May It Please the Court...

Hello Friends.

Every time summer rolls around, I forget just how hard it is to be stuck inside working. No matter how lovely the air conditioning, no matter how many polo shirts I can bust out in July, being inside is always trumped by being outside. That is, unless, what's inside is more compelling, interesting, entertaining, appealing than what's outside.

There are very few options of things I'd stay inside for when it's this gorgeous out, but among them are delicious meals, sex parties, animal husbandry, delicious animals, meal parties, and sex husbandry. God knows those don't happen every day, plus I can't really leave my job to do them. Seems to me when it comes to staying indoors but away from work but not getting fired, there's really only one solution.

Dream: Get called for jury duty.

Goal: Achievable, I think. I'm almost a million percent certain that I am eligible for jury duty. I'm a Canadian citizen, I've never been arrested, I'm not an invalid, and I haven't been officially diagnosed as incompetent by any authority besides my Dad (you try making pancakes without getting batter everywhere, Pops!). By my basic understanding of Canada's judicial system, I think I'm ready to watch the live Dateline episode that is jury duty.

Plan: Remain a healthy, ordinary citizen and hope to be selected when the following events unfold:

For this to work out and be any fun, I cannot serve on a jury for something boring. Apparently in this country, you can be called to serve on a jury for a non-criminal cases. What the hell is that? How incredibly frustrating would it be to pass the selection process, get ushered into the courtroom, and then hear a stream of legalese about a potential copyright violation at an international conference of graham cracker suppliers? I'll answer for you: Very frustrating! For my trial, I want a murder, and the victim can't be someone too appealing. Here are some possible victim and suspect scenarios:

1) Wealthy businessman who has been cheating on his wife is murdered in cold blood by his mistress' brother, who (we found out later) has been involved with the wife! Criss-cross!     

2) Cult leader who runs depraved sex farm is murdered by either his most devoted follower (or is he?) or possibly a hunky farmhand who just comes by to milk the cows and not have sex with anyone (except for juror number 8 what WHAT!)

3) Dr. Oz is murdered by Dr. Phil

4) Dr. Phil is murdered by Dr. Oz

5) Doctors Phil and Oz are murdered by the nameless panel of Doctors on The Doctors

6) A scheming blonde socialite is murdered by her social-climbing best friend who had plastic surgery to look like Kate Winslet. If we are a hung jury (I can't speak for the rest, but #8 sure is what WHAT!) the headline might read, "Nobody Winslet!"

7) The guy who invented Crocs is murdered by the guy who invented drop crotch jeans (whatever we have to do to get both things off the market).

There are several more possible iterations, but it has to be sensational and both lawyers will have to work their butts off to make me feel sympathy for both the murderer and the murdered. As horrific as many of their profiled crimes are, I notice that Dateline and shows of that ilk tend to stop short or the truly devastating. Cases involving murdered children are almost never aired, for example, because such brutality is so senseless that you can't spend an hour with it on a Friday night. Similarly, I don't think I could listen to the facts of a case of that nature and remain impartial until all the information is presented. Give me a soapy, intriguing murder trial, however, and I'll relish my time in the jury box.

I don't want a lot of medical jargon and technical mumbo-jumbo. For that matter, keep away expertise of any kind. Show me a drawing of a bullet riddled body and say, "The bullets came from a gun and went into the body and that's how he died." DONE! No information about point of entry, blood-spatter, shell casings or anything else will take up space in my brain. It's like how, even though I'm a nervous flier who worries about every little bump on a plane, the minute someone tries to explain the phenomenon to me, I'm incredibly bored and irritated ("It's just responding to different air pockets that form over high and low pressures systems which..." "OH MY GOD STOP TALKING TO ME, PILOT!").

I want a reckless, devil-may-care lawyer who plays by his or her own rules. The other lawyer has to scream "Objection!" and the judge will have to shake their head and say, "I'm warning you, counsellor!" Also, if the lawyer or witness says something so potentially incendiary that the judge says, "The jury is instructed to disregard that last remark," guess what? I'm not disregarding shit! If it's so potentially damning that I have to disregard, it's probably one of the most important facts of the case!

I don't want to be the Foreperson, but I need to sit close enough to an entrance or exit of the jury box so I can get to the bathroom. My bladder has shrunk with age and I plan to bring a milkshake in every morning so I can do that "Shkshkshkkk!" thing during some emotional testimony, so I'll need also to be able to easily access the facilities throughout the trial.

The bailiff has to do something. Maybe he restrains the victim's family from physically attacking the suspect, maybe he helps me to and from the bathroom, I don't know.

Finally, the trial itself can't go on too long. I definitely want to take advantage of a hotel stay and free meals, but summer is such a short time, especially here in Edmonton. I'm taking no more vacation days until a wedding in September and by then it's sure to be wintry and gross, and busier at work, and I won't have time to determine the fate of another human being. Right now though, when work is slow and my appetite for a good story is growing, put me in that box, legal system, and tell me a really good story.

Grown-Ups...

Hello Friends.

Hey, real quick: whatever happened to adults? I guess I'm speaking to pop culture specifically, but the same phenomenon is reflected in large social trends. Why, for instance, are we so enamoured of books and movies for young audiences? I'd rather be shot in my goddamn face than learn how to train my dragon 2. And I like Jennifer Lawrence fine, but does she really have to be the biggest star in the world right now? She's barely out of being a bween! She hasn't bweaned, if you will.

