July 17, 2008 - Thursday

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.

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.

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.