Katy Perry's Superbowl of Love

Hello Friends.

For an event I’ve never watched all the way through in my life, I have some pretty distinct Superbowl memories, and all of them involve performers. The Superbowl was where Whitney Houston sang that iconic version of The Star Spangled Banner. By the way, isn’t it sort of weird that the American national anthem is called The Star Spangled Banner? A star spangled banner sounds like a festooned sash at a children’s beauty pageant or the décor at a homosexual-hosted house party. The Superbowl is where Justin Timberlake grabbed the breastplate off Janet Jackson’s breast, momentarily exposing it to a pearl-clutching nation. I’ll never stop being mad about the fallout, by the way. He ripped her top off. Regardless of whether this was pre-planned, it’s an act of sexual violence to rip someone’s top off, why didn’t we get mad at him? A wall of shit really fell on Janet from which I’m not sure her career ever recovered, but Timberlake got off scot-free. Micheal Jackson did a half time show one year where everyone in the audience had to hold up placards to form a shitty picture of children holding hands, which is arguably the greater crime against humanity. The Superbowl was where Madonna and Beyonce led the half-time shows of 2013 and 2014, respectively, in a blatant attempt to bring women and gays to the tv for ten minutes and it worked.  

This year, it has just been announced, will feature a half time performance by Katy Perry. Madonna was good, Beyonce was fine, but Katy Perry? It’s like okay, universe, I get it: this is the most important Superbowl of all time in history, and I want to be a part of it.

Dream: Katy Perry performs a song about me in The Superbowl.

Goal: Achievable. Listen, stranger things have happened. Nobodies have star making turns all the time. Have you seen that “Apparently” kid? He hosts Ellen now. With viral memes, videos, and blog posts (right??) dictating popularity, it’s only a matter of time before something I produced gets beamed around the world into millions of homes, and I think Katy Perry is the perfect conduit.

Plan: Write to Katy so she has adequate time to rehearse James Is My Friend, Look At Him Go.

Dear Katy,

Hi! I’m such a fan of some of your music. I think you can craft a hit like no one else. Teenage Dream? Roar? Birthday? Forget it. Those will be pleasantly stuck in my head until the end of time. I even have an hour long workout mix of your tunes that I listen to while I sit around eating.

I’m not sure why you’re not given the credit of a Lady Gaga or Beyonce. To me, your songs are more instantly memorable, and you’re far better looking. I bought the issue of Vogue with you on it because look at you! You’re a goddamn painting! Wow!

Anyway, I know everyone is looking forward to a medley of your hits (but leave off Dark Horse, that one never really burrowed into my brain like the others), but what I’d like to do is really shake up your forthcoming performance with a brand new hit called James is My Friend, Look At Him Go. I’m not super good with music, but it should be upbeat and poppy. Lyrics below.

James Is My Friend, Look At Him Go

Who is the boy who has all the moves?
Who is the friend that’s closest to you?
Who is the man you want right by your side?

He is the guy who’s healthy and strong
He works in the day and sleeps all night long
He can’t drive a car so I’m taking him for a ride *Katy, good place for a sexy move here*

CHORUS:

James is my friend, look at him go
He is a friend I think you should know
Patient and kind
He’s not your friend he’s mine
Go Big City James Go!

There comes a time when you’re all alone
No Likes on your status no texts on your phone
There’s only one boy who can make you feel alright

So give him a call and there he will be
He’s not just your friend, he’s friends with me
I’m Katy Perry and our friendship lasts all night

CHORUS

BRIDGE

James is his name, and that’s all I know, Go Big City James Go (Go go GO!)

CHORUS x2

And that’s basically it. Easy, right? I don’t have any suggestions for dance moves, but maybe point in random directions in the audience like you’re pointing at specific people, in a “You! You! You!” sort of way.

Alright Katy, realtalk, that time you sang with that girl at an autism benefit makes me cry buckets when I watch it. If you want to do something as poignant and meaningful in your half time show in lieu of singing to me, I can’t stop you (though I have some musically inclined friends who just might decide to record this track if you take a pass). I’m just a fan and a nice person and it’s been such a long time since someone publicly performed in my honour, so…. Come on.

Love your friend,

James

Under the Knife…

Hello Friends.

Starting off on a bad foot because this is already late, but I also have to warn you not to expect a blog next Thursday either because next Thursday I am getting some work done.

The Cobra Superstar Oral and Facial Surgical Centre (not its real name) is just a few blocks from my house and offers everything from nose jobs to Botox injections. After an initial consultation and getting the right forms signed by a doctor, Jonny is driving me to and from Cobra Superstar for a brief procedure on October 3rd.

