Rosie O'Donnell - Artist

I was never a big fan of The View. Four rich ladies sitting around telling unemployed women what to think about life is not my idea of good television, but what do I know?

Rosie. Ah, Rosie. The big, round, mound of sound finally decided to pack it in. She was due to resign from The View in a few weeks, but after her latest tiff with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, she punched the clock early. Or as Rosie wrote on her blog: "When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done."

True. Or as I like to put it, "When done taking dump, there is point u must flush."

Rosie O'Donnell comparing herself to an artist is a pretty good laugh. I'm glad she was talking about art of the paint variety, and not art a la William Faulkner. Here's another great piece of art from the woman that said Christianity is as much of threat to the world as militant Islam:

"On the view u have seen my last hasselbeck spat 2 day was it no more -- its done."

Rosie O'Donnell is a great American story. Only in America can you get rich and famous by ceaselessly bashing your own country, and doing it with a poor vocabulary and bad sentence structure to boot. Rosie's art is loudmouth stupidity, verbal or written, and she deserves some credit for that. Her conceit is evident in every wild charge she makes, and in the fact that she doesn't bother to use a spell check. Through her website, you can see how much thought she puts into her arguments and how much respect she has for her fans. She has paved the way for a whole new artform: graffiti journalism.

Here's a transcript from The View's March 26th broadcast, as recorded by World Net Daily, regarding the British sailors taken hostage in Iran:

BARBARA WALTERS: It could be a decision-making time. It's a very difficult situation. It's at the United Nations. It's being examined now. Should there be sanctions? Militarily, we certainly don't seem to be in the position to do something militarily. But it is a decision-making time.

O'DONNELL: Yes, but it's very interesting too that, you know, these guys, they went into the water by mistake right at a time when British and American, you know, they're two, they're pretty much our biggest ally and we're considering whether or not we should go into war with Iran.

BEHAR: But the U.N. was about to sanction them, also have an embargo against Iran. And the, and the timing [unintelligible] so they distracted the whole world with this.

ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Right and they may be about to expel the inspectors right now, too, which could be considered [unintelligible]

O'DONNELL: Right or it could be just the Gulf of Tonkin, which you should all Google.

O'Donnell's lousy theory about the British hostages being a ruse by the US government to start a war with Iran turned out - surprise - not to be true. But where did she get off saying this stuff in the first place? If The View is a popular show and reaches millions of homes, it owes its audience some integrity. O'Donnell had not one shred of evidence for comparing Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin to the Iran hostages. But that doesn't stop someone like O'Donnell. She spews, she takes a commercial, and she spews again. There's no follow-up, no correction, only an audience of seals that applauds and waits for the next pile of verbal vomit to hit the floor.

Another interesting bit from O'Donnell: ""655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists?"

Let me guess, Rosie. The United States? This was the statement that apparently led to the confrontation where Rosie called Hasselbeck a coward, and Hasselbeck looked like she wanted to jump across the table. Hasselbeck was asking Rosie to clarify the statement, wanting to put her on the record as to whether or not Rosie was calling US armed forces "terrorists." Rosie ran away from the question by calling Hasselbeck a chicken.

Can you imagine being called a coward by Rosie O'Donnell? This is a person who champions gay rights and same-sex marriage, but does everything in her power to make the US look like the bad guys in the Middle East. News for Rosie: if you lived in Iran and told people you were gay and proud, they would kill you. That simple. They hang people all the time for the outrage of being a homosexual. So who's the coward? Hasselbeck for calling your bluff, or you, for toeing the politically correct line even when it means standing up for people that, by their own admission, want you and your girlfriend dead?

The numbers, by the way, don't point in O'Donnell's favor. In 2006 alone, over 16 000 Iraqi civilians were killed by terrorists, while a little over two hundred were killed in circumstances involving US forces.

O'Donnell shouldn't have a problem with terrorists, anyway. While berating Hasselbeck (who must have the patience of a saint) in a 2006 broadcast, O'Donnell told her, "Don't fear the terrorists. They're mothers and fathers."

I would love to comment on that with something smart, but all I can come up with is, "What an idiot."

And that's Rosie O'Donnell. An idiot. And yet a genius. She has done extraordinarily well for herself. She's gotten rich off her schtick, and there's no reason to think that she won't continue to be successful.

I doubt she'd be able to pull it off in primetime. That's when the educated, working people are watching. It's also when the professional news people are ready to hit her with a tough question or two, not liking a daytime upstart who thinks she can say whatever she wants on their show.

Unlike the graffiti artists of the subway, O'Donnell hides in broad daylight. With what's-your-favorite-color Babs Walters running The View, she had nothing to fear, until Hasselbeck decided to pick a real fight. That's when O'Donnell did what she does best. Spew and run.

Unfortunately, all the way to the bank.

Photo: Retna

Café Marseille

I was having a beer in Marseilles with a friend of mine. It took us a while to a find a place which served stout, the French not being known for their love of beer. While sitting on the patio enjoying a Guinness, my buddy remarked that the women in France all look like women.

It took me a second to get his drift, but then I nodded in agreement. Both of us are originally from Canada (he blathers on about having English parents and a UK passport, but he's about as English as a beaver), and we're used to seeing North American women. When travelling to Europe, you're struck by just how different the women are.

I know, I know, of late I have become the anti-woman bore, or many of you seem to think so, judging by the letters that I get. I'm not anti-women at all, and really can't explain why I've been thinking about the fairer sex so much. Maybe I've just got women on the brain. It would be nice if they were on something else, but the brain will have to do, and I guess you're going to have to put up with it.

In any event, my friend is correct. French women dress like women, walk like women, and act like women. In short, they know they are women. They don't act, swear, and dress like men, knowing full well that true power lies in their their femininity.

They carry themselves in what an American would consider a snobbish manner, but they aren't snobs at all. They're just women. They know the men are watching, and want the men to watch, but God help you if you get caught up in their trappings. Behind those tight pants, flowing skirts, and Armani sunglasses, you will find a calculating creature that will love you to death if she is pleased, or stab you to death with her eyes if, to borrow from Queen Vicky, she is not amused.

I've had girlfriends tell me that they hate European women. They dislike the way they flaunt their sex, using it to their advantage, using it as a weapon. As if this were something unnatural?

Women north of the Rio Grande are a terrible disappointment when it comes to the mystery and the allure of woman. Yes, the French chick at the bar in the black turtleneck smoking the long cigarette might be a snob. But there is something sexy as hell about women that can stand alone at a bar and not once - not once - look around the room. Sheer confidence. Like a cat. Utterly disinterested in what you have to say or who you are...or might she be?

This as opposed to, say, the sexy allure of a chick from Kamloops wearing droopy denims when she shouts, "Canada kicks ass. Whoooo!" and then punches you in the arm harder than a lumberjack.

Don't get me wrong. Partying with Canadian and American women is fun as hell at the nightclub, but they just look wrong at the cafe. It's not their fault. That's North American culture. Sometimes you see women trying to ape it (NY, LA, Toronto), but they can't bring it off with the same panache. You can't fake being who you are for very long before smart people see right through you. LA women might try to act aloof, but that's the whole point: they're acting. French women are aloof because that is what they were the day they were born.

Getting by that is the adventure, the rest, gravy.

Monte Carlo Midnight

Monte Carlo is one of those places you like visiting if you have a lot of cash. If you don't have a lot of cash, you enjoy visiting it until you look at your bar bill the next day and realize that the kids can't go to college.

I went for a night on the town with a few buddies of mine. It had been years since the place saw my shadow, and back then I was only there during the day to take photographs and wonder what it would be like to be rich and famous. Years have passed and I am still not rich, nor am I famous, but I am a much wiser man: in a place as expensive as Monte Carlo, you need to take at least five friends with you wherever you go. That way, you buy a round of drinks and scream when you get the bill, but you only have to do it about once an hour. When you're on your own, you have a minor heart attack with every beer that lands in front of you.

The beer test is the way single guys sum up how expensive a place is. Some people go online and research a country's GDP. Women take the exchange rate into account, or what a leather bag costs at the mall. Single guys ask for a Budweiser and then say something like, "Well, that's about what it is at home," or "Holy shit, this place is dirt cheap, let's open a bar," or, "Jesus Christ, who ordered the tequila at 12 dollars an ounce?"

The beers in Monte Carlo cost 8 Euro for a draft, and ten or more for a premium bottle. At today's exchange rate, that's about 10 dollars for a lousy draft of suds, about triple what you'd pay if you're from some Northern Quebec craphole, or four bucks more than LA. Hard liquor is pricier still, with a martini running 10 to 12 Euro depending what you put in it. As a general rule of thumb, drinking with men is cheaper than drinking with women. Women order such new fangled, odd sounding, and awful tasting chick drinks that the bartenders up the price simply out of spite. When it takes ten minutes for them to prepare the thing, I don't blame them.

The beer test is the ultimate indicator of how expensive a city is, because you can be sure that a city charging 1o dollars for a draft beer is not going to sell you a house for under a couple of million. To make a two million dollar house sound reasonable, just tell yourself that it's only worth two hundred thousand beers. Besides, what do you expect in a place like Monte Carlo, where Grace Kelly was a Princess and their Grand Prix has the Mediterranean for a backdrop?

Monte Carlo is not for regular folk, though you wouldn't know it to look at the locals. I didn't see any rich people, I only saw people that had a lot of cash. There's a difference. The people in Monte Carlo are so used to having money that they don't give a shit about it. I met an Australian expat living in Monte Carlo, and while he bought us a round of shots, he told us that when he first moved here, he spent 1.5 million Euro on his new apartment. He said it like a man telling me about the new handsaw he bought at Home Hardware.

