The Workshed

I think William and Kate are trying to steal my thunder ...

2011-04-28T22:08:00.010-04:00

Hello, blog readers? Are there any of you left out there? Have I lost you all as a result of my long, ridiculous absence? Well, it would serve me right, wouldn't it?

Even if any of you still have any desire to continue to read this blog, I know that you won't be reading it for a couple of days, because YOU, as PROUD CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, are surely overwhelmed with frenzied preparations for the celebration of WILLIAM AND KATE'S HISTORIC WEDDING. In approximately 5 hours (if you live in Toronto) you will have the privilege of witnessing this TRULY MAGICAL EVENT, and it will be forever remembered as THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE.

Meh. I think they're trying to steal my thunder.

As many of you know, I too am getting married this spring. I can only assume that the paparazzi presence and tabloid interest in my wedding will pick up after Kate and Will get their shindig over with. In order to allay any confusion that might ensue as a result of two such important weddings happening within a month of each other, I thought I would compile a handy reference guide so that everyone can keep them clear.

Similarities:
Purpose of wedding: Declaration of a lifelong commitment between two heterosexual human beings.
Season of wedding: Spring.
Wine: Yes.

Differences:
Guests: Will and Kate: 1900.
Alison and Jonathon: 90

Location: Will and Kate: Westminster Abbey/Buckingham Palace
Alison and Jonathon: Butterfly Conservatory (Cambridge, Ontario)

Animal Participation: Will and Kate: 186 horses (not including police horses.)
Alison and Jonathon: lots of butterflies and some tropical birds.

Transportation: Will and Kate: Rolls-Royce Phantom VI/ The 1902 State Landau Carriage
Alison and Jonathon: Mazda 5/hopefully bum a ride with someone heading to the Butterfly Conservatory for the wedding.

But here's the biggest difference, folks. I think that my wedding will lead to happiness. I'm not so sure theirs will. The happiest relationship will be put under tremendous pressure in circumstances like these.

Oh, I think they love each other. They both seem seem like perfectly kind, goodhearted people. And neither of them have ever donned a Nazi Uniform for a costume party. They are very rich, and will have lots of things done for them for the rest of their lives. I bet that they can book back massages whenever they want and can get tickets to any sold out concert and don't have to worry about what is or isn't covered on their dental plan.

But let's face it, their lives are going to be awful, and this wedding will just be the start of it. A 1900 person wedding means that there are probably going to be a maximum of 200 guests that the bride and groom actually feel close to, 1699 guests who are perfect strangers and (if the tabloids are to be believed) Kanye West. Seriously. Can you imagine?

"Yo, Will and Kate ... I'm happy for you, and Imma let you finish ... but Charles and Diana had one of the best weddings of all time!"

Oh yeah. Apparently this guy is coming too.

But it's not just the 1900 guests. Don't forget about the military, the police force, the undercover security, the throngs of spectators - all strangers. Add to that constancy of the television cameras and the inevitable public scrutiny ... and it's basically a description of my worst nightmare. Did I mention that Kanye West might be there?

I feel so sorry for these kids. As soon as they are married, they will make a trip to Canada, in order to glad hand another big bunch of strangers. Royal watchers are already eagerly awaiting the couple's first child (well, MALE child that is. Who cares that it's 2011 - the laws of succession have not changed, a boy still trumps a girl. If you get an heir AND a spare, so much the better!) They are too good looking to ever escape the media spotlight, and Kate will have to face critiques of her hair, her outfits, and of the placement of each pound on her body every time she steps outside. And finally, if they have any modicum of self-awareness or perception, they will be aware that, like no other time in history, their inherited positions in Britain and the world are losing relevance every minute.

So yes, their wedding will be very beautiful. I won't wake up early in the morning to watch the wedding, but I will search for pictures of their flowers and cake and, of course, Kate's dress when I do get up. And Jonathon and I may roll up to our wedding in our dog-fur-covered Mazda 5 rather than a gilt-edged horse-drawn carriage, but at least we know that our wedding will be full of friends and family that we actually know and like. And, more importantly, we are getting married because we are looking forward to how our lives will unfold after the wedding day. If I were Will and Kate, I would not feel so optimistic.

Here's to us, honey.

My new BFFs

2009-11-02T21:51:00.011-05:00

This summer, I had two gargantuan celebrity encounters. I saw Britney Spears in concert and I met Sandra Bullock in a restaurant. I suppose the Britney experience wasn't an "encounter," as there were 20,000 other people there too, but I was standing really, really close to the stage, so in my mind, we're now BFF's. Sandra too.

My 2.1 readers will know that I have long harboured a not-so-secret-interest in Britney Spears, which is mainly fueled by my immature taste in music and appalled fascination with people who get pulled through the Play-Doh-Fun-Factory-of -Stardom. I have also been a longtime fan of Sandra Bullock, despite feeling only lukewarm about many of her movies.

(Note: This is not true of Bullock's breakout role in the movie "Speed," where she and Keanu Reeves drive a bomb-rigged bus on the highway, through Los Angeles, on the airport runway and, for an inexplicable 10 seconds, into thin air. I LOVE that movie. I had just broken up with my university boyfriend when it came out and every time I started feeling blue, my friend Graham hauled me out to see that movie in the theatre. It was cheap, wonderful, bicep-filled therapy. "Crash" and "Infamous" also prove that often the material she works with does not match her true abilities as an actor.)

As these two moments were certainly the most momentous of the summer, I thought I would do a compare and contrast treatment of the two life-defining moments. Students, take note; you're going to have to do this soon with books that I force you to read.

Similarities:

1.) Prettiness.

However pretty you thought Sandra Bullock was from the movies, multiply it by 1000 and that's what she looks like in real life. The fact that America thinks of her as "the girl next door" only makes sense if America lives next door to the "America's Next Top Model" house. Britney doesn't fare so well in this respect when it comes to how she has been seen on the billion feet of celluloid that have captured her every meltdown, but let me assure you, in real life she is pretty stunning. She may not look great in all of those candid shots of her, but her genetic material is pretty darn good - when she's all dressed up, she's awful purdy.

2. ... um ... well, maybe there's just prettiness.

Differences:

There is only one here too, and it's big. Life. Sandra Bullock has got one, Britney Spears doesn't.

When my friends and I were eating in the restaurant that Sandra (Sandy) owns in downtown Austin and she and her husband and stepdaughter took a table right next to us, we were all floored. After all, we had been joking all week, to ANYONE who would listen (and several people who didn't really care to) that we were going to meet Sandy there and we would become best friends forever. And here we were, eating together! Or near each other, at least.

I was instantly overcome with shyness, but I had to take advantage of this opportunity. I had to say SOMETHING to her, didn't I? I mustered my courage and blurted out:

"We like your restaurant!"

Sigh. Oh well, it could have been worse. I could have told her how much I liked her in "Pretty Woman," or something.

But then the most amazing thing happened. She turned to our table and had a conversation with us, like a real human being. About the restaurant, about her plans for a bakery down the street, about what she liked to eat there. It was short, but it was genuine. And as I looked around the restaurant, I realized that in this place, she wasn't a celebrity. Nobody in the restaurant was reaching for their cameras and cell phones when she walked in. The waitress asked her about the health of her dogs. There was no TMZ crew stalking her, no security detail. It was just a pretty lady out with her tattooed husband and their adorable daughter, and nobody lifted an eyebrow. Sandra Bullock seems to have found a balance between fame and anonymity; she is at once exceptional and normal.

Sadly, the same could not be said of poor Britney. She is exceptional in every way. Her show, I am not ashamed to say, was spectacular. There were jugglers and magicians and acrobats and circus freaks and in the centre of it was Britney herself. She certainly has that "it" factor; the Corel Centre was packed to the rafters with screaming Britney wannabes, and none of us, me included, could take our eyes off the stage. And for a moment, when she is performing in front of her adoring crowd, it seems that she has the best life in the world.

But of course, she has no life. At least when she was spiralling downwards into the mire two years ago she went out in her car for coffee and cigarettes. She has virtually disappeared from the tabloid media radar, and I'm sure that it's not for a lack of hunting. She is so carefully managed that we don't even see her at Starbucks anymore. You know that she is still drinking frappachinos, but you also know that now there is a team devoted to getting them for her while she is relentlessly shielded from the tabloid glare. Britney has become the most rare of all circus animals - one that is taken gingerly out of its cage for the performance of a lifetime, only to be packed carefully away again and whisked to the next town under the cover of night.

The concert was mesmerizing, but it was pre-fabricated and structured down to the last millisecond. No interaction with the audience was planned or permitted. When she slowed the show down for it's one ballad of the night, she did send out a "What's up, Ottawa?" but that was all we were allowed to see of non-singing, non-writhing Britney. Upon reading reviews of other shows in other towns, I see that the exact same pithy phrase was inserted in the exact same point in the show each night.

Most stars dread fading into obscurity. This is made painfully clear every time I turn on MTV only to learn that Biz Markee needs to lose weight or that Scott Baio is 45 and single. But Britney must yearn to have the kind of anonymity that is now enjoyed by former child stars like that kid from the Sixth Sense or the kid who played Natalie on "The Facts of Life," or the Karate Kid. (Although I do actually remember the name of the guy who played The Karate Kid - it was Ralph Macchio and he is the same age as Barack Obama. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, children of the seventies!)

I kind of wish that Britney would move to Austin. After all, she's a good old southern girl, and maybe she could learn a thing or two from beautiful, gracious Sandra Bullock, who took time out of her own dinner to converse briefly with a few stammering patrons of her lovely restaurant. Maybe she and Sandy could be neighbours and end up sharing iced tea on the porch and clucking their tongues about the latest Miley Cyrus exploits.

If that ever happens, I really, really hope they invite me. After all, they are my BFF's.

"Fashionista" or "Why I should try harder."

2009-09-03T23:57:00.011-04:00

Note: This didn't actually happen today, as is written here. I just had trouble posting it last week for some reason.

Yes, another academic year is upon me, and as I think of how I will inspire my students to write freely and with aplomb this year, I turn shamefacedly towards my own, neglected blog. Poor little blog! How I have missed you!

Luckily for me, several elements of the universe have aligned to inspire me to pick up the blog again.

1.) It's September. For everyone in the world besides teachers (and perhaps students) years end on December 31 and begin on January first. But teachers begin each September with a vow to be better, stronger, faster and more organized than the year before, and to pick up things again that we have neglected over the summer.

2.) I saw Britney Spears in concert. If there is a more blogworthy topic, I'm not sure what it is. That will not be the subject of TODAY'S blog, however, because ...

3.) The weirdest thing happened to me today.

My faithful 2.1 readers will remember that I wrote a blog last year that detailed a highly entertaining and surreal ride in a taxi with a driver who (swear to God) claimed that he drove aliens around downtown Toronto. I will admit that this event isn't quite as cool as that, but it's pretty darn funny.

While my students will not return to school until next week, I have already been going in for a week, attending meetings, arranging my datebook, attending meetings, making photocopies, planning lessons and units attending meetings and attending meetings. Once this week I thought I was just eating my lunch, but it turned out that that was a meeting too.

I never find the transition to going back to work easy. It's not that I'm unhappy to go back to school - quite the contrary. It's just that I have forgotten how to get myself ready and out the door in an organized way. My showers take longer, I can never find my keys, I have to go back into the condo to get my forgotten laptop power cord, etc. It's only going to get worse when the students return because then I'll try to have to look nice too.

For many people, looking nice just seems to happen, but for me, it's not quite so simple. I don't really wear a lot of makeup, and no matter how long I spend, or how nice my hair looks when I leave the condo, by the time I get to the elevator it's all flat and insipid, so what's the point?

But hair and makeup is the least of my worries - my big problem is that I don't really know how to dress myself. I blame this on the fact that since I was about fourteen years old I had jobs where looking nice was not only not required, but downright foolhardy. My first job was at a horse stable, and my second was at a summer camp. Then a ranch, where I cared for and fed a myriad of animals which included (but was not limited to) 55 horses, 5 goats, 2 sheep, flocks of chickens and ducks and two giant pigs named Amos and Sochee. Then another farm. By the time I moved to Toronto to begin my teaching career, the only clothes I had were second-hand and came from Value Village. If I ever happen to actually look nice, rest assured, it's either a total fluke, or because I have allowed my friend Em to dress me.

(Note: I am not making this up. Em takes me shopping twice a year, picks out clothes for me and tells me what to buy and then tells me what outfits to wear. Conversations usually go like this:

Me: "Really? I should put a BELT over a SHIRT?

Em: "Yes, really. I'm telling you - it looks great."

Me: "Is it ... you know ... IN?"

Em: (patiently) "Yes, Alison, it's "in." I promise."

Me: (panicked) "What if it goes "out?" Will you tell me? Because I'll never know! I'll never know!"

Em: (soothingly) "Yes, yes, I promise."

Then we move to another store and have the exact same conversation about shoes or nail polish or pairing navy with black. I can't believe she puts up with me.)

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that because I am still in "meeting week" and I wasn't actually teaching today, I didn't put a whole lot of effort into my appearance. I just threw on a T-shirt and a long "hippie-ish" skirt and some sandals and ran out the door with wet hair. And this was all fine until I was engaged in conversation with the guy ahead of me in line at my local Tim Horton's. I was thinking about all of the things I had to do today which was mostly made up of ... you guessed it ... meetings ... and the guy looked at me and said:

"How are the meetings going?"

At this point I panicked. I thought that he must be someone involved with the school that I should know, but don't recognize. This happens to me fairly often - I can have trouble placing people when I don't see them in their usual context. Then he surprised me with:

"It's a good program, isn't it?"

This made me certain for a moment that he was connected to my school, because we do teach a very good program - the International Baccalaureate. But because I still had no idea who he was (or indeed, why he was talking to me) I decided to ask for clarification.

"I'm sorry ...what program are you talking about?"

And he said, "A.A."

At this point I thought he had mistaken me for someone else. "No, no," I clarified quickly, "I'm not in A.A.!"

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. "Huh," he said. "You know, seven out of ten times, I get that right."

Yes folks, that's right. He looked me up and down and thought that I was an addict of some kind. And he was convinced enough to make his guess publicly, in a very long Tim Horton's line. Publically and loudly. Needless to say, I was somewhat taken aback.

I mean, I knew that I wasn't dressed up, but I did take for granted that people would look at me and assume that I wasn't addicted to ... say meth, for example. I would have been hurt, if it wasn't so funny. The more I thought about it, the more restraint it took me to keep myself from bursting out laughing. At the next moment he was called forward to a cashier, and I to another, and so this life-changing exchange ended.

It did make me think about possibly trying a little harder with my general appearance. Therefore, in the spirit of the new school year, I hereby promise to try to move up to the fashion level of "trying but clueless" or perhaps even just "lame," rather than "obviously addicted to an illegal susbstance."

I do wish I had had the presence of mind to ask him WHAT he thought I was addicted to, though. In the grand scheme of things, it's not important, but honestly, I'm really, really curious.

Next blog - the Britney experience. Promise.

Get your degree, sell some bras.

2009-04-20T21:24:00.008-04:00

My best friend and I have a running joke that neither of us know anything about "typical" teenagers, despite the fact that we run across them all the time at work.

The reason for this joke is that, as a police officer, she routinely sees the "worst of the worst" - kids who damage property, steal, or hurt other kids. I, as a teacher at a small, private high school, see the "best of the best" - kind, motivated, thoughtful kids with exemplary support at home. Between the two of us, one could argue that we have never actually seen a "typical" teenager before (if such a thing actually exists; I have a feeling that it doesn't.)

Unlike my friend and I, there are lots of people who DO think that they understand the typical teenager, and they have been writing newspaper articles about them lately like nobody's business. Specifically, the articles lambaste teenagers for being lazy, infatuated with digital technology and completely unprepared for university. Well, I've got something to say about that.

First of all, I remember reading those articles when they were written about ME. Born in 1973, I am part of the much maligned "Generation X" who are technically people born between 1965 and 1980. (Note: who makes those "date" decisions about terms like "Generation X anyway? Probably some "Baby Boomer.") We were routinely described by the media in the early 90's as lazy wankers in plaid shirts (thanks to Cobain, Vedder et. al.) who had an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and extreme reluctance to move out of our parents' houses.

It was all hogwash, of course. Articles at the end of the 90's pointed out quite rightly that it was harder for university and college graduates to find work than it had ever been before, which explained both the disillusionment of the generation and the prolonged time in the parental home. I can relate: after I graduated in 1996 into an oversaturated teaching market, I had to work at four part-time jobs to make ends meet; teaching horseback riding lessons, doing publicity for a children's theatre company, selling camping equipment at the mall and, just down the escalator from the camping store, selling lingerie at La Senza.

Note: I am not making any of this up. I had four different sets of work clothes; casual for the theatre company and ultra-grubby for the horse ranch. I would work a morning shift in dressy black, white or navy clothes at La Senza (the only colours permitted unless it was Christmas, when you could add red) and then "click click click" my heels up to Hikers Haven and change into khakis and hiking boots and a uniform shirt. It was a ridiculous year. I liked Hikers Haven because I got lots of great discounts on clothes, tents and sleeping bags, but La Senza was way easier because, as a part-timer, I didn't actually have to know anything about lingerie. "That? That's a bra. It goes on your boobs." All that expertise for only $6.90 an hour.

So, as you can understand, I have read the recent articles about ... who are they? I suppose they are the tail end of "Generation Y", "Millennium babies" or "Echo boomers ..." with more than a little skepticism. If the media is to be believed, they are the "unprepared" generation. See this Toronto Star article which ricocheted around high schools and universities last week: Profs Blast Lazy First Year Students and this one about the effect that Facebook is having on university students that appeared a mere 6 days later. And if you think the articles are interesting, check out the "comments" sections that accompany them; they're full of parents blaming the schools, teachers blaming the government, professors blaming the parents, etc.

