud he's often seen wearing over his head, but not before saying to no one in particular (except the 2000 viewing public), "Christine, I love you."
It's then that Meg shows up with her excellent legs and overall cuteness and cautiously approaches the covered Phantom in a chair. She yanks off the shroud and. . . He's gone! But what's this? He left behind his mask, without the wig. She holds the mask up to the spotlight.
The audience leaves to the underground parking garage where we sit in our idling cars for half an hour breathing in noxious carbon monoxide fumes and start to marvel gigglingly about how good the show was. Except the chandelier didn't fall fast enough.
Hope I haven't ruined it for you.
THE END
July 25, 2007 - Wednesday
July 25, 2007 - Wednesday
everything i know i learned from hollywood: part I
In my never ending effort to illuminate the finer points of North American culture for my European friends I would like to offer up a few thoughts about the Hollywood Blockbuster movie.
Hollywood Blockbusters have been ravaging the European lands for hundreds of years. They are worse than the Black Plague in that respect. They seemingly come out of nowhere preceded by a fierce and colourful marketing campaign designed to beat you into senselessness about it's imminent arrival ("ON JUNE THIRTEENTH BE PREPARED TO SHIT YOURSELF "). Aside from the plastering of ancient walls with colourful posters of booty and explosions, or half-lit serious actor faces, they attack Europeans on the radio, television, and before the films themselves. These snippets of an impending Hollywood Blockbuster are called 'trailers' and usually involve a rumbling dramatic male voice saying things like:
"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE BALSAMIC VINEGAR TRAPPED ON A PLANET OF ANGRY WARRIOR SHITZUS… AND YOU HAVE NO WAY HOME? BILLY IS ABOUT TO FIND OUT."
"MEET ALBERT. ALBERT'S LEFT HAND IS A SKILLET. MEET JENNIFER. JENNIFER'S FACE IS A CHICKEN CORDON BLEU. ALBERT AND JENNIFER ARE ABOUT TO MEET FOR THE FIRST TIME."
"…JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME IS ERIKSON MEGAWOOD –HE IS ANGRY… AND HE WILL KICK YOU IN THE FACE!"
Europeans have a very dim view of Hollywood Blockbusters because they feel that it insults their intelligence and turns their brains into split pea soup. They feel that inherently crap writing, bad acting, and unrealistic scenarios are often thinly disguised with cheap theatrics, loud noises and colourful special effects. They feel jaded having to filter through the twaddle to find anything half-way decent. They are annoyed with constantly being confronted with sequels in which the plot is vaguely re-arranged for the next movie in the series.
They feel that it is difficult to actually see a Hollywood Blockbuster Movie as you have to sit through about twenty minutes of production house logos ("TriStar Pictures in association with 20th Century Fox, present a film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Touchstone Pictures, brought to you by New Line Cinema") flying towards you at a great velocity accompanied by loud noises that sound like car doors being slammed, or cellos being beaten with a human skull. When you have actually reached the point where the movie begins you are then forced into a state of nauseous vertigo. Hollywood achieves this by giving the special effects department enough crystal meth to fuel a donkey-run from Paris to Dubai. The special effects department then sets to work creating an intro which makes you feel as if you're traveling rapidly somewhere: you are skimming over some countryside or a cityscape dangerously low to the ground, or you are zipping through a tunnel made up of stylized computer graphic spider webs which then morphs into a tube of hot molten lava which then morphs into zipping through a glass of pink lemonade whereupon you end up in someone's mouth, which is dark, and cues the actual plot to kick in. A very common trick of making you ill during the intro is to zoom in on something: you're in space approaching earth, which becomes a landmass, which becomes a city, which becomes one apartment, which becomes one dude in that apartment, which becomes the dude's eyeball, which then becomes his iris, which then becomes his brain, which then becomes his neurons, which then… well, you get the picture.
Anyway.
Luckily for my daunted European friends I have absolutely no life and spend most of my time watching films; from Hollywood Blockbusters to, as I like to call them, "Decent Flicks". Through careful research of the scientific variety, and long lonely nights of staring bug-eyed at my dad's television which is slightly larger than a sedan, I have accumulated extensive insight into the world of the Hollywood Blockbuster and have found them to be a dynamic suppositories of wisdom, integrity, and fundamental education.
Here are some things I've learned from the Hollywood Blockbuster:
From Action Movies:
People…
There are Good People and Bad People.
Bad People can be divided into two categories: Underlings, and the Very Bad Person.
The Underlings usually outnumber the Good People seven to one. They never have a proper shave and are into rape. Often they have accents (usually British) and are very insulting. They sweat copiously. They tend to hang in groups of two or three and, although wily and overly-confident, are easily dispatched in ascending order of hierarchy.
The Very Bad Person is always the last to die. Despite being the brains of any nefarious operation they often don't get the hint that it's time to leave. Even though all their Underlings are being systematically killed in ascending order. Maybe it's because they themselves know that they are quite tricky to kill; often needing to die in an extremely elaborate –yet somehow Dr. Seuss poetry– manner that involves much pain, screaming, and righteous rage at being killed. After slaying a Very Bad Person it is often helpful nudge them a few time with your boot in order to verify their death. If you have dropped a building on a bad person, thrown them off a cliff, drove over them with a car, and blew them up, be sure to find the body so that you can shoot them in the face. Then nudge them with your boot. Never ever bring your face close to them to check for vital signs. This always revives them.
Good people can also be divided into two categories.
Helpful But Easily Killed People, and the Very Good Person.
Helpful But Easily Killed People are often helpful but die quickly. Usually they are fairly likable and simple folk. They can come in any shape, financial background, creed, or colour –but generally are not quite as good-looking as the Very Good Person, unless they will fuck (or are fucking) the Very Good Person. Sometimes they can start off as an Underling and laterally shift to a Helpful But Easily Killed Person via the moral berating of a Very Good Person. This shift often lowers their sex drive –although they still like to do it. They are often quickly confused but always have a single useful skill; such as being adept at reading blueprints. Sometimes their particular skill is explaining the plot to the Very Good Person.
The Very Good Person, in many ways, shares the traits of the Very Bad Person: they are never very ugly, they have clever things to say about many situations, and they are difficult to kill. Generally they are not as cool as the Very Bad Person (in my opinion) but are very athletic with Olympic-level skills in the Long Jump, the Hundred Meter Dash, and Boxing. Although they are equipped to expertly use any vehicle including an F16, mini-submersible, hovercraft, llama, and dragon, they are particularly good with cars, often able to drive them at great speeds while hanging on to the hood. This serves greatly in their favor when attempting to commandeer a car from an Underling, as Underlings tend to fall out of cars quite easily.
Very Good People also bounce. They can fall great distances, sustain several gunshot wounds, and have buildings collapse on them but are able to recover from their injuries fairly quickly –often forgetting about them entirely. This is partially because Very Good People know that a good cauterization will solve any medical condition; from being stabbed in the neck, to a burst appendix.
The Very Good People also do not scream like a girl, piss themselves, or emit staccato farts while walking up stairs.
Explosions…
Explosions do not kill or even maim. They do not deafen, shock, or cause enough shrapnel to turn you into a cheese grater. At the very most they can launch a normal human several hundred fun meters. They generally occur moments after someone has thrown themselves out of a house (or building, or car, or cupboard, etc.) and often aid people by tweaking their flight farther out of range of the billowing flames.
People themselves can, however, explode, but this sometimes does not kill them. Especially if they are Very Bad People.
Bombs are always disarmed at the final millisecond before detonation.
Toasters, mobile phones, lamp posts, trees, and gloves can explode with the same intensity as a large metal container filled with pressurized gasoline.
Shooting large metal containers of pressurized gasoline will always cause them to explode. Usually they are located near Bad People.
By the same token, a fierce gun battle amidst explosive items (such as a nuclear power plant) will not cause anything to explode. Until, of course, the main Good People have just left.
Guns…
Guns are mostly harmless.
They rarely have recoil and the safety is never on. Furthermore, no one significant can be killed by a single gunshot. Often to put someone down for good, especially if they are a Bad Person, requires several gunshots. Usually to the chest. This is because if you blow someone's face off it is difficult to glean their look of utter shock at being shot in the first place.
Very Good people are never shot in the face. Very Good people are usually shot in the shoulder within inches of their heart. Sometimes they are shot in the leg, arm, and –but very rarely– the belly. All such wounds are easily ignored within seconds –except for the belly wound. The belly shot will cause major discomfort but still allow the woundee (sp?) to run for cauterization many miles away.
People wearing kevlar vests are never shot in the head.
Ammunition is cheap and magical. Many guns are able to fire hundreds of bullets without needing reloading. If they need to be reloaded this is done quickly and efficiently. Reloading occurs as often as necessary because, although bullets may be limited, clips containing them are not.