The locals in Monte Carlo don't dress the part. They have a ton of bread, but they don't spend it on clothing. They wear jeans, shorts, flip-flops. The Aussie expat told me that anyone who dresses too well in Monte Carlo sticks out as a snob. When everyone around you can buy and sell everyone else, what is the point of trying to go them one better in the shoe store?

It occurred to me that this meant me and my buddies could fit in. All we had to do is pretend to have a lot of cash because we already looked like locals. A friend of mine suggested we go hunting for sugar mommas to take care of us for life, but were disappointed to find that most of the chicks in one jazz club were themselves looking for sugar daddies. The rich stay at the bar and drink their faces off, while the wanna-be's like us are on the dance floor, entertaining them with our antics.

And we're more than happy to oblige, too, so long as they don't look down their noses too much when we blanche at the sight of a hundred Euro check for four beers and a couple of whisky chasers. But the people in Monaco's bars don't look down their noses at anybody, at least as far as I could tell. Nobody was rude, not even the bartenders. That is a miracle in itself. Even the doorman said good evening, if you can believe it.

The locals I met at one club were telling. It was a bar located on the last turn of the Grand Prix, the home stretch. Nearby, massive yachts bobbed in the harbor. In the bar, a rock band was playing, and I was struck again at the absolute dominance of American music culture around the world. From Tianjin to Monte Carlo to Singapore, you don't have to go very far before hearing Elvis Presley and Springsteen.

The bar was packed with locals on a Tuesday night, and not one of them was an asshole. No smugness, no attitude. With a lot of real money comes a lot of real confidence. The people that live in Monte Carlo have nothing to prove to anyone, because they've already proven it. They know they're rich, but it doesn't mean much in their scheme of things. When money has ceased to matter, you have to find other things that do. I don't know what they do in their downtime, but I'd like to find out.

Would I go back to Monte Carlo? Bet your ass I would. Just lend me a few bucks, won't you?

Euro Tripping

I was thinking this morning that it has been at least 2 or 3 years since I've walked the streets of Europe. That's too long. I don't have a massive love for all things European, but I know that Europe is an ever-changing place, so you have to catch it while you can. Demographic shift, politics, and even the currency are turning Europe into, well, Europe.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking of France and Germany as merely European provinces nowadays. That's good and bad. Good, because it means Germany might not invade France for a third time. Bad, because European culture is becoming purely European, and not French, German, Polish, Italian, so forth.

Europe is not the Europe of yesterday. To be a good European, you must merely hate the United States, and not wish to work more than 35 hours a week. Sad.

The last time I went to geographical Europe was in August of last year. I went to England. I'm in agreement with my English buddies that the UK is part of the European continent, but isn't "European." Still, I'm starting to wonder about that, too. The more I see and hear about Europe, I can't tell the difference between many of the countries and their peoples' views. England is now falling into that same 'European' category. That's a shame, because I love England, and I love the English people. But all it will take to put the fork in England's Englishness is a switch from the pound to the Euro. That last gesture will seal its cultural fate.

In any event, click here to see what I thought of my last trip to one of the spots in the geographical place we call Europe.

Big Bucks - Small Times

AP Photo/Bill Kostroun
Some random musings on a late Tuesday night got me thinking about athletes and money. Roger Clemens is back pitching for the Yankees, and they said that his contract for the rest of this year is a prorated 28 millions dollars.

That’s a lot of cash. You’d think Christ Himself had come down for the final judgement, decided instead to work on his curveball, and Steinbrenner gave him a spot on the roster.

This season is a month over. The Rocket won’t be ready to play for another few weeks. That means he won’t appear until June. That gives him a four month season. With baseball’s five-man pitching rotation, this means he’ll probably play in no more than 24 games.

Let’s be generous and say that Clemens will average 7 innings per game (he’s already stated that he won’t go more than 3 or 4 innings in the first couple of games in order to build up his arm). That makes for 168 innings of baseball. A wildly inflated number, but again, I’m being generous. Now let’s say that he averages a very good 15 pitches per inning. That comes to 2520 total pitches.

So this season, every time Roger Clemens puts his hand past his ear, he will earn roughly 9500 dollars. And change.

Imagine that. Go out in your backyard and pick up a rock. Throw it at the fence 10 times. Now pretend you just made a hundred grand.

When we pay to watch a sporting event, what we are really doing is paying to watch millionaires play a leisure activity. There’s no denying that. I love baseball, football, and hockey, but be real: they’re games. Leisure activities. And the people playing them are rich. We simply pay for the right to watch them play these games. Once in a while, we yell at them, and it feels good, or we get drunk at the bar with our buddies, and that feels good, too. But they’re games.

Not a new argument, and it’s not really my point. What struck me about the Clemens deal is that he brought up his family as part of his decision-making process. And I thought to myself, is he nuts?

Any sports star that gets married and has kids before he retires is an idiot. I really believe that. Because man, if I was making ten thousand dollars every time I threw a ball or passed a puck, the last thing I’d want to do is go home to a bunch of screaming kids.

What the hell are they thinking? Getting a five million dollar-a-year contract at the age of 25 is a license to party your ever-loving brains out. You’d own any club you walked into. You’d be the life of the party, chicks all around. Never mind the Chivas, hand me the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue so I can bathe in it.

Presidents invite these people over to dinner. Mayors hand them keys to the city. Hell, you can walk out on that field, throw a ball, complain of “elbow stiffness” and go on the 60-day disabled list. Screw working. For the next two months you can rehab that elbow with a bottle of Heineken in one hand, and a blonde in the other for ballast.

A wife and kids when you can own Broadway? Where’s the fun in that? Besides, you’re taking one hell of a risk getting hitched. The groupie you married knows damn well what you’re up to on the road, because that’s how she met you in the first place. Whenever she feels like it she can sic a photographer on your ass and the next thing you know, your contract is chopped in half.

Where did Joe “I like my Johnnie Walker Red and my women blonde” Namath go? Where’s Mickey Mantle lying in the gutter? Sure, their biographies read all sad and sappy later on, but even when you’re reading about their ‘downfall’ you’d cut off your left ear to have the wild times they did.

Watching the baseball All-Star Game is a drag. All of the players in the dugout are holding their children by the hand, pinching their cheeks, tickling their little bellies. Boooooring. Bring on the beer bongs and the dancing girls. I’ll take Babe Ruth over Peyton Manning any day of the week. And sure, twice on Sundays, come to think of it.

I think it was Shaw that said youth is wasted on the young.

The big bucks are wasted on the morons.

Where Have You Gone, Juan Valdez?

If you're feeling masochistic, you may want to step into the nearest Starbucks and buy yourself a cup of joe. It's not that the coffee is bad. It's the new age coffee culture that kills.

Has anyone else noticed how difficult it is to get a plain cup of coffee these days? While standing in the caffeinated purgatory that is a Starbucks line-up, I recently went through the following hell:

"Grande non-fat 190-degree machioto." Shuffle forward, as Starbucks becomes a WWII submarine and every order is repeated twice.

"Grande non-fat green tea latte." Shuffle forward.
"De-caf grande caramel latte." You want strawberries with that? Shuffle forward.
"Tall extra hot, extra pumped chai with whipped cream." Picky, picky. Shuffle forward.
"Grande de-caf, non-fat latte…with a sweetener."

You know you could never like a guy that orders non-fat anything, let alone someone that throws a sweetener in it when he's done.

The language of Starbucks amuses me. There is not a chance that any of these people knew what "grande" was ten years ago. Likewise chai, latte, or machioto. How did they learn the lingo? They must have been nervous the first time they used ten words to order a cup of coffee, some in a different language to boot. Or perhaps it just comes naturally to people that think there's no easier way to sound sanctimonious than to specify that their coffee be served at exactly 190-degrees. And what about the prices they pay? When a large (pardon me - venti) latte costs almost as much as a six pack of beer, you know things are seriously out of whack.

Coffee shops used to be for smokers and cops. No longer. Now they are reserved for the SUV crowd, the kind of people that would be aghast if someone ordered the same beverage as them. They don't seem to realize how comedic this all is. "Extra hot, extra pumped" sounds more like an order you'd hear in a Panama City cathouse than a suburban coffee shop.

The days of the old boys sitting around the coffee shop are long gone. This worries me. They have nowhere left to go. My last visit to Starbucks gave me an image that made me cringe. Say what you want, but there is something depressing about watching an old man read his morning paper while he drinks iced frappuccino through a straw.

Still, I have my fun. There is no better sight in the morning than the Starbucks Frown. That's what you receive when you tell the Starbucks flunky that you want a "medium coffee." My inner voice screams with delight when the high school girl or aged retiree frowns in disapproval, then says, "A grande Breakfast Blend?"

Whatever. Just make it to go.

Polar Bears? Save the Ice - I'm Having Margaritas

I was goofing off on one one of those Facebook sites when I came across a group dedicated to saving the planet. A woman with an infant in her arms left the following message: "Oh, my heart aches for the polar bears." Actually, she put it in capital letters. I can't figure out if that is because the baby in the picture was screaming and so she shouted to be heard, or if she's just a regular enviro-boob. They seem to be shouting all the time, anyway. The only pollution they don't seem to care about is of the noise variety.