Here's what I think. I think that all of these people; the parents, the schools, the teachers, the professors and the government, haven't really thought this thing through. And I think that they're giving teens a bum rap.

It never crossed my mind that I wouldn't go to university. Both of my parents are very academic, and on my 18th birthday, two months before I graduated from high school, my dad gave me a suitcase and a dictionary. The message couldn't be clearer than that. Besides, I loved reading and analyzing novels and plays. I wanted to go to university and I was a good university student. But it also never crossed my mind that if I made another choice, I might starve to death.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but in a workforce that increasingly seems to value academic credentials, it's easy to see how today's teens WOULD feel that way. An undergraduate degree seems to have become the basic requirement for employment in any job, and if it isn't a requirement, it's certainly preferred. That undergraduate "piece of paper" has become synonymous with proving diligence and societal worth and, perhaps more alarmingly, can seem to a high school graduate like the ONLY way to prove it.

Of course, teenagers shouldn't feel this way. Community college programs, apprenticeships and life experience can teach as much as university can and ... dare I say it ... in some cases ... more. But more teens are opting for an undergraduate degree than ever before, and I'm willing to bet that it's not because they're more interested in European History or Chaucer than before. I think it's because they feel like it's the bare minimum needed to get ahead. So they go into a liberal arts program (students who feel like university is a hoop to jump through rarely sign up for applied mathematics or organic chemistry) but they don't really enjoy it. And then professors wonder why they seem unmotivated?

I really think we need to reevaluate how much respect we give to alternative forms of education and life experience. I have one friend who left university to volunteer for 3 months in South America, and was so moved by the experience that she stayed there, working on community projects for the next five years. When she finally did return to Canada, she felt tremendous pressure to complete her degree, because she was nervous about her future prospects without it. Somehow, she felt like she had something to be ashamed of because she lacked an undergraduate degree.

Now is it just me, or is that INSANE? She worked for five years for minimal pay in order to make other people's lives better; surely that's an indication of her worth as a person and a potential employee. I'm sure that she felt a real sense of accomplishment when she completed her degree, but that's what it should have felt like - an enriching accomplishment - and not an anvil hanging over her head.

I'm not saying that kids shouldn't go to university ... not at all. I have spent the last 11 years working in highly academic high schools where university is the next logical step for 98% of them. But I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't come across the occasional kid who was sweating though courses to prepare him for engineering when what he really wanted to do was be a carpenter and spend his days building things. Or the kid who really wanted to do an NGO internship but was too worried about delaying her university education by a year to go through with it.

So you professors who are lamenting the work ethic of "those kids today", perhaps you should take a moment and ask yourself why they are there in the first place. Many of them are there because it's the right place for them; indeed, my friends who are professors said in response to the Star article that they felt that they have had some of the best students in their career in the last few years. But others are probably there because they really do want to succeed, but they feel like they have to bide their time in a program that doesn't really interest or suit them, because our society doesn't offer enough respect to college programs, internships, apprenticeships or life experiences. And that's not their fault; that's ours.

Who knows? Maybe I'm just spouting off here. But remember that job I had at La Senza Lingerie? There were five part-timers there, and four of us, including me, had two degrees; an undergraduate and a teaching degree. Did those degrees help me get that job? They probably hired me over someone that didn't have them.

I guess that's not all bad though. The teaching degree certainly helped me be a true educator at La Senza:

"That? That's a bra. It goes on your boobs."

Laziness, Procrastination ... you know.

2009-02-05T22:41:00.007-05:00

Well, here it is. February, 2009. The last time I wrote a blog was before Halloween. Disgraceful.

The thing is, I love writing this blog. I love it. And yet I still fell off the bandwagon. How did that happen?

I guess I could throw all of my excuses out there. The school play was in full swing and it was consuming all of my free time. I was navigating a new relationship after three years of stolid independence and general bolshiness. It was the lead up to Christmas. There were some health issues in my family.

All of those reasons are valid to a degree, I suppose. And every time I thought I that I had a great idea for a blog I would get caught up in something else, the moment would pass, and I would find myself unable to write. But, excuses aside, I know that the truth is that sustaining anything, even something you LOVE, takes some pretty solid commitment and effort.

This is something that I have only realized in my adulthood, I think. I guess it comes with the realization that the things you love involve one or more of the following: time, money, energy. As I get older, I realize in a way that I didn't as a child, that all of these are things are finite, and a lot of them get used up while you are working.

Take reading, for instance. I love reading. I'm an English teacher for crying out loud. But I buy wayyyyyyyyy more books than I have time to read. It's ridiculous. My shelves are groaning under the weight of books that I look at and think "I'm going to read two of you this weekend! Get ready, books!" And I start the books, but I never finish even one in a weekend anymore - it often takes weeks of snatched paragraphs on the subway or right before bed before I finally hit the denoument. I'm so grateful to my book club because a) it forces me to read books I wouldn't necessarily pick up on my own and b) it keeps me to a deadline. And I need it; Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy is a whopping 1474 pages, true, but that doesn't excuse the fact that I have been reading it off and on for nearly a year. When I was in high school I read Steven King's 1134-page behemoth The Stand in three weeks.

I'm never more aware of the effort needed to keep up things that are important to you than I am when I am at the gym. Any gymgoer knows that this is the worst time of year at the gym because it is suddenly overrun with people my brother refers to as the "resolutionists." The resolutionists, of course, are the people who haven't moved since Hoobastank had their "hit" (note the sarcastic quotations marks) and decide in January that "this is the year for fitness!" and off they dash to clog up the cardio machines and hog the free weights. I won't lie; my resolve to work out is often stronger in January too. But as we all huff and puff on our treadmills like a group of marathoners who will never reach the finish line, I think of myself running joyfully as a child; not for fitness or thigh reduction but because it was the best way to get where I wanted to be. Or because I had the energy to burn. Now, despite the fact that I love how I feel when I come home from the gym, it still feels a bit like a second job.

But that's the thing about growing up, I guess. When you're a kid you don't see that you can freely indulge in the things you love because of the amount of time you have, the fact that you're not paying for your own food and hydro and dental work, and because someone is usually around to drive you to where your fun happens to be located. When you grow up, you see that your fun takes commitment and effort, and it's not always fun in the process, but hopefully, you'll find that the end result is worth the commitment.

This is a long way of saying that I felt so busy and stressed that I thought my creativity had dried up, and before I knew it, months had passed and my blog remained unchanged. But it wasn't really about my creativity - I just got overwhelmed and lazy. So, you know ... sorry about that. The truth of the matter is that I could have been writing this whole time if I had turned the damn TV off now and again. But I'm back on the wagon now, I promise. And I've even got a few ideas for future blogs ... ready? I'm sharing them with my 1.2 readers now (if you're even still here) so you can keep me honest.

I'm going to tell you about the bike ride that is going to kill me. I'm not joking about this - I think that this bike ride might actually end my life. I'm also going to tell you about how I think that the decline of western civilisation is directly related to the decline in the use of consonants in everyday speech. I'm also going to tell you about how becoming a condo owner is like joining a cult, but with less moral relevance.

So get ready ... 'cause I got some crabbin' to do.

A

Confessions of a Halloweenie

2008-10-27T21:44:00.005-04:00

I am a bona fide, certified, deep fried Halloweenie. I have always loved Halloween, and I still do.

I don't really know what it is about Halloween that appeals to me so much. I certainly do enjoy all things creepy (except for spiders.) I like chilling books and movies and plays (Note: Well, as long as there is someone there to hold my hand during the especially scary bits. Liking scary things does not necessarily translate into actually being "brave," you know.)

It's no mystery why it was so appealing to me as a kid, of course. I loved to plan my costume months in advance; I was a shy kid, and the chance to be someone or something else for a night was very appealing. Unfortunately, the thrill of the costume was nearly always marred by the reality that it is freezing cold on October 31. Every year I would fight the valiant fight, but every year my mother would prevail, and I would be stuffed into (as I remember it) a full snowsuit before I headed out trick-or-treating, any semblance of a costume completely hidden. No matter what my carefully-planned outfit was, I ended up looking like the Goodyear Blimp, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And no matter how secretly grateful I was to my mother at the end of the long, cold night, I would still kick up the same fuss the following year and the cycle would continue.

But I didn't REALLY care about how bundled up I was, because I still got to go out after dark with my friends, and I would still come home with a giant loot bag of candy at the end of the night. My friends and I quickly came to know which houses gave out the best treats; I remember nearly weeping when we discovered the house that gave out full-size chocolate bars. Cans of pop were a mixed blessing; they were delicious, but too many of them would weigh down your bag and force you home early. We knew where the dentists (and their toothbrushes) lived and which neighbours gave out apples and teeny, useless boxes of raisins. We knew where the mean old lady lived - the one who wouldn't give you anything if you were also collecting change for UNICEF. (Note: I'm not kidding about this, and as an adult I often wonder what that lady's deal was. So I did a google search using the keywords "refuse," "UNICEF" and "Halloween," and the first relevant link that came up was from the white supremacist group STORMFRONT. Figures - jerks. In any case, we fooled the mean old lady by flipping our UNICEF boxes around to the back and got candy anyway.)

But now I am all grown up. I don't go out trick or treating and I don't wear costumes. (Note: This is not technically true, as I am attending a Halloween party on Friday night and I am totally stumped about what to wear. If you have an idea for me, please post a comment and tell me! I will give you all the credit and buy you a beer.) So why is Halloween still so exciting for me?

Part of it is because I am desperate to retain some of the childhood wonder and excitement I used to feel around holidays and special occasions. When you are an adult there are meetings to sit through, paperwork to fill out and bills to be paid, and if you're not careful, you can let those moments of giddy anticipation that once punctuated your childhood pass you by. Everything is a big damn responsibility, and opportunities to get really excited over everyday occurrences are few and far between.

But here's what I think it REALLY is, and what it always has been for me. I love the fact that we have a socially mandated night of silliness and mischief and gluttony and sin inserted into our otherwise staid calendar. I mean, take Christmas, which is the apparent antithesis to Halloween. Christmas is light, Halloween is dark. Christmas is about giving, Halloween is about getting. Christmas is about what comforts us, and Halloween is about what scares us. Certainly Halloween strikes fear into a few evangelical Christian groups, who would like to see it banned altogether.

I would argue to those groups that Halloween and Christmas have something in common. I can't remember what comic pointed this out first (I know I didn't think it up!) but we spend tonnes of energy teaching and reminding kids not to accept candy from strangers ... and then we have a night where we encourage kids to do just that. And we open our doors to other people's children - sometimes a hundred of them in one night. Then we "oohh" and "ahh" over their costumes and give them a piece of candy and our goodwill as they toddle off to the next house. For such a "scary" holiday, that's a pretty sweet sentiment.

I'm too old to trick or treat, and my strict condo building does not hold the same rosy view of trick-or-treating as I do (the condo blog is coming ... I swear.) So this Friday I'll head out into my neighbourhood and take a walk at dusk. I'll go out there to see all of the kids in their snowsuits calling "Trick or Treat!" and their parents hiding in the nearby bushes, whispering "SAY THANK YOU!" at the top of their lungs. Hope to see you out there.

And just wait 'till you see me at Christmas.

The Play's the Thing.

2008-09-14T16:33:00.008-04:00

I love theatre. Full stop. I love movies too, and perhaps one day I will write a blog about my obsession with movies, but right now, I want to talk about theatre.

It's probably on my mind because I am just about to get underway with our school show. Directing a high school play is extremely rewarding, but it is also an exhausting, nerve-wracking pursuit. Your cast members are only available to you for a few hours each day after school, and have so many other things on the go that they are often totally swamped. They are balancing up to eight different academic courses, sports teams, orthodontic appointments and tutoring sessions. And more importantly, they are at the most socially tumultuous point of their lives, and can be distracted by worries about friendships, romantic relationships, and how much Axe deodorant spray to apply after gym class in order to attract the opposite sex. (Note: Boys, let me save you some time. NO amount of Axe deodorant spray will attract the opposite sex. It is heinous. Seriously. Ask around.)

I remember my very first trip to a theatrical event. I was five years old, and my father, a devotee of the theatre, took me to see a troupe called the "Strolling Players," at the London Public Library. I still remember the song they sang to open and close their show:

"We are the strolling players

We're here to play for you

We'll laugh and sing and dance and have some fun!

We hope you will enjoy us

and join in all the fun

And that is how we strolling players play!"

In my younger years I was somewhat less sophisticated, and thought that this was the pinnacle of artistic genius. I was also far less likely then to harbour disdain for a song that rhymed "fun" with "fun" than I am now. A love affair with the theatre was born.

I was completely entranced with the idea of performing, and I would drag my family (in particular my long-suffering brother) into the basement to sing songs and put on skits.
I created performances using my "Mini-Pops" albums and the John Denver and the Muppets' Christmas Album. My father brought home a Monty Python record and I memorized all of the sketches, which I performed, complete with the appropriate voices and accents in front of family AND guests (The "Argument" sketch and the ridiculous "Eric the Half a Bee" were two of my personal favourites.) I was relentlessly picked on when I was in elementary school, and my basement theatre was a place where I could make my own fun.

I finally overcame some of my shyness and, encouraged by my incredible friend Jenn, auditioned for and joined a local youth theatre troupe when I was in the ninth grade. I got some pretty good roles in high school shows, won the drama award, and went on to study English Literature and Theatre Arts at university. But I knew I would never make my living as an actor.

Now, of course I entertained fantasies of going to professional acting school and making a career out of it. I dreamed of someone discovering me and taking me to Hollywood and putting me in pictures! But I knew, deep down, that I wasn't suited to be an actor. I'm too sensitive, I'm not resilient enough, and the constant financial insecurity of the actor's lifestyle would wear me down. And by the time I was university I had finally realized what it was that I loved most about the theatre, and it wasn't about being in the spotlight.

I actually figured it out while I was leading a camping trip with some very challenging kids. I had become involved in outdoor education, and this particular group of kids came with their own group of social workers who were there to restrain them if the need arose (I am not joking.) The first two days of the trip had been pretty shaky, but all of a sudden the group began to click. As I watched them working together and negotiating what needed to happen in order to set up their tents, I was struck by how much can happen when people work hard together to accomplish something.

And that's what I love about the theatre. I love watching the actors do their thing, but it goes way beyond that. I love the fact that behind the actors is a set that somebody built, lit by lights that somebody else hung and designed, and dressed by props that somebody else collected. I love the fact that the audience radiates energy back to the actors and crew. A play feels alive and subtle and exciting and changeable, and that's not an experience that you can have at a movie theatre. Teaching drama and directing high school shows has allowed me to take the best part of what I love and share it with my students. I don't care in the least whether or not they pursue acting when they leave high school. But I do hope with everything in me that they leave with an appreciation of the art form and with the knowledge that if you can collaborate positively with a group of people, you can create something extraordinary.

Directing a play can be frustrating, and it can feel like it will never come together. But on performance nights, I am completely overwhelmed with pride and respect for the hard work and talents of my students, and I am already excited to begin the process again. I compare it to what I imagine childbirth must be like; painful, stressful and messy, but the minute you see the final product the memory of the pain vanishes and you are willing to do it again. (Note: My mother assures me that this is true of childbirth, although I feel compelled to point out that she was so highly medicated during my birth that she thought that she saw birds flying around the delivery room. True story.) Anyway, that's how it goes when you are working on a play, in any capacity.

So, without the aid of even one tiny epidural, I am leaping into directing Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile with my excellent students this term who will act, stage manage and design. It will be time consuming and it will be difficult. I'll get tired and I'll get cranky and I'll get frustrated.

And I can't wait to get started.

Hey! Teachers! Leave Them Kids Alone!

2008-08-26T19:23:00.015-04:00

Well, it has arrived. The inevitable return to school.

My students, of course, have not returned to school yet. This is the mandatory preparation week during which teachers drag themselves back in to their classrooms and try to recall their login passwords and remember who "Hamlet" is.

I always have mixed feelings about this week. On the one hand, it's wonderful to get back into your office, to organize your day planner, and to have the chance to catch up with your colleagues before the students arrive and you really start running. On the other hand, it's incredibly boring. The only good thing about teaching is the actual time TEACHING ... it's the students who bring the life into the school. The rest of it, no matter how hard administrators try and how earnest they are ... is really pretty boring by comparison. For example, we spent yesterday going over school policy, procedure and ... get ready for it ... the new computer program that will assist us in organizing our markbooks. Boo-yah! And tomorrow, we will complete our mandatory eight hour First Aid course. I think that being trained in First Aid is important, and I absolutely understand why we are doing it, but ... it's going to be really sunny tomorrow, and I just don't wanna.

As a matter of fact, I was working up a pretty darn bad attitude about all of this back-to-school prep, when I remembered that I could be teaching in Harrold, Texas this year. Many of you will have already heard that Harrold is the first district in the United States in which teachers will be able to carry concealed weapons into the classrooms. Not to worry though. These teachers, according to the superintendent, must be registered to carry firearms and must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations. I guess that's how they are spending their preparatory week, if they have one. (Note: The superintendent has also stipulated that teachers must select ammunition for their guns that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls. Talk about reassuring!)

Now, this policy may seem ridiculous, even horrific, but the superintendent has an explanation for it. The town of Harrold is 30 minutes away from the closest emergency response centre, so the teachers need to be armed in the event of a school shooting situation. Seem reasonable?

Here's my problem with this explanation. The school district of Harrold, Texas, has a total of 110 students in it. I would never want to trivialize the possibility of a school shooting, as one cannot assume that any particular school is completely immune, but wouldn't it make more sense to monitor the tiny student population instead of bringing guns IN to the school? I don't know about you, but I can't think of one teacher that I have that would have instilled confidence in me as a student if they were packing heat. As my friend Graham recently reminded me, I had a prof in university who couldn't find her TELEPHONE in her office when it started ringing while we were having a conference. And I don't mean a cell phone, either ... I mean a late 70's model, 40 pound, plastic, land-line telephone. With a rotary dial.