Every male star seems borne of some franchise (again, intended for children), and reduced to soundbiting on late night TV. If there is a Dustin Hoffman-type actor coming up today, we'll never meet him unless he's in Spaghetti Kids 4: Uh-Oh, Spaghetti Kids! And Jimmy Fallon has to reduce everyone on his show to viral-worthy clickbait, which I understand gets good ratings, but I can't imagine Dick Cavett and Norman Mailer engaging in a lip-synch battle or forming a barbershop quartet.

I don't mean to suggest that we need proto-typical adult men and women role models to enforce some kind of arbitrary gender binary, but can't we place a little bit more emphasis on maturity? I don't mean we should all find jobs, homes, and families in short order; nailing those first two down is nearly impossible in our economy, but rather that we should be more realistic about just how great it is to be young and cool all the time. I'm neither cool nor particularly young and I've never been good at either. I really feel like I'm becoming more of a person by growing older and having new experiences; why doesn't everyone feel this way?

Dream: Embrace becoming an adult.

Goal: Achievable. In many cultures, adulthood is something that is simply thrust upon you, there's no choice about working to support the family, getting married, providing. But here in North America, there is a generation of us unwilling or unable to move out of a younger person's dynamic, whether that means living at home, having little to no full time work, or being a perpetual student. Contrary to blowhard thinkpieces in several "esteemed" publications, that's not laziness, that's just the reality for many people in this economy. Yet, I still there are things that we can do, that I can do specifically, to grow up a little bit.

Plan: Set foot on the path to maturity by making the following changes:

Cut my hair. No, I can't do that one. While the part may have moved from the centre to the side, I've had the same long shaggy hair in my long shaggy face since I was 14. I know a clean, close-cropped cut looks more professional and less like I slept in a car. But then what would I play with when I'm bored (suggestions aren't welcome)? What would I tug on nervously, or run my fingers through constantly? I was in a play once where a director accused me of relying too much on my hair. This particular show started with my hair slicked back and, over the course of the evening (the play more or less took place in real time), my nervous tics (and hot theatre lights) left my hair bedraggled and wild and I loved that, it was so much fun, and the director wanted to cut my hair because it was distracting. I fought and won that battle, thankfully. I know it's just fucking hair, but I'm also proud to have it. Someday I'll start balding and get that awful Michael Bolton/George Carlin no-hair-up-front-tons-in-the-back look and have to rethink, but that day is not today.

Wear a suit. No, I can't do that one. Suits are flattering and classy on the right person, but I'm no Diane Keaton. Even after working in (and getting a substantial discount on) nice menswear, I still look like a kid in his Dad's clothes when I wear a suit, or a pregnant bean on stilts. At my current job, I can get by in pressed pants and a dress shirt or polo. I never interact with clients, so I could also wear a garbage bag and a Tilley hat and no one would care. Some colleagues are suited up, though, and look great. Maybe if I was a little broader in the chest and narrower in the waist, I could be poured into some quality threads, but I'm not about to starting working out just to look a little better than Jason in Human Resources.

Develop a taste for wine. No, I can't do that one. Wine is so gross, you guys! It's sour and bitter and coats your mouth and makes your teeth disgusting. But people LOVE it! Guzzle it by the bottle, they do! I've heard that your tastebuds supposedly change as you age, thus explaining, for instance, why kids like the taste of Kool-Aid and adults like the taste of wine. I think I missed that all-important transition. The booze I like are sugar-bombed vodka coolers, like Smirnoff and Vex. These selections are terribly gauche and so, so bad for me, but taste so good! Give me a Raspberry Lemonade something with a 7% alcohol content over a Cabernet that was nestled with baby lamb for two hundred years any day of the week.

Travel. No, I can't do that one. Travelling is supposedly a fulfilling life-changing experience, but when I picture doing it myself all I can think is: are the beds comfortable, and will the food make me puke? Well-travelled friends make fabulous guests at a dinner party. Tales of backpacking through some awful mountain and bunking in some kind of eco-treehouse sound admirable from a distance, but I don't want to do any of those things. You know where I'm going on vacation next week? The Big City where I lived for many years. You know where I'm staying? With friends, and then a hotel. Maybe I'll travel someday, but from where I'm sitting, it's better to be home. But about that...

Own a home. No, I can't do that one. Home ownership is freaking impossible, and it's only getting worse, but I think in a sly way, Doc and I might have the market beat. Right now, we rent a small 1 bedroom apartment for $1100/month. I don't know anyone who pays that little for a mortgage and fees. If we were to buy a condo of comparable size, we'd pay at least $1100 per month on a mortgage payment in addition to condo fees (by the way, what the fuck are condo fees? It costs $800 per month per resident to shovel the snow?). The Doc and I don't have any debts, and we're able to squirrel away some nice chunks of change because our rent is so small. If we keep saving, we'll eventually be in a place to buy a little property without hurling ourselves into a massive money-owing pit of despair we won't be able to hoist ourselves out of until we're ready to retire.