I could continue with this misdirection awhile because it’s fun, but truthfully I’m just getting some dumb operation done on my jaw because apparently (this is gross) there’s a tooth imbedded in there. I was hoping the tooth would be attached to one of those fetus twins but no joy. My dentist tells me that, while this imbedded tooth gives me no discomfort now, it will eventually hit nerves and the pain will be horrendous. The op is totally covered by my insurance combined with the Doc’s, so there’s really no reason why I shouldn’t get this troublemaker yanked outta me. If there are no complications and recover quickly, this procedure could open up a whole new world to me, and it might be fun.

Dream: Get extensive cosmetic surgery.

Goal: Achievable. Recently, I asked a friend, “If plastic surgery wasn’t at all stigmatized, would you do it?” She said, “Yes, totally. Wait, what did you say?” and I said, “If plastic surgery…” and she goes, “Ohh! I thought you said prostitution. But yeah. Yes to both” (she’s one of my best pals). And she’s right (about plastic surgery, anyway). If there was absolutely no stigmatization (and procedures were affordable and safe), wouldn’t many of us fix up our faces and bodies the way we get our hair cut or go to the gym? I know I would.

Plan: Make a list of potential procedures to undergo, assuming my rogue tooth is extracted from my jaw without causing me undue duress. Here’s what I’d fix if I could.

Ab implants. Would that be cool? I’m so tired of obscuring my pizza gut with big sweaters, Chinese dressing screens, and obvious props like a pregnant tv actress. I want to know what it would feel like to rub my hand on my belly and feel taut ridges rather than a hairy sack of gluten.

Face shortener. I have a longer face than a cartoon basset hound. I’m scared of ever getting a caricature done of me because I know it will just be a long bean riding a skateboard or something. What else?

Eyebag de-puffing

Ballbag de-wrinkling

Wit sharpening

Nipple sharpening. Just open cans of tomato juice instantly.

Nasal cavity widening. This will be a tricky one. I don’t want bigger nostrils, but apparently I have an irritating nose whistle. I saw apparently because I can’t hear it, but everyone around me can. In fact, I’m probably sending out a merry tune as I write, but I’m none the wiser.

Preemptive jowl filler. I know I should smile more to eliminate the future perma-creases on either side of my mouth rendering me a living Ben Wicks illustration. Actually, this has nothing to do with anything, but I read an article positing that facial fillers are a boon to AIDS patients. A small amount applied to either side of the face eliminates the gaunt, hollow-cheeked look common among sufferers. That’s a major downer, but the kind of thing one is tempted to trot out in defense of plastic surgery. Sorry for the AIDS digression.

Permanent hair. My hair has done me a solid over the years, can I get surgery to keep it on my head for the rest of my life? If that doesn’t exist, it should.

Finally, to steal a joke from Maria Bamford, what I’d really like to surgically alter is that part of my brain that cares what other people think. I’m not really considering any plastic surgery for myself right now, but I’m not one those people who casts aspersions on people who nip and tuck. A beautiful friend of mine confided that she had had a nose job in her teenage years and I stupidly thought, “But that’s impossible, your nose is so pretty!” But of course I’ve only known her with her current, pert and beautiful nose on her pert and beautiful face. Being (forgive me) nosy in turn, I asked if she had any other procedures done and she laughed and said, “No, I just had a big nose growing up. Now I don’t.” Simple as that.

Of course anything can be overdone and ghastly, and the effects of plastic surgery are permanent, but so are tattoos and we’ve become perhaps too permissible where those are concerned. All I would hope is that if I do ever seriously contemplate getting something done, it’s for my own peace of mind and nothing else. I hope I don’t age into Botox where a 60 year old James looks like a permanently surprised 70 year old James, or buy myself a new schlong for Christmas, but it’s my own damn business if I do. If there’s something different about me one day that you can’t quite put your finger on, don’t ask me to explain myself because I’ll probably just do what is advised for my recovery after next Thursday: keep my mouth shut.

Blinded With Science...

Hello Friends.

Do elementary school children still have to participate in science fairs every year? When I was a kid, science fairs were mandatory. I don’t remember what all of my projects were, though I never did that copout, the volcano one. One year, my mother saved all the bones from a helping of chicken wings, and then I traced a picture of a dinosaur onto a piece of cardboard, then put glue over the tracing, then glued the chicken bones onto the picture. I’m not sure what about this project made it an experiment, exactly. I know people walked by my display and probably asked, “What is your project about?” and I probably pointed to the picture and said, “Dinosaur.” It really shed light on the age-old question, “Did dinosaurs have bones?”

