What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, June 30, 2004

SWEET RELIEF

I've worked the last six nights in a row, with two more yet to go, so I'm fairly wiped but feeling happier and more hopeful than I have in a long while.
Three big reasons why:

1) Pride in Toronto was big, splashy and far too crowded, yet everything went smoothly enough and -- with the federal election the next day -- the million people attending were more energized and feisty than ever. It was great to see.

2) I took in a matinee of "Fahrenheit 9/11" on Saturday and it was all I hoped it would be -- a fast, funny, devastating swipe at possibly the most hateful US presidential administration ever. The sequence with the wounded veterans made me cry with rage, remembering those scary, sad wretches from my childhood who'd just made it back from Vietnam. The movie honours the bravery of these courageous people while condemning the venal, greedy men who have betrayed their trust. Thanks to the dialogue this film helps continue, more and more people agree that we cannot allow this to continue.

3) The Canadian federal election ended perfectly, not with the near-terrifying spectre of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister but with Paul Martin leading a chastened Liberal party. A Liberal minority government seems like the perfect thing for Canada right now. People voted thoughtfully and strategically for a humane liberal agenda but against an arrogant Liberal monopoly as we've been so often stuck with.

Factor in the repair (finally!) of the air conditioning at the store and I'm feeling downright perky this week -- especially with having tomorrow off.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

Labels: Canada, Stephen Harper, Trawna

BUT WHILE YOU'RE AT THE VIDEO STORE...

Pick up a copy of "The Station Agent", one of those little gems that you stumble across and fall in love with. Just a terrific film, with sharp writing and wonderful performances from everyone in it.

A LITTLE SOMETHING FROM THE FILES...

With Pride Week in full gear in Toronto, you may not hear much from me this week, chained as I am to the front door of Woody's. Till then, last year's take on the subject holds up quite well...

June 26, 2003:
"HAPPY PRIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!".....UGH

Yes, Gay Christmas is fast approaching and I....don't especially care. Not that I have a problem with it (thank you, Jerry Seinfeld), nor am I some 'self-hating homophobe' (ie. someone who doesn't immediately subscribe to the 'gay-good-straight-bad' school of politics), but I just think I'm too old, frankly.

Like Christmas, Gay Pride is for kids. It's for those fresh-out-of-the-closet newbies from 9 to 90 (and if you think there's no gay 9-year-olds out there, you've clearly never seen the kid on that "Who's the Boss?" sitcom -- he writes for "The Advocate" now and we ALL saw that coming). When I moved to Toronto in 1992, with everything but my closet door, Pride Day was the best thing ever -- an incredible street party where the ordinary people made me feel fascinating and the fascinating people made me feel ordinary. As they say, I Was Not Alone. Pride Day has been all about first times -- I remember the first time I attended the parade, the first guy I picked up at an afterparty, the first all-morning brunch with friends, and the first day spent holding hands with my boyfriend amidst the hundreds of thousands of others. It's been beautiful, and it's been done.

Now, and for the last two years, I've been working on Pride Day at Gay Ground Zero. The pub gets thousands of people streaming through its doors all weekend long and the inside is always filled to capacity. The energy is electric, exciting and, sadly, exhausing. I've nothing left. All week long, customers have been squealing "Happy Pride!!!!" at me and, in some sensitive cases, catching me in my plastic smile. "Aren't you excited?" they ask. "Do you work retail?" I ask back and, when they answer yes, I say, "Then today is December 21." I can see the light coming on in their eyes as they get it.

I'm a massive grouch, of course -- I will enjoy seeing the city erupt with gayness all weekend, as I always have, and no work-stress will ever take away that pleasure. But, as BB King says, the thrill is gone, gone away from me. I leave it for the next generation, those high-schoolers and graduates who'll come downtown on Sunday with their eyes wide open.

Labels: Trawna

CAN YOU FEEL IT?
DEEP DOWN IN YOUR WALLET?