Make peace with the younger me. That's the hardest one. I was always the kid who wanted to be older than he was because I never thought my current self was all that interesting. I was a neurotic, overly-sensitive child, prone to tantrums and tears. Despite having a marvelous childhood, I was not a marvelous child. The adults I knew were great role models of how to grow up and it infuriated me that I was not their contemporary. Now I'm the same age my parents were when I was small and I feel like the biggest faker. As if someone will see through my pretentious blathering and self-important dreams and point out that my grasp on adulthood is tenuous; that my veneer of maturity is paper thin. If I could go back and meet Younger James, a device often used in terrible films, I don't know what I'd tell him, necessarily, but I hope I'd be kind. Maybe he'd look at my little apartment, my paltry resume, my schlubby clothes and messy hair and think, "Oh fuck, I'm gonna turn into this guy?" Or maybe he'd take it all in, reserve his fleeting judgments, and decide that I must be trying my best.

Obsessed...

Hello Friends.

There's this woman I've been following on Twitter. At least, I assume she's a woman, her profile picture is some kind of Second Life fairy nymph (although you know she spells it 'faerie'). I won't reveal her screen name, but she's easy enough to find because she is occasionally retweeted by a news personality we'll call Debbie Couchfarm. Debbie Couchfarm retweets the tweets of this woman because every single tweet she sends is directed at Debbie Couchfarm. Every one, morning until night. She will say, "@DCouchfarm Believe in your dreams as I believe in you!" or "@DCouchfarm Do you still like dancing?". It's WEIRD! Weirder still, as I've said, is that Couchfarm seems to be, if not encouraging the parade of fawning tweets, not stopping it either.

For the Twitter illiterate, congratulations on not wasting your time, but the tool works like this: Someone has a Twitter account, from which they tell jokes or talk about their lunch. Twitter users send tweets out from their account, and people who Follow them can read those tweets. I follow Debbie Couchfarm, who is a popular news personality less famous than Diane Sawyer, but more famous than Linda Talisman, an NBC news correspondent I just made up right now. Anyway, the Faerie Nymph lady sends tweets to Debbie, and Debbie retweets them, meaning she publishes them on her own Twitter page, which is how I found this person. I'm sure Faerie Nymph is a harmless fan, but what if a response from Debbie Couchfarm leads her to suppose a friendship is developing when it's not? What if Faerie Nymph reads so far into these meaningless digital interactions that it affects her mental health, if it hasn't already? 

This is the point in the show where I'm awarded Lifetime Achievement in Hypocrisy because I am the WORST for tweeting at famous people. People like Josh Mankiewicz, Julie Klausner, and The Bean Institute receive replies from me to messages that were not intended for me. I'll do that obnoxious "top a joke" thing that lazy internet commenters do, where a famous person will tweet something funny, and I'll try to add to it in a way that's not funny at all. Some famous people have kindly responded something non-committal like :) or "Haha", but to my surprise, no one has ever said, "I must get to know this James better", followed my Twitter account, sent me emails, and become my dearest friend/offered me a job. Because famous people recognize blatant fawning for nothing more than blatant fawning. Behaviour like mine and Faerie Nymph shouldn't be encouraged because, in certain circumstances, we become obsessed.

Dream: Recognize and curb my obsessions.

Goal: Achievable. I'm throwing around the term "obsessed" pretty loosely here. I know true obsession is no blog fodder; that people are tortured by compulsive behaviour that makes day to day living unbearable. But I also think that popular usage dictates a distinctly millennial version of obsession, where unprecedented access to things we like has turned my contemporaries and I into voracious cultural consumers where we feel entitled to not just like something, but love it. We can't just embrace something new to the culture, we have to beat it until it is dead. To that end, here are some things I'm obsessed with, that I must let loose and fly free (like a little bird), lest I kill it (like a little bird).

Dateline. Yeah, here's Dateline again. But it's SO good. A few weeks ago, there was an episode where this man was on a hike with his wife and then she died. Either she fell onto some rocks, was swept away by a rushing current, and was found pinned underwater by an errant tree branch, or she was attacked by her husband, drowned, and pinned to the same errant branch in the creek. Holes were poked in both theories, aspersions were cast in all directions, three devastated children mourned their mother, which doesn't deserved to be minimized in my cavalier write-up. What was truly exceptional about this information, though, is how it was so gloriously unspooled. Over two hours, details were teased out and new information brought to light. A narrative structure is imposed on these stories that make them absolutely captivating. You forget you're watching a story where a woman died on some rocks and you instead feel like you're watching a really good mystery movie. Is this exploitative? Does it minimize the tragedy, or wrongly suggest a sinister pattern where none exists (although thankfully, Dateline has strayed from the "It's one of the most deadly substances in America and you're probably topping your dessert with it" stories)? These questions are not for me to answer. But I should stop reveling in the great storytelling every so often to remember that these are tragedies being recounted week after week, and the pain on the screen is real.

Orange is the New Black. This SHOW, you guys! It's ironic that the show so many of us gleefully binge-watch is so good that it should probably be spaced out a little bit. Since season two debuted, I've been trying to limit myself, but I'm already on episode 7 or something. The writing, the characters, and the acting are SO good, though, that I should probably stop and appreciate it more. There is so much that is dense and layered and clever, and I'm not reflecting on any of it. For instance, when's the last time you saw a diverse group of actresses on the same television show all wearing the same outfit?