There’s a picture of note in our family album from my third grade science fair. Little James, in his little sweat suit (my uniform of choice, apparently), standing proudly in front of a big folded cardboard display that we all used for science projects. On one side of the cardboard display, written in red marker in my finest all caps printing read, “ARE FINGERPRINTS DIFFERENT?” Below the text were fingerprints from various family and friends. On the other side of the cardboard display, written in green marker was, “YES.”  

All of us laugh at this picture when it appears in the family album, but no one can get on a better roll about it than my father, who lapses into hysterics. “Are fingerprints different yes! What the hell kind of project is that? Look at you, what a wiener!” Lest this paint a bad picture of Dad, trust that he was always supportive and encouraging to me when I was a child, and it truly is the most heinous science project imaginable. Are fingerprints different? The fact that this was my topic suggests two possibilities: one, even at eight, I was more interested in taking the easy route where projects are concerned and built a project based on a foregone conclusion or two, more troubling, I genuinely didn’t know that fingerprints were different! What a stupid kid! That’s literally the second thing you learn when you learn about fingerprints! A) They are prints of your finger and B) They are all different from each other! How could I have missed those facts as a child?

LITTLE JAMES (pointing to smudges on window): What’s that, Papa?
DAD: Those are fingerprints, James. When you touch something with your fingers, it leaves behind a fingerprint. And every person in the world has their own unique set of fingerprints. Nobody’s fingerprints are ever the same as somebody else’s!
LITTLE JAMES: Ohhh.
JAMES’ BRAIN: I WONDER IF FINGERPRINTS ARE DIFFERENT.

Dream: Improve my grasp on science.

Goal: Not achievable. If trendy listicles are to be believed, science is really enjoying a cultural resurgence. My Facebook feed is littered with posts from a site called, “I fucking love science.” Everyone seems to be watching that show Cosmos and kneeling at the altar of Neil Degrassi Junior High.

My trouble is, I lack even the basic principles upon which scientific discovery is based. For instance, you could tell me anything about what bees do in the wintertime and I would believe you. Fortuitously, I found out in high school that a twelfth grade science class was not required for my university program, so I scraped by in an eleventh grade physics course before leaving science behind forever. Even in University, though a science elective was required, computer science counted as a science! I barely eked out a pass making animated gifs out in MS Paint. The point is, having never taken any courses, I still have a child’s grasp on chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, and all mysteries of the universe. It is time, therefore, to start figuring out the basics for myself.

Plan: Develop a successful third grade science project. Look, I’m not going to do research for fun, or read any books, but the least I can do is try to erase the distinct impression of my fingerprints fiasco. Here are some hypothetical projects that I could undertake:

Does a Plane Stay In the Air? Yes. This project would actually be another cheat because I did hear something on the radio the other day that explained the phenomenon quite plainly. Airplane wings curve up slightly so that it takes longer for air to travel on top of the wing than it does for air to pass below. This creates stronger air pressure on the bottom so the plane cannot fall out of the sky. However, I wonder if the muffled farts of airborne travelers doesn’t also help somewhat.

Do Cellphones Give Us Cancer? Yes. It’s gotta be cellphones, guys. To think that we’re sending and receiving enough signals both determine our exact coordinates on the planet and also download the new Taylor Swift song, how can that be healthy for our squishy melon heads?

Do Animals and Babies Keep Us Healthy? Yes. I want to hold your baby. LET ME HOLD YOUR BABY! Also, can I pet your dog? I really think my daily worries would decrease dramatically if I could play with a baby and/or dog sometimes. Pets are no longer allowed in our building and the Doc and I aren’t at the parenting stage yet, but I just want to have a friend with a baby who lives close by so I can snuggle it and give it squishes. Sometimes a baby will reach out and grab your finger with its little fist and that’s better than any 2 for 1 drink special. And sometimes you’re worried about your job or how fat you are and a dog comes by and puts his head on your knee and says, “Hi, can we play?”

Further to this idea, I know a man who is originally from India and he told me, in half-apology for his irreverence, that in India, they refer to Alzheimer’s and dementia as the white man’s disease. There are conflicting studies on this issue, some suggesting that degenerative brain diseases simply aren’t properly diagnosed in other parts of the world, and some maintaining that they are actually more prevalent in Western society. But anyway, my friend said that the cultural expectation where he is from is that the elderly parent is moved into the family home, or is otherwise integral to the family life. There’s no, “Going to visit Grandma”, Grandma is as much a part of the family as Mom and Dad. This structure keeps Grandma sharp in turn, because there’s often a baby or young child underfoot. There’s no boring routine to settle into if there’s a baby around! Grandma’s mind is sharp out of necessity and constant stimulation. Anyway, science.