I could go on a long-winded rant about this woman's priorities, but instead I'll pull a cheap move and re-print something from February 2nd. I can't bring myself to write too much more about the environment right now, and my mind hasn't changed much since then, so here goes. Enjoy.

From the Daily Mail (UK):
Global Warming Sees Polar Bears Stranded On Melting Ice

They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.

Captured on film by Canadian environmentalists, the pair of polar bears look stranded on chunks of broken ice. Although the magnificent creatures are well adapted to the water, and can swim scores of miles to solid land, the distance is getting ever greater as the Arctic ice diminishes.

"Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one," said Dr Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service. "They just kind of float along and kick. But as the ice gets farther out from shore because of warming, it’s a longer swim that costs more energy and makes them more vulnerable."

Bummer.

I don't know what to say about this global warming thing anymore. In the 70's it was global cooling. In the 80's it was warming. Then in the 90's it became 'climate change,' which was a great turn of phrase for the enviro-boobs and unemployed people that wanted to yell at lumberjacks. With the words 'climate change,' bitching about mankind's sins became an all-season sport, snow or shine, blizzard or heatwave.

I studied anthropology in school. That's what the degree says on my wall, anyway (both the degree and the wall are made from tree products. Apologies all around). During those classes we had to look back at history and count the number of ice ages and such. The theory then was that there were three big ones and a bunch of smaller ones.

Not so long ago, Toronto was under a mile of ice and the Great Lakes didn't exist. The ice had to recede in order to leave those puddles behind. So I guess one would have to say that global warming is a damn good thing. Without it, there would be no shopping on Yonge Street, and there would be no forests for the enviro-weenies to run around in.

The conceit of human beings is astounding. The idea that we parasites could affect this planet in any major way is a laugh. It's also a great chuckle watching the National Geographic specials and hearing the narrator give the Obligatory Guilt Trip. At the end of every episode, they always manage to say that such-and-such a thing will cease to exist if Man doesn't change his evil ways. Why? Because the ecosystem is fragile.

Fragile? Tell that to the people in central Florida. A fragile tornado dropped out of the sky the other day and obliterated a town, killing 20 people in the time it takes to make toast.

Katrina, she didn't look too fragile, did she? We stewards of the Earth gaped in slack-jawed wonder at her power, cowered beneath concrete, and watched as she kicked over levees as if they were anthills.

Or the tsunami (Random Aside: can someone tell me where tidal wave went?) That surfer's wetdream wiped out thousands of people and destroyed entire villages and towns in less than ten minutes.

We're supposed to protect the environment from us? Please. More like the other way around. We're as nothing on this spinning globe. Anytime it feels like it, it can give one big belch and we're history.

The Earth is not fragile, and to refute the article above, neither is a bear's grip. Timothy Treadwell could tell us that, were he still around. He's the guy who took his girlfriend up north to live with his furry friends. Treadwell's method of approaching bears was to slowly slink up to them while singing "I love you" in a high-pitched voice. He and his girlfriend are now bear shit.

Our conceit is limitless. The Earth has been through ice ages, massive earthquakes, hurricanes, innumerable volcanoes spitting sulphur into the sky, catastrophic meteorite impacts, so forth. But hairspray and unleaded gas will be the planet's demise?

Ours, maybe. But the Earth doesn't give a damn about us. Ask the next skydiver whose chute doesn't open how fragile the Earth is, and how much it cares. You'll get two four letter words in response. The first is shit!, the other is thud.

Eavesdrop

I overheard a woman talking to her friend outside a mall last night:

"You know Angela. If it doesn't involve manicures, pedicures, martinis, or jogging, she doesn't give a shit."

Such is the epitaph over many a woman's thirties.

Vacancy - Review

Director: Nimrod Antal
Writer: Mark L. Smith
Starring: Luke Wilson/Kate Beckinsale
Runtime: 80 minutes

In Vacancy, Luke Wilson takes a turn away from comedy to try his hand in a horror thriller. The result is a so-so homage to Psycho. Or maybe The Ring. Or perhaps Saw.

Vacancy starts out with Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale driving on a mountain road. They are a husband and wife, and they hate each other. It is night. The road is deserted. They have a map, but they can’t read it properly. They have cell phones, but there’s no signal. They spend a few minutes digging insults at each other as the car winds its way through the mountains. They realize they are lost. Then their car breaks down. The only piece of civilization is a deserted motel with a gas station. What to do?

If you’ve seen enough horror films, you’ll now be screaming "Derivative!" at the top of your lungs. You’d be correct. Yet you also have to feel sorry for the filmmakers.

Horror movies are getting harder and harder to create. GPS systems are making the whole ‘wrong turn’ idea more difficult. Cell phones mean that 911 is only three buttons away. Then there’s the fact that 300 million people live in the US. Just how many empty roads are left for crazy people to hide out in?

As a filmmaker, all you can do is toss it against the wall and hope it sticks: empty road means crazy people means no signal on your cell phone. On with the movie.

Beckinsale and Wilson check into the hotel for the night. The manager is a skinny, creepy fellow, straight out of central casting. He and his motel are such a ripoff of Norman Bates and his establishment that the director throws in the towel and makes it a homage: the motel’s lobby is a replica of Psycho’s, and there’s bird statues on the desk beside the bell, another subtle nod to Norman Bates.

When they check into their motel room, Beckinsale and Wilson are disgusted by the place, but decide to make the best of it. Wilson finds some old VHS tapes beside the TV. He puts one in. It’s a horror scene, with a man and a woman being attacked by a couple of masked men. Wilson puts in another tape. Same thing, people being attacked and stabbed to death. But then Wilson notices that the room in the video tape is the same as the room he is in right now. And when there’s a loud knock on the door, he realizes they are in deep trouble.

I was intrigued. Yes, I’d recently seen most of this (the video in The Ring, the trapped duo in Saw), but I liked the size of Vacancy. Not the length; modern horror films rarely run more than 95 minutes unless they involve an exorcism. In Vacancy, 20 minutes had gone by and we’d only met a few characters. I liked that, because it meant that there might be some solid writing.

With more characters comes more excuses to cheat. If someone’s in trouble, one of a half-dozen people can rush in to save the day in the nick of time. But when the amount of characters are limited, so is the writer’s ability to cheat the audience with a dumb coincidence.

Unfortunately, scribe Mark Smith couldn’t make it the distance. He does a very good job keeping us in the dark for a while, but then he exposes the reason behind these snuff films too early. From then on it is regular run-away-hide-run-away-hide fare, and it's tedious. It is amazing how horror writers and directors don’t trust their instincts, and instead reach for the screenplay manual. In that manual, it says that the lead characters must meet their adversary face to face at the exact mid-point of the movie.

Why, oh why, do they continue to do this? In Vacancy, the knocking on the door, the empty parking lot, the flickering lights, the terrifying videos, all of these things turn the screws. Then the killers are exposed and the suspense is dead. The fear of the unknown is so much more powerful than a man with a knife, and it sickens me when filmmakers have a good thing going and then pull out the cliches.

Luke Wilson does a good job with the role. It takes a few minutes to get his comedic films out of your head, but after that, it’s pretty smooth sailing. Beckinsale is great, but takes a loss when things get physical. The writer turns her into the fraidy-cat girl, and the director lets her act like it, which is a shame.

I know what they were going for. Hollywood is in love with the idea of ‘character arc.’ Even in a horror film, a character must evolve and learn. So this couple starts out hating each other, but by working together to escape psychos, they rekindle their love. Beckinsale learns to cry, Wilson holds her like he did in the old days, bells will ring and birds will chirp. What tripe.

Today’s horror films demand an awful lot of suspension of disbelief. To see if it’s working, I use the audience.

With Vacancy, it was pretty plain they were buying it. They paid to see a run of the mill horror movie, and that’s what they got. The only true groan of disbelief came towards the end. They were right. It was as derivative as it could get, but by then they’d had their fun.

As for me, I was left with those same old words on my lips: “It could have been so much more…”

Curt Schilling - Blogger

I was listening to MLB Homeplate on XM 175 and caught the tail end of host Charley Steiner's interview with a sportscaster. In the interview, Steiner commented on bloggers, and made a point of saying that they don't need any credentials, all they need is a keyboard and a computer.

He was, of course, intimating that bloggers shouldn't be taken seriously when they write about sports. The fact that they don't have any credentials makes them suspect as a source of information.

Fast forward about fifty-five seconds. Steiner moves on to the topic of Curt Schilling's bloody sock. (For those not in the know, broadcaster Gary Thorne reported that Doug Mirabelli said something about the blood on Curt Schilling's sock in the 2004 ALCS being fake. Thorne has since retracted the report, saying he misinterpreted Mirabelli's words). To get Schilling's view, Steiner read out a few words from the Red Sox pitcher. Guess where the words came from?

Curt Schilling's blog.

So which is it, Charley? Are bloggers to be taken seriously, or not? And if you are going to pick and choose your blogs, you'll have to tell your audience what credentials a blogger needs before you'll use his stuff on the air. A journalism degree? A life in politics? A 90-mph fastball?

As Steiner says, all you need to be a blogger is a computer and keyboard. That's true. But tell me, what else do you need to be a journalist? I've published material in various places before, I've cashed the checks, I've written back and forth with editors. There's a degree on my wall, but it isn't in journalism. No editor has ever asked what my degree is in, or if I even have one. In fact, the topic of schooling has never come up.

Why? Because editors couldn't give a damn what degree you hold. Like a GM in baseball, they want one thing and one thing only out of their players: good stuff. They want well-written, topical pieces, that are supported by facts. If you can write an explosive story about the president, supported six ways from Sunday, an editor is not going to toss your stuff in the trash just because you didn't attend Yale.

