The Roof is Leaking and the Wind is Howling...

Hello Friends.

I spent this past weekend out of town with family and had a great time. I overindulged in booze and food, but they were accompanied by great conversation and togetherness and I'm none the worse for wear. I returned home on Monday resolved to let the positivity of this experience stay with me and keep me in high spirits until Christmas, which I will also get to spend with family. All was well until I actually walked into my apartment, which is plagued, once again, by a leaky roof.

Our ceiling had an intermittent leak for nearly a year. Largely ignored by our landlord, the leaks were small, but tolerable, as we didn't have a lot of hard rain. When we (meaning Jon) got confrontational about this leak with the maintenance staff, they grudgingly did something on the roof and the leak would subside, then return. They'd go up on the roof again, the leak would subside again, then return again. Finally, they took the protruding plaster off of our ceiling, re-plastered the whole offending area, and the leaks stopped. Until this past Monday. The newly plastered area is yellow and brown around the edges, where it's bubbled and saggy. The leak is a persistent, audible, syncopated 1,2 drop of water. It's not a steady stream, but a torturous trickle. Now everything in the immediate area has been moved around and unplugged and covered in garbage bags. I was using my bathroom garbage can to catch the water, but had to get up in the middle of the night to dump it out so it wouldn't overflow. Sheepishly, the landlord provided a large basin for the leak and trudged up the roof yet again, but is stymied. A roof guy has been called, but couldn't go to work today when the rain turned to snow, which stopped the leak for awhile, until the snow started to melt.

As problems go, this is totally manageable. This small, localized dripping has not otherwise affected the heat in my apartment, or the electricity, or the phone or internet or anything. I would rather have a leak than bedbugs, or rowdy neighbours, or any roommate of any kind, but there's something so... invasive about it, I guess. Something that reminds me that I'm still at the mercy of the elements, something driving me slowly insane with every drip. Something must be done.

Dream: Fix the leaky roof.

Goal: Achievable, because I've fixed a similar problem. Once, because I'm a moron, I knocked a roll of toilet paper into the toilet as it flushed. It was the stupid, flimsy biodegradable toilet paper because I evidently care more for the Earth than my own ass. I heard that awful shudder mid-flush and realized I'd clogged up Old Toily (what I call my toilet) real good. Like a simpleton who pushes even harder when a door marked "pull" doesn't open, I flushed Old Toily again. It shuddered again, and cemented the clog. I tried my plunger, fearing it wouldn't work, and it didn't. So get this, you guys! I watched some videos on YouTube, went to the hardware store, bought a weird spindly-lookin' thing called a drain auger, watched the videos again, taught myself how to use it, bingo bango, fixed Old Toily! So it can be done.

Plan: Use a variety of options at my disposal to get this taken care of, such as:

Money. You know how sometimes you hear a sound repeat so often, you put words to it? Like a car alarm going "Be-boop! Be-boop!" starts to sound like, "Tree-root" or "Neice-poop"? Maybe it's just me. But the double drop of the water as it hits its stagnant brothers in the basin sounds to me like, "You're poor. You're poor." I can't help but think if I lived on the top floor of a high rise in the financial district, instead of a four-floor walk-up in midtown, the landlord would do more than provide a basin. I'm luckier than most in that I don't have debts, or crazy expenses, and that Jon makes enough money that he can contribute to our rent here when he doesn't even live here anymore, but I hate stretching every pay-cheque so embarrassingly thin. But nobody makes enough money, least of all people in my age group. Really I should be Occupying some Street right now, but I think the rain falling on my tent would bother me more than this.

Clout. Clout would fix my ceiling. Can you imagine what it would be like to seriously shout at someone, "Do you know who I am?" I don't think I ever would do that, but it would give me orgasmic pleasure just to know that I could. Some would argue that clout is about money, too, but I think it's really more a state of mind. Dr. Phil says a lot of stupid shit I don't understand, but one thing he used to say when I watched him back when he was on Oprah that I've never forgotten was, "You teach people how to treat you." In other words, if you're meek and cow-towing, some folks are going to walk all over you. Conversely, if you believe that you are worthy of certain consideration regardless of how others might perceive your status, you're more likely to get it. Sending food back at a restaurant, barking orders at a subordinate, even stamping my feet about a leaky roof are all things, unfortunately, that are not in my nature to do. I remember reading once that Terry Eagleton, this big, mucky-muck literary critic and scholar said that an accurate tombstone on his family plot might read something like, "Here lies the Eagleton Family. They didn't cause too much trouble." For as-yet unexplored reasons, I place a higher premium on not making a fuss than I do about getting my own way, but I suppose that's another blog.