Firm pillows. Jon bought me a firm pillow for my birthday (although not just that) and my reading in bed has QUADRUPELED! If firm pillows were a World Cup team, I'd watch.

Body shapes. I'm obsessed with body shapes beyond fat and skinny. Here's what I realized and it's about to turn the diet industry on its head: you can't change the basic shape of your body. Yes, I know there are some people that go from very small to very large, but otherwise, we're all fighting the same battle against a natural shape that can't be won. I know a woman, for instance, who is smaller than a hummingbird. She exercises and eats heartily, but will always be about the same size. By the same token, I know a broad woman who is big because she is broad. She is extremely health-conscious and athletic, but has wide hips and broad shoulders that will never suddenly change their shape. It's crummy to think that people judging her for the size of her jeans might think she is fat, when she's the farthest thing from it, but her bone structure is such that she's broad. That's a thing that happens! I got a free trial at a fancy gym and I've been using it to spy on people who prioritize their fitness. Even the ones huffing and puffing at the toughest equipment have bodies that aren't perfect, but that's because there are no perfect bodies. The point is, we're gonna look how we're gonna look, so we'd better chill out about it a little bit.

What I'm really obsessed with is leisure time, which is why I'm hurrying to finish this before making dinner and watching some more of Piper & the Cons. I know obsession is, by its very definition, unhealthy. But if you replace obsession with enthusiasm, and are more conscious about what earns that enthusiasm, then you're just an enthusiast! I think people stay young when they cultivate interests and explore them fully. In addition to firm pillows, I guess you could say I'm obsessed with novels about sexless lady detectives (Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency, Hetty Wainthrop Investigates, The Flavia de Luce Mysteries, what WHAT!), cooking with garlic, being a good guy, and sunscreen application. Those last two will serve me well throughout my life! So what's a little obsession, particularly if it gets you on your feet and off the couchfarm.

In the Year 2000...

Hello Friends.

I couldn't write anything for this blog yesterday because a particular work assignment had a pressing due date and required quite a bit of evening work at home. I rarely have to take work home and had no plans beyond watching YouTube documentaries about Michael Jackson's fucked-up face, so this assignment was little more than a slight inconvenience (by the way, I'm really annoyed that we can release an album of all new Michael Jackson material as aided by other musical artists, but no visual artist can take a stab at what MJ's 2014 fucked-up face would be? That's careless). That said, the inconvenience of after-hours work would have been extremely annoying if I actually had to do it at work. I sent a final draft off at 10.30 last night, but I was in my jams listening to my jams, and I went to bed after hitting send. But it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't electronically send a work file to your home to continue working on. Even this blog entry, as I start this morning from home and will send to myself to finish and post over lunch from work, digitally exists in two places at once and could be sent anywhere in seconds.

I know we live in a futuristic wonderworld with technological capability our ancestors only dreamed of. It's remarkable that, just a few short years ago, I remember tearing the perforations off of printed paper before handing in a school report and now I get mad when my internet porn has to buffer for more than ten seconds. But part of me sees the progress we've made as an indicator of what subsequent generations will enjoy and thinks, "Well fuck."

Dream: Live an extra hundred years, able-bodied and healthy.

Goal: Maybe achievable. TEDTalk speakers love to trot out the statistic that, because science, the first human to live to be 150 has already been born. Then they go back to openly masturbating in front of nerds. I don't know how reliable such a statistic is, or if medical science is making leaps and bounds behind closed doors (forget about boner pills and work on cancer, why don't you?), but I'd like to be that guy, provided I'm not drooling or dotty, just to see what the future holds.

Plan: Reduce my Dorito intake by 17% percent in order to live to see the following innovations:

The Transporter.  I don't know what else to call it, but I want one of those machines where you enter one portal and walk out the next instantaneously, anywhere in the world. So you get in a chamber in Regina, say, "Saskatoon!" and you walk out of a chamber in Saskatoon in 5 seconds. Although, I mean, it's not a long drive, don't waste your transporter credits on that, go to Paris or something.  I don't know how far we are from this technology, but with fax machines, email, and 3D printers, we must be getting closer. I'm worried they'll develop the first shaky prototype when I'm like 90, and getting in one would kill me instantly because of my old bones and cotton candy hair that would get caught in the mechanism. Think about the ways in which this technology will change the world. Soon, it will go from being a luxury available to the very rich, to a government mandated necessity. We could feed the starving in Africa, illegal labour would skyrocket, and I could finally find that Genesis cassette I left behind on a family trip to Michigan when I was nine. 

And won't it be satisfying to watch the airline industry dwindle and die? Air Canada would be frantically spinning plates and tap-dancing, begging us to please deign to take air travel. "We don't care about carry on allowance! Forget security lines! Take the whole can of pop! PLEASE GOD, FLY WITH US!" Flights would get cheaper and cheaper, and airplanes more and more luxurious. Like a cruise now, a flight would become a destination in itself. Take a vacation ON a WestJet plane. Eventually, though, even that would shut down, and we could convert airports into prisons and convert prisons into cute loft apartments.