Let's get one thing straight: if Steiner is talking about bloggers that are writing "Red Sox suck!" on their front pages, then I am on his side entirely. But if he's talking about all bloggers everywhere, then I think he's full of it. And he's also afraid. He's afraid that enough people with a computer and keyboard might find out how to do his job, and they might even take his job away from him.

The internet has blown things wide open on all fronts. Buying a house used to be the domain of the real estate agent. An agent could tell you whatever they wanted, and you more or less had to believe them. "The market's tanking," they could say, and you'd sell early, afraid of taking a loss. That isn't the case now. Today you can go on-line and do a couple of weeks of research before even contacting the real estate agent. If the agent hands you a line of bull, you'll know it, and you'll move on to somebody else. That is, if you think you still need somebody else. Maybe you'll just do it yourself.

Term life insurance, the cost of video games, the stats on a big league pitcher, all of this is the same thing: information. The experts used to hoard this information for themselves, and we would pay them to give it to us. Now we don't have to. I can compare life insurance policies from different companies in the blink of an eye. I can find out that the video game at one store is ten bucks cheaper than the other guy's. I can go online and see for myself how well a pitcher does against right-handed hitting. In the process of looking up that stat, I save myself a dollar on a newspaper.

It is no wonder that Steiner and his brethren are afraid of bloggers. Guys like him used to be able to tell people whatever they wanted. They chose what information we were allowed to hear. It was they alone who decided what was newsworthy, and what was not.

The rules have changed. Ten years ago if he had said something on the air, no one could check it out. Now we can. We can research his research, and we can debate him on any issue that he brings up, short of going into his personal life. Virtually all of the information he has, we have. Even if he has an interview with someone, there is nothing stopping a person from going online, finding that guest's agent, and trying to set up an interview of their own.

What I find disturbing about Steiner's attitude is its conceit. The idea that all of the people out there with keyboards and computers are sheep. If you don't have a newspaper's name on your letterhead, you can't write intelligently about baseball? Ludicrous. Charley Steiner watches a baseball game, reads the newswire, checks the stats, then goes on the air to pontificate about it. Fine. But who can't do that? Nobody. Because we all have Charley's tools.

Regarding the mainstream media types, Schilling had this to say:

"Does anyone stop reading their newspapers? Watching the shows they appear on? The answer to that is no. Instead of using the forums they participate in to do something truly different, change lives, inspire people, you have an entire subset of media whose sole purpose in life is to actually be the news, instead of report it."

Well put, blogger.

Memory Murmur

John D. MacDonald had an interesting take on life. It went something like this:

You and all of the people you know are on a very small island. That island is your life. The raging waters passing by that island are life itself. On that island you live out your days together. You play, laugh, dance, weep, and smile. But eventually someone steps a little too close to the waterline, and they're gone. You watch them fading into the distance, and perhaps they're not drowning but waving, but in any case, they're gone. A memory. And you go back to being with the people on your island.

As you get older, some people come to the island, and some people are washed away. The older you get, the more people slip into the waters until they are gone. And, if you've lived a long life, eventually you are alone on that island. Maybe one or two other people are with you. Until they too are engulfed. And then it's just you, waiting to go under.

Depressing.

But it makes sense. When you stroll through a cemetery and see a man's grave marker that reads 1902, it doesn't take much imagination to realize that there is not a single person still alive that knew him. He might make for a tall tale around the campfire, but no one misses him. He's just gone.

Not that the dead guy worries about it. The Romans used to put an epitaph on the grave markers of slaves. It got straight to the point:

I was not.
I was.
I am not.
I do not care.

Indeed.

Memories are like grave markers. Every once in a while we smell a cup of coffee, or hear a car horn, and someone's image pops into our minds. I have always been fascinated by that. You do not need to hear a person's name to remember them. Something merely has to happen, and for some reason this triggers a chemical reaction in your brain that says, "Johnny, getting hit in the face by a baseball." Or, "Jennifer, when she laughed at me because I couldn't undo her bra."

It is people, of course, that are the meat of memories. If I say to you, "High school," it's doubtful you'll get too far before picturing a person's face in your mind. If you push that memory a little further, you'll probably remember more about them than you thought possible. And if you keep at it, you might be able to remember the last time you physically saw them. Until they were gone, washed off your island. Not by death (as far as you know), but by time and circumstance.

Memories are a bitch, aren't they? Try as you might, they just don't seem real. When I think back on events five years ago, it's almost like they happened to somebody else. Could I have really felt that way? Did I really say that? Was I really that happy/sad/elated/scared? It felt so real then. Why doesn't it feel real now?

I remember hearing about a friend that died. He wasn't a close friend, but we shared some drinks and jokes together. He was a hell of a guy. He got married, and three years later he dropped dead. I hadn't seen him in a long time. When I got the news, the first thing that popped into my head was him cutting up a salami and asking me if I wanted some. That memory comes from an all-night bender that we'd had. At the end of the night he pulled out some salami, some bread, and a knife. He said, "You want some salami?"

I feel like I cheated him. Nobody's first memory after death should involve a damned salami. I like to think he'll forgive me for that.

For me the hardest part about remembering people that are still alive, and missing them, is not their absence. It is the idea that they are doing things without me. I won't hear their stories, share their joys. They are gone just as if they had been unplugged from life.

Certainly we've all been there. It doesn't take very long to feel like you've been washed off the island. A friend says good-bye, and a short time later you get a mass email. And deep down you realize: "They don't need me anymore." They are busy making more memories, only this time you aren't in them. You do not, as it were, exist.

One time I wrote to an old girlfriend of mine. She lives in London and I was going there for some reason or other. I would only be there for the day. I thought it would be swell if we could hang out down by Piccadilly Circus and have a cup of coffee, share a few laughs. She wrote back to tell me that she was busy that day, but she hoped I would have a great time. And I was momentarily angry with her. Why could she not spare the time? And then it hit me that she's alive and living a life that I haven't been part of in years.

I found out an old friend of mine had a blog. I opened it up. It's a very personal blog, with daily routines and who's doing what to whom. I read it briefly. And I closed it. I'll check in on it from time to time, to see what they're up to, but it is like reading the diary of a stranger. It smacks of research, not reminiscence. Did I know that person the way people know them now? Did I really know them at all?

Casino Royale - Review

Director: Martin Campbell
Writers: Purvis/Wade/Haggis
Starrng: Daniel Craig/Judi Dench
Runtime: 144 minutes

George Lazenby: "I'd loved to have had that time over again and done another one or two (Bond films), it would have worked out great for me."

Lazenby would know. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was a good flick, and Lazenby did a fine job in the lead role. So what did he do with it? He squandered it away and watched his career take a tumble into mediocrity, if not outright obscurity.

There have now been 21 Bond films, with another currently in production. It is without doubt the most successful franchise in film history, and it has catapulted stars to fame and fortune, some of it deserved, some of it not. It made Sean Connery the film star he is, even though he once said he hated the character. The end of Roger Moore’s career, and the bulk of his retirement fund, was built not on the 401K, but the 007.

Timothy Dalton? Please. Without James Bond as his alter-ego in the ‘80s, no one would even know who Timothy Dalton is. Or rather, was.

Pierce Brosnan didn’t seem to need 007, but let’s be frank: before James Bond, he was more or less the guy from Scarecrow and Mrs. King. After James Bond, he is the man who has made a couple of extremely questionable film choices. After the Sunset was a bust, and The Matador, though an interesting character study, didn’t bring in the crowds. In that movie, Brosnan played a lunatic assassin who looked ridiculous in a Speedo. One has to wonder what Brosnan was thinking when his agent pitched him the script: “I just quit being the most popular action hero there ever was. So you want me to sprout a funny moustache, grow a beer gut, and wear skimpy underwear? Where do I sign up?”

All big film stars should have the following note written on their groupies’ foreheads: “Playing against type is how new guys get noticed. Playing against type is also how film stars destroy their careers.”

The fact that James Bond has been played by so many actors without missing a beat is all the evidence you need that the actor playing him doesn’t matter much.

That is why I took no notice of the anti-Craig hype when Daniel Craig decided to come on board as the next incarnation of 007. When I heard his name, I scratched my head, then snapped my fingers and said, “Oh, yeah, that English guy. From…”

“Layer Cake,” my friend said.

Sounds good to me, I thought. In Layer Cake, Daniel Craig was a good looking English guy with a gun. When you get down to it, that’s about all you need to play Bond. Even if an American were cast as Bond, traditionalists would protest vehemently, but they would go and see the movie. Some would like it, some would not, it would turn a profit, and we would await the next one.

Bond movies are Bond vehicles, not star vehicles. The actor is incidental, because you are not going to the movie to see him, you are going to see what he does: say a funny line or two, escape death, screw some women, and save the world.

I finally caught up with Casino Royale and it surprised me. Not because it cut back on the gadgetry, and not because Daniel Craig is a superb actor that brought anything new to the role. What surprised me about Casino Royale is that it had balls.

From the beginning of the film, the writers (Purvis/Wade/Haggis; God knows who wrote or re-wrote what scenes, but such is Hollywood) let you know that this time it is going to be a little bit different. A black and white scene opens the film, a subtle gesture to tell us that this is the first Bond, not the next Bond, just as Casino Royale was the first of the Bond novels.