Ah ... but the Harrold superintendent has ANTICIPATED the argument about his teeny, tiny town, and has clarified his statements. He is worried not about his students shooting each other, but rather about the school's proximity to a large, interstate highway, which anyone can drive down. So, in essence, he is worried about an anonymous maniac on the highway pulling over, coming into the school, and shooting students and teachers. Now, I am not 100% positive about this, but until I see proof otherwise, let's call this event ... unprecedented.

Of course, the considerable pro-gun faction in the United States is having a field day with this, particularly with the recent gun tragedy in a Knoxville, Tennessee School last week. But I can't help but wonder if armed teachers would have made this particular situation better or worse. It was a targeted attack - one student shot another and then fled. If a teacher, with rudimentary training in crisis management, had flung his bullets into the fray, would there still be only one victim? Would it have been clear in that split second, even to the best-intentioned person, who the gunman actually was, and at whom the gun(s) should be pointed?

I really think that if a school feels the need for increased safety, the kind of safety that can be accomplished only by armed personnel (and I have no doubt that there are schools that are concerned with this) then they should hire a highly-trained individual who will act as a security guard on campus. It is difficult enough for a teacher to build a rapport with their students, and it is tricky to squeeze trust through the barrel of a gun. Then again, Texas doesn't seem to be particularly concerned with teacher/student rapport; according to a recent report by the Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, 48,197 Texas students were hit by teachers or principals in the 2006/2007 school year. That's right, folks, Texas is one of 13 states in which corporal punishment is not only legal, but "frequently used." Doesn't this make the school in Harrold seem even more appealing? I don't know about you, but nothing about an environment where armed adults are allowed to hit students says "education" to me. And it certainly won't say "safety" to the students.

So, in light of all this, I will skip happily to school tomorrow in giddy anticipation of my eight hours of First Aid training, and I will welcome my boring policy meetings with a positive attitude. Because I know that somewhere, in a dark and scary place, some teachers are preparing for their school year on a firing range. And I, thank God, am not one of them.

Confucius has nothing on Larry.

2008-08-14T23:06:00.012-04:00

DISCLAIMER:

I generally have nothing but disdain for people who whine about their dating lives publicly on their blogs. So I generally never do it. But this one is just too damn good to leave alone.

My friend Larry, through a simple philosophy, has given my life meaning. And here it is:

Life should be viewed as a method of collecting anecdotes.

This may seem simplistic, unfulfilling or even sacrilegious ... but it is the only way that I can continue to muddle my way through life and have it not seem entirely ludicrous.

Anyone who has known for more than 25 minutes knows that my life continually veers toward weirdness. I'm not sure why this is; on the surface, I am pretty much an average plain Jane, with several passable life skills, none exceptional. I play the piano and sing reasonably well, but not well enough to put on a concert (my flute and saxophone skills have slipped well below "bearable.") I'm a pretty good volleyball player, horseback rider, dancer, public speaker. I think I'm quite a good English teacher, but then again, you can't open your car door without hitting an English teacher. I can write, but my proof of that is about 50 unfinished writing projects in various drawers and filing cabinets and computer hard drives. So it's reasonable to think that my life would tend toward the ordinary. Not so. For example:

1) When I was five, I was the only kid in London Ontario to contract scarlet fever that year. Yes, you have heard of scarlet fever before - it's the medieval disease that eventually kills Beth in Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women," published in 1868. I don't think that anybody BESIDES me has had it since that book became a best-seller.

2) I was called for jury duty AND audited by the government of Canada before my twenty-fifth birthday.

3.) I have been inside a house while it was being robbed. I was with my friend Allison Campbell-Rogers (ACR) and luckily we were oblivious - we were upstairs watching "South Park" while the downstairs was being looted. I am convinced that the robbers did not come upstairs because of our hysterical laughter, and therefore can say with some certainty that "South Park" saved my life.

4.) I have been hit by a car. While standing on a sidewalk. By a drunk driver. Who was STEALING the car. In CUBA. I did avoid any major, lasting injuries, which I suppose makes me lucky. I would argue however, that I am not as lucky as, say, people who DON'T get run over by drunken, international auto thieves.

See what I'm saying? All weird, but all worthy anecdotes.

It is this philosophy that has led me to value my latest weirdo experience, or at least reach a level of acceptance that prevents me from descending into a total depression and drinking fabric softener on the weekends. So here it is.

About two months ago, I received a package in the mail. It was exciting - I love getting non-bill mail. "It must be a gift!" I thought. I grabbed the package and raced up to my condo to open it. Inside the package was a hardcover copy of "The Prisoner of Azkaban," the third book in the Harry Potter series. That was it. No note, nothing else. And, to make matters more confusing, I realized that the package was not addressed to me BUT my name and address did appear in the top left-hand corner in the "return address" space. The package itself was addressed to a man I had never heard of, at an address I had never been to.

I was totally stumped. Why would anyone send me this book? Was it mine? I checked my bookshelf; my copy of "The Prisoner of Azkaban" was missing, along with several other books in the series. (Note: I am a compulsive book lender, and I admit that I never keep track of where they are. I simply trust that they will be returned to me, and truly, most of them are, sooner or later.) Was it possible that I packaged up the book, sent it to a stranger, and it was returned to me due to insufficient postage? I can be absent-minded, but this seemed ridiculous. I did a reverse-phone number search using the address on the package, but in the end I simply felt too shy and silly to phone. I mean, what was I going to say?

"Ummm ... hi ... I don't know you ... do you know me? Because I think I sent you a children's book ... no ... I'm not sure ... well, I know it seems like I'm crazy but ... I guess it could be dementia ... I did have scarlet fever as a child, you know ..."

So, I did the only thing I could think of - I put the book on my shelf and went about my life. Then, last week, I finally got an answer to the riddle that had been quietly plaguing me for months.

My 2.1 readers will remember that, although my intention was to NEVER discuss my dating life on this blog, I had one date that was so supremely awful that I included a scathing description of it in my "Youb tube" blog. I simply can't bring myself to write about it again, so you can look it up or just trust me. All you need to know is that he showed me the grossest Youtube video ever ... which involved ... well ... POO ... and then treated me with utmost disdain when I didn't share his sense of humour. I never expected to hear from him again, so you can imagine my surprise when he called to see if I had received the book.

"I'm glad you called," I told him. "I couldn't figure out where the book had come from, or if it was even for me."

"What, you don't remember loaning it to me?"

I suppressed the urge to say that not remembering much of our encounters was probably due to some kind of post-traumatic stress. "No, sorry. I was confused because the package wasn't addressed to me, and there was no note inside."

"Oh yeah, that was my experiment. I figured it would cost $6.50 to mail, so wrote you down as the "sender" and threw it in the box without postage. See? You got it back as the "sender" because of "insufficient postage." I just didn't want you to think I was the type of guy who wouldn't return a book. Even though you hate me anyway."

Now at this point, about a billion things were going through my head. Here's a brief synopsis:

1.) That's actually pretty clever.

2.) I don't HATE him ... hate is an awfully harsh word.

3.) Well, he's got a PhD in physics ... so it's not really all THAT clever.

4.) What does it matter if I think he doesn't return books? I already know that he shows scatological videos on dates.

5.) And now I know he practices mail fraud.

6.) And that he's cheap.

7.) Maybe I do hate him.

8.) Seriously, this is stupider than getting hit by that car.

After I hung up the phone, I started laughing, and I couldn't stop. The book episode was perfect closure for this ridiculous four-date "relationship." And, as anecdotes go, it's one of the best I've got. My friends who go on "real" dates that involve things like dinner and pleasant conversation will never build up a story bank like mine. And really, isn't that what being a writer is all about? Finding stories?

Larry, you're right. Your philosophy gives value to the stupidest things, and makes me see humour everywhere. So I thank you. Because otherwise my life would be too depressing for words, and I would certainly be drinking Woolite on weekends.

P.S. And ladies, if you ever come across a tall, handsome physicist-turned high-school teacher, don't let him near your computer and don't loan him any books. Unless, of course, you are looking to collect some anecdotes of your own.

The Open Road, Open Air, and an Open Letter to a Jackass.

2008-07-27T19:14:00.013-04:00

I recently returned from a two week road trip during which I camped my way through British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon. I love going on solo road trips, and the Pacific Northwest is absolutely stunning. As always, dear readers, I have returned with random observations and a cranky rant which I hope will amuse and delight.

Random Observations: THE OPEN ROAD.

I love driving through the United States of America for the following reasons:

1.) Unlike Canadian drivers, U.S. drivers do not find it too taxing to engage the little finger on their left hand to indicate that they are going to turn their car. I am constantly amazed by the staunch refusal by many Canadians to burn the .000000001% of a calorie it takes to indicate that they are immediately going to cross eight lanes of traffic. While I admire our nation's physical economy, I must admit that I prefer the U.S. attitude towards turning.

2.) The U.S. Road Signage system is the most vigilant public safety service that I have ever seen. If a pebble should wobble from the shoulder onto the highway, U.S. road signage services immediately spring into action and erect the following signs to alert oncoming traffic of the upcoming hazard:

BUMP - 2 MILES

BUMP - 1.5 MILES

BUMP - 1 MILE

BUMP - .5 MILE

BUMP - REALLY SOON

BUMP - SERIOUSLY, I'M NOT KIDDING, THE BUMP IS COMING ANY MINUTE. IS YOUR SEATBELT ON? YOU SHOULD PROBABLY PUT YOUR COFFEE IN THE CUPHOLDER TOO.

BUMP - .000001 MILE

BUMP!

For all of the "BUMP!" signs I saw on my trip, I can honestly say I never felt a single bump, and certainly nothing even came close to Toronto's spring potholes. It was, however, very reassuring to know that should a possum shed a few hairs while it crossed a road, the road signage services would take immediate action to alert me of that fact at least eight times before my tires touched any follicles.

3.) The roads are so luxuriously wide that, had my car been capable, I could have driven it sideways throughout my entire trip and still been well within my own lane. Enough said.

Random Observations: Open Air.

I have done a few roadtrips before, and the best way to travel through the U.S. and Canada and save a few bucks is to take a sleeping bag and a tent and camp at state and provincial parks. The added bonus to this approach is that parks are usually designated as parks because they are attached to something beautiful, and you can hike, bike, climb, swim or ride a horse through whatever that beautiful thing is. I climbed to the top of Cape Perpetua and swam in the chilly Pacific in Oregon, and hiked through the lava flow rocks of Mt. St. Helen's in Washington.

What amazed me about my open air experiences in the U.S. was that on all of my excursions I was completely alone. I didn't see another soul, not even on treks that were outlined as some of the best in the country, despite the fact that the adjoining campgrounds were full to capacity.

Twice during my trip I was absolutely desperate to share what I was seeing with someone, but there was no one to be found. One experience took place at a whale watching centre in Depoe Bay, Oregon, which is strangely proud of its claim to fame as the "world's smallest harbour." I had been scanning the horizon for whales through my crappy binoculars for about 10 minutes when I was joined on the observation deck by a family of five. They glanced left, glanced right.

"Hmph. No whales. And we walked up all of those stairs!" the mother grumbled.

And off they went, back down the stairs. They had been on the observation deck for all of 30 seconds. This meant that I was all alone, fifteen minutes later, when three humpback whales began to breach and then continued to hurl their bodies out of the water for over twenty minutes. Alone on the observation deck, afraid to take my eyes off of them for a second, I kept calling out "Whale! Whale!" to anyone that was nearby and listening ... which of course, was no one.

During my visit to Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area (yep, that's what it's called) I decided to forgo the long line of people waiting to walk up the three flights of stairs in the historic lighthouse and to explore the winding paths and the black rock beach below. When I got to the shore, there was (of course) no one else there. As I trained my binoculars on a rock offshore to gaze at a group of harbour seals sunning themselves, I heard a strange sound on the sand by my feet. When I looked down I saw that a seal pup had launched himself out of the surf, and was wiggling his way up the beach towards me. He stopped, and looked at me with a quizzical look on his face, while I frantically looked around for someone to share this moment with. But again, there was no one.

My new friend

My gut reaction to these experiences was to encourage Americans to take advantage of their national park system. To go exploring. Then, something happened to change all of that. And that leads me to, as promised ...

An Open Letter to the Jackass who hiked the Falls Trail at Silver Falls State Park sometime before July 2, 2008.

Dear Idiot,

You don't know me, and I don't know you. But I do know that you are a grade-A jackass.

I know this because I camped at Silver Falls State Park on July 1 and 2 of this year. I picked that park specifically because I wanted to hike the legendary Ten Falls Trail - the eight mile loop that would take me past ten stunning waterfalls. Imagine how thrilled I was when I woke up early, drove to the trailhead and saw that no one else was parked there. Imagine how excited I was each time I encountered a new waterfall. Imagine how peaceful and tranquil my hike was as a result of the fact that everyone else in the park was still at their tent sites, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and watching movies on their portable DVD players.

Now imagine what it was like for me, almost three hours into my hike, to arrive at the ninth and tallest waterfall, to find the dirty diaper that you left rolled up on a rock next to the waterfall pool.

Now, here's how I see it, you jerk. You clearly put a clean diaper on your kid, because even taking the shortest route back would have been over an hour's walk. This means that you must have brought some kind of carrying device in which you transported the clean diaper that you put on your child. Now, I know that this is a radical idea, but ... and try to stay with me here, brainiac ... that same carrying device could have been used to transport the dirty diaper OUT of the waterfall grove.

Now, this isn't just about the fact that it ruined the beauty of the waterfall site, but the fact that I, as an environmentalist and a staunch NON-dickweed, felt compelled to carry the diaper out of the waterfall canyon in MY backpack. For over an hour. And I don't know EXACTLY what was inside the diaper, but I do know that there are only two options, and they are both gross. If it comes out of YOUR kid, you putz, it is YOUR job to carry it out of the area of natural beauty.

And if you just don't want to take that kind of responsibility for your kid's excrement, then let me know. I will personally buy you a portable DVD player and a lifetime supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon if you promise me that you will stay on your campsite and away from hiking trails or other pretty things from now on. Or ... maybe you should just stay in your own house.

Sincerely,

P.S. Jerk. The site of the crime!

Summer Vacation ... Ask Me How!

2008-07-14T23:48:00.015-04:00

When I started writing today, I thought I
was going to write a blog about my 10-day camping trip in the Pacific Northwest, which, as a special bonus, would have included an open letter to a Jackass. But you'll have to wait a day or two for that one, because I just wanted to get this off my chest first.

I was in the elevator in my condo building today, taking my camping equipment back to my storage unit in the parking lot. A man that I hadn't met before got on the elevator and glanced at my backpack.

"Going on a camping trip?" he enquired.

"No, just getting back." I smiled.

"Oh, so back to work then. Too bad."

I should have just agreed with him. But no, I wasn't smart enough. "Well, I'm a teacher, so ..."

"Oh, a TEACHER," he said. "Two months off. Huh. Must be nice."

Okay. I never know what to say to this, and this is the response that every teacher gets from everyone they meet as soon as the teaching thing comes up. It may or may not be delivered as a "joke," but it is always spoken in the same disdainful, slightly accusatory tone of voice. It always makes me feel like I need to either a) apologize for my offending holidays or b) offer justification as to why teachers really do earn their vacation time. Up until recently, I did neither - just stared at my shoes and shuffled my feet apologetically, and maybe murmured something about all of the evening, weekend and yes, even summer commitments that teachers have.

Because here's the thing; it is nice. It's awesome. Teachers do get better vacations than pretty much anybody else - summer vacation, Christmas vacation, March break. We know this, and it's easy to feel guilty about it when a sensitive individual on an elevator focuses on the perks of the job rather than the monumental work involved. (Note: I wonder, what Mr. Elevator would say if he were introduced to a lawyer? Let me guess ... "So you're rich. Huh. Must be nice." Hmmmmm ... somehow I don't think so.)

But no more! I refuse to feel guilty about my summer vacation anymore, because I have EARNED it and I'll tell you how. Let's just assume that we all agree on the easy stuff here, shall we? The lesson planning, the marking, the coaching, the theatre club, the dance supervision, the lunch duties, the staff meetings and the parent/teacher interviews - yep, they all take lots of extra time above and beyond the normal workday. But it's another, lesser acknowledged reality that can take its toll on a teacher. I am speaking of the relative lack of anonymity, and the constant awareness that everything you do will be scrutinized by a larger community. This is true of your classes, your marking, your material (and of course, it SHOULD be) but it extends further than that. For example, whenever I am in a bar I am always worried that I will run into an underage student that has been able to sneak in. What are my responsibilities at that point? My night out at a bar shouldn't have anything to do with my job, but it's within the realm of possibility that it could, and that's unnerving.

A teacher's website or online blog can be a professional nightmare. Earlier this year, the head of a private day school in Toronto resigned after an anonymous email (I really have to wonder here WHY the email was anonymous, but I digress ... ) was circulated to the parent community which featured six of the several poems that were displayed on his website. Penned sometime between 1973 and 2003, these particular poems contained sexual and violent themes and material. His biggest mistake was arguably not actually writing the poems, but putting them on a website instead of hiding them in a place where no one would ever would ever see them, such as inside the pages of a book of poetry. As a result of the content of the poetry, questions immediately arose in the community as to whether or not he was an appropriate person to lead the school, despite the fact that he had been recruited from England for this specific position four years earlier.

Now, a few things about this. We should probably note that the guy has been writing poetry for twenty years, and only six poems were singled out as offensive (and really, they are not even very good poems.) We should also note that displaying the material on his website (now defunct) was not only dumb, but irresponsible. He knows what the Internet is after all, and he knows what a private school principal is. Finally, we should acknowledge that parents place a huge amount of trust in teachers and principals, and that they are absolutely right to be concerned about and protective of their children.