The timing isn't great but I can't seem to care -- during a particularly-tight money week, a special order I sent out months ago finally arrived at the store.

To be honest, I'd just about forgot about it, but the 4-CD set from Rhino Records called Soul Spectacular is worth the harsh reminder.

The first CD begins with Ray Charles' "What'd I Say (Parts 1 & 2)" and the fourth CD features Al Green's "Let's Stay Together". Do I need to go on?

Poorer but happier, I'm off to turn the lights low, the volume up...

Labels: money - lack thereof, music

GEORGE W. BUSH IS A NICE MAN

No, really.

Sure I loathe the guy (still wishing he'd choked on that pretzel, quite frankly) but even I have to admit that he's capable of real class.

To wit, his "welcome home" to Bill and Hillary Clinton, who came back to the White House Monday for the unveiling of their official portraits. We all know Dubya can't stand Bill Clinton but he evidently grit his teeth and said:

"Bill Clinton could always see a better day ahead, and Americans knew he was working hard to bring that day closer. Over eight years, it was clear that Bill Clinton loved the job of the presidency. He filled this house with energy and joy."

Bush even went so far as to say, "I could tell you more of the story -- but it's coming out in fine bookstores all over America," a direct plug for Clinton's memoirs, due out June 22.

It's political spin so savvy, Bush almost seems to mean it. Either way, I'm geniunely impressed.

Labels: George W Bush

THE INDESCRIBABLE WOW

As an early birthday gift to my friend James (and apparently myself), I picked up a pair of tickets to see Sam Phillips at the Lula Lounge last night. What can I say? She's my new diva.

Her gorgeous new album, "A Boot and A Shoe" is one-part cabaret, one-part blues revue -- stripped-down yet strangely lush -- and the show last night captured its mood perfectly. Sam was backed up by a keyboardist, a violin player and a drummer, all three superb.

The venue itself, by the way, is an out-of-the-way spot near Dundas and Dufferin but worth the hike -- a supper club reminiscent of the fifties with a "Havana martini" that rocks.

Now go check out that album!

Labels: friends, music

WRITTEN IN INK

I've been mulling it over for a long time and finally made it happen Saturday, sitting down for what I called "Baby's First Tattoo." (OK, probably the only tattoo, since I'm no chili pepper -- red, hot or otherwise.)

It seems a bit nuts to me, since I have no real link with what appears to be 'tattoo culture', but for a long time, I felt the need for one on some level deeper than just 'ooh, me too'. Some part of me needed it, I felt, so it was time.

It's all part of an agenda to teach myself to follow my own whims. That sounds utterly banal, of course, but not for me -- possessed of some peculiar need to satisfy an external authority source that doesn't appear to exist. Everything I do, everything I might wish to do, is filtered through a notion of what I "ought" or "should" be doing instead, except that no "proper" path is ever provided, from within or without. Don't worry if none of that makes sense; I'm not completely grasping it myself. All I know is that it's long past time to start listening to myself.

My experience yesterday confirmed it. I had gone to see Jay at Passage, recommended by a friend, and set up an appointment after giving him some photos of what I was after. He was both patient with my nerves and meticulous in his drawing skill.

I was grateful in that, while the 'inking' certainly hurt, it was nowhere near intolerable. I've always been suspicious of people who talk about tattooing in religious 'rebirth' terms -- while there is a bit of that going on emotionally, it ain't that painful, folks.

Jay carved a beautiful dark-wood chess bishop into my left shoulder, one very similar to the icon at the top of this page. It's been my own little motif for many years now and has meant a lot to me for various reasons -- some silly, some not, but all mine:

-- the word 'bishop' comes from the Greek 'episcopos' meaning 'overseer' or 'watcher'

-- it has specifically come to mean a sort of spiritual superintendant of priests, one high in the ministry

-- in the game of chess, bishops are decidedly weaker than rooks, slightly less valuable than knights, and often reined in by pawns of both sides. As the endgame approaches, however, bishops gain in flexibility, their abiility to slide diagonally across the field often changing the game entirely in a single move.