Finally, knowledge would probably be my greatest asset here. Like my YouTube instructional videos helped me to rescue Old Toily, surely there are tools I can buy or expertise I can glean that would help me fix the damn leak myself. The feeling of satisfaction I got when I finally, blessedly extracted the disgusting roll of toilet paper, and the former flush gurgled back to life and everything worked again was remarkable. It's unfortunate that I can't share this accomplishment with too many people, because it makes me look really interested in toilets, but it made me feel so capable, which is awesome!

In the meantime, though, I could really use a little perspective here. It's been heart-sickening to look at the really leaky roofs, dilapidated shacks, and 12 person tents in Attawapiskat. I know it's an often repeated refrain, but I can't believe what happens in this country we're all so proud of. Red Cross and True North Aid are taking donations, as I understand it, and I have been talking to a gal who puts together amazing music cabarets about throwing a bitchingly awesome fundraiser, where I promise not to sing, this December (exact date and time to come, Readers, assuming everything goes forward as it should). Fundraising is really the least we can do in these situations. After all, I want to help, truly help, not by donating a basin, or patching a crack. I want to be part of the group that fixes the roof.

And Justice For All...

Hello Friends.

Let me set the scene for you. I'm at a standing room only concert last night by one of those good indie bands with an unmemorable name. I thought they were Dakota Blue, then Fun Candlestick, but they're called Hey Rosetta. Have you forgotten the name already? I have. But they were good. Not really a beat I could dance to, but lots of fun. They were rockin', but they had a cello, which I support.

What was not good was the weird girl sitting behind us. Did I mention the concert was standing room only? I did? Because she was sitting. We stood close to the bar and she sat at the bar and whined the whole night to my friend Lewis, standing in front of her. "Get out of the waaaay! Why are you so talllll! Why the fuck are you so tallll! I can't seeeee!" Lewis tried to accommodate her, but she increasingly became a bitchface. He moved so as to improve her field of vision, but then she would move herself behind him again so she could smack him (like literally smack him) and go, "Get out of the waaaay!" Then, as my friends Dan and Lajya looked back to see what was going on, she said, "What the fuck are you looking at?" And then, to Lajya, "You wanna roll?" She was, apparently, not offering Lajya a roll (which was my first thought), but challenging her to a fight. She declined. We gave her an even wider breadth, which she did not deserve, then another girl approached weird girl and they started making out with each other and then weird girl zipped up her winter coat, put her hood up, and started crashing into me. What? WHAT?

I ignored her, as did my friends, but she only became louder, and more aggressive. Dan ordered another drink and gave the briefest of head-jerks towards the offending party. Kind of a, "Check out this cracky gal" to the bartender. Bartender checked her out and within minutes, two security guards approached her, and kicked her out! I can't stress enough how supremely satisfying this was. She wasn't breaking bottles, or hitting people, or really breaking any rules beyond common courtesy, so I think we all expected to deal with her for the rest of Cable Tree's set. So the fact that she was kicked out just for being super annoying was fantastic, it was heartening, it was justice.

Dream: Justice for discourteous people.

Goal: Unachievable, for now. As much as I'd love vigilante justice for line-cutters, joke-stealers and people who smell like piss all the time, I know there's no way to actually police such behaviour. Best as I can do is offer suggestions and hope that those fat-cats on Parliament Hill take notice. If any political candidate adopted the following platforms, I bet they'd get a lot of votes.

Plan: Create a system of checks and balances that appropriately punishes shitty behaviour. For instance:

All of those so-called "medical experts" who spend their time talking to Star magazine, speculating on how much weight Jennifer Aniston has gained or lost, should be forced to spend their time watching hidden camera footage at restaurants to catch bad tippers. If someone receives good food and service and leaves a tip of ten percent or lower, they should have their picture taken as they leave the restaurant, like those people who run red lights. The medical experts should circulate the pictures to various restaurants (and send a copy to the offender) along with a photocopy of their bill and the tip they left. Consequently, bad tippers will be banned from whichever restaurants feel like banning them. Justice!

Dental hygienists who are all high and mighty about your brushing should be forced to spend one shift of their workweek installing dummy seats in buses. Then, from behind a two way mirror or something, they will watch people waiting for a bus. When the bus comes, if somebody cuts the line and insists on getting on first, the dental hygienist has to make sure whatever seat they choose instantly collapses beneath them. Justice!

Telemarketers should have to use the technology they've created to auto-dial numbers to install an iphone app (am I saying that right? App?). This app will be able to sense by proximity, I guess, when you are standing close to someone and having a conversation with them. Should you continue this conversation and try to text someone while you're talking to me, this app will shut the iphone down instantly. If you are a repeat offender, the iphone will start to vibrate so vigorously it drops from the users hand and shatters. Justice!