But is a writer one of the things that kids have to be protected from? One of the first things that I teach my students is that the AUTHOR is an entirely different entity than a NARRATOR or a CHARACTER (or in the case of poetry, a SPEAKER.) If we assume that the content of a literary work reveals the intention or personality of the author, then Stephen King would have to go to prison, and we should probably execute Thomas Harris, who wrote "The Silence of the Lambs." Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro would certainly have a lot to answer for in their writing if they were teachers. And Shakespeare wouldn't even be able to make it through the front doors of a school if we were to assume that he espoused the values of his characters (cannibalistic chef extraordinaire Titus Andronicus comes to mind.) You can pursue artistic interests if you are a teacher - but you'd better be careful that your art is appropriate and palatable and that it is not easily accessible ... and a pen name may be in order.

Being a teacher impacts your entire life, and once you have the enormous responsibility of educating and caring for children, your whole public persona needs to be evaluated and perhaps reconsidered. You agree to carry your professional responsibilities into your personal life to some degree, and you accept the fact that you are held to a higher moral standard than people in most other professions. I'm not saying that this is wrong - far from it. I'm just saying that THAT'S one of the ways that you earn your two months of summer vacation.

In the end, these consessions are worth it for me because I LOVE teaching. Love it, love it, love it. I love summer vacation too - that's part of the package. And, for all of you people who lurk in elevators and sneer resentfully at my vacation time, buck up! There's no need for jealousy! YOU TOO can have two months off a year! Just follow these six easy steps, and eight weeks of bliss will be yours:

1.) Quit your job.
2.) Go to teachers' college.
3.) Graduate.
4.) Acquire a teaching job.
5.) Spend every day with kids who are not yours. If you're a high school teacher like I am, that could translate easily to 75-100 different kids during 3 or 4 different periods in a day. Spend your weekends planning things you'll say to them in the next week and reading stuff that they write. Give up your lunches and do extra tutoring and coach and direct and challenge and comfort, and prepare to get barfed on during school dances/long, field-trip school bus rides.
6.) Take your summer vacation.

See? That's not so hard, is it?

A

P.S. Perhaps you should also include step 7 - establish a pen name. I may have to myself for my upcoming "Open Letter to a Jackass."

Graduation, Growing Up, and why John Hughes is a big fat liar.

2008-06-21T23:47:00.015-04:00

Over the last month I have had lots of opportunities to reflect on this mysterious phenomenon that is referred to as "growing up." (Note: Like many other colloquialisms in the English language, I feel compelled to comment on the apparent inaccuracy of this one, which seems, grammatically at least, to be referring to height, not age. Of course, this could apply to me specifically, as I am about 12 feet tall, but I digress.) Such self-reflection can be jarring, to say the least.

Last night, I attended a lovely dinner party to celebrate the accomplishments of the graduating class of 2008. My 2.1 readers may know by now that I am a high school teacher, and this is the first year that I have taught grade 12, the final year of high school in Ontario. I am very lucky to teach at an outstanding school, and to work with some truly excellent students. They are not all dedicated scholars, but they are all kind, compassionate and thoughtful people, and I am very grateful to work in such a positive environment. The students at the dinner (finally freed from their defining school uniforms and ties) looked like sophisticated young adults, and behaved with grace and decorum before they left the hall to go on to their graduation party. (Note: it did seem that a few students had started the party before the formal dinner ended, and to those students; don't kid yourselves ... parents and teachers notice more than you think.)

As if that wasn't enough to inspire a bit of nostalgia, three weeks ago, I attended the celebration of my high school's 45th anniversary. Revisiting high school is a bit of a disconcerting experience, partly because of how much you have changed, and partly because of how much you haven't. I certainly appreciate my high school teachers more now that I am a teacher myself. Because I was a vocal and instrumental music student I had the pleasure of being taught by two of the best teachers in the school. Watching them now with their students, seventeen years (gulp) after my own graduation, I am filled with gratitude and an understanding of how hard they worked and how much they inspired us. (I think that it is not a coincidence that in my circle of, say, fifteen friends who had these teachers, seven of them now make money as professional musicians.) I also have a much better comprehension of the world that I live in, and I understand now (as I did not understand then) that it doesn't actually revolve around me.

But it's the ways that I haven't changed that interest me the most, principally the fact that I am still waiting to feel like an adult. When I look around, I see the trappings of adulthood all around me ... a condominium (aka debt with carpeting), a steady job and a hopelessly indulgent shoe collection. I read the paper. I drink wine with dinner. I'm a member of Amnesty International. But this doesn't change the fact that I don't feel like a "grown up." Acquiring the condo on my own was absolutely terrifying, and even after eight months I have a few unpacked boxes still on the floor. I need advance notice when company is coming over so that I can spend extra time cleaning so that I can look impressive. Sometimes I eat potato chips for dinner. When a friend or family member is sick or sad, I feel scared and helpless. Truthfully, most of the time I still feel like a gawky, awkward teenager, just trying to figure stuff out. And this brings me to John Hughes.

For everyone who had the dubious pleasure of teasing their hair in the 80's, John Hughes was the voice of the teen generation, or at least he kept telling us that he was. He wrote and directed such movies as "Pretty in Pink," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "Ferris Beuller's Day Off," and "Sixteen Candles." I was very familiar with these movies as they were requisite viewing at every single birthday party I went to from 1984-1988. I knew somewhere deep down that the situations in the movies did not represent my life (senior male hunky student falls in love with awkward sophomore, cute sensitive guy gives up his crush on popular girl and chooses faithful girl-best-friend instead, kid skips school and ends up in parade, etc.) but boy, did I want them to. However, none of Hughes' movies strayed farther from any semblance of reality than "The Breakfast Club," the 80's teen movie cornerstone about five diverse students who spend 8 hours together during a Saturday detention.

"The Breakfast Club" is riddled with so many gaps in logic that it is only as realistic as, say, "Spiderman." For example, doesn't it seem strange that a high school principal would a) hate teenagers (as it is clear that he does in the film) or b) choose to spend his entire Saturday at school with the kids he hates the most? (Note: In the movie he actually commits to two months of Saturday detentions. I mean, seriously, folks. I have to do one hour of detention duty a YEAR and I resent it like crazy.) There's just not enough space in the blog to go through all of the unrealistic aspects of this "slice of life" film, so we'll just focus on the most egregiously manipulative one. It's most apparent when the kids are all angsty and weepy and learning that different types of people can be friends. Ally Sheedy's character (shamefully named Allison) proclaims to the group mournfully that "when you grow up ... your heart dies."

Now, Mr. Hughes, I hate to be a stickler about this, but according to my calculations that movie came out when you were 35 years old ... the same age that I am now. I certainly understand the marketing tactic you were going for; after all, how better can you engage an adolescent audience than to remind them that they need to rail against the evil adults? And I am willing to bet that your adult, cold, dead heart was at least somewhat warmed by the gobs of money that you earned as a result of that movie. But ... didn't it occur to you that your demographic would eventually graduate from high school, grow up and have something to say about the predicted death of their hearts?

As I watched my students celebrate their graduation yesterday, I wanted to tell them things about adulthood that would have probably bored them to tears. I wanted to tell them that they are embarking on an incredibly exciting time in their lives, but that they are going to have to search for the opportunities that will enrich them, rather than having opportunities handed to them. I wanted to tell them that they are going to fail sometimes, because ... well, sometimes you fail. It sucks and you deal with it. I wanted to tell them that although they will take responsibility for more and more in their lives (friends, money, education, pets, spouses, children, debt with carpeting,) they will often feel as nervous and unsure as they do right now. That despite their uncertainty, they will make the best decisions they can and soldier on with the consequences. And I want to tell them that John Hughes is a big fat liar and that their hearts will love more deeply and break harder than they can imagine.

Kids (and I know some of you sneaky ones have found this blog) I've had some experience and done some thinking on this topic, but here's all I can come up with. I hate to break it to you, but adulthood doesn't mean answers. All it means is that you decide every day whether you will be a good person, a mediocre person or a dickweed, and that you alone will be responsible for those decisions and what comes as a result of them. Things are complicated, so you have to think of ways to simplify them in order to find your way in this crazy, "grown up" world. Sometimes things are awesome and sometimes things suck, and you never know which it's going to be or when it will suddenly change. All you ever get to control is how you live in this world, how hard you work and how you treat other people. And that's it. In terms of life wisdom, that's all I've got. I don't know what else to tell you, kids, so I'll leave it to Kurt Vonnegut, who penned this, my favourite quotation. I think it's the best guideline for life that you can be given:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you have about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of– God damn it, babies, you've got to be kind."

A

P.S. You should also be kind to John Hughes if you ever see him ... even if what you really want to say to him is "Up yours, you big fat liar."

Geekdom (or Why Sex is Scarier than Chainsaws)

2008-06-07T19:59:00.046-04:00

It occurred to me today, as I stood in a line for two hours in 30 degree weather in order to buy two tickets for the 300th performance of "Evil Dead, the Musical!" and the after-show party, that I am a geek. It's a difficult reality to avoid when you are standing in a ticket line with people who are feverishly passionate about musical zombie dismemberment via prosthetic chainsaw.

I could try to present the case that my interest in "Evil Dead: The Musical!" is highly academic and that I am, therefore, not a geek. I could argue the play is incredibly clever, and that I am intrigued by the way that it uses dialogue, music and choreography to lampoon every other musical that has ever been written. I could pontificate about how innovative and technical the show is, and about how I appreciate the physical and musical demands of the roles. I could even add that some of the most intelligent people I know have seen the show and loved it. All true. But it doesn't change the fact that I am really pretty geeky about it.

It ain't easy, being geeky, even for a moderate like me. I classify myself as a "moderate" on the basis that I never dress up in costume (with the exception of a series of Halloween parties in my younger days and one teenaged viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.) I do not collect action figures, nor do I write fan fiction. There are many iconic cult obsessions to which I am completely immune: Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Twin Peaks, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, anything with a video game console, Hannah Montana and Star Wars. (Note: All right, all right, before you rip my head off, I was a fan of the first two Star Wars films, particularly "The Empire Strikes Back." Who wasn't? But surely you must have noticed the Lucas/dollar inverse ratio; the more money that Lucas has, the crappier his films get. He can't even leave the first two good ones alone; he has digitized and sanitized them to death.)

My first brush with real geekdom came in university when I became mildly obsessed with the TV show "The X-Files." My friend Cathryn and I were so enamoured of the show and so anxious to learn the exciting conclusion to a gripping two-part episode that we decided to attend a meeting of the university's "X-Files Club." (I am not kidding.) Somehow the club had gotten a copy of the episode two days before it was scheduled to air, and we could go to the meeting and watch it without commercials. Bliss! But the viewing came with a high price; the organizers of the club did not want to let us simply watch the videos - instead they became obsessed with recruiting Cathryn and I, their "new members," for their X-Files club pub crawls, T-shirt and cap design and bake sales. Needless to say, we did not attend other meetings and only watched the X-Files in our dorm after that. We were not geeky enough for that group.

Perhaps in some ways it is harder to be a moderate geek. Let's say you are really into Star Trek, so you go to conventions and club meetings and, as a result, find yourself surrounded with people who agree with you, and who you have that passion in common with. The moderate geek doesn't have the inclination (or time, or money) to pursue an interest to that level, so they will occasionally try to half-heartedly defend their interest to their colleagues in their staff lunchrooms: "No really! I know it sounds silly, but "Buffy the Vampire Slayer really is a fantastic show!" Or take today's "Evil Dead: The Musical!" ticket line. Most of the people there seemed to have arrived in large groups; I arrived on my own. I didn't have the requisite black t-shirt with a horror movie/death metal logo, the black fingernails, tattoos or piercings - in my white cotton skirt and tank top I stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a friendly, patient, jovial group of people, all laughing and socializing, and they probably thought I was aloof as I hid behind my copy of "The Painted Veil," out of shyness. And because I hadn't arrived early enough (like the real fans did) I missed the line cutoff for the 300th performance tickets.

But you shouldn't feel badly for me - I embrace my pseudo-geekiness and nobody really bugs me about it. Who we should all feel sorry for are arguably the newest "geeks" out there - the "Sex and the City" fans, or "chic-geeks." These are the people who dressed up in their highest fashion duds and sashayed out to the earliest showings of the long-anticipated film. (Note: I'm not being critical; I tried to do just this last Tuesday night (well, in my rather boring duds, but nonetheless.) Unfortunately, when I arrived to buy tickets they were all sold out. Just like today, I didn't make it there in time as a true, better-than-moderate fan would have.) Women have been flocking in droves to, and enjoying this movie, but we should feel sorry for them because something scary is happening.

When I went online to read about viewer response to "Sex and the City," I was surprised at what I found on the Internet Movie Database page about the film. First of all, it had a "user rating" of 4.9/10, which seemed to be very low to me considering the positive response the movie has had. But I was far more shocked by the comments that were being posted on the film's message board. Here's a sampling of what can be found there; I have not altered any part of the comments including spelling and grammar:

"Ok lets see what feminism has given us:abortion-thanks to this we have few future workers to replace the elderly,divorce-ok i understand sometimes divorce is neccasary ie abusive relationships but honestly you cant say it's with all of them and so many single parent families is it any wonder we got social problems these day? no i'm not sexist and not old fashioned i do believe women should get the right to vote and work etc but this is a step too far into a liberal uncontrolled direction."

You will notice that the above post is not actually about the MOVIE. It's not edited; that was the post in its entirety. I particularly enjoy the inpeneterable reasoning as to why "we got social problems these day." Here's one that is commenting on the fact that "Sex and the City" was outperformed by the children's movie "Kung-Fu Panda" this weekend at the box office:

"These 4 Ho's Beaten By A Panda How fitting. p.s. Guys if you want to keep your self respect don't let your wife/gf make you go see this. If she threatens to hold back sex just hire a prostitute, it is more self respecting than viewing this."

It's wonderful to get advice from someone who is clearly so schooled in the methods of respect, isn't it? I wonder how many Steven Seagal direct-to-video movies his "wife/gf" has sat through? This next one is one of my personal favourites, mostly because of the "signature" line at the end:

"In my day is was called being a slut, whore, etc. Now it's sexually empowered, thanks for the memo SATC fans.

~If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it, copy this and make it your signature!~ "

Now, it's important to note that I didn't have to look far for these comments - they were but a few of many that were posted TODAY. Since the movie opened last week there have been 70 pages of comments posted on the board, and many of them are incredibly negative and, in some cases, hateful. And they're not about the movie - they're about the people who are going to see the movie. The fans. The geeks. And the rhetoric here is downright dangerous; the implication is that the people who go to see the film espouse the views that are contained within it. If people are making judgements about the views and/or morality of "Sex and the City" audience simply by the fact that they have purchased a ticket to the film, what should we say about the "Silence of the Lambs" or the "Saw" audiences?

As someone who hasn't seen the fim, I not entirely sure why the movie is touching this nerve, but I've got some ideas. I suppose one could argue that people simply feel that it is a film that is based on a TV series that ran its course, that it is full of plot problems and that it is poorly acted. But that doesn't explain the tenor of the comments above, nor does it explain the absence of such comments on the "Dukes of Hazzard" message board which has all of the above problems and wasn't even based on a good TV show (incidentally, the Dukes of Hazzard message board only has three pages of comments.)Maybe it is because this is a movie made for women and, for some reason, people get weird about women being geeks - lining up, dressing up in the requisite costume (of course, the costumes here are high fashion) and going to see a movie they relate to and that they enjoy. A movie that examines male and female relationships with a critical eye and that women watch (for the most part) not with their partners, but with each other. Hmm.

I don't know. I haven't even seen the movie yet. All I can say is that if I am going to be a geek, moderate or not, it seems that I will receive a lot less abuse from outsiders if the object of my interest involves chainsaws and dismemberment instead of Prada and friendships and discussions of female sexuality. Now, isn't that interesting?

P.S. What, you want less social commentary and more geekitude? Seriously then, go see "Evil Dead, The Musical." It's so darn good.

A Tale of Four Kitties

2008-05-26T20:50:00.026-04:00

This is a cat. I know it doesn't look like one. It looks like an alien. An angry, constipated alien. But it is a cat - a purebred Siamese. And it has been bred to look like this ... yes ... ON PURPOSE.

In ever more cartoonish ways, Siamese cats are being bred for arbitrary features such as big ears, wedge-shaped heads and tiny bones in order to win competitions that judge them on said arbitrary features. A person could drop between $200 and $3000 on a Siamese/angry alien kitten, depending on their pedigree. If you liked Siamese cats 20 years ago and wanted to get one now, you would have to search for a breeder of "traditional" Siamese cats to find an pet that looks remotely feline.

It's not just Siamese cats, either. Persian cats have been relentlessly bred for their adorable, squashed faces. There is no health benefit to the squashed-face breeding decision; on the contrary, because of their truncated ocular and nasal passages, the are particularly prone to infected eyes and sinuses. People who own Persians have to bathe them because their fur is too long for the cat to maintain themselves, and there are several suggested methods for dealing with eye goop. I'm serious. And my favourite breed of dog, the golden retriever, now has a projected 10 year life expectancy as opposed to the Goldens of 20 years ago, who had a 12-14 year life expectancy - all because of breeding for specific physical features.

It seems to me that breeding to this extent is a little weird. I mean don't we want our pets to live long, healthy lives?

I have never chosen a pedigree pet; as a matter of fact, I have never chosen a pet at all. My journey from lone-apartment dweller to mildly insane cat owner has been a strange one, as I can honestly say that I have never picked the cats that I ended up owning. And the cats that I have owned have been absolute mutts - the "Kid Rocks" of the animal world, if you will.