-- and obviously, a bishop is neither a king nor a pawn

For me, the chess angle was deliberate. Having tried unsuccessfully over the years to be a grandmaster -- thinking several moves in advance over a complex gameboard -- I've come to value the honour of the single piece -- choosing a direction, one square at a time.

Less 'watching', more sliding -- and a ready reminder on the Kabbalah's left arm of power.
It's a good start.

PLANTING A SEED

Grouchy Harold-Bloom-types whining about the dumbing-down of our culture used to gripe that no one really reads anymore, they just flip through magazines. These days, however, a great number of people read obvious, Oprah-recommended novels while magazines die out faster than ever. Is this progress?

I've always loved magazines -- meatier than newspapers, more varied than an essay collection -- but finding one that really speaks to me has proved elusive: "Adbusters" is too strident, "Entertainment Weekly" is too fluffy, "The Advocate" is too gay, "The New Yorker" is too New York and "Vanity Fair" is too...too. Glum times at the newsstand until today, when I fell right in love with a magazine called "Seed."

"Science Is Culture," proclaims Seed's logo and the masthead quotes Bertrand Russel: "Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know." The magazine attempts to cover both, with the latest issue featuring an extended look at how the real issues facing Americans in this fall's presidential election are science-related: energy regulation, bioterrorism, the environment, AIDS research, child development, etc.

Instead of another facile op-ed on gay marriage or tax cuts, the magazine gets into the nitty gritty, especially in a marvellous piece by Laurie Garrett, author of the cheery light-read "Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health."

And, lest this all sound too dry for words, the vagina article, the Hubble photo centrefold(?!) and namedropping the Wu-Tang Clan were all very cool.

PACKED!
a day of greed, helicopters, revenge and karaoke

People I see occasionally (that being most of my friends...oy) will ask, "So what have you been up to lately?" and I'm forced to admit that the answer is work, work, work, and little of it rewarding in any spiritual, practical or financial sense. Actually, I usually just say, "Oh not much."

Today, however, I could change all that, as I packed a week or two worth of events into one evening. To start with, I had to leave work early at 3 pm so I could take the street car down to the Bathurst ferry docks. Universal Home Video had decided to hold its fourth-quarter product announcement party (translation: telling us what to flog at Christmastime) at the Island airport and, with my boss and DVD buyer Stan on vacation, he'd asked me to attend in his place.

After a ridiculously short ferry ride (the 'fixed-link' controversy is being held over this?), I arrived at the ridiculously tiny airport and was greeted by people in army camouflage pants and black T-shirts reading "TEU". Under the Universal/Alliance Atlantis logos on the back was their full designation, "Tactical Entertainment Unit." Uh-oh.

Surrounded by young media people aiming at glamour, I was led into a fenced-in area and offered drinks until the helicopers arrived. Seriously. Against the beautiful west-side view of the Toronto skyline, four helicopters came roaring in towards us and I hoped I wouldn't hear "Ride of the Valkyries" as they did. The wind whipped at us as the copters landed and smoke bombs and tiny explosions marked the entrance of two men in suits being rushed towards our gates by a group of TEU officers with rifles, presumably protecting them from those Warner Brothers bastards.

The two men gave a short welcome speech and then led the way into a large aircraft hanger filled with round dinner tables. A stage was set up in the corner with a podium and a projection screen, flanked by regular television sets. At the other end was a line-up of heated buffet trays with a group of waiters behind them and, above us, hung an array of movie posters for current and upcoming releases.

This was all very impressive. Then the guy in charge delivered the opening news that Vivendi Universal's merger with arms-dealing General Electric has gone through, forming NBC Universal (owners of Telemundo!). This new merger, he explained, will allow for an exciting new era in television-on-DVD programming, beginning with...(was that a drum roll?)..."The Apprentice" on August 24th, that irritating reality show that inflicted Donald Trump on us yet again. Among the DVD's many attributes, I was told, will be its "breakthrough packaging" design -- a sound chip that says -- he stopped and pointed at the crowd who yelled happily -- "You're fired!" I began to feel somewhat deflated.