Can We Smell Better? Yes. I really don’t think we’ve hit the zenith of what perfumes, colognes, deodorants, and breath freshener can be. I know people will tell you those are chemicals and toxins and “you don’t need it!” but those people are wrong and they especially need it. How come some people carry off a great scent so perfectly from morning until night and the rest of us somehow lose the smell of our cologne by ten in the morning and smell like ham the rest of the day? For all the shit I give my former job, the cosmeticians who work in those big drugstores really know their stuff. They have to attend several workshops a year as put on by various vendors so they can both speak knowledgeably about what they sell and sell it. Anyway, from learning at their feet, I know that a lot of people choose the wrong scent for their body chemistry. Also, and this is fascinating, did you know that the pigment in a person’s skin determines how deeply they absorb the scent on their body? In other words, the darker someone’s skin, the more the smell of their cologne or perfume sticks around, the better they smell. I’ve worn Armani Code pretty consistently in my adult life, but I don’t know that it does me any favours. That said, I have to be ahead of the game somewhat if I’m not dousing myself in Axe. People still do that. A guy beside me at the gym had so much on that I was tempted to move from my machine, but Chopped was on and I can really only enjoy that while moving at a glacial pace on a bike screwed to the floor.

Is Science Necessary? Yes. Despite my reluctance to learn anything, nothing chaps my ass more than willful ignorance to scientifically proven information. I read recently that schoolchildren in the wealthiest part of Los Angeles had vaccination rates lower than the South Sudan. Are people insane? The long ago study supposedly linking vaccination to autism was debunked and the study’s own conductor admitted to fabricating all of it! Perhaps we don’t know the long term residual effects of some chemical combinations in vaccines but we know it sure as fuck prevents polio and whooping cough in the short term. And I sure hope members of the “No such thing as climate change” crowd were relaxing in Calgary two weeks ago when Sunday was a balmy 25 degrees and Monday saw the city covered in snow.

I can admit to a lack of both interest and aptitude in science, but I can certainly appreciate the tireless work of the people in that field. While I don’t think it is the worst thing to be stymied and confused by scientific discoveries, I do think it’s crappy to be incurious. Learning things makes me feel smarter, and being convinced you know everything already makes you a real dope in my book. Every person accrues a certain amount of information and expertise in their lifetime, and everyone’s base of knowledge is completely unique. No two are the same. Much like snowflakes.

Pizza Day...

Hello Friends.

I am writing to you this afternoon on my lunch break at work. After a fairly hectic week, my boss has ordered pizza for the office and we’re waiting for it to arrive. I can only think of pizza. Anything could happen right now and it wouldn’t take my mind of pizza. Joan Pizza could be brought back to life and hit the pizza carpet with her fashion zingers and I’d still be all, “Pizza!”

The trouble is, my gut, ass, thighs, and upper arms are also pizza. Upper arms, that’s the cruelest fat depository! I was feeling so pleased with myself at the gym yesterday doing shoulder presses. The machine faces a mirror and I saw what I thought were muscles bulging under my shirt, but it was only goddamn pizza. If I can grab and manipulate the flesh on my arm, It’s not muscle tissue, it’s DiGiorno.

Notice how I aggressively inserted that “In the gym yesterday” bit? Yeah, so did I. After parting ways with my Big City Gym when I moved, I was content to just go swimming at the university for any kind of fitness, but now that classes have started up again, the pool is so goddamn full of youths that I can’t be bothered to go anymore. Instead, I found a good gym and a pretty good rate and thought, “Now everything will change! Goodbye, fat guy underwear!”

Anyway, one of the “perks” to this gym membership is a consultation with a hunk employed by the facility. I dreaded my consultation because I knew I’d fail terribly at all of the tests and I was right. But beyond sweating, humiliated, at the machines, I also had to have a chat with him about nutrition, during which I lied through my goddamn teeth.

Dream: Eat better.

Goal: Achievable. The hunk explained that diet was responsible for like 70% of achieving a successful fitness goal, to which I wanted to ask, “Could I counteract some of that with aggressive pooping?” I don’t eat garbage food, I cook at home a lot, but I cook red meat, and chicken, and pasta, and dishes where the only vegetable is mushrooms, and the only side dish is more of the entrée. But at the same time, my own lightning-fast metabolism has slowed down because I’m too old to figure out how Instagram works.

Plan: Adopt the following strategies to eat better, get healthier, and buy thin guy underwear again.