In 1999 I was living in a fantastic bachelor apartment on Isabella St. and loving it. I am definitely an animal lover, having worked on farms and ranches for much of my pre-Toronto life, and occasionally I would remark to a friend that I would like to get a pet one day. Every time, the friend would turn to me in horror and say "You couldn't keep a dog in this tiny apartment!
That would be cruelty!" (Note: I always thought that it was interesting that my friends thought that my apartment was too small for, say, a Lhasa Apso, but not for, say, ME. I think that says a little something about my friends, don't you?)

Part of my job was to arrange community service opportunities for my students, which included volunteer time at a local animal shelter. As a result of my ties to the shelter, I would get all of their emails regarding pet adoptions. I noticed that all of the cats on the list changed each month except for one sad, scrawny 11 year old black cat. Finally, after about six months of this, a passionate plea came into my inbox. Cleo, the cat, had been scratching all of the fur off of her face, and the shelter wasn't sure if it was due to some kind of allergy or simply because of the stress of having been in the shelter for over a year. Would anyone consider being a foster parent so that she could be away from the shelter until a permanent home was found? Before I knew what I had done I fired off an email saying that I would foster the cat. Allergies and small apartment be damned!

When Cleo arrived, she looked terrible. If you have read The Outsider, think of Salamano's dog and you'll have an idea of what Cleo's face looked like - scabby and awful. She immediately dashed under the bed and stayed there for the better part of a day. I basically did my own thing, thinking that she would come around eventually. I figured it was best to let her come to me in her own time.

And she did. After a few weeks her face was healing, she was gaining weight, and I couldn't sit down without her leaping into my lap. At night she would snuggle under the covers with me and when I woke up in the morning she would be sound asleep, sprawled next to me on her back, her head on the corner of my pillow. She was incredibly playful, and would chase toys for hours. And she didn't give me a moment of allergies.

It was part of my job as a foster-cat-parent to arrange meetings with people who wanted to adopt Cleo. The calls were few and far between, as a 11 year old black cat is a pretty hard sell; even without the age issue some people take that black cat superstition really seriously. But after about six months I noticed an interesting phenomenon; people would call and try to set up an appointment and I would put them off, or call and cancel. Finally, I decided it was time to get over my fear of cat commitment and just adopt the damn cat myself. I did, and she lived to be 16 years old, and made me happy every single day of her life.

After Cleo died, I didn't want to rush into getting another cat, but the apartment seemed horribly empty. A few months later, I decided to go to the humane society and get not one, but two cats. I often have very long days at school and I like to travel during my vacations, so I thought if I got a "bonded pair" of cats they could keep each other company while I was away from my new, larger apartment. I had a pair all picked out - they were as cute as little buttons on the Toronto Humane Society website - little year-old white cats snuggled up together in the same basket. When I got to the Humane Society however, the white bonded pair was gone.

"Do you have any other bonded pairs?" I asked an exhausted animal care worker.

"Just one," she said, and pointed me towards a cage.

I went over to it and peered in. There was one enormous black, long-haired cat sleeping inside. He looked like a felled mammoth, minus the tusks.

"There's only one cat in here." I objected.

The animal care worker came over, opened the cage and pushed the behemoth to one side. Almost underneath him, her fur all squashed, was an emaciated, four pound tabby who was so thin that she looked rather like the Siamese pictured above.

"Is she sick?" I gasped.

"No, I think she's just sad. He hasn't eaten much either, although you wouldn't know it. They're just stressed out."

"And this is your only bonded pair?

"Yep." she clarified.

"And that stuff all over their fur is ... "

"Diarrhea."

"Huh. Gross. Okay. I'll take them."

I took them home and cleaned them off and named them - Charlotte for the tabby, Fezzik for the behemoth (Note: I have my brother to thank for the excellent name suggestion taken from one of my favourite books. Still can't place it? Click here.) And as the months and years went by I was incredibly grateful that the bonded pair I was initially hoping to adopt was gone, because the mutts I got were the most hilarious, mismatched, loving and awesome pair of cats that I could have hoped for. To watch them sleep or play together always made me smile.

Fezzik and Charlotte

When Fezzik died last year of liver failure, I was heartbroken and so was Charlotte. She meowed at the door for two days and then curled up and went to sleep for two months. No more playing. I knew I wanted to find a friend for her, but I didn't think that I could take the walking up and down the Humane Society aisles, trying to choose the "right" cat. After all, I had never chosen a cat before, and the stakes were so much higher now; what if Charlotte didn't like her new friend?

Luckily, I didn't have to choose. My best friend found a kitten in a field, the only survivor in a litter of five whose brothers and sisters had either been carried away by foxes or frozen to death. Viki phoned me immediately.

"I found a kitten. I'll take it to the Humane Society if you don't want it, but ... do you want it?"

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"I can't tell. It was nearly frozen when I found it, so it's all curled up and I don't want to disturb it."

"What colour is it?"

"Well, it's pretty dirty ... but I think it might be black. Or gray. Or orange ... it's REALLY dirty."

"It's probably got worms, doesn't it?"

"Oh yeah, I think so. And some pretty wicked ear mites too."

"Huh. Gross. Okay, I'll take it."

The cat turned out to be female, light gray and incredibly active and mischievous and the perfect companion for Charlotte, who now acts like a kitten herself again. Emily and Charlotte play together, sleep together and destroy all of my personal belongings ... together.

So there you have it. In the last ten years I have owned four cats, and I have personally selected none of them. They have all come to me, and they have been scabby, filthy, scrawny, tubby and sick (which would be great names if Disney ever decided to do a movie about disease-ridden dwarfs.) And you know what? They have been the best pets I could ask for. So you can keep your expensive, pedigreed, snooty, alien pets. All the more mutts for me.
Emily

Wediquette

2008-05-17T12:07:00.017-04:00

My friend Noel got married yesterday, and let me tell you, he did it right. Not only did he marry Maria, who could be the most adorable woman that is legally allowed to reside in the GTA, but the couple managed to avoid the pressure applied by a few friends and family members, and do the wedding their way. This involved an afternoon trip to City Hall and then an evening barbecue reception with 30 or so guests at their home. As the groom and several of his guests were musicians, the festivities wrapped up with a late-night jam session in the kitchen. It was a great night and, as far as I could tell, it was exactly the night that they wanted.

As I have watched friends and family get married over the years, I have seen that it can be very difficult to get the wedding that you want. My best friend, who got married 10 years ago, wanted to plan a tiny, inexpensive wedding in her mother's backyard. The backyard concept took (and was gorgeous!) but 90 people and $15,000 later, she was shaking her head and wondering what happened. Another friend of mine, after warring with her mother and future mother-in-law for months, threw up her hands, handed over the reins and told them that she would just pick a dress, show up on the day and find out what they had planned for her. How do these things get so out of control? Well, I'll give you my take on it.

(Note: my 2.1 readers are probably thinking right now; "Hey! You've never been married, Alison Hunter! What right do you have to spout off about this?" Well, I have three answers for you. One: I have been involved in several weddings - three as a maid of honour/bridesmaid and three as an Emcee, so I've got some chops. Two: Although it's true that I have never been married, I did come very close getting married a few years ago, when I suddenly came upon evidence, much to my surprise, that my fiance was a giant douche. You can watch a dramatic re-enactment of our relationship breakdown here. Three: It's my damn blog. I set it up expressly so that I could spout off about stuff I don't know much about. If you don't like it, get your own damn blog. Now, on to the observations.)

It has become very clear to me that the wedding industry as a whole hates people that are getting married, particularly brides. My best friend's caterer, while providing outstanding food, threw an absolute hissy fit and then pouted when my friend decided not to offer strawberry daiquiris as her "signature drink" at her reception (coincidentally, it was also the caterer's "signature drink.") Linda, another friend of mine, was planning a tiny, family only ceremony with a catered dinner afterwards. Wherever she turned, venues REFUSED to give her a price list until she specified whether or not it was dinner party or a wedding dinner party, so that they could give her the appropriately inflated price list. Attach the word "wedding" or "bridal" to any purchase, and the price immediately jumps by at least 50%. And, drawn to the gleaming engagement ring, predatory, salivating, salespeople scuttle out from under nearby rocks, trying to convince the masses that the "wedding" cake-cutters, photo albums, chairs and toothpicks are somehow better than their everyday counterparts.

But, and this might not sit well with some of you, even more than the wedding industry, family and friends seem to have even more ability to pervert and alter the wedding plans of the happy couple. From my observations, these disagreements can usually be broken down in two categories; tradition conflicts and guest list conflicts.

Tradition conflicts are probably the trickiest because they deal with cultural expectations and standards, as well as religious ceremony and significance. I get that, I really do. But I have seen more than a few couples grit their teeth through a religious ceremony that has no significance, or that they even find offensive, all in the quest to please their families. Families, I know it's difficult and that you want the best for your loved ones. But isn't the point of the marriage ceremony to be significant for the people getting married? They are the ones who are going to have to do the marital heavy lifting for (hopefully) the rest of their lives - so their ceremony should be meaningful to them.

As for the guest list conflicts, I must admit that I find this one a bit insane. I have several friends who have received some SERIOUS grief from people that they have left off of the guest list in an attempt to keep their weddings small and intimate. I mean, really people. Can't we just be cool about this? Weddings are expensive; according to Report on Business magazine the average Canadian wedding in 2007 cost $25,883. That amount is a very respectable down payment for a house! Or if you prefer something a little less practical, it's the cash equivalent of 359 bottles of Herradura Anejo Tequila (yum), 647 viewings of "Evil Dead, the Musical" (I'm actually well on my way to that number) or approximately 4 visits with your cat to a veterinarian (I wish that were a joke.) If you are close enough to the couple that you feel very strongly about their wedding, you can find another way to celebrate with them if need be. Don't kick up a fuss if you are not on the invitation list; show your support for the couple by ... I don't know ... maybe... supporting their decision? You shouldn't assume that, because you are not going to the wedding, they don't value you as a friend. Save those assumptions for 2 years into their marriage when they say things to you like "Umm ... don't take this the wrong way, but you've been on the couch eating our food and drinking our beer for 5 weeks ... how's about heading home now? "

I don't know if I'll ever say wedding vows myself, but today I am prepared to take some wedding-bystander vows here, publicly, in front of all of you.

Ahem.

I, Alison Hunter, take you, (insert engaged couple's names here) to be responsible adults who know exactly how you want your wedding to be without my unsolicited input. I honour and cherish your decisions, and promise to never throw a hissy fit or pout if you decide to keep your wedding small and intimate. I vow to make myself available to you if you need anything, and to get out of your way if you don't. If you do invite me to your wedding, I promise not to be one of those lame-o guests who comes and eats the dinner and doesn't bring a gift. In buying the gift, I will consult the registry list so that you don't end up with nine fondue sets. I also promise that if I am invited to your wedding that I will act appropriately and avoid the following common wedding misbehaviours: leaving my cell phone on so that it rings in the middle of the ceremony, clinking my glass if you have made a "no-clinking" rule, giving a speech about your ex boy/girlfriends, sobbing in the corner because I am still single or getting drinks all night from the open bar and leaving them, half drunk, all around the reception hall. You may now give me a high five.

Seriously though, I do feel incredibly flattered whenever I get invited to a wedding. I mean, think about it. A couple is making lifelong vows to each other, putting the foundation down to build a life and a family together ... and they think that my presence will make the day even better? That's pretty darn cool. So whether or not you get invited to a friend's wedding, just roll with it. It's all good. And it's all in the name of love, baby.

Tragical Realism

2008-05-12T22:30:00.011-04:00

"Umm... like... being so far up in the air, so far, far high ... it's like being an angel. It just shows me how much in love I am."

This is one of the inanities that I subjected myself tonight, as I was drawn like a moth to the flame to the finale of "The Bachelor." The bachelorette who formulated the poetic sentence in question was parasailing and, I guess, felt like an angel... in love? Her train of thought was a bit hard to follow.

I didn't even know that "The Bachelor" had another season going, but when I flipped the TV on, there it was, chugging along as merrily as it did when I last watched it, probably about six years ago. All of the requisite ingredients were there ... the Bachelor (who this time, in a shocking twist, has a sexy accent!) a blonde finalist and a brunette finalist. The blonde bard of parasailing "won," an engagement ring and a fiance after six deeply intimate weeks of polygamous dating. The brunette, in her disgust at this outcome, said of the blonde "but... she was the falsest person here!"

To be the "falsest" person on a reality TV show is high praise indeed. When I ask my students to define "reality TV," they often reply that it is "TV programs based on things that really happen." But of course, this is the furthest thing from the truth, because otherwise we would assign the "reality TV" designation to the nightly news, or perhaps to live sporting events. No, to truly gain the "reality TV" label, the situations on the program must be almost entirely contrived. Washed-up celebrities living in the same house, wives being traded from one household to another, Scott Baio seeking out life coaching ... THESE are the "realities" we are presented with on the programs.

"Survivor," the granddaddy of reality TV, presents us with a very interesting take on reality. Sure, the contestants are actually deprived of food to some degree, and are actually living on a tropical beach, but their survival tasks involve answering trivia questions about each other, running obstacle courses, and solving gigantic wooden puzzles. My very favourite part of this reality show is checking in once each season to see how they have designed what I call the "indigenous pen." This is, of course, the ornately decorated Sharpie marker that contestants use when voting each other out of the tribe during the solemnly titled "tribal council." Each season the "indigenous pen" looks as if it was hewn from a sacred tree by the local shaman, and that it therefore must be an accurate representation of the organically harvested Sharpie markers of the region.

But I know that there are "Bachelor" fans and purists out there. So let's take a look at the "reality" elements of "The Bachelor," shall we? Far be it for me to say that you cannot learn anything from reality television! I have compiled a list of life skills that you can acquire by watching "The Bachelor."

1.) How to move into a house with 25 other suckers in order to compete for the attention of one person. Or, if you're a bachelor, it prepares you for that inevitable, golden opportunity when you too get a chance to try to impress 25 fame-seeking, captive women who are constantly being plied with alcohol. This opportunity is not dissimilar to the opportunity to go big game hunting at the Toronto Zoo. Gotta love those odds!

2.) How to go on dates that involve helicopter rides, parasailing ("Wheeeee! I'm an angel!" etc.,) trips to Barbados and gondola rides in Venice. How to dress in couture gowns and designer tuxedos. How to select an engagement ring which boasts a diamond the approximate size of a Toyota Yaris. And... how to have all of this paid for entirely by a large multinational corporation. I don't know how your relationships blossom, but over the years mine have followed this pattern pretty consistently.

3) Learning how to sensitively reject a woman. As we know from "The Bachelor," what you do is assemble a bunch of beautiful, fiercely competitive women around the "rejectee" and hand a rose to everyone in the room BUT her. You make sure that the event is witnessed by about 15 trillion people including a large viewing audience, a ubiquitous "host," several cameramen, producers, key grips, best boys and Phil the boom mike operator. Be sure to preface the rejection with "this is the hardest decision I have ever had to make," and crack a bottle of champagne with your remaining conquests the minute the woman is finally out the door.

4.) Learning to depend on others to do your thinking for you. If you're the Bachelor, you don't even have to know how to COUNT, because there is a host there to do your pesky math for you. Don't worry if you are at the "Rose Ceremony," and your rose count starts to dwindle, because your host will be there to clarify matters by saying: "Ladies ... Lance (or whatever your cheeseball name happens to be) ... this is the final rose tonight." This is incorporated into the ceremony because the Bachelor clearly can't tell the difference between two roses and, say, one oven. The host is kind of like the intellectual prompts you see in the form of flash cards taped to kindergarten classroom walls; "Apple starts with A!"

5.) And finally, the most applicable life skill: breaking up. There have now been 12 Bachelors on the groundbreaking program, and, including the one on the show that just finished, only two are still with their buxom picks. Ain't love grand?

Let's just take a minute and do the math on that. If your chances of being picked as the bachelor's partner are 1/25 (4%) and then your chances of surviving as a couple are 1/6 (17%) ... well ... there's gotta be a better way to find love. Dare I say ... a more realistic way to find love?

Then again, I'm probably wrong about that. After all, I don't have a "host" to do my math for me.

Screw integrity ... I just can't make myself read this book.

2008-04-30T19:58:00.023-04:00

Okay, here's the thing.

When I started this blog in February, my very first idea (after writing about how difficult it is to choose a blog name) was to write about "The Secret," Oprah Winfrey's book choice and latest pet philosophy. (Note: technically I suppose that it's not even her latest pet philosophy - now she is on to Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth ..." but it's one of her more recent ones.) I had vaguely heard of this book and film, but happened to catch an episode of Oprah that featured the bestseller when I was home sick.

I learned from the program that "The Secret" is based on "The Law of Attraction" which basically goes like this: Your thoughts either attract good things to you or bad things to you. If you think positively about things, you will attract positive things. That's it. That's the big, stinkin' secret. Do you feel better? Do you feel that your life has been revolutionized?

Of course, I do believe in the power of positive thinking. It makes perfect sense that you will be happier if you try to view your life with a positive attitude and remember that you are lucky for the things you have. But "The Secret" very explicitly states that if you think "properly" about what you want, you will get it, regardless of what it is. A perfect body? No problem. A million dollars? Easy! A trip around the world? Just think it, you'll get it! According to "The Secret," the Law of Attraction is essentially a giant cosmic vending machine.

In order to illustrate the incredible power of the Law of Attraction , Oprah interviewed a woman who had employed a Secret-endorsed "vision board" to achieve her goal. The woman was remodelling her kitchen, and pinned a picture of a stove that she really wanted to her bulletin/vision board so that the stove would "come to her." Then she went out and bought a stove! Wow! Cue heavenly chorus of angels singing in delight!!

See, before I watched "Oprah" I would have thought that she had acquired the stove through the Law of the Exchange of Money for Goods and Services. But no! It was the LAW OF ATTRACTION.