The next 45-minutes consisted of movie trailers, PowerPoint marketing plans and terrible military-themed puns from the guy in charge. Most alarming was the wild applause in response to the news that "Shrek 2" has grossed up to $350 million dollars and that such successes for the company will lead to "what we all want more of...CASH!"

Wow, I thought, they're not even pretending to care about art anymore. I mean, no amount of clever marketing campaigns will excuse "Van Helsing" from being a godawful movie. And, while I welcomed the confirmation of a December 14th release of the fancy 4-disc version of Best Picture "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", the goodwill was drowned out by gushing tributes to the huge sales potential of movies like "The Terminal," "The Chronicles of Riddick" and "Thunderbirds" -- none of which have opened in theatres yet. I guess I'm just a crank to think that people should like the films before owning them.

I consoled myself by sitting with a lovely group of women from the Universal marketing team and we all enjoyed the truly amazing food from a catering outfit called "On the Move". As we all talked shop, one of the ladies admitted that they too hated the bilingual packaging of their products but insisted that it was necessary without knowing exactly why. I offered my theory of "DVD-customer-as-book-customer" (the parallels are scary!) and they were genuinely interested, which was nice.

By dessert, it was 6:30 pm and just about time for a helicopter ride. As corporate bribes go, this was pretty damn cool. I got to sit in the front seat beside the pilot, with the clear plastic under my feet, as we lifted up and headed past the CN Tower. The view was fantastic, even through yesterday's awful smog, and I asked the pilot if he still enjoyed it. "Every time," he said with a grin, "it's awesome!" As we circled back around Rosedale towards Jarvis and Bloor, I pointed and said, "I can legitimately say I can see my house from here!" The pilot shook his head. The flight back in just over the water was a bit tense (what if we crash?) but we landed gently about ten minutes after we'd left.

One of our own head office people (part of a table I'd quietly avoided) came up to ask me how the trip was and I gushed a little before moving into the requisite small talk. I took a deeper breath and said, "So...is this sort of winding down, then?" and he said, "Pretty much" -- my cue to flee!

My haste, you see, was encouraged by an offer from the very-cute Felipe, an acquaintance of mine who'd dropped by the store earlier that day to ask if I'd take his extra ticket to see British singer/songwriter Dido at the Hummingbird Centre. I called Filipe at quarter after seven to ask if he'd found someone else but no, so I met up with him at the door. He waved off any attempt on my part to pay for even some of the ticket price so I insisted on at least buying him a drink. He graciously accepted a vodka cooler and the Hummingbird's bars feature champagne by the glass so who could pass that up?

I thanked Filipe one more time as we walked through the marble lobby and he said, "Well, it's no big deal..." "Oh, I don't know," I said, "I'm strolling through a concert hall on a summer evening with a glass of champagne and a handsome man at my side -- this is about as good as it gets." He actually blushed at such smarm -- how cute is that?

The concert itself was great -- Dido on CD is mellow and vaguely electronic but the live show was surprisingly energetic, the lighting was fantastic and the girl herself was very funny. She introduced "See you when you're 40" as a song about a particular person which "you should never do as a songwriter -- it's such an abuse of power," she said before shrugging and telling us how she did it anyway. When the song ended, she warned the audience that, see, if anyone upsets Dido, she'll "write a really mellow song about you. That's about as angry as I get."

The concert wrapped up about quarter to eleven, just in time to join the entire record store gang at the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen, where our Tony was playing with his band, Fight Like Gentlemen. Filipe wanted to see Ruby but decided to head home. I tried to talk him out of it but, after an evening in his debt, felt I was in no position to badger.