Cook and eat more nutritious foods. That’s definitely something that works better in theory than in practice. Have you guys had nutritious food lately? It’s fucking gross. Kale? Gross. Quinoa? Gross. Spinach is okay, but only because you can wilt it in garlic and toss it in some goddamn noodles. I think I’m going to try to integrate healthy components into unhealthy dishes. I’ll put an orange segment next to my steak, for instance, or a broccoli floret will garnish my tumbler of Baileys.

Eat less. It would really be a win-win if I could do this. I would have less food to eat, but more food leftover for lunches. As often as not, however, I’ll make a big dish of something, justify a second helping, eliminate all possibility for leftovers. I guess I could just make more at suppertime but I feel like I’d just keep eating, like one of those awful competitive eaters, expecting a prize at the end.

Not care what I eat. Man, I wish I could do this. The Doc appreciates my cooking, which is lovely, but he could also just as easily eat a frozen dinner, a plate of beans, a slice of bread, a piece of string. He’s the rare bird that just eats because he’s hungry and doesn’t recognize the truly enjoyable experience of eating really good food. Consequently, he has no guilt about what he eats or whether or not he gains weight (though he doesn’t). That’s the way to go. Also, he’s great to live with because if there are chips in the house, they’ll usually stay in the house until I eat all of them.

These are all very first world problems. I’m lucky to go to a grocery store, or eat at a restaurant, and get whatever I want in unlimited quantities. It’s only good genes and being raised by health-conscious parents that keeps me from tipping the scales. Plus, I know age is only going to make me gain weight faster and restrict food further, so why am I kvetching now?

In elementary school, we had Pizza Day. I don’t know if that’s still a thing, but I remember regarding them as akin to days off from school entirely. “I don’t have to pay attention in class today, it’s Pizza Day!” As if all of our activities would somehow be pizza-related. Now, of course, all food decisions are stupidly fraught, and tied to all kinds of feelings of either superiority (“Just a salad”) or shame (“Can I get a side of mayo with the fries?”). But all I’m really serving up is a helping of gluttonous vanity, which is the first thing I have to shed before stepping on the scale. But now I have to go. Pizza’s here.

Get 'Er Done...

Hello Friends.

When I worked as a cashier at a drugstore, a position I held for longer than I’d like to admit, it fell to me to restock the candy aisle. Because of the candy aisle’s close proximity to the cash register, cashiers were supposed to grab boxes of candy from the stock room, set them up in the aisle, and replenish or rotate bags of licorice, chocolate bars, bags of chips, and Bridge Mixture, which is only a suitable candy if you hope to put the recipient to death. Years on from that job, I can say now, with no fear of reprisal, that I never, ever restocked the candy aisle. It wasn’t a difficult task, but it was something so tedious and self-defeating that I would rather stare into space, doodle on register paper, count money in the till, or staple my fingers together than actually do it.

In maybe the best book I’ve ever read, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, a middle-aged woman takes a job in a grocery store after her husband walks out on her and her children. Every shift she works, she leaves her hat on suggesting, she hopes, that she just popped in to help out, not that she actually worked there. This is not what the book is about, by the way, it’s a riveting character study about generations of a family, but the fact that Pearl leaves her hat on always returns to me, because it reflects how I often felt as a cashier. “This is just my job, I’m not working here.” That’s a shitty and elitist attitude, to be sure, but it helps explain why I couldn’t and wouldn’t stock the candy aisle. I’ll stand there and help customers, but I’ll be damned if I fill my off time with anything but boredom and self-loathing.

What I don’t understand, however, is why I’m treating more and more things in my life like the damn candy aisle. This blog, for instance, is missing quite a few weekly entries in the last couple of months. A project that I started earnestly with a friend has stalled for no reason. These are things I really believe in, things I wish I had more time to do, but yet when I have time, I don’t do them! What’s the deal, here?

Dream: Be more productive.

Goal: Achievable. Beating myself up doesn’t accomplish anything, but a public record of one’s own laziness can occasionally be a motivator. Maybe proclaiming my uselessness publicly will get me working again.