Bullets hit the dirt in a series of minor explosions behind someone that is running, especially if they are running in a straight line to an obvious place of cover. The bullets will never out-race the running person to their sanctuary, even though, through basic laws of geometry, it is easier to turn a gun muzzle a short distance than to run a great one.
A hail of bullets is not necessarily a bad thing if you have some cover; like a rock, some deep water, or a piece of foam.
The ricochet and subsequent injury by flying bullets is very rare unless it has been established that an environment has this effect on bullets. If the environment has this effect a bullet can ricochet up to five times before coming to a rest. Usually in someone's thigh.
It is possible to disarm a person with a gun pointed at you three inches from your face.
If they are farther away it is possible to disarm them with a kick.
A person can be rendered unconscious via a single blow to the head with the butt of a gun.
Guns are very light and can fit anywhere on your body without any discomfort. Often this place is on the waist or in a jacket pocket without noticeably weighing them down. It can also be in your sock, shirt cuff, butt crack, or hair.
Good People have better aim than Bad People.
Other things that poke holes in people…
Swords are deadly, keep away from them. Although Very Good People and Very Bad People are generally spared the embarrassment of becoming an amputee as a result of sword-play a single thrust will kill them more surely than several shots in the chest. The same can be said about spears. Though, be wary Underlings and Helpful But Easily Killed People; you are quite prone to losing limbs, eyeballs and such.
Arrows, although generally not deadly, can be of great annoyance, causing you to have to wrench them out of your body with a great roar of rage.
A warning to Very Bad People: You tend to impale yourselves on things that poke holes in people as part of your elaborate death. As a general rule you should stay away from anything sharp.
Being chased by things…
Often people are chased by things. Sometimes these things are Very Good People, Underlings or Helpful But Easily Killed People, sometimes they are very angry mammals, sometimes they are electronic; like robots or washing machines, or sometimes they are simply gifted children who want your autograph. Whatever the case may be, the best way to escape (and this is amazing to me) is to be faster than them. The most convenient form of escape tends to be the automobile. Automobiles are easily had anywhere that is populated. They can be started by jiggling some wires beneath the steering wheel, or –as I've mentioned before– throwing an Underling or a Helpful But Easily Killed Person out of a moving one. Remember, if you don't like the car that you're in you can always throw yourself out any speed. The same goes for ski-doos, horses, and aircrafts.
If you decide to escape in a car just remember to squeal your tires whenever you accelerate or stop. Horses should rear on their hind legs by the same token.
Escape: Windows…
Escape is always possible by throwing oneself through a plate glass window. As it turns out, the higher the window is from ground level, the less thick the glass is. This is useful to know for causing the death of an Underlings on your way up to elaborately kill the Very Bad Person. Simply bouncing off glass, as you would the Surprise Sliding-Door at the shopping mall, rarely occurs.
Escape: Just jump…
It doesn't matter whether you are on the top of Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur or the edge of Angel Falls in Venezuela; if you are a Very Good Person surrounded by Underlings, or the Very Bad Person themselves, just jump. It's that easy. There will always be something to break your fall, like some bushes or a toddler.
Escape: Stealth…
It's possible to be stealthlike even when a very dramatic musical score is blaring right in your ears. Although it might be difficult to escape in utter darkness because you bump into things, be thankful that utter darkness does not exist. There is always a little light coming from somewhere, even if it's your wristwatch. Generally the people that bump into things in semi-darkness are Helpful But Easily Killed People and Underlings, so it's okay. These people exist to die in order that you live.
Remember: If you are wearing black you cannot be seen.
Okay, time to sneak out of here.
To Be Continued.
July 25, 2007 - Wednesday
July 25, 2007 - Wednesday
everything i know i learned from hollywood: part II
If there is one thing Hollywood Blockbusters do it is uniting the perceptions of the common man. They show us what is true and consistent in the world throughout all walks of life, all economic statuses, all languages, and all races. Except for black people.
And if there is one thing that is universally understood planet-wide it is that love is hilarious. Love, passion, jealousy, anguish, adulation, obsession, and all things associated with romance, lost or achieved, is made up of a series of whimsical occurrences and misunderstandings which, in the end, will be for the greater good of the couple involved.
But before you embark on your amusing and sometimes comic-tragic romantic escapade there are a few things you should know about love:
You need to be incredibly good-looking to truly be in love. If you are not incredibly good-looking this can pose serious problems, because people don't love people that are not incredibly good-looking. People that are less than incredibly good-looking tend to lose people, or, at the very most, end up with the less than incredibly good-looking friend of an incredibly good-looking person.
But don't despair those of you that are less than incredibly good looking, because often all it takes is some make-up, a glamorous dress, a few sit-ups, or a black turtle-neck sweater to catapult you straight past the moderately good-looking people into the category of incredibly good-looking. And when that happens –usually with the assistance of moderately good-looking people who are always amazed and sometimes chagrined by the result of their efforts– you will get your One True Love.
Generally, again, this doesn't work with black people. They tend to either be incredibly good-looking, or not at all throughout the whole quirky romantic escapade. Of course, black people rarely experience the same amount of love as white people, and are generally relegated to the level of Helpful Abettor by their white incredibly good-looking friend.
People are really nice…
Aside from a few bad apples, who will never find true love anyway, people are really nice and helpful. They will always forego their personal problems to have the plot explained to them by one or more of the central romantic figures. Strangers are also very nice, whether you're running around an airport like a terrorist, dashing across a busy intersection, walking across people's heads in a New York city subway station, getting the hotel room number of your One True Love over the phone, or writing 'Will You Marry Me?' in burning flames on someone's front lawn, people really don't mind. As a matter of fact strangers find this kind of behaviour endearing and may even applaud.
Always remember that people that may seem like complete degenerate assholes at first can be swayed to extreme perfection. If you find yourself in love with an incredibly good-looking (of course) person who has the personality of a rage-crazed Rottweiler all you need to do is make them cry. It doesn't matter how cynical or embittered that person is, how nasty, sardonic or cruel –they will change because you love them. This is a difficult concept for many to get a bead on because nobody loves stupid people, and it tends to be stupid people that can about-face 180º personality-wise. But hey, that's amoré.
Everyone has lots of money…
To truly be in love you need to have a lot of money. Maybe not both of you, but one of you for sure. Even the person that doesn't have a lot of money usually has a loft-flat in New York city the size of a football field. This is because one of you has a high-paying and interesting job that isn't entirely satisfying (because you're not in love yet). The careers of people that will fall in love are as follows:
Journalist
Lawyer
Any PR Agent
Successful artist (because all artists are very-to-mildly successful)
Military (although, usually these people are in love to begin with)
Major Sports Athlete
Student
Criminal that Does not Deal Drugs
Teacher
Waitress
International Spy or any other kind of Random Adventure Person
The careers of people that will NOT fall in love are as follows:
Janitor; Porno Theatre
Drug Dealer
Fishmonger
Plumber
Anybody that works with sewage or waste matter
People on the Dole
Telemarketer
Any kind of extremist or fundamentalist leader
Royal Executioner
Barnyard Masturbator
(Other people that will never fall in love are: retards, perverts, disabled people, and fat people)
One of you having a lot of money facilitates having conversation-laden adventures together while going to the zoo, constantly going to trendy restaurants, skating in the middle of a major city, or staying at the George V Hotel in Paris. It is important to note that people in love tend to spend a lot of time on rooftops, balconies, and other high places. People in love like to be quiet, near a nice view with a slight breeze.
If you are worried about not having a lot of money don't fret, because your parents most certainly do. They have a house with 17 rooms and a dining room-table that seats 30 people in a small town (population 178) somewhere in the American Mid-West. This is handy for the awkward but hilarious meeting of the parents and family. Remember, if you are a man be wary of the woman's father. He will most certainly hate you at first. But don't worry, he will come to eventually like you and respect you.
In every true love scenario there needs to be a comic and witty dialogue around a large dining-room table. This is another reason why wealthy parents are useful. In this dialogue you find out that Grandma thinks you're a fag, Dad thinks you're a pervert, Mom thinks you're kind of sweet, younger siblings either have a crush on you or think you're a jack-ass, the youngest sibling makes irrelevant but funny comments, and the dog pooped in your shoe.
Lies…
All true love begins with a colossal lie. This lie may take the form of a simple misunderstanding or the complete failure to relate a fundamental aspect of your personage. Such as; you are royalty, or you are three other people.
Sex…
People in love have beautiful tender sex. Often this sex is in slow motion with many indistinct close-ups of your bodies. Sex is never dirty or involving the use of depraved language. Anal sex is only permissible if you are a homosexual. On that note: chances are if you're gay you're the hilarious and secondary Helpful Abettor to heterosexuals who are attempting to experience real love.