In the space of a few hours, I'd gone from a glass of wine at the industry party to a glass of champagne at the concert hall to a bottle of Amsterdam Brown at the rock joint. I was pleased at how everything had worked out, even though the others were more drunk. Tony's band played a short set and were thankfully very fun and very loud, with a bit of a 60's power-pop thing going on.

Our lovely blonde Penny was rightly convinced that the Horseshoe bouncer wanted to remove her for being too drunk so we decided to move the party over to Milwaukee's where the gang goes every Tuesday night for "Extreme Karaoke." I never get to join them since I almost always work the door at my pub every Tuesday so I was happy to head over.

By now, it was about 12:30 am and the karaoke guy seemed a bit put-off by our gang pouring in. "Where were you guys at 11?" he grumped. Our security guard 'limeys' Dean and Brooke sang "A Day in the Life" together (Dean, I'm told, only sings Beatles songs) and I got to holler through Chris Isaak's "Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing" in honour of our archeology student Sarah, leaving us last night for a summer placement on a dig in Egypt. Again, how cool is that?

I danced with Penny during one song, which greatly amused Alex and AJ, as she was very drunk by now and grinding all over me. I grinded back, pretending to be some hipster bisexual, but (sigh) such is not to be. The poor girl got no reaction from me and, hey, I was trying. By this point, it was clearly time to go so I dumped myself into a cab and rode home, wishing that Filipe wanted me as a boyfriend or that I wanted Penny as a girlfriend or that I simply get more days like this one.

Labels: friends, movies, music, oh l'amour, travel, Trawna, working girl

OOOOOOOH, PRETTY!

Lovely photos of our cosmos are not rare on the NASA site but the photos of yesterday's passing of Venus in front of the sun are as spellbinding as they are timely.
(Last week's close-up shots of Saturn are pretty cool, too.)

SUMMER CAMP?

When I read last year that Frank Oz, director of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," was teaming up again with "In & Out" writer Paul Rudnick on a remake of the 70's camp classic "The Stepford Wives", complete with a cast comprised of Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close and Christopher Walken, I thought it sounded like a foolproof bet for a fun summer hit.

An article in the New York Post explains how it all went wrong, inadvertantly making one wonder how a Hollywood movie turns out alright at all.

It makes Clint Eastwood's achievement with "Mystic River" all the more impressive, since its collection of big-name (and, in a couple cases, infamously-fussy) actors all got on swimmingly with one another on a very short shoot.

The DVD, by the way, comes out tomorrow, so now there's no excuse and I can't plug this movie any more, ever!

WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

I've often been accused of "getting political" during otherwise genteel situations (weddings, picnics, silence...) but even I know that some discussions just don't go together -- like a website called "Encyclopedia of Chess Openings" with a link to the essay "Evil in our time". Again, where did that come from?

BECAUSE SUPER MARIO HAS A RIGHT-WING BIAS?

I've spent a bit too much time on BushGame: the Anti-Bush Online Videogame, "a fun and fact-filled adventure about the most appalling presidency in the history of the United States."

If you've ever harboured a secret desire to gather together Hulk Hogan, Mr. T., Michael Moore, R2-D2 and Jesus to kick the crap out of the current White House administration, this is the game for you (notwithstanding the creators' juvenile fascination with anal rape, of course).

Just don't blame me for time wasted...

Labels: George W Bush

MORE FROM BIZARRO WORLD

The New York Times admitting it was wrong about the case for war in Iraq?
I can scarcely believe it myself -- the paper now says that its reporting "was not as rigorous as it should have been" in the months leading up to war. I hope now we'll see more news and less White House press releases...

SMOKING MAD

I've always had great sympathy for smokers. Some may read that as 'pity' and maybe so but I genuinely regret seeing anyone treated as second-class citizens or as cancer-spreading health threats. I've said and still say that people have every right to smoke.