Plan: Take the advice we give people about work and tailor it specifically to motivate me. For instance:

Find out what you love to do, and get paid for it. Everybody tosses this ice cube into your soup, but I’m afraid I have to call bullshit on it. I’m thrilled to be getting paid to write every day, but writing is hard fucking work (not as compared to coal mining, parenting, surgery, prison guard, janitor, but you get my meaning). Writing is not something I love to do. I love sleeping, eating bad food, and having sex. Who is going to pay me for those things? Besides, find out what you love to do and get paid for it is a very white, upper-middle class conceit that many of us were lucky to grow up with and take advantage of. But a lot of people pump gas for a living their whole lives, or work in a factory, or make ends meet by any and all means, and I think they’d chafe at being told to just “do what you love.” I think we ought to change the expression to, “Find out what you’re good at and get paid for it.” I’m good at writing, and I’m also really good at running a cash register (in spite of what you might have read earlier). Obviously I’d pick the former over the later for a career path, but both jobs keep the bills paid, so I’d be stupid to never take a retail job again in desperate times just because I didn’t “love” it.

Don’t compare yourself to others. I hear this in regards to creative people, especially. Yes, realizing that so-and-so is doing better than you doesn’t make your situation any better, but it doesn’t make the fact any less true. When I hear that a contemporary (by which I mean someone around my age) is doing better than I am, I bitch and moan, sure, but it lights a fire under my ass. If I didn’t compare myself to others, I might avoid reading the writing that my friends do, and I might hinder my own development by not “borrowing” whatever I can from them. I don’t mean that I steal ideas from others, exactly, but that I’d only be hurting myself by not using their best techniques. For instance, I know of a writer I really respect who decided to stop using anything but “said” when referencing what a person said. In other words, she might write:

“You don’t love me!” Bill said.

But she wouldn’t write: 

“You don’t love me!” Bill cried.

She believes that what a person says should be enough for the reader to make their own determination. If she writes, “Bill cried” instead of “Bill said”, she’s telling us how Bill feels, instead of having Bill reveal his feelings through further dialogue or action. Isn’t that badass? If I stopped seeing my own work compared to this woman’s efforts, if I wasn’t jealous of her abilities, I’d stop evolving as a creative person. What’s the point?

You have to believe it to achieve it, and similar. I hope this one is true, but the trouble with advice like this is that it always comes from someone comfortably ensconced on the other side of what you define as “success.” Motivational speakers who failed at their professions don’t get hired on the lecture circuit, and nobody asks a failure, “How did you do it?!” But people who are successful offer platitudes like, “You are the only thing standing in your way” and, “Your attitude determines your altitude.” Does it? A positive outlook is important, sure, you’re more motivated and pleasanter to be around, but I know many of people who believe in themselves that might not see the return on their investment that they are hoping for. I’m lucky to be friends with all kinds of creative types continuing to plug away in saturated fields, many of whom seeming to equate fame with success. Fame is not success, but recognition doesn’t hurt if you’re trying to book stand-up gigs, land auditions, get published.

I’m from a generation that believes everyone deserves a trophy, but I’m also of a collective age group in a terrible economy and job market. Reconciling the two suggests spending less time blogging and more time filling the candy aisle. At the moment, though, I know what’s truly hindering my creative endeavors is plain old laziness and fear. The projects that don’t guarantee any return in the form of money or opportunity can feel like distractions. The ambitious longshot that is an unsolicited manuscript, unproduced webseries, unfunded theatre company might not work out, but there’s no chance at all if it’s not attempted in the first place. If I stopped blogging, for instance, or playwriting, or undertaking fun possibilities so that I might leave my work email open for a few extra hours a week, what kind of return on investment is that? Creative paycheques might be limited, but creative possibilities are endless. I hope I can find that balance between doing what I’m good at, doing what pays the bills, and doing what I love so that I can grab and sample everything I want, feasting on the endless options before me, like a kid let loose in the candy aisle.

Funny Guy...

Hello Friends.

Robin Williams is an exercise. Depending on the quality of the project and my mood as a viewer, he hit somewhere between exhilarating and exhausting. There's something in the frenetic plate-spinning, the rapid fire impressions, the tossed off references that is manic. One can go along for the ride, or just see the sweat and the arm hair. Alternatively, a dialed down Robin Williams can be captivating in his stillness, or maudlin in his winking, bearded softness. More often than not, he was the gut-busting comedian and the heart-stopping dramatic actor, but there were some clunkers in the bunch. How could there not be? Thanks to his versatility, every film could benefit from some Robin Williams, which meant he was sought-over, which meant he took on a lot, which meant not every project could be great.

I wonder why he worked so hard. Why he accepted thankless roles as the hapless priest, or the cartoon penguin, or President Eisenhower. A Robin Williams cameo immediately elevates a movie, I'm sure a nice cheque always cleared, but couldn't he wait until the next Birdcage? Good Will Hunting? Aladdin?