No more offices. I love having a little office, though I've been told I'll soon have to share it with a new hire. But it seems counter-intuitive that I'm more productive on certain assignments when I just take them home. Plus, with bosses in Vancouver and Toronto, the only way I'm connected to the clients I write for is electronically. Therefore, my commute can feel like a bummer, and it's definitely productivity lost. We are already a paperless office (never print anything, all materials are digitized), but soon we will be an office-less office, I'm sure of it. If you're not in a line of work that requires face-to-face interaction, what's the point of having warm bodies in a building five days a week? I'll be angry when I retire in order to live my dream of writing full time from home, my replacement will be working full time, writing from his home.

Food pill. I love eating, but I would love it even more if I only had to do it once a week and could indulge in whatever I want. Why haven't we perfected the pill that gives you all your vitamins, nutrients, and energy without leaving you feeling hungry, so that you can live off the stored fat of your once-a-week mega meal? Eating can be an important social ritual, but so often it's grilled cheese in front a computer screen. Such a pill would cure not only world hunger, but eating disorders as well. If food was strictly pleasurable, but nothing beyond the food pill was required for nutrients, people could stop eating, theoretically exercise themselves down to skeletons, but still be somewhat healthy. This trend would mean a terrible increase in stick thin models and unrealistic beauty expectations, but I would suspect a food pill would be rushed into production when our natural food resources started becoming more and more scarce. Therefore, actual food would be expensive, the ability to dine on real food would become a luxury, a fat person is suddenly a status symbol, like the white-pale Victorians of old. Suddenly, the most celebrated famous people start sporting tits and ass again. John Goodman becomes a symbol for virility and manhood, if he isn't already.

Cures for cancer, HIV, and AIDS. In my lifetime, the scourge of the Western population has been cancer, while other parts of the world (as well as here at home, of course) have been ravaged by HIV and AIDS. Surely another superbug will come along to replace them, but for a glorious while, I hope I live to see every cancer patient leave a clinic cancer-free, and no more AIDS orphans. It's just too sad that. Statistically, cancer will a lot of us, and I hate that we're still so in the dark about root causes. In a few generations, people will look back and say, "I can't believe people didn't know that cell phones were responsible for all the cancer in the world." And people putting cell phones to their head will suddenly become imagery that is daring and punk rock, like a rockstar holding a gun to his head on an album cover or something. I don't know if it's cell phones, or sugar, or air, but something is killing us, and we seem more focused on treatment rather than prevention.  Doctors, just find out what's making everybody sick, you can even take time off developing the food pill.

New prejudices. I'm not looking forward to this one, but it will be very interesting to see how our views evolve and we pick new groups to be scapegoats for our cultural fear and hatred. I hope, at least, that we evolve beyond our current roster of "Others". LGB (but not much T)-bashing is less and less culturally acceptable, racism is pervasive, but we'll all eventually become so intermingled that it will naturally subside, yet I worry that women will continue to bear the brunt of our deepest prejudices because so many people are convinced that misogyny isn't a thing. It's a thing. I have never and will never experience what it's like to be a woman, but I am confident that we are waist deep in our own bullshit when it comes to society's treatment of more than half of its members.

Maybe it's greedy to want to experience the future through the lens of the present. It's not as if there is a solution to all of society's ills, and even if there was, it wouldn't be found in advanced technology. If anything, I am grateful to experience my life at the age I am with the experiences I've had. I don't really understand wanting to be older or younger when you're neither old nor young. I'm so glad I'm old enough to appreciate what I have, and young enough to know the best may be ahead of me. Whatever the future holds, I'm ready for it.

Step Right Up...

Hello Friends.

This past weekend, I visited my old hometown and took in a street festival. The thing about street festivals is that attract the same calibre of attendees as outdoor music festivals, and those attendees are among the worst people in the world. Frustratingly, I read Facebook updates after the fact where several old friends posted that they had attended the same festival. Didn't see you there, gang! Instead, I saw an awful mix of hippy dippy henna tattoo types, burlesque dancers, old gays in linen beekeeper suits, and sunburned babies. Sunburned. Babies! NEW MOMS! When you're attended a street festival on a hot and sunny day, get out the SPF 1000 and slather up your damn kids. Also, is it necessary to bring the stroller AND the dog? And to stop in the middle of the festival grounds to look at a spoon that been molded and reshaped to look like another spoon?

The other thing these festivals always have is street performers. The ones at this festival were situated unfairly close to one another so the saxophone duo taking a crack at Poker Face were drowned out by the octogenarian on the didgeridoo. There was one performer, a young boy with a small accordion and a beret and a placard in front of him that read something like Zayden the Musical Boy. Well, Zayden just pushed the squeezebox back and forth! It wasn't even a song! Whee-HAW, Whee-HAW! No one's impressed, Zayden! And the beret is pandering. But guess what, guys? Zayden was MONEY! Everybody dropped change into the open guitar case of Zayden the Musical Boy. I don't know if you know, but getting just one dollar from a thousand people will net you over 700 dollars. If not set for life, Zayden definitely had a good weekend. Summer is coming up and I plan to attend many festivals, and there's no reason why I shouldn't get a piece of that sweet, sweet summer money pie.

Dream: Become a street performer.

Goal: Achievable. I don't necessarily have any talent, but have you seen some of these buskers? Clearly, talent is not a pre-requisite.