Bros who are still doing Borat impressions (the movie is five years old, bros), need to obtain the phone numbers those bored mothers who drag their awful children through the store. You know the mothers I mean. The ones who bring their obviously tired, obviously cranky kids to a store, regardless of the time of day or night, and take their sweet time buying junk food while the kids scream and run and knock stuff over and mother offers only the occasional, "Settle down, Brexler. Do you want another coke?" Anyway, the bros need their phone numbers so they can call the bored mothers in the middle of the night to do their Borats.

Bored Mother (sleepily): Mmph...hello?
Bros: Issa niiice! Issa niiice! Issa niiice!

Justice!

The downside with being a justice vigilante is that, while people support you in theory, nobody actually likes you very much. My very favourite story of the manners police comes from a few years ago when I was working the till one night. A rowdy but harmless drunk was buying scratch tickets from me. He grabbed his tickets and moved aside and the uptight older businessman started unloading his cart. Then the drunk said, "I won! I won five bucks! Can you put this through for me?" and gave me the ticket. I took it to run through and give him his five bucks (which would have taken my ten seconds) and Uptighty goes, "Hey hold on here! There's a line and you've had your turn! You need to go to the back of the line!" And Drunky pauses a moment, steps back, and says, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" Ohhh man! Even though Uptighty was in the right and Drunky was in the wrong, isn't that still Justice! So while we can't police everybody's behaviour, can we just agree to all be a little bit more polite to each other, applaud justice when we see it, and sometimes tell Uptighty's to go fuck themselves? That's the kind of beat we can all dance to.

A Month of Fun-Days...

Hello Friends.

Have you heard about this Movember thing? I'm afraid I was totally late to this party. Movember takes place over the entire month of November where men are instructed not to shave their face and grow a moustache for a month. They get people to sponsor the growing of this moustache and the funds they raise go to prostate cancer. I can't quite connect moustaches to the prostrate (and don't want to give it a try), but it is apparently a very successful campaign.

I'd like to participate in this, I really would, but... moustaches are gross. I know it's all a big laugh riot but I don't need to be any more self-conscious about my appearance than I already am for an entire month. I've never tried to grow a moustache, but I feel like it would be less Ron Swanson and more John Waters. But I would like to be more charitable.

Dream: Designate another month in support of a charity.

Goal: Achievable. Movember only started in Canada four years ago and now it's widespread! I can think of five guys I know growing moustaches right now (and they all look... like they're sporting moustaches).

Plan: Come up with more cutesy-named but philanthropic month-long events. Such as:

Frocktober - Wear a dress every day in October in support of women's health.

Dissember - Diss someone every day in December in support of Tourette's syndrome YOU FUCKING WHOREBALL!

Gaypril - Develop a same-sex attraction every day in April in support of gay rights.

Puly - Document your regularity every day in July in support of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Heptember - Enjoy a different sexual partner every day in September in support of Hepatitis's A through C.

Pube-ruary - Leave your body hair unkempt and overgrown this February in support of people who just don't care anymore.

AIDS March - Hold an AIDS march every day in March in support of AIDS.

Blogust - Visit Big City James every day in August in support of me.

All right, so maybe these proposed months don't have the same appeal as Movember, but they're all for very good causes. I'm sponsoring a friend this month who seems to really regret ever agreeing to not shave these past 17 days and counting, but he's raising a lot of cash with his 'stache, which seems reason enough to keep a stiff, albeit hairy, upper lip.

An Open Letter to Kim Kardashian...

Hello Friends.

I'm afraid the problem with Kim Kardashian is not Kim Kardashian. It is not her heavily-sponsored wedding, her subsequent divorce, her reality show, her endorsement deals, her parents, or her bangin' bod. The problem with Kim Kardashian is me. It's you. It's us. There's been an internet meme circulating since Kim announced her divorce after 72 days of marriage and a plethora of media coverage with a picture of Kim and her groom on their wedding day captioned something to the effect of “If you think gay marriage cheapens the institution, two words: Kim Kardashian.” This point is well-taken and very true, if not supremely ironic when extrapolated. Gay marriage and Kim Kardashian both have a huge gay following, so is supporting both then working at cross-purposes? Maybe that's too easy, but what if it's not? If every gay American man took Kim Kardashian as a threat to gay marriage and decided to stop watching her show, it's specials and spin-offs, viewership would significantly decrease. Who else but us campy gays watch the E! Network or tolerate such an absurd spelling of “Khloe”?