Inside of three minutes, Craig’s Bond has killed two men. These are apparently Bond’s first ‘hits,’ and he shows no squeamishness about performing them. This is refreshing, in the sense that a hitman wouldn’t be hired as a hitman if he was afraid of killing people. M, played by an underused but always good Judi Dench, reminds us a little further into the film that the double-oh prefix in Bond’s title means he has a license to kill. This is also refreshing, since in past Bond films, the words kill and death were lacking from the script, no matter how many bodies flew through the air.

Bond had become a video game. This time around, the writer and director have the guts to give Bond his balls back and make him what Fleming always said he was: a hitman in a tuxedo.

He still gets the ladies, of course. One fantastic line in the film comes when Bond is talking to a beautiful assistant in the back of a car. He tells her she’s not his type.

“Smart?” she says.

“Single,” he replies.

And that’s about all the dialogue you’re going to get out of Daniel Craig. The writer has parsed his words down to next to nothing, and the film is better for it. Not because Craig can’t deliver dialogue, but because, what’s the point?

I was surprised by the balls of the writers, as well as those on director Martin Campbell. He keeps the focus on the violence of Bond, the subtleties of the character. This is courageous, considering what has come before. Laser beams, rockets, explosions, they are done away with. Bullets are about as sophisticated as it gets, and when Bond is tortured, it’s done the old fashioned way: he’s tied to a chair and receives a vicious beating. In the balls.

Though taken from the first Bond novel, the film is updated. Cell phones and laptops are put to use, and the baccarat game is replaced by Texas Hold ‘Em poker. This is a smart move by the filmmakers. American audiences would have been lost by baccarat, and the popularity of Texas Hold ‘Em on ESPN makes it the obvious choice.

The guts of the director come out again in the poker scenes. They take a good twenty minutes of screentime to develop, and it would have been very easy for him to skim it. He doesn’t. The game is played as if the audience knows what is happening. You can almost hear the director saying, “Don’t know the game? Lean over and ask your neighbour, because I’m taking this to to the limit. The movie’s called Casino Royale for God’s sake.”

The film is long, but not drawn out. I enjoyed watching the director take Bond through some water that hasn’t been charted in years. Bond, physically disabled. Bond, in love. Bond, truly enraged. Bond, out for vengeance and enjoying that vengeance. Bond, touchingly emotional. Yes, for the first time in ages, Bond actually strikes an emotional chord. It borders on melodrama, and isn’t as poignant as when Bond’s wife died (it has been a long time since you saw George Lazenby, hasn’t it?), but it is a quality scene.

But how was Daniel Craig, you might ask?

He was fine. As with all the other Bonds, he did a good job with the material and he didn’t try to play Hamlet. Like a smart actor with a smart director, he knew to keep his Laurence Olivier in check and let the character’s mystique cloud our vision of the actor beneath.

For his sake, I'm glad he's following what would be Lazenby’s advice: “Do two.”

Happy Birthday, Bill

Today is Shakespeare's birthday. Here is what I had to say about the state of English letters 443 years after the Bard arrived on the scene.

Communication Breakdown

Have you called a friend and left a message lately? I haven't. I fell asleep halfway through the exercise, banged my head, and forgot what I wanted to say.

The answering machine was invented in 1904, but didn't reach wide-scale use until the '50s. They were mostly used for office work, and it wasn't until the 80's that they became a convenient way to avoid colleagues and dodge ex-girlfriends.

Not so long ago, they seemed like a great idea. After the fourth ring, a tape would roll. A friend's voice would say, "We're not available to take your call. Please leave a message after the beep." Had they foolishly said "We're not home right now," you would have run over and robbed their house. But since they were mysteriously 'unavailable,' you said you'd meet them at the restaurant for six o'clock. Simple.

People no longer have answering machines, they have an answering service. And whenever you add 'service' to anything, you know you're going to get the exact opposite of it. These days, leaving a message for people takes forever.

My friend's phone is a great example. Calling her is like trying to get through to the President of Argentina. She's one of those people that thinks you actually care what her opening message says. I quote:

"Hi everybody, this is me! [no kidding] I am currently unavailable [obviously] because I am on a cruise around South America [swell]. So please leave your name and a message [darn, I was all set to sing Oklahoma]. I will be periodically checking my messages [That's good. I usually leave mine until Christmas]. However, if you want to get in touch with me right away [now you tell me], my email..."

That thud you hear is me, slipping into a coma and falling off the chair.

Her greeting amuses me for two reasons. One, her cruise around South America ended last month. If you're going to tell your life story over the phone, at least make it a recent chapter. Two, how many strangers are calling that need to hear this stuff? Zero. Like you, she has the same half-dozen people dialing her number day in and day out. They know what hemisphere she is in, and they know her email address. They use it because they don't want to go through the hassle of phoning her.

A buddy of mine also has a long-winded speech. Like most guys, he adopts a tone usually reserved for morticians and airline pilots. Then he makes room for the Phone Lady. I hate that woman. When my friend finishes talking, she takes the floor: "After the tone, leave a message. When you are done leaving a message, you may press pound for more options. Press 1 to replay your message, press 2..."

That sound you hear is my phone, being thrown through the window.

The worst greeting I ever heard comes from a friend's mother. She changed it every day. I'm fairly certain that my friend moved out of the house not because she didn't want to live there anymore, but because people kept making fun of her mom: "Hey, it's me. Tell your mom I'm not enjoying this gift of a sunny, glorious day anymore, because it just started to piss rain."

Right now I need to make a phone call. I will try my best to get through the rings, the greetings, and the button pushing. Just please, wake me when it's over.

Another Chapter in the History of Violence

I didn't want to weigh in on the Virginia Tech killings mainly because an idiot headcase like that didn't need any more press. Alas, CNN, NBC, et al, have given the idiot headcase all the press he will ever need. He'll be on the internet forever, and his words will have the longevity of Churchill, Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is sobering to think that we will know more about his words than we will about Abraham Lincoln's. Lincoln's words were only recorded by the pen. We know how boring that is compared to the flash and dash of the TV screen, so we're lucky that some students might even know who Lincoln was, let alone what he said at Gettysburg.

But that is not the fate of the idiot headcase. Before murdering 32 people, he dropped a tape of himself into the mailbox. He posted it to NBC. Yesterday, NBC promptly played the piece. It shows the idiot headcase brandishing firearms, ranting about the world in general, and now and then pointing a gun at his own head. It is a shame that he was more headcase than idiot. He might have pulled the trigger and splashed his idiot mind all over the wall. But he didn't.

The television media that aired this piece should be deeply ashamed of themselves. I don't mean professionally ashamed, as in, "Did we make the right call?" I mean ashamed in the way that you can't look your mother in the eye.

This is a disgrace. To give a subhuman like that a platform to 'air his views' before murdering 32 people is a travesty. It accomplishes three things: it gives the idiot headcase exactly (and I do mean exactly) what he wanted. 2) it destroys the remaining members of the families that he already destroyed. He killed some with the gun, and he now kills the rest with anger and humiliation. Until the end of their lives, these families have a chance of running into the idiot headcase on the internet and hearing his crap. He will never leave their lives. He will always remind them of what he did, what he took away. And he always wins. Remember: he got exactly what he wanted, at their sons' and daughters' expense. 3) any other idiot headcase out there now knows that he will win, too.

This is not a first amendment issue. If CNN or any other organization had transcribed some of his words and put them on a screen, I would have had no problem with that: it's news. It might (though this is extremely dubious) help point out other headcases in the future. But to play the tape in its entirety is pure sensationalism at best.

By the by, when are we going to hear from the victims? The answer, of course, is never. Unlike the idiot headcase (and if you're looking for his name, go look somewhere else; it won't be mentioned here) the victims of this crime did not get a chance to sit down and tape their last words. That was for the idiot headcase alone. The victims were busy going about their day. Maybe they were thinking about exams. Maybe they were thinking about the next kegger, or getting laid, or going home on the weekend to see mom and dad. Whatever. They didn't get a chance to say anything to anybody, except perhaps to beg for mercy.

They got none. Neither from the killer, nor the media.

I'm sick of the news networks. I want them to go to the families with hat in hand, get down on their knees, and ask forgiveness. I want them to ask for any and all family videos they can get their hands on. Then I want them to run these tapes back to their offices as fast as they ran the idiot headcase's tape to their broadcast studios. I want them to sit down with an editor and make a 10-hour movie about these kids. I want the birthdays, the smiles, the touchdowns, the first steps, the graduations, and the love. I want them to cut that as fast as they can, and I want it on the air for tomorrow. In its entirety. And everytime they show even one second of that idiot headcase's footage, I want them to show that 10-hour movie again. In its entirety.

Think it will happen?

Fat chance. About as much chance as the police doing anything to stop idiot headcases like this from killing people.

No, I don't think the police are responsible. At least, not for the first five deaths. Or ten. Or maybe even fifteen.

But 32? What the hell were the cops doing while this creep was executing people?

I'm fed up with the cops, too. We've got America's Most Wanted, COPS, SWAT, Protect and Serve, and all kinds of tough-guy cop garbage on TV. When a drunk driver gets pulled over, the police have no problem throwing him to the ground or using a Taser to zap him into submission. On the SWAT programs, fifteen guys get out of a van all dressed in black body armor. They look ridiculous, like schoolboys at Hallowe'en. When they kick in the drug lord's slum door, they find the 17-year-old menace to society passed out on the couch in his underwear.

When they shackle the drug kid and put him in the back of the van, they usually bring on a sergeant to make some remarks. "Nobody got hurt," he says. "Successful day."