Having said all that, I'm astonished at how smug I now feel over the new smoking ban in bars. I'm thrilled. Working the pub last night was a joy -- my chest didn't tighten, my eyes didn't burn, my clothes didn't smell. I had no idea I was so miserable until my conditions were so suddenly improved. It's fantastic.

Still, I harboured some compassion for the singer in the rock band, for instance, who told me of her fears of playing to smaller crowds. "At the Horseshoe," she said, "everybody's got a cigarette in their hand." And she's right, though I wonder how everyone can frame health debates solely in terms of money. During last summer's SARS drama, no one ever really discussed how to treat the sick or increase prevention but instead focused only on how the disease was hurting the economy.

Still, we all need to make money -- why else would I be working evenings anyway? I was concerned for about a minute -- that's when somebody walked up to the door with a cigarette in his mouth, blew smoke in my face and began a whiny tirade about the forces of fascism that oppress him by insisting that he go outside.

That's when it hit me -- in the three years I've worked at that pub, I've had over a dozen chest colds and/or bronchial infections, each one lasting at least ten days. Ten days of staying up all night coughing up green phlegm, ten days of feeling like I've got a black baseball of filth lodged in my chest, ten days of pain when I speak or breathe in sharply or lie down. Ten days every three months or so and I never complained to smokers about it the way they whined at me last night about this "fascist" ban.

So I'm done. Done with the sympathy. I'm tired of being poisoned, tired of being told that I shouldn't work in a club if I "can't handle" the smoke, as if it's an endurance test. People have every right to smoke. And they can do it outside.

Labels: health

CHRIS, ROCK

From his first comedy special in four years (!), the necessary Chris Rock...

On the aftermath of September 11th:
"You see these weird white guys getting overly patriotic, and they have their fuckin' flag hats on, and their flag drawers, and their flag pickups. 'I'm American, man! I'm American! Fuck all these fuckin' foreigners!'
There was a lot of accepted racism when the war started. 'I'm American, man! I'm American! Fuck the French!' That was cool.
Then 'I'm American, man! I'm American! Fuck all these Arabs!' And that was cool.
Then they went to: 'I'm American! I'm American! Fuck all these illegal aliens!'
Then I started listening, because I know that niggas and Jews is next."

On affirmative action:
"But let's keep it fucking real, OK? A black C student can't run no fucking company. A black C student can't even be the manager of Burger King.
Meanwhile, a white C student just happens to be the president of the United States of America!"

On gay marriage:
"People always say we can't have gay marriage because marriage is a sacred institution. No it's not! Not in America! Not with 'Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire' and 'The Bachelor' and 'Who Wants to Marry a Midget.'"

On rap music:
"White man makes guns, no problem. Black rapper says 'gun' -- congressional hearing."

BIZARRO WORLD

I'm watching the federal election campaigns with mounting anxiety as Conservative leader Stephen Harper continues to match the Liberals in poll numbers. No huge surprise, really, considering how Paul Martin and Ontario leader Dalton McGuinty continue to appear respectively shifty and inept.

Having said that, however, I cannot believe that anyone angry with the Liberal's clumsy handling of Ontario's near-bankruptcy could possibly consider returning power to the Tories responsible for it all.

Worse yet, Harper is playing to the crowd, leaning to the left so hard he's about to fall over the port side of the boat. In today's news, he said:

"It was an NDP leader, David Lewis, who coined the term corporate welfare bums in 1972. Unfortunately, in the past 30 years, too many corporations have been drawn into this trap by the available plethora of government loans, grants, and subsidies...[which] does not deliver value for money."

What kind of bizarro world politics is this? It's obviously part of the usual Conservative scheme of shrinking government and handing over more and more power to big business -- under the guise of 'going it on their own', I suppose -- but even so, hearing this kind of talk coming from Harper's mouth is creepier than that movie with Anthony Hopkins as an insane ventriloquist!

And where's Jack Layton in all this? Isn't he annoyed that Harper is running up the court with his basketball? Let's wait and see while I figure out another goofy metaphor...

Labels: Stephen Harper