But let me take my tongue out of my cheek for just a moment to wonder if what Kim Kardashian represents is actually an insidious threat to our culture. It could be said that to value her is to value style over substance, pornography over sexuality, objectification over feminism, vapidity over smart-ishness. So what can I do about that?

Dream: Get a letter to Kim Kardashian.

Goal: Unachievable. With the amount of coverage Kim gets and the lawyers, managers, and handlers that surely filter through everything which is sent her way, I doubt very much that she will ever read these words. But I recently read that, in terms of probability, you're just as likely to find a $50 million winning lottery ticket lying in the street as you are to buy it in a store. I am Kim's lottery ticket and maybe if I can't reach her by conventional means (not that I've tried), she will inexplicably Google her own name and “pizza gut” and find this. I don't know, the method's not important, what's important is the letter.

Plan: Write the letter, mean every word, and hope she gets it.

Dear Kim Kardashian,

How are you? I am fine. You don't know me, but I know you, which is worrisome. I don't watch any of the television shows with your name on them, but I know you have some sisters, you recently separated from your husband to whom you were only just married, a few business ventures that didn't do so well, and millions of fans. Do you ever wonder what your fans are fans of, Kim? What qualities you possess that others emulate? I do. I wonder how you feel high atop the slippery slope of “famous for being famous.”

I'm writing to tell you that, despite what I'm sure is a difficult time for you personally, you have the world on a string. Millions of people are waiting, with baited breath, for your next move, and I'm here to beg you to consider it carefully.

I would love to see you go to school, Kim Kardashian, even if only to learn a trade. It would be amazing if you took those cameras following you around and went to a small liberal arts college and really hit the books. It would be amazing to watch you eating cold pizza with one hand while going over and over the hi-lighted portion of your textbook, repeating the same facts over and over so it'll stick in your head. I find it helps to remember facts using the tune from the song Maybe from the musical Annie. For instance, “Betcha she's Mercury/Betcha he's Venus/Betcha he's made Earth a closet of Mars. Betcha they're Jupiter/as Saturn as Uranus/Don't really Neptune, as long as they're Pluto.” I want to see you value your mind as much as your body!

You have so much, Kim, won't you be charitable? I don't mean start a foundation with your name on it so you can throw a gala every year and wear some bejewelled ass-flattering gown. I mean find out what this Occupy Wall Street business is all about. Go down to the soup kitchen and grab a ladle. Go to the battered women's shelter and help pick out clothes for the ladies to wear for job interviews. Go to the children's ward of a hospital and help them put on a puppet show. Help them, Kim, don't give yourself the starring role. You can take the cameras, if you want, but only if the E! people agree to large donations to each of the charities you visit (as far as I can tell, you don't hold down a full-time job, so you've got lots of time to spare here).

Date a man, Kim, but don't marry him. Not for a long time. Don't marry him until marriage is the only thing you haven't done as a couple. Wait so long that everyone who receives an invitation to your wedding will say, “Well it's about time!” And just have the wedding in your backyard with hot dogs and hamburgers and kids running around. You had the fancy ceremony and it didn't work, so this time, hire a local cover band, get Bruce Jenner to double the recipe of his famous potato salad, and go barefoot! And love this one for his mind, Kim, as well as his body, and make sure he does the same for you. Stay home with him more often than you go out, watch bad tv and make ice cream sundaes for each other. If he falls asleep with his glasses on, take them off gingerly so he doesn't wake up. Make up nicknames for each other you're embarrassed to use in front of your friends. Enjoy doing things together, but enjoy doing nothing together even more.

I'm sorry to bring this up, Kim, but I feel like we're getting closer now. Do you remember when you first realized there was a sex tape of you on the internet? How conflicted you felt when that tape spread like wildfire and consequently you became very, very famous? That fame has given you a platform, influence, even power, which are great rewards, but they came at a very heavy price. You had no say in how you were thrust into the public eye, which I am very sorry for, but with the power you now yield, you have a say in how to take yourself out of it. And the most powerful thing you could do right this second is to turn the cameras off. Leave us wanting more and you leave with your dignity. If you wait until we get tired of you, and we probably will sooner rather than later, you fade from us with little dignity left. I'm not saying you can't be an actress or a singer or something, but let us see you on your terms, not through the heavily-edited “reality” as dictated by Ryan Seacrest. People like me get snarky and bitchy about people like you, not because of anything you've done or anything you are, but for all the things you represent. It's time to change what you represent. I know that if you elect to terminate your contract with the reality show, you'll have a few legal battles, you'll lose some money, and the paparazzi will be relentless, but things will blow over, we'll move onto the next fad, and you'll be young, rich and beautiful with your whole life ahead of you.