Plan: Figure out something cheap and impressive that I could perform on the streets for a couple of bucks all summer long. Here are some options:

Sing. The only appeal to this one is that it requires the least amount of stuff, you just show up and sing. But my unaccompanied singing voice sounds like a homeless woman calling for her dog, so perhaps I'd bring along sleigh bells to jingle, Salvation Army-style. I would also choose unexpected hits to sing so that I would draw the passer-by in. Can you imagine a sleigh bell remix of Cece Peniston's 'Finally'? *tink tink tink tink tink "Finally, it happened to me/Right in front of my face/And I just cannot hiiide it!" *tink tink tink*"

Breakdance. Kids love the breakdancing. It looks very difficult to do, but I notice that, before someone starts their back spins or leg twirls, they kind of aggressively dance in a circle, like a dog turning three times before he goes to bed. What if I just did the circles, but faster and faster. People would be like, "This guy's bound to do something cool! And soon! Better give him a buckaroo."

Clowning. Nope. The only reason clowns make money is because former theatre majors like myself pass them on the street and think, "There but for the grace of God go I." Like burlesque dancing and veganism, clowning is one of those, "Maybe there's merit to this... oh wait, no there isn't." Before I discount the practice entirely, let me say that there are good clowning performers who are strong writers who create really compelling narratives that are somehow entrancing. I once sat through a one person clown show for 90 minutes absolutely transfixed. But the REST OF THEM! Here is every goddamn clown show:

BINKER: I have a bicycle! (rides bicycle)
BINKER: See my bicycle? (rides bicycle)
BINKER: Who are you? (Villain approaches, takes bicycle)
BINKER: WINKER! WINKER!
WINKER: What is it, Binker?
BINKER: Someone took my bicycle!
WINKER: Your bicycle?
BINKER: My bicycle!
(Back and forth for two hours)

Magic. I don't think I would attempt this dark art because I'm happy to report that I'm absolutely boondoggled by a magic trick every single time. Sleight of hand magic is something I will never understand, particularly "find the little red ball." I am SO confident that I know where the little red ball is, and I'm misled every time. I'm disappointingly white, so my reactions to magic are always masked incredulity, while pretending I know what actually went on. "Oh, clever you! Yes, well, you must have taken a long time to learn that trick. Excuse me, I have tea brewing." But have you ever seen black people react to a magic trick? This is going to get amusingly racial, try to relax into it. I'm only going by those street magic specials they used to air on TLC, but it seems to me that some (not all) black people react with raucous laughter and/or a run in the opposite direction. That is exactly the reaction we should all have! Laughter is borne of a defied expectation, and that's what magic is! And sometimes magic is so astonishing, you have to distance yourself, as if to gain clarity on the whole thing. That somehow seems so much more honest than a suspicious, "Hmmm, well you must be very good at tricking others."

Guitar. There's something so cool about a guy who is facile with a guitar. Strumming and picking sound effortless, and the way a guitar reverberates around a subway platform, let's say, or drifts gently through a park is just calming. I have no such facility and would probably just rely on the extent of my grade school music lessons and play "Sloop John B" over and over again.

Comedy. Have you ever seen a stand-up comedian try to ply his trade out of context? It's awful! Now, granted, in the context of street performing, comedy is usually part of another thing the performer is doing. They might banter during the set up of a magic trick, for instance, or a clever quip after eating fire. But sometimes you have that poor soul at a talent show, or during an open mic that is not comedy oriented, that wants to try a set. I used to go to this cabaret show in a piano bar where actors from the various musicals in the community would come by and sing a number. It was very impromptu, but these folks were pros, and it was a bit like getting Mirvish season tickets in an evening. But one night, somebody's cousin was an aspiring stand-up comedian and he took the stage and began, "So my girlfriend is pretty annoying..." and lost the room. It was a painful five minutes that took fourteen hours. The crowd was restlessly silent throughout and the guy at the piano rolled his eyes at everything. I think I could maybe do stand-up again someday, but only in the appropriate context, and never what it was unnecessary (though is stand-up comedy ever necessary?).

Psychic readings. I think this one is the most appealing. You can charge people a good amount of money, toss in some bullshit about how their dreams will come true, and profit! I know there's the matter of not having psychic ability, but the more I watch shows with supposed psychics on them, the more I'm convinced that's no more than its own sleight of hand magic. For instance, I saw a psychic reading on tv recently where the medium said, "Who's the older woman in your life that has passed?" and the person said, "Oh my god, my Grandma!" I'm sorry, but who would that not work on? Who hasn't lost either a grandmother, great-grandmother, mother, aunt, etc? Then the medium says, "Do you have something of hers?" and the person said, "Yes! She left me her necklace." Come on, guys. Do you own something that belongs to a family member that died? Probably! I don't mean to dismiss the calling entirely, I think there probably are some people that have unexplainable visions or visitations and then intuit something uncanny about a person or situation. A cold case investigation show I saw once turned to psychic for help solving a murder, and he was able to tell the cops where the dead body was, how she had died, and when it had happened. They found the body and the psychic was right. Though I suppose the psychic could have murdered the person himself. That could be a show.