Oprah then interviewed a second woman who was single a year earlier. She read "The Secret." Then she met somebody and, a year later, got married. It was the Secret in action! How else could she have possibly met a member of the opposite sex? Cue heavenly chorus blah, blah, blah.

I was so fired up about this ridiculous Oprah episode that I immediately turned on my computer in order to write about "The Secret." But then I hesitated; should I write my second blog about a book I have never read? Won't that cause my 2.1 readers to question my journalistic integrity? I reluctantly decided to postpone the blog until I had read the book.

This created a problem for me, as I was determined not to spend one red cent on the book itself. I must admit that I did toy with the idea of stealing it from a bookstore. I figured that if I got away with it, I could attribute it to the Law of Attraction ... I wanted to read "The Secret" and it "came to me!" How's that for a scientific trial? But then I realized that I probably didn't have this "attraction" stuff down yet and I would probably get arrested and then fired from my job and I certainly wasn't risking all of that for the damn "Secret."

I decided to turn to the Toronto Public Library. I checked the online catalogue and learned that despite the fact that there are 274 copies in the Toronto library system, I was number 511 on the "hold list." So I resigned myself to waiting for 6 weeks until the book finally came in to my local branch. And then I started to read it.

My problems with "The Secret" are as follows.

1.) It's not a "secret." That's right ... these questionable ideas have been around for ages, and no amount of cover art featuring an unbroken wax seal will change that fact. (You can see from the picture that I'm not even joking about this. What, like the wax seal is going to prevent me from OPENING THE BOOK? I guess it will sell a lot of books to fans of "The Da Vinci Code" though.)

2.) Here's what you may not know, middle America. When you want something, and you create a "talisman" (say ... a picture of a stove on a "vision" board) and focus your energy on it, you are essentially following the dictates of pagan spellcasting. Yep - you are purchasing repackaged Wicca! I'm open minded, middle-America, so the fact that you're choosing to cast spells certainly doesn't bother me! But I'm willing to bet that it bothers you! Doesn't it, minivan-driving Oprah fan?

3.) It is essentially a license to be lazy, which may be one of the reasons for it's runaway success. According to the book, you just have to think positively and you will amass incredible wealth. Seriously. No job required. Same goes for losing weight - if you are carrying around extra weight it is because ... you guessed it ... you attracted it to you! Just stop doing that, will you? Attract money, not weight! Jeez, how much easier can we make this?

4.) The Law of Attraction only seems to "work" for shallow, lame-ass requests. A stove? A fiancee? What about the research scientists who have dedicated their lives to finding a cure for Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis or HIV/Aids? Are they not thinking "positively" enough in order to "attract" the cure? Surely the collective power of ALL of the people in the world who have been affected in some way by these diseases and want them eradicated should be enough to do the trick. Shouldn't it?

5.) And what about the people who SUFFER FROM those diseases? Did they "attract" the illness? And what about people who have suffered around the world? What about the Jews, the Slavic people, the disabled and the homosexuals who were massacred in the Holocaust? What about the Kulaks in the Ukraine under Stalin? Did they "attract" their fates? What about people who are starving around the world? Why aren't they "attracting" food? Is the fact that they are starving their fault?

Incredibly, according to the book, IT IS their fault. Read this quote ... if you can bring yourself to:

"Often people ... recall events in history where masses of lives were lost and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. By the law of attraction they had to be on the same frequency as the event... If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time ... Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts. (page 28)

And that's the point where I stopped reading the book.

Sorry about my lack of journalistic integrity, but I simply can't keep going. I didn't even make it through 30 pages, and I feel filthy. I do stand by my original assertion that "The Secret" is incredibly lame, but now I have to add ignorant, poorly written, and a hugely offensive waste of time. I don't know if you could classify a work blaming genocide, disease and famine victims for their situations as "hate literature," but it certainly walks a line. And there were many more idiotic ideas in the first 28 pages that I could have written about as well, but I'm tired of throwing up in my mouth.

I'm taking the book back to the library tomorrow, and I will enjoy watching it vanish into the "returns" bin. But I have put a post-it note on page 28 in the hopes that a future reader will find it. It reads as follows:

"If you have read this page and you want to keep reading, read this page again. If you still don't see what's wrong with this book, then go back to the library and take out a history book. Any history book will do. If you still don't see what's wrong with this book, then certainly the "Law of Attraction" will bring you what you deserve."

And I think I'll skip Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth."

You say it's your birthday ...

2008-04-22T22:50:00.007-04:00

... it's my birthday too. At least, it's my birthday for another 39 minutes.

I'm not gonna lie - I feel a bit cranky about my birthday this year. After all, I am now 35 years old. I can no longer desperately cling to the "early 30's" label - I must admit that I am definitively in my "mid 30's." If I am immature, which I think it is clear that I am, I can no longer blame it on age, but must chalk it up to fundamental deficits in my personality. And with each year that passes it becomes more and more clear that I will probably never be an Olympic competitor in any sport. Not even the discus.

Not that my birthday is all bad. My birthday is on "Earth Day," which accurately reflects my political and philosophical sensibilities. I enjoy having a reason to go out with my friends and family for dinner and events and spend piles of money because I "deserve it!" I actually share my birthday with one of my best friends, Graham, which is really fun. And although I feel cranky about getting older, I wouldn't classify my birthday as simply "the devil" as my friend Becca does (although her bitterness could come from the fact that she is four days older than I am... sucker!)

But I do sometimes wonder about our obsession with birthdays. I am grateful that people want me to have a happy birthday, but why is it a big celebration in my honour?

Really, if we are going to honour someone today, it should be my mom. Thirty-five years ago she brought me into this world by squeezing me through a very tiny, very sensitive part of her body over a period of about eighteen hours. I finally emerged looking less than perfect (I have seen the pictures.) She then held me while I was covered in slimy goop, gazed into my pruney face through a morphine-induced haze and decided to house and raise me IN SPITE of what I had just put her through. Really, that is an incredible amount of devotion. All I have really done to hold up my end of the bargain is to keep on breathing until 35 rolled around. Mom truly did all of the heavy lifting.

Hmmm... I feel less cranky about turning 35 if I assume the holiday is all about my mom. And I don't want to get overexcited here, but with this new view on birthdays I'm fairly certain that I am on the cutting edge of a greeting card revolution, which means inevitable wealth and fame. So "Happy Alison's Birthday, Mom!" Thanks for putting up with me.

In Memoriam

2008-04-20T21:34:00.020-04:00

Jennifer Headley - 1972-2006

I walked up the 1,776 stairs of the world's tallest building yesterday, and it got me thinking about religion and what I believe.

For the last two years, my friends Jennie, Sherry and I have climbed CN Tower stairs in order to raise money for the World Wildlife Foundation in memory of our friend Jennifer Headley. Jenn was working for the WWF in Nepal when the helicopter that was bringing her and twenty three others home from a conservation site crashed into the mountains in September, 2006.

Losing Jenn was a terrible shock. We lived a few doors away from each other in high school, and Jenn was a huge influence on me in my teenage years. I had been relentlessly bullied in elementary school, and the thought of going to a big high school full of strangers terrified me. We met in the school photo line, and I don't remember our conversation, but I do remember that the photographer was furious with us because we just couldn't stop laughing about whatever it was that we had been talking about. That laughter became a cornerstone of our entire friendship.

Jenn inspired me in several ways. She encouraged me to join a local theatre group, which was the starting point for a lifelong passion. We both loved music and singing, and participated in school choirs together. She was incredibly politically aware at a young age, and I started reading the newspaper to try to keep up with her. Perhaps most importantly, Jenn's appreciation of my qualities gave me confidence in them myself, confidence that I had never had before. And it wasn't just me - she did this for everyone she knew.

When you walk up 1800 stairs, it gives you time to think (particularly because it is far too difficult to speak.) I thought about how grateful I am that I am able to do the climb with two people who knew and loved Jenn. I thought about how angry I still feel that someone who dedicated her life to helping others and healing our planet should be taken from the world so prematurely. And I thought about my religious beliefs (or arguable lack thereof) and yearned for some answers.

I have always had an uneasy relationship with religion. I was raised in the Anglican church, but really learned by rote, and didn't spend a lot of time considering the real implications of the Christian faith. Later in life I attended a Baptist church at a time when I was yearning for answers, yet became disillusioned with their strict stance on various social issues, particularly same-sex relationships. Now I don't think very much about religion at all, to be honest. But around flight 75 of the CN tower stairs I began to think about the afterlife. I don't know if there is such a thing as Heaven; if there is, then Jenn is certainly there. But here's what I do know:

I believe in an "afterlife" here on earth. I mean this in a few different ways.

The force of Jenn's personality remains after her life so strongly that people are united and inspired by her memory. Sherry, Jennie and I live different lives in different cities, stretched to our limits by jobs, travel and family, and it is Jenn that brings us together for this event every year. It was Jenn that motivated me to turn off all of the electrical appliances in my apartment for 12 hours instead of 1 during the "Earth Hour" campaign. It is Jenn that inspires me to travel and discover new parts of the world while living responsibly in it.

But it goes further than that. I met Jenn at such a formative time in my life that she truly affected the way that I developed into a young adult. If I examine the roots of my political interests, my first stirrings of courage in adolescence or the factors that led me to becoming a drama teacher, I find that Jenn has influenced all of those qualities.

I don't know if Heaven exists or not. But I do know that a part of Jenn still lives, here, in the people that knew her. The influence she has had on my life is so profound that I think that it is impossible to separate the parts of me that developed independently of her from the ones that she helped to cultivate. Now it is my responsibility to live up to the this challenge: to take the gifts she has given me and to do something productive with them.

Jenn, I miss you. But you are not gone. You have left within me the unique and beautiful aspects of who you were, inexorably intertwined with who I now am. And for that, I am forever grateful.

Best. Taxi. Ride. Ever.

2008-04-11T10:39:00.012-04:00

I swear to God, this happened.

I was coming in late to work last Friday morning, as I had a meeting with a "financial manager" at my bank. I have one of these meetings per year, essentially because I have read that I should, and each year it goes pretty much the same way. I sit down, try to look businesslike and impressive, and then lapse into a banking-induced coma. I try to focus and concentrate, but what I hear is basically "blah blah blah blah blah credit line blah blah blah blah credit card blah blah blah blah blah blah RRSP." Then I leave, certain that I am going to face financial ruin.

After my ever-so-enlightening meeting, I began to walk to school, hopelessly trying to manage a coffee, my laptop bag, my ipod and my umbrella, all the while wedging a "Now" magazine between my upper arm and my ribcage. After my umbrella blew inside-out for the fourth time in sixty seconds, I hailed a taxi. (Note: Isn't it funny that I would hail an essentially unnecessary cab just minutes after worrying about my financial solvency? Aren't I clever? Anyway.)

I heaved myself and my various accoutrements into the cab and settled back against the seat, expecting a quiet ride. After all, it only takes about 10 minutes to drive from my bank to school. But it was not to be. Immediately the driver asked me my name, and told me his. Will Levine was in his early sixties, with a round, tortoise-like face and one of the biggest, sweetest smiles I have ever seen. He opened the conversation with a biggie:

"So, what's your story?"

"Can you be more specific?" I asked politely.

"Well, what do you do for a living?"

"I'm a high school teacher. English and Drama."

"Drama, eh? You must meet all kinds, being interested in theatre."

I smiled. "Yep, all kinds. But you must really meet all kinds of people, driving a cab."

"Oh yeah, especially late at night. I'm also a magician, so I meet all kinds that way too."

Now, this was getting good. I love magic of all kids - little simple card tricks and big, showy, David Copperfield tricks. My brother can do some magic, and one of his tricks can literally keep me entranced for days. One in particular, involving a disappearing hanky, kept me entranced for YEARS until he finally showed me how to do it. And you know what? I'm still entranced by it, even though I know the secret. I was gearing up to ask him questions about performing magic when he dropped this little gem on me:

"Of course, I don't do 'stage magic.' I do real magic."

I took a moment to ponder the possibilities of this statement, and before I could respond, he continued:

"The real magic is how I meet the most interesting people. I can see stuff that regular humans can't. Last week I had aliens in this cab, right where you're sitting now."

Upon hearing this, gentle readers, I did what any self-respecting product of 21st century media would do - I scanned the cab for hidden "reality tv" cameras. (Note: This is the type of thing that keeps teachers up at night - some kind of permanent record of their idiocy and/or embarrassment that their students can record on their PVRs and then put on Youtube. I know I'm not a celebrity, but that's no guarantee that some Ashton Kutcher-type- slacker-actor-douche isn't going to try to screw with me at some point. Vigilance is ever my watchword.)

"Aliens, huh?" I said, testing the waters. "Did they look like people?"

"They did when they got in," he said earnestly. "But then one of them asked me if I'd ever seen an alien. I told him I hadn't, and then he asked me if I wanted to. I said yes and then he changed."

"What did he look like then?"

"Kind of like a bear, actually."

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah."

"Were they good tippers?"

"Not really."

I decided to try to converse with him on his level. "So, when you say 'real magic,'do you mean Wicca?" (Note: I actually went to Teachers' College with a Wiccan and went with her to a couple of events to see what it was all about. I wouldn't call myself religious per se, but as religions go, it's a pretty groovy, nonjudgmental one. I've got a lot of respect for the Wiccans.)

"Not really. Wiccans use their magic to manipulate things in the physical world. I use my magic to communicate with the astral plane. I speak to ghosts and demons." I'm going into business with a demon, actually. His name is Marchosias." (Seriously, follow the link. Apparently he's the "Marquis of Hell.")

To my chagrin, I saw that the taxi was pulling up to my school, but I just couldn't let that one lie.

"Business? What kind of business?"

"It's going to be called 'Ethereal Consultants.'" Will pulled the taxi over to the curb by the front door of the school. "If you have a problem you can't solve, we'll solve it for you with magic."

"Do you have business cards yet?" I asked hopefully, taking out my wallet for the fare. I mean really, how great would that business card look on my bulletin board?

"Not yet."

"Rats."

I paid him, thanked him for the ride and got out of the cab with a smile on my face.

There are two possible explanations for the epic arc of this cab ride: 1) I am going to be on Youtube any minute now or 2) Will is not quite playing with a full deck. But I don't really care. To have any kind of interesting conversation with a complete stranger is a rare, rare thing in this world. Life would be a lot more entertaining if we all just skipped the "What do you do/how are the renovations going/have you made your RRSP contributions?" kind of conversations and just blurted out our weird and wacky ideas. And I would certainly rather talk about demons than Paris Hilton or "Dancing with the Stars" any day.

Mr. Levine, I wish you the best with your business ventures - demon based or otherwise. Perhaps you'll become a kind of Mamet/Miller hybrid ..."Willy 'the Machine' Levine"... and become a huge mogul in the ethereal world. And if anyone reading this blog ever gets into Will's cab in the future, please see if you can score me a business card for my bulletin board.

Rrroll up the Rrrim for Crrrrrap.

2008-04-07T20:37:00.012-04:00

This is not a picture of my thumb. This thumb is too victorious. What do I mean? Read on ...

Somehow, despite the fact that I am addicted to Tim Horton's coffee, I have never won ANYTHING during the annual "Roll up the Rim to Win" contest. Not one thing. EVER.

For those of you who have been living under a rock (or in America ... or under an American rock) Tim Horton's coffee is more than just a beverage ... it's a fundamental part of the Canadian lifestyle. If a Canadian were to get mugged between the hours of 7:00 and 9:00 am and had to choose between handing over their wallet or their Tim's coffee, there would have to be some serious consideration of the pros and cons of both choices, possibly involving flow charts and Venn diagrams. And if the coffee itself wasn't addictive enough, every March and April, they distribute the coffee in contest cups that may (or may not) have a redeemable coupon under the rim.

The contest seems to cause a bit of a frenzy in Canada. Everyone has a "technique" for actually unrolling the adhesive-laden (and often a bit saliva-soaked) rim. My friend Megan very tastefully uses scissors to snip the cup on either side of the prize area to get the "rim rolling." Me, I fold the empty cup in half and then use my thumbs to unveil the (invariably) pink portion of the cup which chirpily encourages me to "Play Again!" Not to be outdone by myself or Megan, another of my colleagues (I am not making this up) has a "rim roller" keychain, manufactured specifically for this purpose, and this purpose only.

It can certainly pay off to roll those rims. There are some big ticket prizes up for grabs including cars, boats, GPS systems and cash. You can win $50 gift cards redeemable for Tim Horton's food and coffee, which could lead to literally weeks of blissfully caffienated mornings. And, even more persuasive, there are the ugly cautionary tales about what could happen to you if you DON'T roll up your rim, and foolishly discard the cup with the rim intact.

Two years ago, a 10 year old girl found a cup with an unrolled rim in a garbage can in her St. Jerome, Quebec elementary school playground. Her little fingers were too chubby to unroll the rim herself, so she asked her 12 year old friend to help her. When the girls unrolled the rim together they discovered that they were the proud new owners of a $28,000 Toyota SUV. When they ran home to tell their parents, a bitter dispute erupted between the two families as to which child actually "won" the prize. The controversy escalated when the original owner of the cup came forward demanding a saliva DNA test to prove that that she should be awarded the prize. Tim Horton's finally decided to award the SUV to the parents of the girl who originally discovered the cup (as a minor she could not collect the prize herself.) Justice prevailed, I suppose, but maturity and grace suffered.

Here's the thing. I don't care about any of the big prizes.. I don't want a SUV or even a prize card. I just want a damn donut. According to http://www.rolluptherimtowin.com/ Tim Horton's gives away 31,000000 food and drink prizes per year. But not to me.