Bodily functions…
Just as Action People never sleep, people in love never go to the bathroom unless it's to brush their teeth, have beautiful tender sex in the shower, apply make-up, or change slowly and seductively into something slinky. It's never to piss or shit.
Note: It is common for people about to be in love to see one or the other naked, either by surprise, or via a contrivance.
Your friends are meaningless…
Your friends exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: to Helpfully Abet you achieving your One True Love. Are you perhaps in love with you best-friend's wife? No problem, simply steal them away. Don't worry about it, your friend will get over it in time, and may in fact apologize for causing you grief in acquiring his wife in the first place. Friends are also useful soundboards for explaining the plot to during the inevitable slump which occurs after you have first met, and fucked up, the relationship with your One True Love. When you get back together again forget about them. They are of no further use to you.
Friends may appear to be engaging in strange activities during the pursuit of your One True Love. Perhaps they're an alcoholic, or freely trading partners amongst each other, or have leprosy. Maybe their mother just died, or they've been missing for days. Just ignore all that weirdness. Unless it directly helps you in achieving your One True Love it will only distract you from your goal. All that stuff is for comic relief to lighten your load anyway.
Stalking is normal…
You can always get your One True Love if you are willing to do anything necessary. Because with die-hard perseverance, and relentless chasing, they will eventually come around. Show up everyday at their home, throw rocks at their house, sleep on their porch, leave notes and flowers at their office, follow them all over town, attck anyone that comes near them, lead a yak with their name tattoed on it through a café, chase them screaming through heavily populated places –whatever it takes, just don't stop, because relenting equals failure, and failure means you'll end up like your Helpful Abettor friends: slightly comical losers. They may have no pride, but you're swallowing yours for love. What better reason to stand naked in the piss rain at midnight screaming, "But I love you!" at your One True Love's dormitory window?
Note: loudly singing love songs to your One True Love in crowded places is never awkward and always works in shifting their opinion in your favor. In this manner everyone around you becomes an Abettor, and thus can help you in pressuring your One True Love into coming around. Your One True Love will appreciate the nuances of this.
A good rule of thumb to remember is that you are one in a pack of starving hyenas, and the gazelle you're all chasing is awfully small.
The fishing line…
There is always one good line that will sway your One True Love your way. These lines are best delivered in the rain, or after you have been running for a bit, or while you are crying. Either way, you should be wet.
Some lines that work:
"You complete me."
"Don't forget. I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy...asking him to love her." (not to be used on paranoid schizophrenics)
"You had me at 'hello'"
"You are what I never knew I always wanted" (only for extremely intelligent One True Loves)
"I can't imagine life without you."
"Don't ever leave me."
"You're the one that I love (Oo-wap shoo-walla-walla doot-doot-doo)!"
Some lines that don't work too well:
"My apartment had many leather-bound books and smells of rich mahogany."
"If you don't love me right now I'll hammer this nail into my eyeball."
"You are a doughnut to my box of Pringles."
"I require the love of a slutty-hoer. And that slutty-hoer is you."
"If you don't love me right now I'll hammer this nail into your eyeball."
"But I engraved your name into my forehead for you."
"They make take our lives, but they will never take our FREEDOM!"
And there you have it. Through romantic comedies Hollywood shines it's rich immortal light on matters of the heart itself. As long as you're extremely good-looking, have one of the jobs people who fall in love get, have rich parents, stalk relentlessly, and are not black or gay, love is possible for anyone. Helpful Abettors are exempt from this categorization of course. And if you don't fall into any of these categories you should probably check your social insurance number because it's doubtful you exist.
And yeah, the sequel is rarely as good as the original.
To Be Continued.
everything i know i learned from hollywood: part II
If there is one thing Hollywood Blockbusters do it is uniting the perceptions of the common man. They show us what is true and consistent in the world throughout all walks of life, all economic statuses, all languages, and all races. Except for black people.
And if there is one thing that is universally understood planet-wide it is that love is hilarious. Love, passion, jealousy, anguish, adulation, obsession, and all things associated with romance, lost or achieved, is made up of a series of whimsical occurrences and misunderstandings which, in the end, will be for the greater good of the couple involved.
But before you embark on your amusing and sometimes comic-tragic romantic escapade there are a few things you should know about love:
You need to be incredibly good-looking to truly be in love. If you are not incredibly good-looking this can pose serious problems, because people don't love people that are not incredibly good-looking. People that are less than incredibly good-looking tend to lose people, or, at the very most, end up with the less than incredibly good-looking friend of an incredibly good-looking person.
But don't despair those of you that are less than incredibly good looking, because often all it takes is some make-up, a glamorous dress, a few sit-ups, or a black turtle-neck sweater to catapult you straight past the moderately good-looking people into the category of incredibly good-looking. And when that happens –usually with the assistance of moderately good-looking people who are always amazed and sometimes chagrined by the result of their efforts– you will get your One True Love.
Generally, again, this doesn't work with black people. They tend to either be incredibly good-looking, or not at all throughout the whole quirky romantic escapade. Of course, black people rarely experience the same amount of love as white people, and are generally relegated to the level of Helpful Abettor by their white incredibly good-looking friend.
People are really nice…
Aside from a few bad apples, who will never find true love anyway, people are really nice and helpful. They will always forego their personal problems to have the plot explained to them by one or more of the central romantic figures. Strangers are also very nice, whether you're running around an airport like a terrorist, dashing across a busy intersection, walking across people's heads in a New York city subway station, getting the hotel room number of your One True Love over the phone, or writing 'Will You Marry Me?' in burning flames on someone's front lawn, people really don't mind. As a matter of fact strangers find this kind of behaviour endearing and may even applaud.
Always remember that people that may seem like complete degenerate assholes at first can be swayed to extreme perfection. If you find yourself in love with an incredibly good-looking (of course) person who has the personality of a rage-crazed Rottweiler all you need to do is make them cry. It doesn't matter how cynical or embittered that person is, how nasty, sardonic or cruel –they will change because you love them. This is a difficult concept for many to get a bead on because nobody loves stupid people, and it tends to be stupid people that can about-face 180º personality-wise. But hey, that's amoré.
Everyone has lots of money…
To truly be in love you need to have a lot of money. Maybe not both of you, but one of you for sure. Even the person that doesn't have a lot of money usually has a loft-flat in New York city the size of a football field. This is because one of you has a high-paying and interesting job that isn't entirely satisfying (because you're not in love yet). The careers of people that will fall in love are as follows:
Journalist
Lawyer
Any PR Agent
Successful artist (because all artists are very-to-mildly successful)
Military (although, usually these people are in love to begin with)
Major Sports Athlete
Student
Criminal that Does not Deal Drugs
Teacher
Waitress
International Spy or any other kind of Random Adventure Person
The careers of people that will NOT fall in love are as follows:
Janitor; Porno Theatre
Drug Dealer
Fishmonger
Plumber
Anybody that works with sewage or waste matter
People on the Dole
Telemarketer
Any kind of extremist or fundamentalist leader
Royal Executioner
Barnyard Masturbator
(Other people that will never fall in love are: retards, perverts, disabled people, and fat people)
One of you having a lot of money facilitates having conversation-laden adventures together while going to the zoo, constantly going to trendy restaurants, skating in the middle of a major city, or staying at the George V Hotel in Paris. It is important to note that people in love tend to spend a lot of time on rooftops, balconies, and other high places. People in love like to be quiet, near a nice view with a slight breeze.
If you are worried about not having a lot of money don't fret, because your parents most certainly do. They have a house with 17 rooms and a dining room-table that seats 30 people in a small town (population 178) somewhere in the American Mid-West. This is handy for the awkward but hilarious meeting of the parents and family. Remember, if you are a man be wary of the woman's father. He will most certainly hate you at first. But don't worry, he will come to eventually like you and respect you.
In every true love scenario there needs to be a comic and witty dialogue around a large dining-room table. This is another reason why wealthy parents are useful. In this dialogue you find out that Grandma thinks you're a fag, Dad thinks you're a pervert, Mom thinks you're kind of sweet, younger siblings either have a crush on you or think you're a jack-ass, the youngest sibling makes irrelevant but funny comments, and the dog pooped in your shoe.
Lies…
All true love begins with a colossal lie. This lie may take the form of a simple misunderstanding or the complete failure to relate a fundamental aspect of your personage. Such as; you are royalty, or you are three other people.
Sex…
People in love have beautiful tender sex. Often this sex is in slow motion with many indistinct close-ups of your bodies. Sex is never dirty or involving the use of depraved language. Anal sex is only permissible if you are a homosexual. On that note: chances are if you're gay you're the hilarious and secondary Helpful Abettor to heterosexuals who are attempting to experience real love.