I've been reading a lot of tributes which posit that Robin Williams got from an audience the kind of happiness and peace that he couldn't find in his own life. That may be true to some degree, but seems like a really simplified explanation. If all Robin Williams needed was an appreciative audience, he could find one at any comedy club in the world. He had dozens of great films, great reviews, great box office returns, more than any one performer could ever expect to receive in his lifetime. The vague and sinister, "He had his demons" lends credence to the notion that depression is some kind of mystical, ethereal condition that we can't understand. You would never say of a person with cancer, for instance, that they had demons. Yet for so many people, depression and addiction still sit in this weird grey area between a disease and a state of mind. People chafe at comparisons to physical illness saying, "You can decide to pour another drink, you can decide to self-harm, you can't decide to be diagnosed with Parkinson's" (just an example). I know that's a horrible sentiment, but it's one I used to believe for a long time, until I started learning things about depression. I just don't know enough.

Dream: Understand depression.

Goal: Achievable, with caveats. The more I learn and talk to people, the more I can understand, but as someone who doesn't suffer from depression, addiction, or mental illness myself, I'm hesitant to say that I can truly understand it. I know people who deal with those issues, friends and family, loved ones to acquaintances, but it has not been my personal experience. To put it another way, I can read about what it's like to belong to another race, or to have a disability, or to suffer from ALS, but if I'm not another race, able-bodied, and not diagnosed with ALS, I can't claim to truly understand what it's like.

Plan: I'm the type that has to talk through everything to make sense of it. I don't know what kind of learner that makes me (a slow learner?), but I think I'll derive some benefit from just blathering for awhile. An important caveat to these musings is that I'm truly just feeling my way and it's not my intention to offend anyone. I don't know a great deal about all the nuances of depression, but I know it's serious and it affects a lot of people. With that in mind, all I'm trying to do is be sensitive here. If ill-informed talk from a dope will only engage triggers for you and make you more upset, please don't read any more of this today. I don't want to upset anybody, really and truly. Keeping that in mind, here's what I know (or think I know) about depression.

Depression is not sadness. Can we come up with a different name for depression? Unfortunately, it is a serious condition that shares its name with an abstract feeling that we all suffer from. I can be depressed when my weekend plans get cancelled, but I'm not suffering from depression. From what I understand, depression is the absence of any feelings, good, bad, or otherwise. If depression had another name, like bindlestar or shoobaloo, we'd stop associating it with a sullen teen listening to records alone in her bedroom. We should start by changing the name.

I think the unfortunate trend that is related to the equating of depression and sadness is that people who are sad but do "cheer up" and "snap out of it" and all of those things we wrongfully advise truly depressed people to do, those people think they suffer from depression. You don't, sad people! You're just mopey! I wouldn't presume to know someone else's life, but it really chaps my ass when people that I don't think truly suffer from depression post (but again I don't know) post sullen, passive aggressive Facebook messages looking to illicit tea and sympathy. I'd venture to guess that truly depressed people don't do that in the throes of their illness. The vague status that reads, "sigh... i guess it's another sad day... what is my life right now?... ugh :'( " really bothers me because I don't think people that truly think that post it. Maybe I'm wrong here, but again, the people I know personally who suffer from depression don't whine on Facebook. If anything, they work so hard to hide, rather than reveal their struggle, that you'd never guess something was amiss based on a social media account.

Some addicts suffer from depression. Some people with depression are not addicts. Are some addicts not also depressed? I don't know. It seems to me depression and addiction get lumped together, but can you have one without the other? I know some people who suffer from depression who don't appear to be battling an addictive tendency in turn. I couldn't say if there are addicts who are not also depressed. But if addiction is linked to depression, shouldn't that be in all the literature? Wouldn't that help treatment and recovery?

Depression is a mental illness, but mental illness is not necessarily depression. Taking the "mental" away from "mental illness" shows one how broad the term really is. Obsessive compulsive disorder is not the same as schizophrenia is not the same as PTSD. It's helpful to have dialogue about all of these things, but maybe it's dangerous to lump them together.

Here's the bit I don't understand and I wish I did but I don't. I get that depression is no different from a physical illness in terms of the effects it can have on a person. I get that depression can't be snapped out of. But then I don't understand why people say, "If you're feeling this way, call this hotline", or "There's always help, tell someone now", etc. If someone has reached the point of suicide, how is a stranger over the phone able to help them? How does the person about to attempt suicide not know, at least intellectually, that people love and care for them? And if they really don't believe that's true, how can a stranger on the telephone convince them of that? I'm genuinely asking, I'm not trying to be judgmental. What is the phone call that keeps the suicidal person from going through with it? Is that like defibrillator panels, briefly jolting someone back to life, but not restoring them to total health? Is it like CPR, suddenly clearing a blocked airway? How does a person at the end of their tether recognize that a stranger on the phone could save them, but not see that the people in their lives would want to prevent this more than anything else in the world? Do they really forget that they are loved? How do you do that?