No kidding, pal. You stormed a suburban home as if you were the Marines. The kid didn't even know you were coming. The chances of somebody getting hurt were pretty damn small. Where are these tough guys when somebody is shooting cheerleaders and university professors in the back?

These SWAT guys really take the cake. In almost every instance that one of these rampage shootings happen, the killer ends up taking his own life. Why? Because the police were outside 'securing the building,' and 'waiting for back-up,' and calling in the 'SWAT team.'

I've got news for you, guys: the building is already insecure. The only people that are going to run out of the building are victims and civilians. The killer is inside. Right where you should be.

CNN broadcast a tape that some kid took with his cell phone at Virginia Tech. The kid was outside in the parking lot. In front of the kid were at least three cops, guns drawn towards the building. The cops were behind their cars, in the classic, 'cop with gun drawn over the hood' look. In the background, you heard, "Bang...bang...bang..."

The shots were evenly spaced, and all of the same calibre. There was about five seconds between each shot. It wasn't a shoot out. It was the idiot headcase strolling down the hall executing unarmed men and women.

What heroes the police are. What great training they have. To protect and serve? Get off the damn hood of your car, into the building, find the sonofabitch (just follow the gunshots and the screams of teenage girls), and shoot him, for God's sake.

Don't hand me this 'waiting for back-up', or 'securing the building' crap. We've seen these rampages before. At the Amish school, at Columbine, and in Minnesota. We've seen it happen in Germany, and we've seen in it Scotland. Every time it happens, the cops secure the building so that the killer can get on with his rampage without being interrupted. When he runs out of bullets or get tired of the whole thing, he kills himself. He isn't going to scramble out the front door and start blazing away at the parking lot (where the police are hiding behind their cars), he's going to stay inside where the victims are.

I guarantee you this: if the police had gone inside earlier, less than 32 people would have died. I really have no doubt of that. Every eyewitness report we hear tells us that these headcases do not hide behind desks or slink around corners. They walk very deliberately down the hall, intoxicated with power, and shoot what they see. Bang...bang...bang. Any cop following that noise could peek around a corner and let the headcase have it.

"But what if the cops shoot an innocent victim?" comes the reply. My answer: shoot the guy standing in the middle of the hall, as opposed to the girl cowering in the corner. In other words, shoot the guy with the damned gun. And if there's two or three of them, keep looking until you can shoot them, too.

I fear we will learn nothing from this. An idiot headcase will do something like this again. The TV news will make sure he gets his day in the sun. And the cops will stand back and let it happen. Again.

One thing is certain: if you are ever caught in a situation such as this, remember Todd Beemer: "Let's roll." Do it yourself. Go down with a fight. Because no one is going to save you, and the idiot headcases certainly won't spare you.

Remember that.

Global Warming Is A Harsh Mistress

More geniuses from the global warming movement took to the snow to protest...global warming.

But they weren't alone. Down in Reno, a few other brainiacs were disappointed when their global warming rally was cut short by rain, cold, and sleet.

I love these guys. Whenever I'm having a bad day, they never fail to lift my spirits with a good laugh at their expense.

CN Tower - Middle Finger to the Nation

There's a documentary coming out at the Hot Docs film festival called, "Let's All Hate Toronto." Reuters (Apr. 13) did a write-up on it and quoted co-director Albert Nerenberg as saying, "There is something different (about hating Toronto). People are more passionate about it."

Jennifer Forhan, who wrote the piece, kicked off her report with, "The dislike of Canada's biggest city, Toronto, in the rest of the country runs so deep that a filmmaker has made a documentary about it."

To which I say, well, Toronto must be doing something right. Just ask the United States. When you're the big boy on the block, everybody wants to take a shot at you.

People hate what they envy. And, if you have toured Canada coast to coast, you've seen plenty of reasons why people might envy Toronto.

Size, for one. As an honest woman will tell you, size really does matter. Not only does Toronto have the largest population in Canada, it also has the CN Tower, North America's homage to masculinity. The CN Tower gives the rest of the nation's capitals skyline-envy. Show someone a postcard of Toronto, and they will know exactly what city they're looking at. Show them a picture of Halifax, and they could be forgiven for thinking it is a fishing village in Oregon.

People in Vancouver hate Toronto? What a shocker. They'd love to be known as Canada's city, if only they could muster up a better style than a Roots sweatshirt and a monogrammed umbrella. If you've been there lately, you'll see that Vancouver has gone downhill faster than a snowboard flunky on dope. Their nightclubs are overpriced and under-hip. The rising number of downtown beggars is astounding. A good day is the one in forty that it doesn't rain. You lost a basketball team but got the Olympics, Vancouver. Sit down.

Montreal has a beef with Toronto? That isn't news. Don Cherry said it all last week. When asked during the intermission if Toronto was going to beat Montreal, he said, "Toronto's going to win, don't worry about it."

Think about that statement. This was on Hockey Night in Canada. He could have said Montreal, but it seemed natural not to. I laughed out loud, thinking of all that Montreal blood boiling over. Not exactly the ‘Yankees of hockey’ anymore, are you, boys?

Saskatoon, Ottawa, Winnipeg, St. John's (or is it John?), Calgary, I guess they all have something going for them. With the exception of Regina -- whose name alone makes schoolchildren giggle -- they may even have their pride.

Yet Toronto beats them all. Not because of a strong economy, a better nightlife, or prettier girls (though it has these, too). No, the reason Toronto is hated is no different than the reason that people hated someone in high school: Toronto's cool.

It's so cool, guess where the filmmakers have to crawl in order to screen their insult?

Toronto's Hot Docs film festival starts next week.

Disposable You

I remember reading a story about Lewis and Clark, where the writer said that their names were so commonly put together that they should be spelled Lewisandclark. You can’t think of one without the other.

The other day I was over at friend’s place, and he and his wife are like that. Steveandjanet is their name, and I like to think of them that way. There is something special about it. In the modern era of Disposable You, it is nice to have touchstone people in your life, where you can think of them as an example for the rest of us. Steveandjanet would probably hate that idea if they thought about it long enough, because in the end they would realise that I see them as quaint. They’d be right. And no one wants to be quaint. It’s not sexy. But it is to me.

Disposable You began back when divorce became the norm. Henry VIII started the ball rolling (not to mention the heads) on that account, but it took the 20th Century to turn divorce into the relationship crematorium that is has become.

Divorce did not increase because it became more ‘acceptable.’ Acceptable is an effect, not a cause of divorce. Anyone who has been through a bad break-up of any kind will tell you that they felt like a failure, and that it was probably the worst thing that ever happened in their life. Just because something is acceptable to society does not mean that is acceptable to the heart or the soul.

No, divorce became prevalent, and acceptable, because the reasons for divorce went up. After all, people don’t wake up one morning and decide on a whim that this is the day they are going to dump their husband or wife. There needs to be a reason behind that decision. And the 20th Century was more than happy to oblige.

The leading cause of divorce was the women's liberation movement. Now hang on, before you reach for the gun and come looking for me, hear me out. This isn't a rant against women. Far from it. It's more a discussion of demographics.

Giving women the right to choose their own destiny did just that: it allowed them to make more choices than they ever had before. The right to vote could not have been very far from the question, “Well, if I am voting, why should I not run? And if I can run for office, what can I not do?”

The answer over the years was: nothing. There is nothing you cannot do. And so women set out to do it.

It gave women a glimpse at what life would be like without a husband. Women never had careers before, but now that they did, the word career was at least as important as the word married, and perhaps more so.

With careers comes cheating. This shouldn’t be a surprise. In the past, most women were at home during the day. The chances of them running into a man to cheat with were quite slim (there’s a reason the mailman cliché is such a cliché: he was virtually the only man that women saw between the hours of 9-5).

But not anymore. Entering the workforce gave women a chance to meet a vast number of men, whether they be single or otherwise. It gave them a chance to fall for each other. At meetings, at conferences, at luncheons, by the water cooler, beside the coffee machine, on the subway, so forth. Further to that, this gave men and women a chance to meet people that had similar qualities, dreams, aspirations, and goals to theirs. Stock brokers with stock brokers, educators with educators, tradesmen with tradeswomen. And further to that, people generally look good when they are at work, or at least attempt to. Men shave, wear cologne, put on suits, women do their hair, wear perfume, and apply lipstick. In short, women at work gave both sexes a chance to meet people that they saw as both mentally and physically attractive. Five days a week.

If one were to surf the internet dating sites, you would see that women place an extreme importance on what they call ‘chemistry’ and having ‘something in common.’ So now you must ask yourself where women would find men like that, and it’s pretty plain that they would find them at work. If a woman is married to a plumber, she may love him to death. But if she’s a stock broker, there is a good chance that she would enjoy spending time with other stock brokers. And if one of those other stock brokers happens to be handsome and (the ultimate deal-clincher in women’s eyes) funny, then the plumber could be in for some bad news.

Too simple?

I don’t think so. First, let me say straight off that I think infidelity is a two-way street. I don’t think all women are harlots, nor do I think all men are cads. But it is ludicrous to argue that women in the workforce has nothing to do with the rate of break-ups in our society. Women in the workforce is a wonderful thing for empowering women, giving their life meaning and value, and giving them money. With money comes more empowerment, and more choice over their own destiny. But with that package comes a rising chance of bumping into a man that they can develop romantic feelings towards, and vice versa. To argue otherwise is silly.

I feel for the people that make the following statement: “I love my career, and my life is great, but I want someone to share it with.”