Bodily functions…
Just as Action People never sleep, people in love never go to the bathroom unless it's to brush their teeth, have beautiful tender sex in the shower, apply make-up, or change slowly and seductively into something slinky. It's never to piss or shit.
Note: It is common for people about to be in love to see one or the other naked, either by surprise, or via a contrivance.
Your friends are meaningless…
Your friends exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: to Helpfully Abet you achieving your One True Love. Are you perhaps in love with you best-friend's wife? No problem, simply steal them away. Don't worry about it, your friend will get over it in time, and may in fact apologize for causing you grief in acquiring his wife in the first place. Friends are also useful soundboards for explaining the plot to during the inevitable slump which occurs after you have first met, and fucked up, the relationship with your One True Love. When you get back together again forget about them. They are of no further use to you.
Friends may appear to be engaging in strange activities during the pursuit of your One True Love. Perhaps they're an alcoholic, or freely trading partners amongst each other, or have leprosy. Maybe their mother just died, or they've been missing for days. Just ignore all that weirdness. Unless it directly helps you in achieving your One True Love it will only distract you from your goal. All that stuff is for comic relief to lighten your load anyway.
Stalking is normal…
You can always get your One True Love if you are willing to do anything necessary. Because with die-hard perseverance, and relentless chasing, they will eventually come around. Show up everyday at their home, throw rocks at their house, sleep on their porch, leave notes and flowers at their office, follow them all over town, attck anyone that comes near them, lead a yak with their name tattoed on it through a café, chase them screaming through heavily populated places –whatever it takes, just don't stop, because relenting equals failure, and failure means you'll end up like your Helpful Abettor friends: slightly comical losers. They may have no pride, but you're swallowing yours for love. What better reason to stand naked in the piss rain at midnight screaming, "But I love you!" at your One True Love's dormitory window?
Note: loudly singing love songs to your One True Love in crowded places is never awkward and always works in shifting their opinion in your favor. In this manner everyone around you becomes an Abettor, and thus can help you in pressuring your One True Love into coming around. Your One True Love will appreciate the nuances of this.
A good rule of thumb to remember is that you are one in a pack of starving hyenas, and the gazelle you're all chasing is awfully small.
The fishing line…
There is always one good line that will sway your One True Love your way. These lines are best delivered in the rain, or after you have been running for a bit, or while you are crying. Either way, you should be wet.
Some lines that work:
"You complete me."
"Don't forget. I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy...asking him to love her." (not to be used on paranoid schizophrenics)
"You had me at 'hello'"
"You are what I never knew I always wanted" (only for extremely intelligent One True Loves)
"I can't imagine life without you."
"Don't ever leave me."
"You're the one that I love (Oo-wap shoo-walla-walla doot-doot-doo)!"
Some lines that don't work too well:
"My apartment had many leather-bound books and smells of rich mahogany."
"If you don't love me right now I'll hammer this nail into my eyeball."
"You are a doughnut to my box of Pringles."
"I require the love of a slutty-hoer. And that slutty-hoer is you."
"If you don't love me right now I'll hammer this nail into your eyeball."
"But I engraved your name into my forehead for you."
"They make take our lives, but they will never take our FREEDOM!"
And there you have it. Through romantic comedies Hollywood shines it's rich immortal light on matters of the heart itself. As long as you're extremely good-looking, have one of the jobs people who fall in love get, have rich parents, stalk relentlessly, and are not black or gay, love is possible for anyone. Helpful Abettors are exempt from this categorization of course. And if you don't fall into any of these categories you should probably check your social insurance number because it's doubtful you exist.
And yeah, the sequel is rarely as good as the original.
To Be Continued.
July 11, 2007 - Wednesday
July 11, 2007 - Wednesday
wanton notes on being single around here
The pressure to be in a relationship is strong around here.
It seems the older you get the more of a pariah you become for being alone. I blame this on a variety of reasons:
There is nowhere a single person can go that's remotely interesting. All the pubs are carbon copies of each other. The majority have two words in their name which you might associate with Merry Olde Britaine –if you read too much Dickens and enjoyed Marmite. For example: The Lieutenant's Pump (pronounced "left-tenant's" for reasons that are beyond me and too annoying to contemplate right now), The Clock Tower, The Royal Britannia, etc. Other places have tacked on an '&' sign and involve two distinctly British sounding, but wholly random nouns: The Heart & Crown, The Fox & Feather, The Cock & Lion. Still other places have embarrassing names that no self-respecting Brit would have without killing themselves at the age of six; D'arcy McGee's, Grace O'Malley's, Biddy Mulligan's. In a weird twist one place is even called The Cock 'N Bull.
My feeling is that if they called all these British pubs, which are all exactly alike, "Cock 'N Bull" it would spare the limited imaginations of their owners, and conveniently summarize what's going on in the place.
Here they don't even bother trying to create a delineation between a pub being Irish, Scottish, or English, aside from the name. You will always get the following: wooden chairs, wooden tables, wooden bar, wood veneer that goes half-way up puke coloured walls, brass fittings, music that jack-asses like to sing along to, and the irresistible urge to ignite tear gas in order to get one fucking drink.
The thing is, I've been to British pubs in Britain and they don't have British sounding names. Maybe they used to, but they have moved on. Why can't we? Why can't Canada just stop sucking on the teat of Mother Britain? There is nothing remotely cool, or particularly dynamic about the place except for the fact that there is actually stuff to do over there… aside from going to pubs with British sounding names, that is.
Anyway.
The bars here close at two in the morning. Many of you (North Americans) that are reading this think that this is normal. Some of you (Ottawans) are grateful that it's not 1AM as it used to be. This is severely abnormal. Especially when you couple it with the fact that you can get served food 24 hours a day. This, to me, speaks volumes. Or kilos depending how you look at it…
Essentially, what happens is that at 2AM, when you are abruptly cut off from tying on a good drunk –enough of a drunk to actually meet someone amongst all the Cock 'N Bull in the place– you are kicked out. You are then faced with either going home and fucking your girlfriend (which you don't have), going and stuffing your face with enough grease to slide a dead elephant down an airport runway, or, depending on your state, going home and fucking a dead elephant, then sliding your greasy girlfriend (which you don't have) down an airport runway.
And, people around here go out young. Most places you go to, that have any kind of sociable ambience (and the rare few without British sounding names), are filled with awkward early-twenty-year-olds, new to the drink, and so hopped up on their own hormones they get 'Hyuk-hyuk!' Goofy when they see another human of the opposite (sometimes) sex.
One might think that this is prime picking ground for young unwitting nubile female flesh, but One would be sadly mistaken. These girls are witting. They are made so by the relentless snorting and stamping of the afore mentioned sticks of hormonal dynamite which are one touch away from exploding in a shower of sputum and pointless babble. It's a terrible, terrible cycle because these girls, who all too often look like plucked turkeys, carry on like they're supermodels. Like they're owed an ogling while they clatter about in their slut-wear, their noses held high, determined to snub you even when you haven't spared them a glance.
Faced with this kind of abject horror who can blame most of my friends here for being in the latter stages of a Very Long Relationship, complete with impending or moderately-formed lumps of wriggling, noisy, wet, pink, flesh that they have entitled 'The Baby'? But that's a whole other thing.
Yes, single people here are looked upon with fear and terror at worst, and mistrust and pity at best. There is a schematic of life firmly in place here, and if you stray from it you become the focus of 'setting-up', blind-dates', and the source of vicarious living for your friends who wish they were single, occasionally, and will egg you on for greater detail about the most mundane encounter:
"So she smiled at you?"
"I think so."
"Did you touch her breast?"
"Well, I didn't really talk to her."
"You didn't talk to her?"
"No."
"So… Did you touch her breast?"
These same people will offer idiotic and pointless advice by way of 'assistance'. Because long ago, when they were single, and they spotted two attractive strangers in the room, of course they proposed a threesome to them.
Suddenly you are plunged back into high school; receiving third-hand information that someone might 'like' you. You keep your mouth sealed when you find someone remotely interesting or risk setting in a motion an inexorable machine designed to 'hook you up' so that the awkward silence between you and that person can be occasionally punctuated by the mutual realization that you have absolutely nothing in common, and probably don't like each other very much anyway.
I have actually banned all my friends from trying to set me up with someone, because in terms of organizing a fresh relationships, as with many other things, a third party will only fuck things up.
Interestingly the only people that attempt to 'set me up' tend to be my female friends, especially those friends which are partners with my male friends. Their motivation, thinly disguised behind the veneer of altruism, is based mostly on two other parts: one small part pity, and one large part the fact that, in my singelhood, I'm conjectured to be a severely bad influence on their man. I might lead their docile and sheep-like significant-other astray with my Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ways. The pervading logic here seems to be that by being in a relationship I am safely neutered and can then engage in the comfortable couple-type things that couples do; like playing charades, talking about being a couple, and talking about other couples.