The thing about performers, any performers, is that they have a courage so few of us possess. Can you imagine calling attention to yourself in public, literally making a spectacle of yourself, and then asking people for money? To tell the truth, I was just another moron at the arts festival this past weekend. I probably walked too slow, feigned interest in things I had no intention to buy, and watched a hip hop dance crew for way too long without parting with a dime. But aren't I lucky to experience any of it? On the face of it, the idea of street performing, arts festivals, independent craftsmen, seems so patently absurd in today's economy that it's wonder such things even exist. Perhaps I should just be grateful, instead of another whiny baby, soaking up the sun.

Left to My Own Devices...

Hello Friends.

Am I the only one who sees the terrific irony in a video about putting down your phone going viral on social media? You know the one, the poem that goes like, "Put down your phone and you will see, the world  alive for you and me" or some nonsense like that. It's not nonsense, I completely agree, but people are literally watching and posting this video from their own cell phones, thus using the medium decried by the message to boost the message.

Again, I completely agree with what this guy is saying. We miss so much of life while we're staring at screens. But for so many of us, staring into screens is essential to our work, and our work bleeds into our life, and our life is how we live, and ooh, an email from Old Navy! My job requires complete device connectivity at all times. I work in a small office as part of a nationwide company, so the bulk of my assignments and directives come from people in Toronto or Vancouver or Moose Jaw or wherever. If lost access to my email for an hour during a workday, I could justifiably be docked pay for that hour (if my bosses were cheap and miserly, which they are not). In fact, my job is such that I sometimes wonder why I don't work at home. I could provide the same press releases and sales announcements in my jam jams with the added bonus of a 30 second commute from my bed to my desk. But the point is, I am "plugged in" for at least eight hours every day.

It's easier to unplug outside of work, but it's tempting not to. Social media, for all its "What character from the Flintstones are you?" is fun! There are people I almost never see in person anymore that I quite enjoy catching up with on Facebook. There are people on Twitter I have never met that are hilarious and reading their tweets is free access to the best comedy club in the world. But I do worry about virtual connections replacing real ones. I fall back on the idea that we don't have a lot of friends here yet, and going out and doing things is a lot harder than staying home not doing them, but that's a self-fulfilling prophecy that will soon see me with one of those headsets, and a wrist brace from carpel tunnel mouse clicking, and a weight problem. Not how I'd like to spend my life.

Dream: Unplug, at least an hour a day, every day.

Goal: Achievable. By unplug, I mean no cell usage, no internet usage, no television, no ipod. That should not be hard, but sometimes it's stupidly hard! I never thought I was that attached to my electronica until Jon pointed out that, when one of us takes a bathroom break from a television show we're watching, the other will open his laptop. How pathetic, really! We can't sit for two full minutes while our loved one pees? An update that Susan is "sooo frustrated FML i don't wanna talk about it tho" is that worthy of our time? Come on.

Plan: Continue to recognize my compulsive behaviour in an attempt to curb it. Also, fill more of my free time with constructive pursuits.

An hour a day to unplug is easiest if I go swimming. A walk or the gym doesn't count because I have my stupid ipod in. In the pool, I can only hear my own watery thoughts. I'm going to try to use my ipod less during walks and workouts, though. Yes, fast music can increase your pace and alleviate the inherent boredom of exercise, but how many times do I need to hear Talk Dirty? Thankfully, I don't have an iPhone, because I can't imagine being able to text, play games, and listen to music at the same time. Occasionally, though, on my morning commute on the train or bus, I'll be listening to my ipod and staring down at my phone in my lap, like I've got my dick in my hand. And while I occasionally get a text coming home from work like, "Pick up milk", I never get a text on my way to work like, "Office exploded, take the day off." Never ever. Also, I should mention that I don't know how to get internet on my phone and thank god for that. I Facebook and Tweet from my home computer, like the pioneers used to. Anyway, all of this is to say that I should either swim every day or leave more stuff at home when I go out.

Also, it's vitally important to remember that the people I'm desperate to keep in touch with via email and social media don't have any information that can't wait until tomorrow. It impacts me in exactly zero ways that you had roast chicken for supper. Likewise, I need to resist the impulse to weigh in on everything. Beyonce's sister Solange attacked Beyonce's husband Jay-Z in an elevator, and I tweeted about it conservatively 5000 times, and weighed in on other people's impression of the incident. Who gives a shit? But at least I'm hilarious. The sanctimonious preachy post gets a lot of attention, too, and I try to limit those to just 10 times daily #Kony2012.

What doesn't make me feel hilarious, or sanctimonious, or otherwise important, is socializing with another me, who can't stop looking at their own phones. I know of a boyfriend and girlfriend a few years younger than me, for instance, who seemingly spend all of their time together messaging other people, and all of their time with other people messaging each other. Doesn't that sound exhausting?

An hour a day is so little time, really, considering I only work 40 hours a week and don't have children. Lately,  I enjoy going to bed obscenely early to read. Tucking in at 9.30 with a book when I don't have to be up until 7 the next day is absurdly luxurious.  The scary thing about dependence on this kind of technology is that you can literally determine how much your time is worth. You can figure out how the charges in your various data plans amortize over a given period. If I pay x dollars per month for all my services, then spend all day between my internet, cable, and phone, I can measure my sloth in dollars and cents. My time spent unplugged is my own and it's free. One hour is a good starting point, but I hope to keep adding to it, little by little, until my life is mine again.