This has become something of a joke within my social and professional life. For the last three years I have bought my friend Kevin a coffee in the morning to help him ease into the workday. Our coffees are differentiated by distinctive markings on the lids ... his has a big R (for regular coffee) and mine has a D (double-double.) Kevin has probably won 30 donuts from rims that I BOUGHT WITH MY MONEY AND BROUGHT HIM WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. And my coffees ... nada.

Two years ago I was whining about my bad coffee luck to my brother, while he was driving me home after yet another fruitless attempt to win a donut. "Here," he said generously, reaching into a compartment below his dashboard and pulling out a handful of torn rim coupons, "take some of mine." Needless to say I pushed them away disdainfully. "I want to win my OWN donut." I sniffed haughtily. "The next one I buy will win. You'll see."

And here we are today ... two years after that statement ... and I have NEVER won myself a donut. How can that be? It's true that my luck is inconsistent to say the least - at 22 I was probably the youngest citizen to have have been audited by the government of Canada. I have been called for jury duty FOUR TIMES in my life. But I wonder if there are larger powers at work here. Perhaps the universe is preparing me for my inevitable SUV rim? Maybe I am not supposed to win until a prize that I really want is up for grabs, like a trip to Iceland or a role in a Bruce Campbell zombie movie or ... a pony!

Look, I'm trying to be mature about all of this. I'm fairly certain that I will never try to pry a soggy rim out of a 10 year old girl's little fingers. But I can't promise that I'll show the same restraint with my friends or family or even (sadly) my students, because one of these days I might just snap from the frustration. So hold onto your rims tightly my friends ... because SOMETHING will have to break the cycle of (start rolling your "r's" now ...) rrrrrolling up the rrrrrrim for CRRRRRRRAP.

Everything is Everywhere: The End of Anticipation

2008-03-29T18:08:00.011-04:00

Just a week ago, my friend Melissa and I were driving across the southern tip of Texas. On one particularly long driving day, during which we had been passing through small town after small town in virtual silence, Melissa suddenly turned to me and said "everything is everywhere."

What she meant was that every town seemed to have the same stores in which you could get ... well ... everything. Each town that had 15,000 people or more also had a Target and/or a Walmart (often both) a "Whataburger" (this fast food chain was new to me) a "Church's Chicken," a "Sonic Burger" a "Home Depot" a "Walgreen's" drugstore and a "HEB" grocery store (HEB apparently stands for "Here Everything's Better.") And these weren't small stores, either ... they were gargantuan.

Yes, as we drove across Texas, everything was at our fingertips. Our trip to Target was a revelation; Melissa and I both bought much needed no-name sleeping pads for only 20 dollars! And to think that at Mountain Equipment Co-Op we would have paid at least 80 dollars for industry-proven Therm-a-Rest pads like a pair of suckers! Of course, the Target sleeping pads were useless. They stayed inflated for approximately 30 minutes, and those thirty minutes were pure hell; imagine trying to get comfortable on top of three half-inflated basketballs and you'll get the picture. But there was no need to fret about our purchases because there were a Target store every twenty feet, so returning them was a snap. Everything was, indeed, everywhere.

It is incredible to live at a time when everything we want seems to be instantly attainable. Within the confines of one store you can find organic soap, ground venison and potato chips flavoured like Kung Pao chicken. Online booksellers like abebooks.com have made my second-hand book hunting a quick and easy task. Heard a song you like on the radio? Don't want to wait for the next Harry Potter movie to come out on video? Don't feel like researching and writing that pesky essay? Get on the Internet and get downloading!

My brother told me recently that he asked his friend Casey to show him how to download movies and TV shows from BitTorrent, a worldwide file-sharing system. Colin was very excited to acquire commercial-free television, but Casey prefaced the lesson with a warning. "Are you sure you want to know?" he asked. "Because you'll never be excited about a DVD release date again. You'll probably never go to Blockbuster and scan the shelves to decide what you're in the mood for again. BitTorrent actually takes some of the fun out of it all."

When Colin told me this story, I started to think about the power of anticipation. Are we missing out on the excitement of waiting for something because, as Melissa pointed out, "everything is everywhere?"

The more I thought about it, the more I started to realize how much I enjoy anticipating something. I love the lead up to Christmas as much as I love Christmas Day. I know that November 1 to December 24 is a capitalist's dream come true, but I admit that I adore the twinkling lights, incessant carols, and wrapping the gifts that I have carefully chosen for family and friends. When I was a kid, the weeks leading up the Halloween were sheer bliss, full of costume-planning, pumpkin-carving and elementary school Halloween crafts. Really, the preparation was just as much fun as the night itself. And everyone knows that planning and getting ready for the high school dance can be the best part of what is often a long and/or humiliating night.

I remember one of the best lessons that I ever got from my fourth year theatre professor in the "Advanced Acting and Directing" course. I was struggling with a scene in which I had to passionately kiss a classmate who was a good buddy, but didn't inspire a ton of passion in me (nor I in him.) After watching us clinch and mash our faces together my prof pulled us apart and rolled his eyes. "Don't you get it?" he asked. "There's no interest here ... you're going in for the kiss too soon. Look at magazine ads that show a romance between a man and a woman. They're never actually kissing .... they're ALMOST kissing. Maybe their lips are touching, but just barely. It's the moment BEFORE the kiss that really gets the heart racing. Let the audience wait for it ... once you actually kiss the anticipation is over."

And he was right. It's those moments before a kiss, when you're not 100% sure whether or not it's going to happen, that gives you that twisty feeling in your heart. Those are the moments that I appreciate as a mid 30's singleton and that my married friends tell me that they wish that they could experience again. I would never want to go back to high school, but I do sometimes wish that I could recapture those pre-dance flutters. I can see how I try to keep anticipation alive in my adult life. I try to get my Christmas shopping done early so that I can appreciate the Peanuts specials, the cocoa and the carols without getting bogged down in the cranky crowds. And every year I host a pumpkin-carving party before Halloween, so that my adult friends and I can recapture the joy of scooping out handfuls of gooey pumpkin guts and setting our masterpieces aglow.

Melissa is right - everything is everywhere. As consumers we should look at that fact as an incredible privilege and treat it with respect and restraint. But perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we DESERVE the things that we get immediately, or whether we should actually wait for them. And if we do actually have to wait for something, we should try to enjoy the moment, because the anticipation ... like all good things ... will surely come to an end.

A Maighty-fayne Oddessy ... Making my way through Texas one Prepackaged Snack Cake at a Time.

2008-03-24T15:23:00.017-04:00

I recently had the opportunity to spend a week in Texas, a state I had never visited before. The real purpose for the visit was to lead an International Baccalaureate teachers' workshop for four days. As my flight was paid for by the IB, I decided to explore Texas for a few days after the conference with my friend and coworker Melissa in the hopes of capitalizing on a cheap vacation opportunity. We didn't know what we would encounter, but we had a few goals; to spend our nights in my two person tent in state parks to keep costs down, and to spend time both on the Gulf Coast and in Mexico. In the end, we drove almost 1000 miles (that's 1600 kilometers for you metric-lovin' Canucks), listened to a lot of Johnny Cash and ate a LOT of gas station prepackaged snack cakes.

Before I left for Texas, I took stock of my preconcieved ideas about what Texas was like. They were as follows:

1.) Texas is hot and sunny and flat.

2.) People who live in Texas drawl.

3.) Everything is bigger in Texas.

4.) Texas is ragingly Republican.

5.) Texas simultaneously prides itself on its' gun culture and southern hospitality.

Deep, eh?

Well, after an exhaustive SEVEN DAY study of Texas, here are my reflections on my initial assumptions about the Lone Star State.

1.) Texas is hot and sunny and flat: TRUE ... SOMEWHAT. The weather and landscape of southern Texas is extremely varied, as is the weather (at least at this time of year.) At night we were downright cold once in a while, and once we had to tear down the tent at midnight and high tail it for a hotel due to 100 mph winds. (We learned the next morning that a tornado had touched down in the next town.) We experienced a torrential downpour, blistering sunshine and even saw a thunderhead develop, and drove through various desert and forest landscapes, flat plains and rolling hills. I would reccomend a drive across Texas to anyone interested in geography and/or varied topography... it is a ruggedly beautiful state.

2.) People who live in Texas drawl: TRUE. Not only did the people there drawl, but Melissa and I came back with hefty drawls of our own. It's true that we largely cultivated this ourselves for our own amusement, but when you drop those pesky consanants and draw out those vowels, everything is suddenly easier! Speaking with our Toronto accents now feels like some kind of post-face lift physiotherapy. The Texan accent also led to some funny misunderstandings; when asking for directions it took me a while to realize that I wasn't looking for a detour around a hospital, but rather the "DeTar Hospital."

3.) Everything is bigger in Texas: TRUE. Texas is a gigantic state - almost 24 million people live within its 300,000 sq. miles (metric-lovin' canucks ...700,000ish sqaure kilometers) - and everything within the state is sized to scale. I have never seen such big trucks and SUV's that are not part of a monster truck rally. (I seriously think that the state should just stop spending money on roads altogether as everyone is prepared to offroad at a moment's notice. Driving in Texas is like driving in a "Celebration of the Tank!" parade.) Any town with at least 15,000 people had a series of "big box" stores that truly lived up to the "big box" name. And the food ...the food was unreal. A small sweet tea is actually a gallon of syrup so thick that it is almost crunchy. One particular restaurant featured a baked potato stuffed with ... are you ready for this? A POT ROAST. I am not joking.

4.) Texas is ragingly Republican: UNDETERMINED. Certainly the four days I spent in Houston at the conference seemed to reinforce this idea; I made the mistake of watching both "The O'Reilly Report" and "Fox News," which is some of the most appallingly biased media coverage I have ever seen. One "anchor" actually punctuated a story about Obama with an eye-roll and a "sheesh!" But once we started talking to the locals, we often encountered sheepishness about the current government and an eagerness to point out to the Canadians that "We are ashamed of the mess we are in! We're not all Bush supporters!" We also saw a lot of paraphenalia supporting Hillary Clinton's campaign. Even in the very rural areas people seemed anxious to talk to the visiting Canadians about how upset and nervous they were about the future of their country, particularly with regards to the soldiers in Iraq and national healthcare.

5.) Texas simultaneously prides itself on its gun culture and and southern hospitality: TRUE. With the exception of one cranky gas station attendent, the locals we met were unendingly friendly and kind and open to conversation. At the same time were were amazed at some of the ATV's that we saw in state parks (specifically specified as NON hunting spaces) that were equipped with sharp-shooting seats on the top. All of the Wall Mart and Target stores have aisles upon aisles dedicated to guns - including a toy gun aisle in the children's section Everything that is for sale in Texas can be bought with a camoflage design: toothbrushes, Barbie dolls, school binders. EVERYTHING. We didn't see guns in cars, but we didn't go lookin' neither for fear of what we might find..

All in all, I enjoyed my trip. The small towns were much more enjoyable than the concrete jugle of Houston and walking across the border from Texas to Mexico was a real highlight. We met some lovely people and saw some truly beautiful sights. I don't reckon that I'd be headin' back anytime soon, but there are some maighty-fayne times to be had if you know where to look, y'all. (But I would still advise that you avoid them pot-roast potatos ... and them prepackaged snack cakes.)

The "Youb Tube"

2008-03-11T19:56:00.009-04:00

I think that it is safe to say that I have elevated wasting time to an art form. If I am meant to be working hard at school, I will check my email or go to the staff room to get a coffee. If I am meant to be working at home, I will clean my condo, do dishes, play with the cats or watch television. I spend too much time watching the boob tube, and the "watching" is just the beginning. For example, here is is how my time commitment to "Lost" breaks down over an average week:

Watch an episode of "Lost": One hour

Discuss episode of "Lost" at work the next day with various coworkers over lunch, in office, at coffeemaker, etc.: One hour

Nurture crushes on several of the main characters in "Lost" and contemplate which man I would rather be lost on an island with:
Five hours (approximately one hour per cast member crush.)

As you can see, "Lost" can take up SCADS of time. Don't even get me started on "Prison Break," which requires just as much commitment and inspires just as many crushes, even though it jumps a new shark before each commercial break. And as if the boob tube wasn't bad enough, I have recently been dealing with another insidious time-sucker.

Youtube.

Up until recently, I could faff around on Youtube for ages, looking up movie clips, music videos, stand up comedy, newscaster bloopers, and hours and hours of videos of kittens falling asleep, batting at strings or diving into paper bags. Whenever I clicked on a video, a bar of "related videos" was displayed on the right of my screen, leading me down the rabbit hole and into the kind of "lost time" usually only experienced by UFO abductees.

Like everything on the internet (or indeed, in life), there is some great stuff on Youtube. There is also abysmal crap, and worse. As far as I can tell, there are five "levels" of Youtube:

Level One: Useful and/or Informative:

I have been amazed at what I can find on Youtube. For example, I have recently been doing some research on Guan Hanquing, the "Shakespeare of 13th century China," and, lo and behold, there is a clip of a performance of the Hanquing play "Snow in Midsummer" on Youtube. You can see news reports you have missed or clips from documentaries. There are clips from the Royal Albert Hall Proms! Actual sophisticated, informative content.

Level Two: Original and Fun:

There are some very creative film projects and excellent music that I would not otherwise get to experience. I have really enjoyed the reedited movie trailers that put a whole new spin on the films they are parodying ("The Shining" recut is particularly good.) I can't stop watching "Ok Go's" video "Here it Goes Again," which is entirely choreographed using treadmills. Videos like this inspire me to be creative.

Level 3: Useless

I would venture to say that the majority of clips on Youtube are purely pointless crap. There are a disordinate number of videos of people reenacting famous movie scenes in their living rooms. Not for purposes of satire mind you ... just ... reenacting. There are angst-ridden whackos wailing into the camera about the plights of their favourite celebrities. There are clips of "ALF" on Youtube. I mean, really. ALF? Really? Is someone REALLY fulfilling their destiny as an ALF archivist? Anyway.

Level 4: Humiliating:

This is where Youtube begins to turn my stomach. I'm no angel; I have laughed at some of the "pratfall" videos before. But some of the images captured on Youtube are truly awful. There are several clips of teachers yelling at their students, after being deliberately provoked for cinematic purposes. Miss South Carolina will never live down her disasterous answer to why 1/5 of Americans cannot locate the US on a world map. And there are all kinds of videos with names like "Fat kid falls into water."

WARNING ... THE REST OF THIS BLOG IS SO GROSS THAT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY JUST SKIP OVER IT. I'M GOING TO BE PITHY ABOUT MY BAD DATING LUCK AND THEN WRITE ABOUT SOME AWFUL STUFF. I'M NOT KIDDING.

I was introduced to a particularly humiliating video against my will. I was on perhaps the most ill-fated date of my life, and keep in mind when I say that that I have been on some STAGGARINGLY bad dates. At the end of a truly dreadful evening, after several "Whooo! I'm TIRED!" hints, he finally agreed to go only after he showed me a "hilarious" clip on Youtube. In the clip, a group of people are sitting in an outdoor hot tub. One woman suddenly stands up and says "I have to get out" and then ... I am not making this up ... has massive diarrhea into the water. My date laughed and laughed, and then when I told him that I was disgusted as I handed him his jacket and held the door open, he accused me of being "uptight."

I think that one of the things that really bothered me about that clip (besides the copious diarrhea, of course) was that it appeared that that woman was among friends at the time the footage was shot. I guess she wasn't, because that video is now on the internet for the world to see (although I can't imagine who would want to ... except for one damn person. Please, even if you have a sick sense of humour, don't go and look at it because you read about it here.) Maybe I am "uptight," but it breaks my heart to think about how embarrassed that woman must be, and how cruel her "friends" must be.

Level 5: Criminal:

I'm not going to dwell on this one, but this category exists, and none of us should forget it. Those of you who read about the marine/puppy video last week know what I am talking about. If you didn't - don't look it up. Trust me.

When I reflect on this, I wonder if Youtube is the modern equivalent of the Roman Gladatorial Games. There was a great deal of pageantry and bloody mayhem in the games, and it all fell under the umbrella of entertainment. It may seem like a ridiculous comparison, but the fact remains that with a simple mouse click on Youtube you can navigate back and forth between clips of the London Symphony Orchestra and Saddam Hussein's execution. That's entertainment, I guess. Ain't it cool that we're so much more evolved than those Roman types?

When I think about it in these terms, I get a bit queasy.

Huh. Maybe I should just stick to watching "Lost." Or maybe ... just maybe ... I should stop wasting my time altogether.

A

(P.S. Wait, wait, wait ... okay ... how's this? I'm going to waste LESS time in general but keep watching "Lost." Okay? Okay? *breathes sigh of relief *)

Learning as I go ...

2008-03-06T11:18:00.003-05:00

I'm very new to doing this "online" thing, and I'm learning as I go.

I have been advised that it is a good idea to restrict the comment option on this page to Google users and to moderate comments before they are posted. Apparently pages like this are big targets for spam, and I don't want this blog to become a nonstop advertisement for penis enlargement products.

I hope it's not too much of a pain, and that you'll keep leaving comments if something I write appeals to you! I promise that I'll try to write extra good to make it worth it, y'all, and keep you entertained 'n stuff.

A

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

2008-03-05T22:10:00.008-05:00

It took me a long time to become a "girl." I have always had all of the requisite parts, but my interests were never particularly "girly." As a kid, I didn't like dressing up or playing "house." My parents were thrilled when they realized that they had spawned the only female child alive who didn't want a "Barbie." I remember wondering why all of my friends wanted them so badly - to me they were stupid to play with because "dressing" is not playing, and they weren't cuddly and they couldn't even stand up on their own. I liked running around and climbing trees and playing with Lego. As I got older I became fascinated with horses, and worked on farms and ranches on and off for twenty years. I was never a fashion plate, and I remember, on more than one occasion, trying to walk out the door to go to a dance or a party while my mother begged me to put some makeup on before I went out.