The impression in North America about the lifestyle of the adult single person is on the far side of the river Lethe. Being single is akin to being a horny sex-starved sycophant whose relentless drive for gratuitous shagging is barely outweighed by their desperation and depression at being alone.
As a certified adult single person, allow me to set those worried minds at ease and illustrate the goings on of a single person via a weekly schedule of my life:
Monday: Walk along lonely stretches of highway, drunk on absinthe, and try to wave down passing female motorists to offer a little 'Road-Side Beaver-Scouting'.
Tuesday: Wake up at 3PM and not call back anybody I Beaver-Scouted yesterday. Instead, eat a pound of raw oyster, head to nearest brothel, and have wild condom-free sex with eight hookers and a tranny named 'Lulu'.
Wednesday: Wake up at 6PM, stuff my nose full of raw ground Columbian, and vigorously masturbate for six hours. At 12AM head downtown, lean against a wall outside of a populated bar, and holler lewd comments about "chicken poo-nanny" at passing women.
Thursday: Wake up Friday.
Friday: After carefully extracting a cork shaped lump of less-raw ground Columbian from my nostril I then re-mold it and re-insert as a suppository. Shakiness causes this to take hours. Now it's time to go out. Barge into a high-end bar with my dong blatantly hanging out of my trousers. Walk up to the nearest girl, grab her by the breast and demand a blow-job. After being slapped –and now chagrined into being more coy– gently place my dong on another girls' lap and tell her how amazing I am. Bathroom stall sex ensues.
Saturday: Orgy Day! Head to the nearest Orgy House (location secret –known only to single people, but usually located in the richest housing estate of any city) at about 5PM. Stop along the way to meet Ricky who sells me three tablets of ecstasy, six grams of cocaine, and a satchel of Viagra. Head to the basement of the Orgy House where everyone listens to the relentless Nazi-beats of Scooter and have loopy jungle sex (unprotected) with up to thirty partners in a room with black walls and floors covered with silken duvets.
Sunday (day of rest): Hidden Dragon, Beaten Monkey
Or maybe not.
Maybe it's just being single. Maybe it's just doing the things that are available to do here (such as watching idiot television, or ublinkingly trying to identify the piece of something on your fingernail) alone, without the benefit of regular copulation and the inherent safety and security of being in a relationship. Copulation, by the way, that notoriously comes rarely to people in long-term relationships.
Some people are afraid of being single. I am not. I pity those that have the fear. These people are far more dangerous to me than I am to them, because they are so afraid of being alone they have defaulted to a relationship that will inevitably implode. And when it does, they seek out people like me who, although secure in my singelhood, am gullible to the aggressive wiles of newly lonely people. These folk can take up an awful lot of your time.
Yes, it's a lone wolf kind of life, but fuck it. What's the big deal? If you can't learn how to entertain yourself and be an individual, without constantly having to think for two, or relying on someone else to do half of the thinking for you, what good are you? It's this thing about a good relationship being two whole people overlapping. Not two halves making a whole.
Indeed, I've spent much of my life in one long-term relationship or another. This is largely due to my inability to have a one-night stand. I don't have the stomach to go through all the transparent and dubious motions of picking-up someone at a venue. All the simian chest-beating ducking and weaving and verbal acrobatics involved with getting someone from the bar to the boudoir is not to my taste. I don't chase, and it's worked out so far.
Also, I'm not very good at games, including sociological ones.
And, after all, judging by retrospective pervading patterns, I'm going to be single for a while. My first relationship lasted four years. The next, three years. The next two –all the way down to my last, which was six months. All of these with three-week smatterings in between. Where does it go from here? Three months? One-and-a-half? Come off it. All of these have been pretty rocky ordeals at the end for both parties, making me twisted psychologically and turning me into the arin I don't want to be. The arin I never want to be again.
And so be it. I'm not going to get into a relationship out of boredom, and I'm not going to get into a relationship to fit in with my coupled friends. I actually don't mind hanging around couples. I like being on the other side of the coin for a change. And I sure as hell am no going to settle for someone I half-way like, either by default or loneliness, in the hopes that eventually it'll be glorious. Let's face it, if you listen to an album you half-way like repeatedly you come to like it more. It doesn't change the fact that it's a mediocre album, and more importantly, that there might be better music out there.
I'm just going to wait this one out. I have faith, you see, that the right person –the one– will come along… or come around.
So let your voices ring out Adult Single People. Do not live in fear or shame at your state. Don't let those many happy (or miserable) couples pressure you into a relationship. Treat the thousands of romantic movies and songs as what they are: crap. If you want to be in a relationship, fine. Don't force it. Bend like a reed. Stay firm in your will and your conviction. Remember that every day that you are alone is another day you grow stronger, more self-sufficient, and increasingly independent. You are an individual. And, although the pervading wind demands procreation, this is the age of science… and there are laboratories for such things.
You have yourself for the rest.
wanton notes on being single around here
The pressure to be in a relationship is strong around here.
It seems the older you get the more of a pariah you become for being alone. I blame this on a variety of reasons:
There is nowhere a single person can go that's remotely interesting. All the pubs are carbon copies of each other. The majority have two words in their name which you might associate with Merry Olde Britaine –if you read too much Dickens and enjoyed Marmite. For example: The Lieutenant's Pump (pronounced "left-tenant's" for reasons that are beyond me and too annoying to contemplate right now), The Clock Tower, The Royal Britannia, etc. Other places have tacked on an '&' sign and involve two distinctly British sounding, but wholly random nouns: The Heart & Crown, The Fox & Feather, The Cock & Lion. Still other places have embarrassing names that no self-respecting Brit would have without killing themselves at the age of six; D'arcy McGee's, Grace O'Malley's, Biddy Mulligan's. In a weird twist one place is even called The Cock 'N Bull.
My feeling is that if they called all these British pubs, which are all exactly alike, "Cock 'N Bull" it would spare the limited imaginations of their owners, and conveniently summarize what's going on in the place.
Here they don't even bother trying to create a delineation between a pub being Irish, Scottish, or English, aside from the name. You will always get the following: wooden chairs, wooden tables, wooden bar, wood veneer that goes half-way up puke coloured walls, brass fittings, music that jack-asses like to sing along to, and the irresistible urge to ignite tear gas in order to get one fucking drink.
The thing is, I've been to British pubs in Britain and they don't have British sounding names. Maybe they used to, but they have moved on. Why can't we? Why can't Canada just stop sucking on the teat of Mother Britain? There is nothing remotely cool, or particularly dynamic about the place except for the fact that there is actually stuff to do over there… aside from going to pubs with British sounding names, that is.
Anyway.
The bars here close at two in the morning. Many of you (North Americans) that are reading this think that this is normal. Some of you (Ottawans) are grateful that it's not 1AM as it used to be. This is severely abnormal. Especially when you couple it with the fact that you can get served food 24 hours a day. This, to me, speaks volumes. Or kilos depending how you look at it…
Essentially, what happens is that at 2AM, when you are abruptly cut off from tying on a good drunk –enough of a drunk to actually meet someone amongst all the Cock 'N Bull in the place– you are kicked out. You are then faced with either going home and fucking your girlfriend (which you don't have), going and stuffing your face with enough grease to slide a dead elephant down an airport runway, or, depending on your state, going home and fucking a dead elephant, then sliding your greasy girlfriend (which you don't have) down an airport runway.
And, people around here go out young. Most places you go to, that have any kind of sociable ambience (and the rare few without British sounding names), are filled with awkward early-twenty-year-olds, new to the drink, and so hopped up on their own hormones they get 'Hyuk-hyuk!' Goofy when they see another human of the opposite (sometimes) sex.
One might think that this is prime picking ground for young unwitting nubile female flesh, but One would be sadly mistaken. These girls are witting. They are made so by the relentless snorting and stamping of the afore mentioned sticks of hormonal dynamite which are one touch away from exploding in a shower of sputum and pointless babble. It's a terrible, terrible cycle because these girls, who all too often look like plucked turkeys, carry on like they're supermodels. Like they're owed an ogling while they clatter about in their slut-wear, their noses held high, determined to snub you even when you haven't spared them a glance.
Faced with this kind of abject horror who can blame most of my friends here for being in the latter stages of a Very Long Relationship, complete with impending or moderately-formed lumps of wriggling, noisy, wet, pink, flesh that they have entitled 'The Baby'? But that's a whole other thing.
Yes, single people here are looked upon with fear and terror at worst, and mistrust and pity at best. There is a schematic of life firmly in place here, and if you stray from it you become the focus of 'setting-up', blind-dates', and the source of vicarious living for your friends who wish they were single, occasionally, and will egg you on for greater detail about the most mundane encounter:
"So she smiled at you?"