You are not a show, you are not your name, you are not your breasts, you are not your brand. You are a woman and, last time I checked, women solved problems, built communities, and made the world better. Take on this role, new Friend, with gusto and abandon, and surprise the whole fucking planet.

Oh, and have a great Thanksgiving!

Your new BFF,

James

Curing the Hangover (Again)...

Hello Friends.

Did you ever get up in the middle of the night to pee and realize it's one in the afternoon? Or try to hail a cab home from a party without realizing you were standing inside of a store? Or realize that the well-meaning bartender has been serving you doubles all night so your three vodka tonics were equivalent to some goddamn number you can't calculate because you're drunk? Then you've been hungover.

Dream: Make a hangover bearable.

Goal: Achievable, but keep your celebration minimal, I've got one of those behind-my-eye headaches.

Plan: Several.

Suffer in solitude. What I don't get is how two people can have the same evening with the same alcohol content, and your morning after is rarely identical. Inexplicably, you can wake up feeling like shit and your partner has a tiger by the tail! “Good morning, Sunshine! Nice of you to join me!” Ugh. The worst part is, I'm usually the annoying one! I like the occasional cocktail, but I rarely drink to excess. Something about the loss-of-control in drunkenness really knocks me off kilter. I don't know why, I can't drive or perform CPR, so a sober me is as useless as a drunk me, but I still keep my drinking fairly conservative. Jon's tolerance is higher than mine, but he will usually be the one to have one glass too many and wake up feeling rough. Not all the time, of course, don't get the wrong impression, but there have been occasions where he's not doing so hot but I'm all, “Let's go look at grandfather clocks!” or “Wanna hear me sing Lady Gaga songs? Here they are in order of their release!” The point is, as lovely as it is to have someone wet you a washcloth or turn down the tv, the detriments of having a partner in this instance outweigh the benefits.

The consumption of bad food, which is good. I don't know if there's science behind our cravings for eggs, bacon and carbs after a night out, but I say treat yourself! And, since you probably shouldn't be frying bacon or dealing with putrid breakfast dishes in your delicate condition, take yourself out for breakfast. I believe we should have hangover-themed restaurants (hangover like the phenomenon, of course, not the terrible film franchise). They would serve breakfast food, but also mimosas and Bloody Mary cocktails if you decided to merely delay the hangover and keep booze pumping through you. Each restaurant would be small and comfortable, with no children or boisterous activity allowed. Sorry, hungover parents, but you damn well better keep your loud, excitable, yelling children at McDonald's because they will not be allowed at my restaurant, tentatively titled Rough Night?. The staff at Rough Night? will be made up of retired psychiatric nurses, childless aunts and uncles, and non-judgey librarians. They'll be quiet, efficient and sympathetic and say things like, “Ohh, look at you. Okay, just come on inside. Do you want coffee? Of course you do, here, just take a rest now.”

Finally, I'm afraid the only real cure to hangover is time, which is the worst. The thing I always forget on a night when I drink too much is that, even if I have the next day off, I won't be free to do whatever I want, I'll be in recovery. Somehow, I think I'll just be able to shake it off, do my laundry, clean my apartment, and go birdwatching with a free Sunday, but on my last hangover day, I only managed to wake up late, shower for a long time and eat a blizzard at some point for no reason. I certainly don't condone getting drunk, but what if we were to consider hangovers as some kind of cosmic payment? In exchange for a headache, mouth that tastes like sweaters, eggs and bacon, we get a long night of too much fun with a bunch of friends? Seems fair, doesn't it? I'll drink to that.

In Support of the Party...

Hello Friends.

You know how sometimes you see a dog on a surfboard? Dog isn't surfing so much as not moving while the board goes on its way? That's how I feel at a party. I enjoy myself, but I feel out of place, and I'm never really sure what I'm supposed to do.

This past weekend, I went to fun, happy, fancy-but-not-stuffy party hosted by my old school chum Katie and her new husband Curt. I was thrilled to be there, and loved catching up with dear old friends from my university days and beyond, but I sort of forgot how to be a human person. I have to stress, here, that the party itself was wonderful, the hosts gracious, the guests charming, the venue perfect and the food excellent, I just couldn't make heads or tails of it. I don't have time to catch up with how parties are supposed to work, I have a Hallowe'en party to go to this upcoming Saturday, then its only a few weeks before the Christmas Parties start, then New Year's Eve, then my annual Martin Luther King Dance-a-thon. Instead, I'd rather parties catch up with me.