To Sir...

Hello Friends.

A late and somewhat somber blog today. Through the grapevine, I've heard that a former teacher isn't doing so well. There's something infallible about teachers that makes news of their life outside a classroom seem incomprehensible, and I say that as the son of my high school English teacher. When I hear news of a teacher's illness or retirement or career change or whatever it is, it doesn't compute. I'm suddenly five years old again, picturing Teacher curling up under her desk to go to sleep every night.

I think it's strange to acknowledge teachers having lives outside of a classroom because their impact on your own life outside a classroom is immeasurable. It's as if your kindergarten teacher exists only to teach you counting and empathy, your third grade teacher to enforce a love of reading, your eighth grade teacher to teach you a love of writing, your high school English teacher to raise you from birth, and your art teacher to show you how much better it is, even as a desperate-to-be-popular teenager, to be an outsider looking in at the world, and recognizing all of its inherent beauty and absurdity.

It's no coincidence, then, that the best people I've ever known as an adult have also been teachers. They are my friends now, and still my role models. My mother is a teacher, and my brother, and my partner. I've known teachers through my retails jobs as they either work while they complete their degrees or, sadly, have had to moonlight as till jockeys because their 60 hour a week teaching job pays so pitifully. Maybe it's this proximity to teachers that still has me believing September is the start of a new year and June the end of an old one, but I think everybody still kind of thinks that.

I've always believed that behind every good person is a teacher, but I've also always believed behind every bad person is a teacher, too. Teachers are everywhere and impact people differently, obviously. But what I can't conceive of is not having teachers at all. Right now I'm a tutor at a literacy centre for adults, which is not the same as being a teacher, and I don't mean to make the comparison, but what strikes me is how many of us take our education completely for granted. People from varying circumstances, even born and raised in this country, won't or can't pursue their education beyond an age that they can get to work. Conversely, the legacy of residential schools in this country will be a black mark on our collective history forever and is continuing to affect generations of people. But I've won the lottery as far as education is concerned, and I have teachers to thank.

Dream: Thank the teachers.

Goal: Unachievable. Like the song says, "How do you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume?" That actually always struck me a weird lyric and a bit perverse, but Lulu was onto something. The scope of a teacher's influence on a person can never be appropriately measured, so how can we thank them properly? It isn't easy, but I'll try.

Plan: Here are some ideas on how we, as a society, can start appreciating the people who build the foundations of that society.

Pay them more. Pay them more, pay them more, pay them more. Teachers, particularly in their first years, make pretty lousy money. The trouble with statistics that appear to prove otherwise is twofold. One, the lists that aggregate "average teacher salary" within a province arrives at that figure by also including principals, vice-principals, and other administrators who make a significant amount more than teachers do, and two, no rubric can possibly calculate money earned based on the hours teachers actually work. Lesson planning, paper grading, test marking, parent-dealing, and all the extra-curricular activities teachers are expected to take on (for no additional pay), means a teacher's day never starts at 8:30 and ends at 3:30. You would never know, for instance, that Jon gets summer holidays. As a professor, he is very well paid, I don't mean to lump him in with elementary and high school teachers in that respect, but his time in the classroom is infinitesimal compared to his time doing prep, research, marking, and smoking a pipe/wearing a tweed jacket (you have to do that when you're a prof).

Parents, chill the f out. I saw a cartoon awhile ago that had two panels. The first panel, labeled something like, "A Generation Ago..." had a parent holding a report card over their cowering child, furious and screaming, "Why are these grades so terrible?!" The second panel, labeled, "Present Day..." had a parent holding a report card over a cowering teacher, furious and screaming, "Why are these grades so terrible?!" The point was that some parents expect teachers to serve their children, rather than instruct them. Teacher's aren't gods, nor should they be expected to be social workers, police officers, life coaches, babysitters, or therapists. If your kid keeps getting crappy teachers every single year who don't "get" him, maybe you have a crappy kid.

Treat the profession with the gravity it deserves. I've definitely heard people say, wistfully, that being a teacher must be so great. Short work days, summers off, and you can get into any school dance you want. I even heard that expressed by education students while I was in university. Things like, "Such and such was hard, but I guess I'll just be a teacher." Those people shouldn't be teachers. The saying, "Those who can't do, teach" is such a tired example of elitist, superior horseshit. It's not a concession when an artist decides to teach art, or an actor decides to teach acting, it's a gift. We should prep prospective teachers like they're going into the army, but with crappy combat gear and no end in sight.

Finally, I suppose the best way to honour teachers is to keep learning, growing, and working hard. I have a lot of student guilt when I realize that I'm not using all that I've learned in my work or my life. I may not be a successful actor, writer, athlete, mathematician, or free period, but I use those skills for something every day of my life. When I think of the particular teacher I'm thinking of today, I can't imagine a student not affected by his passion, were they lucky enough to wind up in his class. That's how I will always feel when I think of this teacher, so incredibly lucky to have spent a little time with him. I know intellectually, of course, that teachers teach thousands of students throughout their careers, that they eventually retire, that they cultivate rich, full lives outside of a classroom. But part of me always thinks, when I pass by a school at night, that those teachers are still there, waiting for a new day, and another chance to change some lives.