"I think so."
"Did you touch her breast?"
"Well, I didn't really talk to her."
"You didn't talk to her?"
"No."
"So… Did you touch her breast?"
These same people will offer idiotic and pointless advice by way of 'assistance'. Because long ago, when they were single, and they spotted two attractive strangers in the room, of course they proposed a threesome to them.
Suddenly you are plunged back into high school; receiving third-hand information that someone might 'like' you. You keep your mouth sealed when you find someone remotely interesting or risk setting in a motion an inexorable machine designed to 'hook you up' so that the awkward silence between you and that person can be occasionally punctuated by the mutual realization that you have absolutely nothing in common, and probably don't like each other very much anyway.
I have actually banned all my friends from trying to set me up with someone, because in terms of organizing a fresh relationships, as with many other things, a third party will only fuck things up.
Interestingly the only people that attempt to 'set me up' tend to be my female friends, especially those friends which are partners with my male friends. Their motivation, thinly disguised behind the veneer of altruism, is based mostly on two other parts: one small part pity, and one large part the fact that, in my singelhood, I'm conjectured to be a severely bad influence on their man. I might lead their docile and sheep-like significant-other astray with my Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ways. The pervading logic here seems to be that by being in a relationship I am safely neutered and can then engage in the comfortable couple-type things that couples do; like playing charades, talking about being a couple, and talking about other couples.
The impression in North America about the lifestyle of the adult single person is on the far side of the river Lethe. Being single is akin to being a horny sex-starved sycophant whose relentless drive for gratuitous shagging is barely outweighed by their desperation and depression at being alone.
As a certified adult single person, allow me to set those worried minds at ease and illustrate the goings on of a single person via a weekly schedule of my life:
Monday: Walk along lonely stretches of highway, drunk on absinthe, and try to wave down passing female motorists to offer a little 'Road-Side Beaver-Scouting'.
Tuesday: Wake up at 3PM and not call back anybody I Beaver-Scouted yesterday. Instead, eat a pound of raw oyster, head to nearest brothel, and have wild condom-free sex with eight hookers and a tranny named 'Lulu'.
Wednesday: Wake up at 6PM, stuff my nose full of raw ground Columbian, and vigorously masturbate for six hours. At 12AM head downtown, lean against a wall outside of a populated bar, and holler lewd comments about "chicken poo-nanny" at passing women.
Thursday: Wake up Friday.
Friday: After carefully extracting a cork shaped lump of less-raw ground Columbian from my nostril I then re-mold it and re-insert as a suppository. Shakiness causes this to take hours. Now it's time to go out. Barge into a high-end bar with my dong blatantly hanging out of my trousers. Walk up to the nearest girl, grab her by the breast and demand a blow-job. After being slapped –and now chagrined into being more coy– gently place my dong on another girls' lap and tell her how amazing I am. Bathroom stall sex ensues.
Saturday: Orgy Day! Head to the nearest Orgy House (location secret –known only to single people, but usually located in the richest housing estate of any city) at about 5PM. Stop along the way to meet Ricky who sells me three tablets of ecstasy, six grams of cocaine, and a satchel of Viagra. Head to the basement of the Orgy House where everyone listens to the relentless Nazi-beats of Scooter and have loopy jungle sex (unprotected) with up to thirty partners in a room with black walls and floors covered with silken duvets.
Sunday (day of rest): Hidden Dragon, Beaten Monkey
Or maybe not.
Maybe it's just being single. Maybe it's just doing the things that are available to do here (such as watching idiot television, or ublinkingly trying to identify the piece of something on your fingernail) alone, without the benefit of regular copulation and the inherent safety and security of being in a relationship. Copulation, by the way, that notoriously comes rarely to people in long-term relationships.
Some people are afraid of being single. I am not. I pity those that have the fear. These people are far more dangerous to me than I am to them, because they are so afraid of being alone they have defaulted to a relationship that will inevitably implode. And when it does, they seek out people like me who, although secure in my singelhood, am gullible to the aggressive wiles of newly lonely people. These folk can take up an awful lot of your time.
Yes, it's a lone wolf kind of life, but fuck it. What's the big deal? If you can't learn how to entertain yourself and be an individual, without constantly having to think for two, or relying on someone else to do half of the thinking for you, what good are you? It's this thing about a good relationship being two whole people overlapping. Not two halves making a whole.
Indeed, I've spent much of my life in one long-term relationship or another. This is largely due to my inability to have a one-night stand. I don't have the stomach to go through all the transparent and dubious motions of picking-up someone at a venue. All the simian chest-beating ducking and weaving and verbal acrobatics involved with getting someone from the bar to the boudoir is not to my taste. I don't chase, and it's worked out so far.
Also, I'm not very good at games, including sociological ones.
And, after all, judging by retrospective pervading patterns, I'm going to be single for a while. My first relationship lasted four years. The next, three years. The next two –all the way down to my last, which was six months. All of these with three-week smatterings in between. Where does it go from here? Three months? One-and-a-half? Come off it. All of these have been pretty rocky ordeals at the end for both parties, making me twisted psychologically and turning me into the arin I don't want to be. The arin I never want to be again.
And so be it. I'm not going to get into a relationship out of boredom, and I'm not going to get into a relationship to fit in with my coupled friends. I actually don't mind hanging around couples. I like being on the other side of the coin for a change. And I sure as hell am no going to settle for someone I half-way like, either by default or loneliness, in the hopes that eventually it'll be glorious. Let's face it, if you listen to an album you half-way like repeatedly you come to like it more. It doesn't change the fact that it's a mediocre album, and more importantly, that there might be better music out there.
I'm just going to wait this one out. I have faith, you see, that the right person –the one– will come along… or come around.
So let your voices ring out Adult Single People. Do not live in fear or shame at your state. Don't let those many happy (or miserable) couples pressure you into a relationship. Treat the thousands of romantic movies and songs as what they are: crap. If you want to be in a relationship, fine. Don't force it. Bend like a reed. Stay firm in your will and your conviction. Remember that every day that you are alone is another day you grow stronger, more self-sufficient, and increasingly independent. You are an individual. And, although the pervading wind demands procreation, this is the age of science… and there are laboratories for such things.
You have yourself for the rest.
June 14, 2007 - Thursday
June 14, 2007 - Thursday
the great north american myth - exhibit B(56)
Yesterday I saw a sign in front of a pharmacy. It said:
BUY 15$ WORTH OF VITAMINS AND GET
A FREE 2 LITRE BOTTLE OF COKE!!!
That is all.
the great north american myth - exhibit B(56)
Yesterday I saw a sign in front of a pharmacy. It said:
BUY 15$ WORTH OF VITAMINS AND GET
A FREE 2 LITRE BOTTLE OF COKE!!!
That is all.
June 12, 2007 - Tuesday
June 12, 2007 - Tuesday
nudity and other such things
Nudity.
Naked, nekkid, bare-assed, au naturel, bare-naked, unclad, starkers, in one's birthday suit, in the altogether, in the buff, in the raw, naked as a jaybird, stark naked, without a stitch, the full monty –many words indeed to describe a state of total undress.
Recently a friend (and fellow welterweight UFC bronze medalist) described being in a women's change room in the Czech Republic. It was illuminating stuff, aside from the natural male-centered tendency to imagine cute young minxes snapping wet towels at each other's asses while giggling demurely, it brought to mind the various taboos surrounding nudity in a variety of different places and societies.
The thought of being nude amongst other nude people tends to be a daunting one. Western culture, being mostly centered around Christian ideology, looks at nudity as a big no-no. Frankly, this is just as well considering the types of people that are avid church goers. This is why priests do not conduct services naked to a nude congregation. What kinds of services priests might be conducting after services won't be discussed in this missive. This is also why Jesus on the cross has a white towel around his waist with a tiny little 'Westin Hotel' logo on it.
In Europe there is far more of a tendency to be nude. Some countries more than others. For example, if you were at a Christmas party in Holland and you were presented with a pair of spandex bicycling shorts, the expectation is that you strip off whatever you're wearing then and there –Christmas carols on the radio in the background, family members of all ages watching intently– and try them on. The Dutch, you see, love to be naked. Any opportunity that arises, such as the temperature cresting 15 degrees, or a splash of water on a shirt collar, and the Dutch will strip down to their skin and spend the rest of the social event like that. Grudgingly they will put their clothes back on when it's time to leave.
Perhaps you would not like to see your relatives naked. Not so with the Dutch. This was freaky for me as a young lad. I saw far more naked twattage and breasts than any 10 year old should have to see. And it was all the wrong twattage and breasts. I would gauge it to be about 60 twats –enough light to fill a medium sized room.
Anyway.