Dream: Change the way parties work.

Goal: Achievable. With holidays fast-approaching, and the threat of another hours-cut at work, I need more money and a new job. Becoming a party-planner would satisfy those needs, plus, if I were running an expensive, catered affair, someone might get drunk and start yelling and I would get to say discretely into my walkie-talkie, “We've got a situation here.” I've always, since boyhood, wanted to say “We've got a situation here” into a walkie-talkie. That's my no-hitter.

Plan: Add a few new elements to parties to make them easier, and less socially stressful. Such as:

British men to announce the arrival of guests. You know how, in old movies, someone arrives at the top of the stairs to descend into a fancy party and a British man says, “Lord Chesterball, the Third and his wife, Pinky.” We need that today, with slight modification. We need the guy to say that, then sidle up to you and say, “This was the guy your brother used to work with who has the sister whose still a drunk so don't ask about her.” At this party over the weekend, I could have really used this person.

I was talking with Katie in a small group when a new person showed up and Katie squealed and hugged him and I thought, “I know this guy.” He smiled at everyone and I knew I'd seen him before a million times. There were a lot of people from the prairies at this party, many of whom I hadn't seen in years, and I was frantically wracking my brain, thinking, “How do I know this guy? Did we take a class together? Is he the friend of a friend of mine? Come on, James, figure it out!” Katie introduced him around, saying, “James, this is Stefan, Stefan, James” and I thought, “Good! He doesn't remember me either! Level playing field.” And I was torn between saying, “Pleased to meet you” and “Nice to see you again”, so what came out was “Please to meet you again” (slow clap). It was plain he didn't remember me, either, but instead of being relieved, I was a little miffed. Maybe this guy looked different than he used to, but I've had the same clothes and haircut for fifteen years! Then I suddenly realized the reason the guy looked familiar is not because we know each other but because he played Snake on Degrassi High. Worried that I might fawn too much, or accidentally ask after Wheels, I excused myself and headed for the bar. Had I a British man to give me a heads-up, I could have met and greeted Stefan with a little more elan, instead of saying “Please to meet you again” and making a terrible “sudden realization” face.

Red cards. Apparently, in the game of soccer, or as they called it in England, a packet of crisps, a player knows he is ejected from the game when he's handed a red card. Red cards cannot be refused or contested. We need a version of that for parties. Stefan could have politely handed me one after my “Please to meet you again” and I would have had to walk away, without question, for the greater good of the party. Wouldn't that be great? Sort of a “Get Out of this Boring Conversation Free” card?

At a recent gathering, where music was blaring throughout, I was introduced by a friend of mine to her friend and her friend's husband. My friend and her friend went off to curl their hair or get pregnant or whatever girls do, leaving me and the husband and the blaring music. I'm sure the husband was a lovely man, I'm sure I'm no prize to be stuck next to at a party either, but this was the conversation we had.

HUSBAND: What's your karaoke song?
JAMES: Sorry?

HUSBAND: When you sing karaoke? What's your song?
JAMES: Oh! I don't really sing karaoke, actually.
HUSBAND: Never? You've never sung karaoke? Come on!

JAMES: Well, sure, once or twice.

HUSBAND: So what's your song?
(JAMES thinks back to his handful of times singing karaoke, can only remember one experience, in particular)

JAMES: Um... “Walk Like An Egyptian”, I guess? By the Go-Go's?

HUSBAND: (Silence. Long pause).
JAMES: The Bangles, excuse me.
HUSBAND: (Silence. Long pause).

JAMES: What's your karaoke song?
HUSBAND: Oh, I don't sing karaoke.

What? Come on, Husband! What was the point of that entire exchange? Does he have some book, “1001 Ways to Start a Shitty, Go-Nowhere Talk”? I would have loved to have had a red card that I could quietly hand to him at any point during our conversation. The benefit is twofold as I'm sure he didn't want to be there talking to me, either!