If I hope to change one thing about myself, it's that I wish I could rid myself of the twinge I feel in the pit of my guts when I find out that someone suffers from depression. It's wholly unfair, but there's a part of me that immediately thinks, "That's someone I could lose one day" and it makes me terribly sad. But if depression is just like a physical illness there is treatment, there are options, there is living with depression just like someone is able to live with diabetes. The cruel fact of life is that any of us could lose any loved one at any time. The point is to let people you love know that you love them right now, and I hope I do that, even if I'm sweaty and provincial and can't actually say it say it, but you know it's true.

I don't know what my favourite Robin Williams moment on film is, but the one I'm thinking of right now is in Hook. He and the Lost Boys sit down to eat, and the table is bare. Robin, as Peter, sees nothing before him. Then someone says, "Use your imagination, Peter!" and he opens his eyes and suddenly there's an unimaginable feast. They all dig in, savoring every delicious bite of it, and everyone has just what he wanted.          

Hotsleep...

Hello Friends.

It's so hot right now. ("How hot is it?"). It's so hot that I am very warm, and I'm sweating a lot, and the sweat pools underneath my supple man bosoms giving me a Rorshag-style inkblot stain that looks like rivers of disappointment. But I'm not complaining! We get so few hot days here that I am reveling every moment. Except when I am trying to sleep.

Dream: Get a good night's sleep in this oppressive heat.

Goal: Unachievable, as evidenced by the fact that I am writing you late on a Thursday night instead of, y'know, sleeping.

Plan: Think of a variety of get to sleep quick schemes that will also help beat the heat, such as:

Turn on the air conditioning. THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS WHEN I GOOGLE 'HOW TO SLEEP IN HEAT'? Really, website? Am I so stupid that it never occurs to me, in the insufferable, sweat-inducing, sun-drenched sauna that is my apartment, to turn the air conditioning on? IF I HAD AIR CONDITIONING OF COURSE I WOULD TURN IT ON! I'd turn it on and Doc would say, "Hey! What are you doing?" And I'd say, "I'm turning on the A/C!" And he'd say, "Are you sure?" And I'd be like, "It was on a website" and he'd be like, "Okay." What kills me is how, even though we don't have air conditioning in our apartment, if we were to buy a portable unit, we'd have to pay our landlords extra to use it. What the hell is that? They don't provide A/C, we buy one for a few hundred bucks, they say, "Pay us an extra sixty bucks a month", and we're like, "Durr, okay!" Did we lose a war? Come on, people, rise up against this nonsense.

Sleep naked. Way ahead of you. Well, actually, I'm not ahead of you. You can't be nakeder than naked. I'm at the same pace as you. Some people were just underwear to bed, which I don't get at all. As a human, the best part of underwear is its removal.

Take hot baths. Is it Blanche Dubois in Streetcar who keeps taking hot baths to stay cool, he wondered faggishly? I think it is. Some lady in a play at any rate. She takes all these hot baths because, the theory goes, you raise your body temperature to higher than it is outside, then when you get out of the bath, the air feels cooler. I'm not exactly sure how that works because I've heard the opposite advice:

Take cold showers. Right? Because cold is cold. My trouble is I'm a Baby Suckpants who can't tolerate a cold shower, at least not if there are heated options available. The Doc takes cold showers when it's hot out, but it's like overhearing someone getting waxed. Every few seconds I hear, "BUGH!" and "WAUGH!" and the occasional, "YIPES!" I can't imagine that lulls one to sleep.

I could take some freezer items into bed with me. Say an ice cube under each armpit and a bag of peas for beneath my scrote (those are my heat zones). But then you wake up to a warm, wet bed and a bunch of disgusting peas.

Fans. Fans are effective some of the time, but I'm convinced you just end up circulating the same hot air you're trying to avoid. Plus, rather than comforting, a fan's hum has the opposite effect. It is droning and buzzing and ruffles up your damn sheets.

Actually, the real cure to a hot night, at least in Edmonton, is time. As I write you now, the sun is completely down and some cool air has begun to blow through my windows. Time to, if not curl up, sprawl disgustingly and hope that these hot days go on forever. I might sleep soundly, I might toss and turn, but for now I'll just sweat it out.

Friday afternoon edit to ruin my closing line: It worked! I'm well-rested! Was too sleepy to post last night, so here it is now. FROM THE FUTURE!