Later, in my twenties, I would accompany my grandmother, to a nearby spa. The place was amazing. It had Turkish baths, infra-red saunas, rooms with tiny lights that would gradually change colour while you were lightly sprayed by super-heated scented mist, a hyper-active whirlpool, a larger 'cooling-pool' filled with, what I understood to be, Perrier, and a sensory deprivation float tank in which you could hear all the delightful sounds your body makes when it thinks you're not paying attention.
The thing about this place, this Mecca of hedonistic relaxation, was that it had separate change rooms for men and women. But when you emerged, naked, all sexes were nude together, wandering in and out of the different rooms, chatting amicably with each other; ballast hanging, jib at half-mast, all such equipment being studiously ignored in favour of the kind of eye-contact usually associated with police interrogations.
This is actually one of the unspoken traditions of being nude amongst nude people; always maintain strict eye-contact. The amount of eye-contact going on in these places can, at times, be unnerving –almost a staring contest in which both parties, deep below their airy chatter, are daring each other to take a peek. Which you never ever do. And you definitely do not comment on packaging:
"Good sway on those testicles today Jan. They seem to be hanging well."
"Wow Esther, how do you manage keep you labia looking so shiny?"
"Rough night there William? Your asshole's looking a little loose buddy."
As a matter of fact, all talk of bodily functions are strictly verboten. Probably because the focus of such topics is just too there in terms of contextual reference. If you ever want to clear out a sauna room quick, just make a few fart jokes and offer a nipple-pinching challenge for good measure. People –especially men– usually don't talk about sex during these occasions for very apparent (underlined) reasons.
Huh.
Suddenly I am reminded of having to deftly leap into the aptly named 'cooling-pool' because of two attractive young girls who decided to (I'm not kidding) do a tactile comparison of breast size in a jacuzzi I happened to walk by. I am grateful for that pool which was conveniently placed one jump away from what could have been a very awkward situation.
Thankfully, for the most part, all thoughts of sex are oddly missing in the all nude environment. This might be partially because the types of people you actually would like to see naked are almost never there. And even when they are, such as my gorgeous Swedish ex-girlfriend who accompanied my step-mother, grandmother and myself to the afore mentioned spa, you seem to be disassociated from any thoughts of coitus. As if your normal sex-drive has been reduced to a tiny little voice far in the back of your subconscious. I remember sitting in a sauna across from the three of them, who were conveniently sitting in a row of ascending ages, and understanding how a doctor can look at the female from in a clinical and professional manner.
Yes, and how many of you have seen your step-mother naked? Exactly.I was quite comfortable with the situation and only felt self-conscious when one of the fully-clothed staff of the spa came wandering through, thus illuminating one of the age-old conundrums of the human psyche. Clothed people make naked people feel…well…naked. As a matter of fact, clothed people hate naked people with the kind of abhorrence usually reserved for public pooping, and vice versa. I know this because I've been clothed trying to get through the nude part of a public beach (another example of the ingenuity of Czech planning) to the standard part. I was very aware of being glared at like a pariah for daring to be clothed as my feet slipped on pale glistening backs and dodged wildly flailing soccer-playing penises.
But that was there, and this is here.
Recently, in Ontario, or as I like to call it "Hreeeagh…", the ban against topless sunbathing has been repealed. This in no way should make you think that some how Ontario is becoming liberal. As I've mentioned before, being naked is a criminal offence associated with rape and public masturbation. This may have something to do with the sudden freakishly incongruous outbursts of public nudity in random places throughout North America.
This is one of the weird trends (along with the sudden wave of female teachers shagging their underage students) I've noticed in my perusal of various media outlets:
Metro – June 11th, 2007
"BROOKLYN. A man who appears nude or scantily clad near apartment windows in Kensington has traumatized at least two women since May and is still on the loose, according to police sources and the victims."
It is interesting to me that people that unwittingly witness some nudity are considered to be 'victims'. By that rational couldn't I be considered a 'victim' for unwittingly viewing Spiderman 3?
Spokesman Review – June 8th, 2007
"A naked Liberty Lake accountant plowed his Honda Odyssey minivan through lawns, into garages and into a parked car before being arrested in his neighbor's yard today, police say."
After calls from several motorists early Wednesday, Okaloosa County Sheriff 's deputies found a nude man walking near the Inn of Destin on U.S. Highway 98."
Emerald Coast – June 11th, 2007The 32-year-old man from Mesa, Ariz., was uncooperative in explaining why he was naked and where he was staying, according to a Sheriff 's Office report. He said he was in Destin on vacation and staying with his grandparents in Shalimar, the report stated."
With the kind of repression of personal freedoms going on here, it's no wonder that the odd person will cast off all their clothing and scream "Here I am…naked and free!" right before getting dive tackled by a platoon of police who then beat them like a piñata and charge them with Exposure of Sexual Organs.
But ah, the majority of North Americans frown on such wanton displays of public breastfeeding and topless sunbathing. I can only attribute this to the fact that the majority of North Americans look like large wet pears and know that they themselves could not possibly appear naked in public for fear of being harpooned.
There is this weird psychological gap between fully clothed and nude. Anything between the two is considered sexual and therefore wrong. It's, odd isn't it, that any place that allows total nudity also provides changerooms to change from clothed to naked. As if taking off your clothes is somehow dirty business, but putting them on is no big deal. Am I the only person that finds that a little… uh… screwy? I'm not so sure strip-clubs (whose point I still fail to see) would be as appealing if the girls came out entirely naked and then slowly and sexually put on some slacks and a sweater to R&B. It's states of undress that is shocking to uptight people, not dress.
Then there is the Middle-East where many women are obligated to wear a burka, (ie. Darth Vader Get-Up) or face being labeled a whore, ostracized, and stoned to death. Not only is this a huge security risk, but it's just not practical. It's hot in the Middle East. Of course that whole twisted idea is based entirely on male insecurity and a slavery-style mentality towards ownership. I, for one, don't understand what the big secret is supposed to be. If you drop a tarpaulin over a yeti, there is still a yeti underneath.
Sigh.
It's unfair for me to label the entire Middle-Eastern masculine population as 'insecure' as it seems the amount of bodily self-consciousness a society has is in direct correlation to the frequency at which nudity is acceptable. In North America, and large parts of Europe (Britain), people are obsessed with the perfect body. This is loopy because the vast majority of those populations are about as far away from the 'ideal' shape as logic is from the Burka. In other parts of Europe nudity is not such a big deal, with some practical and usually well-placed restrictions (for example, it is unwise to arc-weld, or be a zoo-keeper nude) and the people look better. They do. They're better looking per capita. Their confidence in the human form shines though in their form of human. What I'm also partially addressing here is varying levels of societal advancement. It seems that the societies with more open-minded conceptions of nudity are somehow more civilized. It's just a reflection of a pervading soft-core ideology as opposed to hard-core fundamentalism.
Does that make any sense?
Now, I'm in no way condoning rampant nudity everywhere across these lands. But I am saying that the odd harmless naked person here and there shouldn't be placed in the same stockade as a child-molester. They spice things up a bit. Add a little dangle to the day. I'm the first to admit that the male body is a goofy-looking thing. Aesthetically unappealing, and more than a little silly looking. Even (if not more so) those men that spend so much time in the gym they look like they were sodomized by an air-compressor. I don't want to see naked people everywhere. But there is a vicious cycle at play here. The more religious-rightists that get away with deeming the naked body pornographic, the more things they will label as pornographic. And these hypocritical nitwits need to stopped flat-footed. We've got to slowly ease them into the idea. We can't startle them with too big a notion all at once or they'll start shooting or blow themselves up. And therein lies the crux of why the odd bit of random nudity is a good thing: It gets them used to the concept.
And just to set the record straight: I don't need to see naked people… Unless I'm about to fuck them.
Or they're looking me in the eye.
nudity and other such things
Nudity.
Naked, nekkid, bare-assed, au naturel, bare-naked, unclad, starkers, in one's birthday suit, in the altogether, in the buff, in the raw, naked as a jaybird, stark naked, without a stitch, the full monty –many words indeed to describe a state of total undress.
Recently a friend (and fellow welterweight UFC bronze medalist) described being in a women's change room in the Czech Republic. It was illuminating stuff, aside from the natural male-centered tendency to imagine cute young minxes snapping wet towels at each other's asses while giggling demurely, it brought to mind the various taboos surrounding nudity in a variety of different places and societies.
The thought of being nude amongst other nude people tends to be a daunting one. Western culture, being mostly centered around Christian ideology, looks at nudity as a big no-no. Frankly, this is just as well considering the types of people that are avid church goers. This is why priests do not conduct services naked to a nude congregation. What kinds of services priests might be conducting after services won't be discussed in this missive. This is also why Jesus on the cross has a white towel around his waist with a tiny little 'Westin Hotel' logo on it.