Lyrics everywhere. Speaking of karaoke, I think parties with music should require easily accessed, well-lit and legible lyrics to the songs as they're being played by whomever is “deejay-ing” the event. This is because humans are the only animals that lip-synch. Well, I can't say that for certain, maybe a meerkat will move it's little mouth to the recording of another meerkat, but I can state empirically that humans are the only animals impressed by lip-synching. And impressed I am! If I'm dancing with someone who can mouth the words to “Straight Up” as Paula is singing them, we're gonna be close friends. Similarly, if Roxette's “Joyride” is playing anywhere, a school dance, a shopping mall, a prison riot, I will drop whatever I'm doing and lip-synch the shit out of that song. But if you're like me and can't even recall the words to O Canada, lip-synching an entire song is next to impossible. Rather than admit defeat and burst into tears, which I know is your instinct, you must instead pretend to be distracted by something else while the lyrics you don't know are playing. That way, people never suspect you've lost the lyric, just that you're busy doing something else. At Katie's celebration, the deejay played Blondie's “Heart of Glass” and I ran to the dancefloor, beyond thrilled. It was only after I took my place in the centre of somebody else's dance circle that I realized I only know the part where she sings, “something something heart of glass” and then I'm totally lost until the “Ooh-ooh-oh-whooa's”. This meant I had to nurse my vodka tonic and wave to a fake person across the room for a full ninety seconds until the “Ooh-ooh-oh-whooa's” started. That shit is hard! If there had been lyrics posted everywhere, we all could have lip-synched the whole thing and made friends for life!

Dr. Jons. We should all be so lucky to have plus ones like mine to take to a party. Jon's absence was keenly felt at this last party, as will be the case for the upcoming Hallowe'en party and every other until we're both in the same province for awhile. It was a real shame I couldn't introduce him to my school chums, people I feel so close to that were part of some of the most meaningful experiences of my life. Beyond that, Jon has a way of working a room that I do not possess myself. I think you could stick Jon in pit full of tigers and within fifteen minutes, he'd be offering to supervise the PhD thesis of the smartest tiger and offering to pick another one up at the airport next Wednesday. That's just the kind of guy he is, I'm lucky to have him.

Really, these are only suggestions, and are far from requirements. The only thing any party absolutely needs is friends, and I'm lucky to have a lot of those. Best to get on the same wavelength with a couple of your dawgs and just ride it out. Surf's up.

What's Your Favourite Scary Movie...

Hello Friends.

I love this time of the year, when it's warm enough to still walk everywhere, but cool enough that you don't have to wear a t-shirt and suck in your pizza gut. Thanksgiving is warm and familial and you get to eat too much, and Hallowe'en is frenzied and slutty and you get to eat too much. I like all of it, but I've never been able to appreciate a good scary movie.

My friend Bradley has a great blog here, where he's counting down the days to Hallowe'en by writing about a different scary movie or tv show every day. This is a great device, but not one I could get away with, as my blog would be about two and a half days long. The Exorcist, Goosebumps books, the first twenty minutes of The Ring. I just can't take scary movies. In high school, a bunch of friends and I went to see The Ring, and I was out of that theatre seriously within twenty minutes. And nothing scary had really happened yet! But they were playing all that tense music and nobody was joking around or coming to terms with things (the only two genres of movies I'd watched until that point) and then Naomi Watts is reviewing “The Tape” in an editing machine, notices a fly in the corner of the frame, then the fly is suddenly alive and blood starts gushing out of Naomi Watts' nose and the music goes “BONNNNNNG!” and I was like, “Done!” I ran out of the theatre and went to a nearby Chapters where I read Entertainment Weekly with shaking hands until the movie was over.

But I feel like I'm really missing something by not watching a horror movie every once in awhile. I usually defend my choice by saying I don't like to be scared, why would I put myself through that, but I wonder if depriving myself of artificial fear makes my instances of real fear somehow worse. From my window, I can see the raccoon who lives at least part time, on my neighbour's rooftop. I feel like he's looking at me, and it gives me the willies. Maybe if I watched more movies where people got sliced up or birthed demon spawn, I'd realize it was just a fucking raccoon.

Dream: Find the perfect scary movie to watch.

Goal: Achievable. People always think they've found a scary movie that I'll not only be able to handle, but love as much as they do. Whether my friend Will insisted I watch The Omen (which was okay, but what was up with that kid?!) or my friend Shannon's pick, Megalodon: Sixty Feet of Prehistoric Terror, about a giant shark, they all say, “This movie is more good than scary. You'll love it.” I haven't yet, but there are so many non-scary movies out there that I do like, surely it's just a matter of time until I find the perfect one for me.

Plan: Find a movie which meets the following criteria.

The protagonist takes the hint early on. I saw a trailer this summer for a scary shark movie. A bunch of sexy teens were vacationing together at this cabin and they were all out water-skiing and suddenly the guy on skis gets pulled into the undertow. “Jeff?” they scream. “JEFF?!?!” But blood rises in the water and of course that's the end of Jeff. Later in the movie (and later in the trailer), the sexy teens go for a swim off the dock, presumably to get their mind off of their dead friend. Really, teens? From my seat, I said, “Get out of the water!” They didn't, and more sexy teens perished. Why would you ever go back in the water? That's the incongruity of most scary movies: something scary happens, usually in a specific place, and people keep on going back to that place!