Alarm bells should be ringing all over the place when you hear that. Because the person isn’t thinking clearly. Let’s dissect it for a moment.

“I love my career.”

Why? Why do you love your career?

There is a very good chance that the person loves their career because they built it. They struggled, they learned, they overcame. They have realized a dream, and it is of their making. The key word being ‘their.’

Now they wish to share it? Nothing could be further from the truth. They had to cut throats, dodge bullets, avoid backstabbers, put up with backbiting, break the glass ceiling, get cut off at the knees, put out fires, and beat out the competition. There’s a reason why the language of workplace politics is loaded with violence: it’s rough business. A tough game. And to get to the top of that, to get past the gopher stage and reach the plateau of loving your career, you have to be unsharing. And now you want to share it?

Love itself is work. A partner is not someone to be brought in to share something. Love is a second career, to be worked on just as hard as the other one. If not, it’s doomed.

Doom, of course, means a break-up. But have you noticed how the age of instant gratification has now become the age of Disposable You? Have you noticed how easy it is to throw something away?

No? Really. All right, when is the last time you heard about a divorce and were ashamed of one of the people involved? I mean truly ashamed, like you would never speak to the other person ever again, not even to say hello in the street?

Disposable You is the new headline of our generation because we have so many choices. Careers take up our time, and there’s always a new job to apply for, a new promotion to get. It’s been years since I heard a friend worry about work. There’s tons of jobs out there, all of them a mouse click away.

The variety of people we meet subliminally convinces us that people are not inherently special. ‘There’s more fish in the sea.’ There sure are. Look at them all: at work, at the clubs, on the internet, on the beach in Cancun. Whether you have a spouse or not, logging into Hotmail or Yahoo will show you ads for dating sites. MSN and Yahoo run their own services. They announce how many thousands of people are online at that very moment. You can’t turn the ads off, and they are always there. If you’ve had a fight with the wife or boyfriend, how tempted would you be to click on it? A little tempted? Just one little click, if only for the hell of it? And if you did, would you tell your spouse? And so the lying begins.

The world got small in a hurry. The days of meeting a girl at the town church and thinking that she is the only one for you are history. Perhaps that is what frightens me most. The idea that deep down, we are all being trained to think of everything, from jobs to spouses, as easily replaceable. Disposable.

Here’s a question for the men and ladies both. When is the last time you were out with friends, and you saw a spoken-for girlfriend of yours flirt with another man? I’ll bet it was recently. And when someone said, “Oh, it’s harmless, she’s just a flirt,” what did you do? My money’s on nothing. I’ll bet you didn’t do or say anything to the girlfriend in order to make her feel shame.

Shame is one thing that is slipping ever further away from us. Without shame, we lose its powerful partner: guilt. No one bats an eye at divorce anymore. In fact, it’s become a running joke. Hearing about a man or a woman’s fourth marriage may draw exclamations of surprise, or head shakes of embarrassment, but it certainly doesn’t seem to reflect upon a person’s character the way it used to. More often than not, people talk about the amount of alimony the crazy bastard must be paying, rather than the hearts he stepped on along the way. (Incidentally, I call the man a ‘crazy bastard,’ because like you, I would think he’s crazy for getting re-married; funny how none of us immediately think he’s crazy for dumping three wives, hmm?)

Without shame, society loses its most potent weapon. Without that weapon pointed at us, we feel free to do as we please with the limitless choices placed on our plate. Blend that with the increased chances of meeting someone to do those things with, and it should be no wonder that marriages and relationships fall apart with such regularity.

By the by, my life is fine. In case you think I’ve just gone through some break-up and I’m bitter about it, rest easy. Not the case. I was simply thinking about Lewisandclark, and Steveandjanet. You can think about your own version, if you have one.

If not, well, that’s a shame.

The Best Game

Opening Day arrived and it was good to see the greatest game take to the field again.

I know, I know, football fans wouldn't agree with that statement. I feel for them. I love football (and by football, I mean football, not soccer. You can look at what I thought of the difference between football and soccer here.)

So yes, I love football. But baseball is the best game. Earl Weaver summed it up like this:

"You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."

I like that, and he's right. Baseball is the only game where you can't screw around in order to win. You can't kick a ball back and forth, can't ice a puck, can't kneel down and kill the clock. In baseball, you've always got to give the other guy his shot. Sooner or later, like it or not, you've got to face him. And you can never tie. Someone's going home a loser, and someone else is going home with the hot chick in row 8.

Isn't that what competition is all about?

Netspeak

When did it become acceptable for educated adults to write like eight-year-olds?

It took me a long time to get hip to the Netspeak that is floating around, and it looks like it is here to stay. I have yet to use it myself, but it doesn’t stop any of my friends from coughing up a potpourri of colons, brackets, and letters every time I open an email.

I remember the first time I saw ‘lol’ in response to a funny story. I stared at those three letters and had no idea what they meant. I thought they might symbolize a touchdown, the letter L being an arm, an O the ref's head. When I asked my friend for clarification, he wrote back, “Laughing out loud.”

Ah. This is as opposed to writing, “IDTTWVF,” which would be, “I didn’t think that was very funny.”

LOL eventually morphed into LMAO, which is laughing my ass off, which morphed into LMFAO, which is laughing my ass off but not in front of mom. Now whenever I tell a friend a story and I get LOL, I wonder why they didn’t LTAO. Wasn’t it funny enough? Could I have told it better?

Netspeak threatens to ruin the entire English language. Sarcasm is dead. When a friend says, “You moron,” I’m fairly certain they don’t really think I’m a moron. But, just in case, they throw in :) to make me feel better.

The smiley face is as interesting as it is irritating. Apparently you can say whatever you want if you follow it up with colon-bracket. When you tell a friend that you’re sleeping with his wife, he will be upset. If you tell him that you are sleeping with his wife :), he’s expected to take it in stride because you’re such a kidder.

I have a friend that is the master of Netspeak. She loves it. When something special happens in her life, she types :P. This means she is sticking out her tongue. When she types ;), she’s winking. When she types :O, she’s surprised.

What people like her don’t understand is that I already know all this stuff because it’s implied in the language. When I write to say that I fell down a flight of stairs, they don’t need to type colon-capital-oh to say they are shocked. When they tell me they won free tickets to the playoffs, they don’t have to stick out their tongue. I know they’re a braggart and a blowhard. No emphasis needed.

It amuses me to hear people place such importance on education during election time. When their parents are writing emails to each other at a grade 5 level, why should the kids care about learning Shakespeare?

Speaking of Shakespeare, one shudders to think of his works had he been a blogger:

Or, if thou wilt needs marry :), marry a fool :(
for wise men know well enough ;) what monsters :O you make of them,
To a nunnery, go, and quickly too :P
Farewell. LOL.

I look forward to hearing from my friends every day. I love reading their emails, even if they do require an Enigma machine. But once in a while, I just wish they’d GTH. While they figure that out, I’ll sit back in my BVDs on the QT and LMAO.

:)

Blog This

My friends have a fear of what they call “being blogged.”

I heard it again the other night, and not for the first time. We were sitting around having a couple of drinks and one of them said, “I want to say something, but I’m not going to because I don’t want to get blogged.”

By me, that is. And I understand their fear. They’ll be talking to me one minute, chatting away about this that and the other, and the next day they see it in quotation marks.

I need to put their minds at ease. There’s certain rules in regards to writing, whether in blog form or the old fashioned way. The first rule is: don’t lie. Don’t make something up out of whole cloth and pretend that somebody said it. You can paraphrase all you want, but never lie.

Second, don’t bother with their names. Even if the thing gets into print, a name isn’t usually necessary.

So my friends can rest easy. I won’t lie about what you say. And if I happen to mention the time you got drunk and slept with five Thai hookers while on a weekend bender, I won’t mention your name, either.

I notice Al Gore managed to make the news this week. He went before Congress and talked about global warming and made himself look like a condescending know-it-all. Again.

Al Gore: “The Earth has a fever.”

Really, Al? A fever you say? Well kindly hand me that super sized bottle of aspirin so we can help bring its temperature down. Have mom make a cold compress to put on its forehead, and fire up the stove so we can make some hearty chicken noodle soup. While you’re at it, would you mind running the kettle so the Earth can dip its feet in warm water? Oh, and put a towel over its head, lest it catches chill. It’s awfully drafty in outer space. Tuck it in before bedtime, wipe its nose, read Where the Wild Things Are, and ask if Al can kiss it all better. Then call it “Earthy,” pinch its cheek, and shut out the light, making sure to tell Neptune and Venus to keep it down, because Earth is trying to sleep.

“The Earth has a fever.” What kind of an arrogant ass goes before Congress (and the TV cameras; let’s not forget why he was there in the first place) and talks to senators as if they are three years old? This man is quoted as saying that global warming is going to be the end of civilization as we know it, and he uses “The Earth has a fever,” to describe this scientific catastrophe.

I would love to hear Al Gore describe other problems using his condescending, talk-down-to-children-tone.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa: “The marble feels dizzy.”

9/11: “The birdies hit your Leggo set.”

Oil spill: “Exxon made a boo-boo.”

Hurricane Katrina: “Someone pulled the Caribbean’s finger.”

Apartment suicide: “Little man fall down, go boom.”

Assault and battery: “The bullies played a mean game of tag.”