"You're so pale!" she would cry. (Note: She was right. My mother has beautiful dark skin and hair and my father is very fair. I got her dark hair and his pale skin which means that I look like I have tuberculosis from October to May. My brother got her hair and her skin and my dad's blue eyes and looks like a movie star. Needless to say, he does NOT look like he has tuberculosis.) Sometimes I would grudgingly stomp back upstairs to put some lipstick on, but I never really learned what I was doing.

As I got older and embarked on my teaching career I slowly begain to embrace more feminine things. I wear a little bit of makeup to work now, and most of my horse-ranch wardrobe is gone (Note: MOST.) I have a shoe collection that, much to my surprise, has totally grown out of my control. And ... I sometimes go to a spa.

I was 29 when I first went to a spa. It is burned in my memory because I wanted to surprise my best friend with something really special for her 30th birthday, and I had planned it a month in advance. I blew my paycheque on a package that included massages, manicures, pedicures and a hair wash and style at a swankydank place in downtown Toronto. My plan had been to keep our destination a secret until we walked through the front doors of the spa but such was my excitement that I blurted it out before we even left my apartment. It was worth every penny; we emerged relaxed, massaged, buffed and polished, feeling like two cosmopolitan, mature, worldly women. It is an experience that everyone should get to try at least once.

It pains me to reveal to you, gentle reader, that until now this experience has NOT been available to everyone. There is a vital demographic that has been rudely deprived of this opportunity to explore the mature, cosmopolitan and worldly aspects of their personalities. I am, of course, talking about little tiny prepubescent girls! How long can this persecution continue?

Fear not, valiant consumer - this marketplace deficit has been noticed and addressed. Spa providers such as the "Glama Gals," "Glamour Tweens" and "Peaches and Cream" cater exclusively to girls as young as three, providing all of the essentials that you would find at any Yorkville Spa. And to think that I waited until my late twenties to pay another person to buff my toenails!

The "Glama Gals" who cater only to children under 16 years old, will bring everything necessary for a birthday or slumber party spa experience to a lucky girl's home. Kids can indulge in "Chocolicious" or "Tutti-Frutti" facials, "Chocolate Ice Cream"manicures or pedicures or makeup application sessions. Their goals are lofty; they hope that the particupants feel like "royalty" and establish a sense of identity. As the "Gals" state on their website:

"We feel empowered by our decisions and experiences and want to take part, even if it's just for a day, in sharing this empowerment with young girls in our community. Glama Gal Party is about Celebrating HER! It's taking a moment to celebrate being a girl and all that comes with being a girl. It's not just about dressing up, hair and make-up; although ask a 7 year old and this is what it's ALL about!"

These spa parties sure sound fun, and they certainly have impressive testimonials on their site! Consider this comment from a mother in Richmond Hill:

"The glama Gals are professional and organized right to the end and 10 year old girls have seen and done it all so to impress them is a feat it itself."

The tenth birthday party (finally ... double digits!) seems to be a big one for the Glama Gals:

"Julia's 10th birthday party was the best & EASIEST party we have ever hosted for her. The girls were so excited and happy with their makeovers."

But let's not forget those other lifechanging, "landmark" birthdays that are often such a nightmare to plan:

"Thanks so much for making my daughter's 4th birthday party such a hit."

Look, I am not trying to be a jerk here. All of the testimonials emphasize the professionalism, kindness and humour of the "Glama Gal" staff, and of this I have no doubt. And maybe it's not that different than little girls dressing up in their mothers' old clothes and clomping around the house in too-big high heels. But should kids know what a day at the spa entails before they know what a day at school entails? Do they need to be "made over" before they have had the opportunity to define their identity for themselves in the first place? Have 10 year old girls really "seen and done it all?" Really?

Moms - girls are going to be making themselves up and fretting about their appearance for THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Give them a few worry-free years before their morning routines get stretched to accomodate hairstyling and makeup application. A birthday party should include snow down the pants, a jump in the leaves or grass stains on the knees of old jeans. A swim in a pool. Some good old fattening cake. Hide and seek and balloons. Soccer. Movies and popcorn.

If you are really stumped for an idea for a girls' birthday party, call me. I'll take them horseback riding.

A

Grave Expectations

2008-03-02T16:30:00.013-05:00

I have walked through a cemetery every day for the last six months and enjoyed every second of it.

I have always felt torn about living in downtown Toronto. One the one hand, I love the multiculturalism and excitement of living in a big city, and have been able to take advantage of the theatres, concert halls and galleries that are at my doorstep. On the other hand, I am an avid camper, hiker and horseback rider, and yearn to be away from big buildings and garish city lights.

Last spring, I decided to start looking for a condo after a giant flood and a negligent landlord made my apartment unlivable. I had to move out of the rubble, but I had grown accustomed to a wonderful lifestyle; I lived on a quiet, treed street and could walk to work in fifteen minutes. I desperately wanted to continue walking to work; I had moved closer to my school in the first place to eliminate being crammed into streetcars, subways and buses during rush hour. I also didn't want to live on the 52nd floor of a high rise, like a veal fattening in my cage, waiting for slaughter. It occurred to me that there was only one place I could live next to mature trees, walk to work and get to a subway station in 10 minutes - and that was next to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

In 1876, the Mount Pleasant Cemetery site north of Yonge and St. Clair was a relatively small piece of land outside of the Toronto city limits. Today it is 205 acres of tranquil beauty in the heart of Toronto's "uptown". William Lyon Mackenzie King is buried there, as are Banting and Best (the first medical practitioners to distill insulin), the Eaton family, Northrup Frye and Glenn Gould. The cemetery is threaded with paved paths, and it is used by nearby residents as a sort of park; people walk, run and bike through it, or take a book on summer days and read.

Despite all of this, I found that not everyone understood why I wanted to live next to a cemetery and, if possible, have a balcony overlooking it. "Wouldn't you be creeped out, living next to all of those graves?" they asked. "Wouldn't you be scared?" As if that isn't enough, friends of mine who bought a unit in a building down the street from me had to sign a contract that specified that if they felt that their unit was haunted because of its location, they could not sue the developers. I am not kidding about this.

Once and for all, all of you "aren't you scared?" folks , let's take a minute to think about the "worst case" scenarios for those who live near cemeteries. Clearly the worst things I would be dealing with are: Vampires, Ghosts and Zombies. I'll deal with them individually.

Vampires: As a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fan, I am well versed in methods of dealing with these guys. The best defense is the fact that they can't come into your house unless you invite them. Heck, they probably couldn't even get past Roger, my building's front desk concierge, who takes his job VERY seriously. My friend Graham came to visit me last weekend and it took him AGES just to get the guy to call up to verify that I was expecting a guest. There's no way that Vampy McSuckerton could get past him!

Ghosts: Ghosts are all filmy and floaty, right? If a ghost is coming after me for some reason, I doubt that my moving closer to a graveyard would make a difference - travel is a snap for them. I don't think that my condo building is built on an ancient Indian burial ground, but even if it were, I think that ghosts would be the most pissed at people in the underground parking and on the first floor; I'm all the way up on the fifth. Besides, I am sure that the whacking great condo fees I pay every month probably cover spectral malevolence.

Zombies: The issue with zombies is that they travel in large groups reminiscent of the bus tours that bring senior citizens to Toronto to see stage productions of "We Will Rock You" or "Dirty Dancing." Even if they could get past Roger, their groaning would alert me to their presence and, as they move at a speed of approximately 5mph, I could pack a bag, take a shower, make a snack and then escape on foot before they made it to my unit.

Our love of horror movies aside, why do we hang on to ridiculous fears about cemeteries? Seriously - I LOVE living next door. It is downtown green space in a city of 3 million that is not under the threat of "development." This morning I heard the first herald of spring - birds singing in the 60 year old trees just outside my bedroom window (I did get that graveyard-view balcony, by the way!) Most of all, as I walk on those paths to and from work I am struck by the symbols of love and respect that are all around me. The people who rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery have been reduced to their organic components, but the people who designed their graves have done the very best they can to preserve the memory of a person they loved. It's a beautiful place, and I feel honored to pass through it every day.

An Apology to Britney Spears

2008-02-28T18:32:00.007-05:00

Here’s my dirty little secret. I have been a Britney-follower for years.

I say “Britney-follower” as opposed to a “Britney fan,” because I don’t actually own any of her albums or merchandise, save for a few songs I downloaded from iTunes to make a vacuous, ear-splitting, beat-pumping running mix. (Incidentally, there are lots of other truly awful songs on that mix that I would never listen to in my apartment, including Fergie’s “My Humps” and Justin Timberlake’s highly annoying “Sexyback.” Isn’t it amazing the things we will do to motivate ourselves to run? I mean, who’s kidding who here …the only really appropriate time to run is when you are being chased. At night. By a pack of rabid dogs. With guns. )

I have four Britney songs on my iPod, which cost me 99 cents each. This means that I have contributed a total of $3.96 to the “Britney Empire.” This would make me feel good about myself, were it not for the fact that I have probably contributed hundreds of dollars to the “Britney Machine.”

What’s the difference, you ask? Well, to my mind, the “Britney Empire” consists of the things that she herself has had some kind of hand in, no matter how ridiculous or contrived. There are the songs and videos on albums and DVD’s (obviously.) There is the merchandizing, which includes Britney dolls, Britney purses, Britney lunchboxes, Britney t-shirts, and of course, Britney perfume, which arguably makes more money than her music does. Despite this marketplace gorging, I have managed to keep my contribution to the “Brit-pire” at $3.96. (Technically, I suppose that I could be held responsible for any Pepsi product that I bought during the time of her endorsement, but let’s keep things simple, shall we?)

Sadly, I participated in the far more insidious side of the Britniverse – the “Britney Machine.” This is the moneymaking bonanza that is around her all of the time – with or without her consent. Three or four years ago I developed a hopeless addiction to celebrity magazines like “People” and “Us Weekly.” It was right around the time of Britney’s sudden Vegas wedding to her hometown pal Jason Alexander, and I found myself compelled to read about the fallout. As we all know, things got worse from there, and I wanted to read every word. The only justification I have for this pathetic behavior on my part is that I REALLY wanted (and still want) Britney to redeem herself.

I remember when she first came on the scene because I was teaching English and drama at a private girls’ school in Toronto. “Hit me Baby, One more Time” was catchy enough, and Britney has an undeniable star quality, but I was more interested in how she was being marketed to the world. The “sexiest, richest, small-town girl-next door” had a perverse appeal for kids and adults of both sexes, and there was a sudden tidal wave of press surrounding the 16 year old. At the time, however, I didn’t really think much about her personal life at all.

All of that changed for me when a journalist felt that it would be in the world’s best interest to ask Britney whether or not she would preserve her virginity until marriage. As a teacher of young women, I was outraged by both the question and the media furor it created. If an adult had asked me when I was 16 about my sexual status – a stranger, no less - I would have been MORTIFIED. Keep in mind that Britney was being carefully handled by a team of publicists and managers … and her mother … and they were probably all there at the time the question was asked. There is only one acceptable answer to that question if you are an American 16 year old – and Britney gave it. She would remain a virgin until she was married! Of course! Her public breathed a collective sigh of relief – the Southern belle with the sexy moves would remain untarnished.

Is it any wonder that Britney is the mess she is now? As a direct result of the marketing strategy that brought her to fame, she has swung wildly between “good girl” and “bad girl” stereotypes in recent years. She tried to satisfy the “be good” camp by becoming a wife and a young mother. The tabloids followed her ruthlessly, documenting every mistake ranging from downright offensive (driving with her baby in her lap) to downright human (tripping while she carried her baby in her arms.) The public didn’t respond well to “Married Britney,” so she became “Divorced-rehab-hopping-vagina-exposing Britney.” That didn’t go so well either. And with every day that passed, the paparazzi army around her grew.

And where was I? I was buying the magazines that paid the photographers around her. I was funding the stalkers that were diving onto the pavement, hoping for the coveted “upskirt” shot as Britney stepped out of her car. I was logging onto the insidious blogs like TMZ.com and perezhilton.com that reported all of her missteps with unabashed glee.

Britney, I am sorry. My interest in you lies largely in the fact that I feel that you have been treated unfairly, and I do hope that you work your life out. But I finally recognize the part that I have played in creating the circus that surrounds you. I promise that from now on I will show my support for you and your young children by ignoring you to the best of my ability. I’m sure that I will still hear about your exploits in one way or another, but I promise that I will no longer seek out any information about any part of your life.

I have been magazine free for a month, and I honestly feel better about myself. This isn’t just about Britney anymore. It’s about admitting that just because someone makes a public living it doesn’t give me the right to poke my nose into their business, even if their business has been neatly served up to me in a bright glossy package.

Can one person (me) make a difference? Probably not. But we should all reconsider how much time we spend on our celebrities, because we must be approaching some kind of pop culture critical mass. We talk about "responsible consumption" when we speak about the environment - maybe it's time to think about the "responsible consumption" of human beings. The Princess of Wales did not survive the constant media scrutiny around her, and I fear that the Princess of Pop may fare no better.

The hardest thing about creating a blog ...

2008-02-27T20:00:00.007-05:00

... is naming it.

I should have seen this coming, but it's been six years since I created my "hotmail" address, and I had forgotten how difficult it was to compete with the billions of web users out there who are way more savvy than I am.

As it is, I am barely savvy enough to turn my computer on, much less write a "blog." I must admit that I never thought that this day would come. But, day in and day out, I do my best to teach teenagers to write, and the reality is that I have not written anything myself in ages. I need to be clear here, I love my job, but there are only so many times that you can correct apostrophes, explain the difference between "their" and "they're" or try to explain the problem with the sentence "The author uses the last chapter to tie loose ends to the reader," before you want to slam your face into the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.

Why a blog? It's pretty simple - I want to practice the type of writing that you do for an audience. I do my fair share of melancholic whining into a personal "journal," but I wanted to try something different. I come from a family of very talented and successful writers, and I want to do my best not to let my end of that bargain down. Finally, although I doubt very much that anyone will actually ever read these blogs, I hope that an imagined audience will make me more disciplined and creative in my writing.

So ... creative task #1 ... find a name for the blog. "Alison Hunter's Blog" is boring and lame, and if my students are going to find my writing and ridicule it (or me,) I would at least like them to have to work at the internet search a little bit. I considered "Just One Thing," a reference to the fact that my friend "ACR" and I are always yearning for "just one thing" in life to be simple, but it was taken. So was "Here's The Thing," which is a phrase that my best friend Viki and I use because everything good in life comes with some kind of qualifier. Example:

Alison: "How's the new automated kitty litter box working out?" (Note: I am not making this up. Viki bought a $300 dollar kitty litter box that SCOOPS AND DISPOSES OF THE WASTE ITSELF. It's gigantic and looks like the Death Star. I would drop $300 on this invention in a second if I didn't live in a one-bedroom condo.)

Viki: "It's incredible! It really does everything it promises - it cleans and scoops and all I have to do is carry the sealed bag out to the trash! But HERE'S THE THING ... one of the cats is so fascinated with the scooping that he leaps into the box the minute it begins to do its thing ... and it automatically shuts off as a safety precaution."

Alison: "So - it never actually gets to "scoop" itself out?"

Viki: "Well no, I've had to do it so far. We're working on it."

Unfortunately, "Here's the thing" was already taken. As was "Here's-the-thing," and, as I learned in a moment of desperation, "Here's the thang."

I quickly abandoned the idea of using some pretentious literary reference when I realized that if I did it was very likely that the name of the blog would consistently be more meaningful and interesting than the writing within it.

So then I began to think about catchy TV/movie phrases that still might be recognizable in a year, or at least funny to me. The Simpsons and Family Guy provided some frontrunners, including "See you in the car!" (Millhouse's yearbook message for Lisa) and "I'm hungry or teething!" (Stewie's explanation for throwing a faux-fit on a plane). Both taken.

I had high hopes for "Blarp" which refers to a running joke with my brother, Colin. A character in the very funny "Hot Fuzz" (if you haven't seen it, you must) only answers questions in the affirmative, with a definitive "Yarp." Later in the movie, the gag is referenced by throwing in one negative - "Narp." Colin and I have discovered that EVERY word is funnier if it ends with "arp," and utilize this gag often, much to the bemusement of everyone around us, including his girlfriend Liz (aka Larp.) But "Blarp," ... believe it or not ... was taken.

So then I started digging deep.

I'll spare you the trauma, but I begain this damn "blog" journey at 5:30, and I am about to wrap it up at 10:30, which gives you an idea about how tricky this quest has been. So let me just tell you about "The Workshed."

Last weekend I read Bruce Campbell's excellent book "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor" (if you haven't read it, you must.) In it, he points out that there is a very obvious overdub in "Evil Dead 2" where Ash "says" the word "workshed" so that audiences know where he's headed. His lips clearly do not move at all when he formulates this plan, and this has become something of a legendary joke on college campuses. I couldn't believe it when I typed in "The Workshed" and it was accepted.

And really, it's kind of fitting. In "Evil Dead 2," "workshed" is a superfluous word. It's clumsily edited in, and it's not at all necessary - the audience figures out that Ash is headed to the workshed because ... he goes there in the next scene. And now it has become a gag to watch for for every hard core "Evil Dead" fan out there.

I hope that the entries this blog will be kinda like that. They are just superfluous, unnecessary words, written for my own gratification in an attempt to leave a literary legacy other than red scratchings on student essays. And I hope that someone will be amused or entertained by the writing, even if that someone is me. If they become a running gag, so much the better.

So if you are reading this, I hope you enjoy it. We'll see what happens.

Alison

P.S. There is a chance that an "Evil Dead" purist will happen upon this blog as a result of their frantic "Evil Dead" google searches and quickly point out to me that the infamous line is not "The Workshed" but simply "workshed." Well, smartypants, I tried "workshed." It was taken.

A