In Europe there is far more of a tendency to be nude. Some countries more than others. For example, if you were at a Christmas party in Holland and you were presented with a pair of spandex bicycling shorts, the expectation is that you strip off whatever you're wearing then and there –Christmas carols on the radio in the background, family members of all ages watching intently– and try them on. The Dutch, you see, love to be naked. Any opportunity that arises, such as the temperature cresting 15 degrees, or a splash of water on a shirt collar, and the Dutch will strip down to their skin and spend the rest of the social event like that. Grudgingly they will put their clothes back on when it's time to leave.
Perhaps you would not like to see your relatives naked. Not so with the Dutch. This was freaky for me as a young lad. I saw far more naked twattage and breasts than any 10 year old should have to see. And it was all the wrong twattage and breasts. I would gauge it to be about 60 twats –enough light to fill a medium sized room.
Anyway.
Later, in my twenties, I would accompany my grandmother, to a nearby spa. The place was amazing. It had Turkish baths, infra-red saunas, rooms with tiny lights that would gradually change colour while you were lightly sprayed by super-heated scented mist, a hyper-active whirlpool, a larger 'cooling-pool' filled with, what I understood to be, Perrier, and a sensory deprivation float tank in which you could hear all the delightful sounds your body makes when it thinks you're not paying attention.
The thing about this place, this Mecca of hedonistic relaxation, was that it had separate change rooms for men and women. But when you emerged, naked, all sexes were nude together, wandering in and out of the different rooms, chatting amicably with each other; ballast hanging, jib at half-mast, all such equipment being studiously ignored in favour of the kind of eye-contact usually associated with police interrogations.
This is actually one of the unspoken traditions of being nude amongst nude people; always maintain strict eye-contact. The amount of eye-contact going on in these places can, at times, be unnerving –almost a staring contest in which both parties, deep below their airy chatter, are daring each other to take a peek. Which you never ever do. And you definitely do not comment on packaging:
"Good sway on those testicles today Jan. They seem to be hanging well."
"Wow Esther, how do you manage keep you labia looking so shiny?"
"Rough night there William? Your asshole's looking a little loose buddy."
As a matter of fact, all talk of bodily functions are strictly verboten. Probably because the focus of such topics is just too there in terms of contextual reference. If you ever want to clear out a sauna room quick, just make a few fart jokes and offer a nipple-pinching challenge for good measure. People –especially men– usually don't talk about sex during these occasions for very apparent (underlined) reasons.
Huh.
Suddenly I am reminded of having to deftly leap into the aptly named 'cooling-pool' because of two attractive young girls who decided to (I'm not kidding) do a tactile comparison of breast size in a jacuzzi I happened to walk by. I am grateful for that pool which was conveniently placed one jump away from what could have been a very awkward situation.
Thankfully, for the most part, all thoughts of sex are oddly missing in the all nude environment. This might be partially because the types of people you actually would like to see naked are almost never there. And even when they are, such as my gorgeous Swedish ex-girlfriend who accompanied my step-mother, grandmother and myself to the afore mentioned spa, you seem to be disassociated from any thoughts of coitus. As if your normal sex-drive has been reduced to a tiny little voice far in the back of your subconscious. I remember sitting in a sauna across from the three of them, who were conveniently sitting in a row of ascending ages, and understanding how a doctor can look at the female from in a clinical and professional manner.
Yes, and how many of you have seen your step-mother naked? Exactly.I was quite comfortable with the situation and only felt self-conscious when one of the fully-clothed staff of the spa came wandering through, thus illuminating one of the age-old conundrums of the human psyche. Clothed people make naked people feel…well…naked. As a matter of fact, clothed people hate naked people with the kind of abhorrence usually reserved for public pooping, and vice versa. I know this because I've been clothed trying to get through the nude part of a public beach (another example of the ingenuity of Czech planning) to the standard part. I was very aware of being glared at like a pariah for daring to be clothed as my feet slipped on pale glistening backs and dodged wildly flailing soccer-playing penises.
But that was there, and this is here.
Recently, in Ontario, or as I like to call it "Hreeeagh…", the ban against topless sunbathing has been repealed. This in no way should make you think that some how Ontario is becoming liberal. As I've mentioned before, being naked is a criminal offence associated with rape and public masturbation. This may have something to do with the sudden freakishly incongruous outbursts of public nudity in random places throughout North America.
This is one of the weird trends (along with the sudden wave of female teachers shagging their underage students) I've noticed in my perusal of various media outlets:
Metro – June 11th, 2007
"BROOKLYN. A man who appears nude or scantily clad near apartment windows in Kensington has traumatized at least two women since May and is still on the loose, according to police sources and the victims."
It is interesting to me that people that unwittingly witness some nudity are considered to be 'victims'. By that rational couldn't I be considered a 'victim' for unwittingly viewing Spiderman 3?
Spokesman Review – June 8th, 2007
"A naked Liberty Lake accountant plowed his Honda Odyssey minivan through lawns, into garages and into a parked car before being arrested in his neighbor's yard today, police say."
After calls from several motorists early Wednesday, Okaloosa County Sheriff 's deputies found a nude man walking near the Inn of Destin on U.S. Highway 98."
Emerald Coast – June 11th, 2007The 32-year-old man from Mesa, Ariz., was uncooperative in explaining why he was naked and where he was staying, according to a Sheriff 's Office report. He said he was in Destin on vacation and staying with his grandparents in Shalimar, the report stated."
With the kind of repression of personal freedoms going on here, it's no wonder that the odd person will cast off all their clothing and scream "Here I am…naked and free!" right before getting dive tackled by a platoon of police who then beat them like a piñata and charge them with Exposure of Sexual Organs.
But ah, the majority of North Americans frown on such wanton displays of public breastfeeding and topless sunbathing. I can only attribute this to the fact that the majority of North Americans look like large wet pears and know that they themselves could not possibly appear naked in public for fear of being harpooned.
There is this weird psychological gap between fully clothed and nude. Anything between the two is considered sexual and therefore wrong. It's, odd isn't it, that any place that allows total nudity also provides changerooms to change from clothed to naked. As if taking off your clothes is somehow dirty business, but putting them on is no big deal. Am I the only person that finds that a little… uh… screwy? I'm not so sure strip-clubs (whose point I still fail to see) would be as appealing if the girls came out entirely naked and then slowly and sexually put on some slacks and a sweater to R&B. It's states of undress that is shocking to uptight people, not dress.
Then there is the Middle-East where many women are obligated to wear a burka, (ie. Darth Vader Get-Up) or face being labeled a whore, ostracized, and stoned to death. Not only is this a huge security risk, but it's just not practical. It's hot in the Middle East. Of course that whole twisted idea is based entirely on male insecurity and a slavery-style mentality towards ownership. I, for one, don't understand what the big secret is supposed to be. If you drop a tarpaulin over a yeti, there is still a yeti underneath.
Sigh.
It's unfair for me to label the entire Middle-Eastern masculine population as 'insecure' as it seems the amount of bodily self-consciousness a society has is in direct correlation to the frequency at which nudity is acceptable. In North America, and large parts of Europe (Britain), people are obsessed with the perfect body. This is loopy because the vast majority of those populations are about as far away from the 'ideal' shape as logic is from the Burka. In other parts of Europe nudity is not such a big deal, with some practical and usually well-placed restrictions (for example, it is unwise to arc-weld, or be a zoo-keeper nude) and the people look better. They do. They're better looking per capita. Their confidence in the human form shines though in their form of human. What I'm also partially addressing here is varying levels of societal advancement. It seems that the societies with more open-minded conceptions of nudity are somehow more civilized. It's just a reflection of a pervading soft-core ideology as opposed to hard-core fundamentalism.
Does that make any sense?
Now, I'm in no way condoning rampant nudity everywhere across these lands. But I am saying that the odd harmless naked person here and there shouldn't be placed in the same stockade as a child-molester. They spice things up a bit. Add a little dangle to the day. I'm the first to admit that the male body is a goofy-looking thing. Aesthetically unappealing, and more than a little silly looking. Even (if not more so) those men that spend so much time in the gym they look like they were sodomized by an air-compressor. I don't want to see naked people everywhere. But there is a vicious cycle at play here. The more religious-rightists that get away with deeming the naked body pornographic, the more things they will label as pornographic. And these hypocritical nitwits need to stopped flat-footed. We've got to slowly ease them into the idea. We can't startle them with too big a notion all at once or they'll start shooting or blow themselves up. And therein lies the crux of why the odd bit of random nudity is a good thing: It gets them used to the concept.
And just to set the record straight: I don't need to see naked people… Unless I'm about to fuck them.
Or they're looking me in the eye.
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