Nothing will make this man keep his trap shut, especially after having his butt kissed at the Oscars.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Al Gore. Okay, yes I do. But what bothers me about him is that I have to look out the window at snow and ice, listen to him say that the Earth is getting too hot to bear and that I shouldn’t drive an SUV, then watch him hop a gas guzzling jet plane back to his estate.

Civilization as we know it, Al? What’s this we crap?

It Takes a Blizzard

This piece caught my eye, about the people who braved a blizzard in order to march against global warming. What can you possibly say about that and make them sound remotely intelligent?

Photo by AP

Sean in the Sun

Here's a look at a piece that went into the Toronto Sun.

Places Past

I just got home from five months out in the world. I rolled in at around midnight on a cold Toronto night and I stood at the same back door that I stood at five months earlier, and the old, profound thought went through my head: “Well, that was a long trip.”

I always liked Jimmy Buffett’s deal: “I took off for a weekend last month just to try and recall the whole year.”

I can relate. When you’re on road and sea every day for months at a time it is easy to fall into Jimmy’s next line: “All of the places, all of the faces, wondering where they all disappeared.”

Yes, I have a thing for the song Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. There’s another line in that song that goes, “Reading departure signs in some big airport reminds me of the places I’ve been. Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure makes me want to go back again.”

Maybe. If you’ve had a really good time you shouldn’t want to go back because it means the police have a warrant out for your arrest. But I get Jimmy’s drift, and every time I’m at an airport, I look at the departures sign and count the places I’ve been to. By now, though, it has gotten easier to count the places I haven’t. There aren’t a lot left. That isn’t to say that I’ve been everywhere, it just means I’ve been everywhere that has an airport.

It’s easy to get blasé about it. Have you heard that Johnny Cash song, I’ve Been Everywhere? It made a comeback on some commercial or other. It’s a foot-tapping tune, and Johnny goes on an on in machinegun style, reeling off all the places he’s been. It sounds like a lot, and it sounds pretty cool, but me and my friends laugh ourselves silly listening to that song.

You’ve been everywhere, have you, Johnny? Oooo! Texas and California. Calgary. Washington? Wow!

Gimme a break. The Man in Black may have been everywhere, but only everywhere that a tour bus can go. After that, nada. And that’s not everywhere.

The sea has always had the mystique of travel about it, and it still does to some degree. Business travellers might think they’ve been everywhere, but catching the redeye to London so you can have a 9AM meeting and be back on the plane after lunch doesn’t mean jack. Me and a girlfriend once took an 11 tour into the Andes. It was a long ass trip to the top of a mountain and the bus was crammed with tourists. At the top of the mountain, we had lunch and the tourists took a few pictures. After an hour of that, we drove 5 hours back down that damn mountain. So basically it was an 11 hour lunch break. I wouldn’t call that an “Andes Adventure” anymore than I would call the redeye flight to London an “English Excursion.”

In the spirit of Johnny Cash, I will now go machinegun-style through the places that I’ve been to in the past five months. I probably should have blogged about them ad nauseum, but the truth is this: I forgot, or I was hungover, or I was working, or I forgot. See, if you’re having a good time someplace, you don’t think about blogging, you think about having the next good time. People that write too much about what they’re doing every day worry me as much as the people in a group picture that say cheese, then ask to look at the LCD screen. It just happened. Move on. The point of photographs is not, “So that’s what I look like at this very moment.” Their point is, “So that’s how bad my hair was five years ago.” With writing, same thing. You need to digest an experience before blathering on about it.

Anyway, an homage to Johnny:

I’ve been to Tokyo, Hiroshima, Dalian, Tianjin, Great Wall, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hanoi (Hong Gai for the Commies), Hue (same), Saigon (Ho Chi Minh is a sonofabitch), Laem Chabang, Singapore, Bali, Komoldo Island, Darwin, Cairns, Hamilton (Australia; not steeltown Canada), Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania (no devils, they killed them all a long time ago), Dunedin, Christchurch, Picton, Wellington, Napier, Tauranga, Auckland, Bay of Islands, Rarotonga, Bora Bora, Moorea, Papeete, Rangiroa, Nuku Hiva, Los Angeles, San Diego, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Ft. Lauderdale, Princess Cays, San Juan, Dominica, Barbados, Devil’s Island, Alter do Chao, Parintins, Manaus, Boca de Valeria, Santarem, Fortaleza, Salvador de Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Punta del Este, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Cape Horn, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, Valparaiso, Fuerte Amador, Lima, Panama Canal, Key West.

And back to Canada. Right about now someone is calling me an asshole, which is why I don’t talk about vacations with people. When I go to a party, I have to be extremely careful not to yawn when some couple tells me that they’re taking a honeymoon to Hawaii or Tahiti. To me and my friends, that is no different than saying, “I’m stepping out for some milk.”

I often have to remind myself that I am lucky. Most men will never see the Great Wall of China, and not many women will take photographs of where the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy. Before I started travelling, Australia seemed like the moon. Now it doesn’t. The more you travel, the smaller the world gets.

That isn’t to say that I really know all of the places I’ve been to. I mean know them in my bones. You need to live in a place for a while to truly know it. I’ve done that in several places, but most of the others have been a sampling, a taste. But it was a damn good lick, I can tell you that.

Besides, it isn’t really about the places. Let’s say some guy comes up with a project for me that involves the geography of Alaska. Now let’s say that all of my Alaska footage has gone down the toilet or been lost by the idiots at Air France. No problem. I’ll pull out my stock footage from Chile, or Norway, or New Zealand, cut it together with some dumb classical music, and give it to you as an Alaskan souvenir. And you’d never know the difference.

Need a picture of northern Ontario? I’m here to help. I’ll give you some shots of the Canadian wilderness, beaver dams and all. You’ll show your friends, you’ll be happy, and you’ll have not the slightest idea that all of those pictures were taken at a national park in Argentina.

Do you want to go to New Zealand? It’s easy. Take a half hour drive up the coast from Vancouver. Pitch a tent. Stay there for a week and take a bunch of pictures. When you get home, enlarge the prints, put them on your wall, and label them ‘New Zealand.’ Anyone from Auckland that sees the photos will say, “Isn’t my home the most beautiful place?”

The world is funny that way. I mean the way it mirrors itself, not the way everyone thinks their home is the most beautiful place (that’s another thing about travelling; you get pretty tired of hearing ‘this is the most beautiful country in the world.’)

For the Earth, north is south and south is north. The geography is a mirror image, like when you were a kid and stood to the side of mirror. Lift your left leg and ta-da, the right leg goes up too, making it appear as if you’re floating.

Tahiti is Hawaii, Southern Chile is Canada, Norway is New Zealand, the Andes are the Rockies….oops.

No they’re not. Say whatever you want about the Andes, they don’t hold a candle to the Rocky Mountains. On that I can assure you. The Alps might. I’ve never seen them, so I can’t say. However, the Alps are crawling with Germans, Italians, and Swiss, so who the hell would want to find out?

See, it’s about the people. People are what make travelling interesting. A photo of Hawaii might look like a photo of Tahiti, and you’d get away with that charade for a while. But then I’d ask you about the transvestites, and your eyes would go blank. Because in Tahiti, being a transvestite is no big deal. There’s tons of them there. I once asked a Papeete local how to tell which women were actually men. He said, “The good looking ones.”

He was right. Tahiti has a load of good looking women. All of them are the height of runway models. They have amazing cheekbones, great tits, and legs to die for. Problem is, the lazy ones also have a patch of dark hair on the small of their back.

I have often said that it is not where you are, it is who you are with. I stand by that. If I am with my buddies Dave and Pete in some craphole, I will have a great time. If I am at the best nightclub in Berlin with some loser who complains all the time, I will hate life. This is why I despise going out with a group of people that cannot make up their minds on where they want to go. You’d figure they’d have learned it by now: if you’re truly friends, then it truly doesn’t matter. If the location matters so much, I have bad news for you: you aren’t friends.

This ties in with another Coyote Law. If someone tells me, “Ah, that town sucks. Nothing to do,” then I know I am in for the night of my life. This happens at least 9 times out of 10. No different than the people that say, “It’s a Tuesday [or Wednedsay, or Monday, or Sunday] and there’s nothing going on.”

Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit. The words, “This place sucks,” or “There’s nothing going on,” are reserved for the losers of society. These statements are tailor-made for the guys that think backyards and BBQs are the meaning of life, or for the broads that don’t want their boyfriends to drink too much at a wedding reception.

If travelling is about people, then travelling has taught me that people are the same the world over. There’s a segment of every society that wants to have fun, and there’s a segment of every society that doesn’t know how.

Case in point: Lima, Peru last month. Sunday night. I was working, so I couldn’t hit the city until close to midnight. Before heading out, all of the people I knew told me, “Nothing’s going on, this place sucks.” I’m instantly looking forward to a blow out. One of the locals told me, “It’s a Sunday, so nothing’s happening.” Now I’m licking my chops with delight. And guess what? It was a blast.

In life, in the world, there is always something going on. In every city with a population over a few thousand, there’s always a few dozen people that want to do something. It is up to you to go out and find them.

It’s nice to be back in Canada. This is the time where I hang up my shoes and barely see the light of day. Doing nothing for a couple of weeks is a great form of therapy. Call it decompression, like coming up from a dive before you get the bends.

Problem is, I can’t get it out of my head: all of the faces, all of the places, wondering when they’ll all appear. Not the old faces, but the new ones. The old ones I miss, and I pine for, but that is my private affair. But the new ones belong to all of us. The ones I haven’t met yet. The people that make my life (and yours, should you bump into them) more interesting.