In my movie, they'll figure it out right away. For instance, a group of sexy paleontologists are in town for a convention dedicated to disproving the existence of dinosaurs. This makes them really mad, and they get madder still when the Hyatt Regency loses their reservation and they're forced to room together in the dingy, dilapidated motel on the outskirts of town when they discover.... a small velociraptor in the shower!!! GAH! Shit! He'll eat them all! So they wisely barricade the shower door, leave the motel early (to hell with their bill, they'll reimburse whichever sexy paleontologist left their credit card), and go on their way! The rest of the movie will be them doing great presentations at the conference and making jokes like, “You sure you want another cup of coffee? You might have to go to the bathroom! Ha ha ha!”. I'd watch that.

Scary movies, especially these days, seem to place a high premium on gratuitous nudity and violence. I'm all for boobs and punching but, together? It seems like the college girl is always stepping out of the shower before she's slashed in her guts, or the young couple starts having sex in the back of the car when the guy with the hook-hand shows up. Excuses for nudity as a precursor to violence is so badly written these days that I'm sure there's a movie where a girl is just sitting with her shirt off for no reason, maybe she's a sexy lab technician who wanted to let her “boobs breathe” while she was alone doing research, and then she gets attacked by some creepy dude. I'm all for nudity in films, but does it always have to signal imminent danger? Or else nudity is due to a simulated sex scene, which often makes me feel embarrassed for the actors. To have pretend sex while being for real naked in front of a bunch of crew jerks doesn't sound fun. I think foreign filmmakers have it right. There's this super sexy Mexican movie I saw called Y Tu Mama Tambien where these two hot young dudes go on a roadtrip across Mexico with his sexy older woman and they all seduce each other. If I'm remembering correctly, there's no nudity in the sex scenes, but they all go swimming and sunbathing naked and the movie is gorgeously shot and their bodies look impossibly beautiful. Similarly, I loved the French movie Swimming Pool. Charlotte Rampling plays this writer of mystery novels who is fresh out of ideas and so spends the summer at her agent's beach house, and the agent's sexy daughter decides to crash there for the summer as well. The daughter is played by Ludivine Sagnier, a kind of French Scarlett Johaanson, who spends the movie lounging by the pool topless, smoking haughtily, and it drives Charlotte Rampling crazy. She's jealous of her spoiled lifestyle, perfect body, ease with men and joie-de-vivre. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that both films have nakedness solely to emphasize the beauty and sensuality of their subjects, not because they're about to be fake-raped or attacked by some lizards.

Finally, my movies wouldn't have slow, painful lead-ups to anything bad. This is the staple of the horror movie and, for me, the absolute worst part of the experience. You know the parts I mean. Where someone is walking slowly down a long hallway, the music getting ominously quiet. The lighting is sparse and you can hear the person breathing heavily, and their footsteps creaking along, until they turn a corner and suddenly....GAH! THAT's the worst! It's the guy with the hockey mask or the wolf with sunglasses or whatever. The music goes BOOM and the whole audience jumps and I scream. Wouldn't it be great if, like in my upcoming film, the lead-ups were only to pleasant things? Like what if it was Joan Cusack around that corner? You don't see her in anything anymore! And she goes, “Oh gosh, sorry if a scared ya! Come on, I just made muffins!” Ahhh, that would be great!

I know these suggestions seem impractical, because if you take the scary out of the scary movie, where's the movie, but it can be done. I just finished a fabulous book called Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan. Stewart O'Nan is primarily known for his horror fiction, and he's even collaborated on some work with Stephen King, so I had some trepidation going into this one, which is about three generations of a family spending one last summer together in their cabin by the lake. It turned out to be totally sweet, sedate novel about family dynamics! There's a moment where one of the adult children of the family goes to a gas station and the attendant is missing and the police cordon off the area because of a possible abduction, and it comes to nothing! The family hears bits about the abduction on the new and they say things like, “Oh, that's a shame! I hope they find her!” and then drop it completely. I won't tell you how that turns out, but suffice it to say it has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the book. Message boards were flooded with angry comments from readers wondering why this kidnapping had just been dropped in and not developed in a novel that wasn't the least bit scary, but I loved it. So I think this Hallowe'en, I'll watch the first ten minutes of American Werewolf in Paris, then finish it off with Midnight in Paris. Or I'll watch some demonstrations from Occupy Wall Street on the news, then check out the crowd numbers from Newsies. Maybe I'm a big wuss for avoiding scary stuff this Hallowe'en, but maybe that's what keeps this my favourite time of year. Now if I could just do something about that damn raccoon...