The Part of Me Will be Played By...

Hello Friends.

You know how sometimes a specialty cable channel doesn't really have a specialty? Like TVTropolis, what exactly is their game? They don't seem to be catering to a specific demographic or have much original programming. Their slogan ought to be something like, "A bunch of shows for watching." The Americans have PeachTree, which I think is Tyler Perry shows, Judge Judy, and those commercials where the black guy tells us to get up off the couch and pursue a career in medical office assistance.

The thing these channels do, the way the get viewers and make money, is to buy a bunch of syndicated programming, like old sitcoms that are no longer being made but at one time were watched by everybody. That's how Doc and I occasionally find ourselves revisiting Roseanne. Sometimes you don't have plans for a Saturday afternoon and find yourself deeply embroiled in four hours of Roseanne. Say what you will about the varying quality of that show (later seasons are unwatchable), some of that early stuff is solid.

I bring this all up because Roseanne is one of the more modern examples of sitcom recasting. Midway through the run of the show, Becky, the eldest daughter, is suddenly played by a different actress. I'm sure this had to do with the availability of the first actress or something. Unlike other instances of recasting, the first Becky then came back. Wouldn't that be great to do in your own life?

Dream: Be temporarily recast.

Goal: Sadly, unachievable. As my boyfriend often reminds me when I drop the roast on the floor in front of his boss, smile impishly and say, "That went well!", life is not a television show. But I've had kind of a shitty week so far and it's put me into a funk. I hate being in a bad mood, but the fact that I hate it so much makes it harder to escape. My bad moods are nothing serious, I've never experienced true depression, I couldn't compare, but the sensation is akin to using my non-dominant hand, or constantly feeling the tag on the back of my shirt. It's awkward and uncomfortable and I could use a few episodes off. In perfect world, they ought to do as they did with Becky Connor: bring in a prettier, more agreeable version of me until I'm ready to return. In the meantime, I will graciously step in to the lives of others.

Plan: Predicated on the premise that recasting is a zero sum game, if someone steps in to play me for awhile, I must take on another role. I think I'd like to fill in for the following people.

Katy Perry. Don't even front, haterz. Can you imagine her life for a day? Her last record was so successful that she could literally put out anything and people would buy it. She doesn't have to be married to that lanky whiner Russell Brand anymore, and have you seen that Vogue spread? Even if it's Photoshopped to hell, having a picture like this out there in the world has to be a bit of a boost. Goddamn. That skin, am I right? I could sport that epidermis for awhile.

A middle manager. I used to work in office and we had these meetings with a middle manager (let's call him Blarv), whose official function was to communicate the goals up upper management to us, the peons. But Blarv knew nothing about what the higher-ups did, and nothing about what we did, so kept both sides pacified with platitudes like, "Believe it to achieve it!" and "Let's get over the hump this quarter!" I'm sure he had duties beyond vague motivational sessions, but I don't know what they were. My favourite thing about Blarv's non-meetings would that he would open them with a non-story. He would say things like, "So I wanted to barbecue this weekend but it rained all Saturday, but then it cleared up, so then I got the food ready, but then it rained again, so I guess that's that, then!" And we'd all laugh like goddamn morons and he'd look so pleased! Like he was clever! One time, and this is absolutely true, he told a story about someone moving some of their furniture into his house and he said, "Now my living room looks like this!" and he held up his Blackberry. In a boardroom. Filled with at least fifteen people. I can't explain why this is funny except to say that no one was close enough to see the TINY image on his TINY phone. It is the power trip of middle-management, the hubris of someone not talented enough to make things, not smart enough to run things, that results in a boring man holding a small screen in his fat hands while a dozen people laugh the laugh of the underlings. I'd love to experience that kind of arbitrary authority for awhile.

The lady in the lobby. There's this big blob of a woman in my building who stations herself either in the front foyer or on the bench just outside, and it's her job to yell the world at us. She's stocky, she wears Coke bottle glasses, cargo shorts, a stained tank, and no bra. Her breasts are so saggy and pendulous, she could tuck them into her cargo shorts like a long necktie. Oh, and also, she's shaved her head recently. If I describe her ungenerously, it is because she is very unkind. She barks bulletins at any of us unsuspecting fools dumb enough to leave the building. "It's fuckin' cloudy out there, you're not gonna be fuckin' warm enough!" she'll bark, or, "There's a fuckin' car out there idling and I don't know what the fuck it's doing there but it's a real pain in my ass! Is that your fuckin' car? Look at that fuckin' car!" She'll moan about the Chinese people in the parking lot, or the Middle Eastern security guard, and it's never good to play the race card, especially when you represent white people as sweaty, foul-mouthed globules of hate. But for all about her that is terrible, she really, truly, doesn't give a fuck. I wonder what it would be like to greet the day, the morning sun shining on my bald head, ready to mouth off to any and everyone, hitching my cargo shorts up enough to cover my nips.

Gorgeous George. Gorgeous George (not his real name but maybe it could be) works out at the same place I read magazines and nurse a water bottle. His body is a great advertisement for the gym but more impressive is his magnanimity. He's everybody's pal, but not in an asshole gym rat way. One time, he approached a guy using the stationary bike near where I preening and said, "Aren't you Lisa's brother? You're taking Bio Chem or something, right?" And Lisa's Brother was surprised at being approached but the two lapsed into easy conversation. The best is when Gorgeous George comes in with his girlfriend. She works out and he's Mr. Encouragement. Again, not in a "PUMP IT UP! FEEL THE MAX! DRIVE THE MONSTER" kind of way, but he literally cheers her on, in a public, but not showy way. He seems like one of those guys untouched by other people's judgement, and he's probably often spared it anyway because he's so affable. Plus his torso is V-shaped! I'm at best a pear or ampersand. Here is me in repose: &.

An Asian game show contestant. Forgive the broad "Asian" here, I'm pretty sure what I was watching was Japanese, but perhaps the Korean game show industry is working just as hard at creating bizarre entertainment, and I'd hate to shortchange them. Anyway, one time on a bus, I was sitting next to an Asian girl with an iPad and headphones on, watching what I took to be some kind of game show. It was a long trip, so I sneakily watched quite a bit of the show (though without sound, but that wouldn't have helped me understand it any better, I'm sure). Two hosts and a studio audience kept cutting to a twosome in a sparsely furnished room. At first I thought it was an apartment, or something, but later took it to be a kind of shed, because the contestants were really bundled up, as if it was cold outside and they weren't protected from the elements. So, the hosts would ask something of the contestants, and they would perform (presumably) what was asked of them. Once they appeared to sing together, another time they hopped on one foot, and once they even did those armpit fart noises (the audience in studio seemed to love that). After these tasks, an unseen person or persons would bring something into the weird room like long planks or swaths of canvas. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was going on. Then they cut back to the same two contestants who walked out of the shed and onto a small boat built with the materials they had been given. Is that the gist of the show? Do comical tasks and we'll give you materials to build a sloop? And did the contestants build it? I don't see how, unless they were professional boat-makers. How popular is this show? It must have some appeal as this girl was watching from her iPad in Canada. I'm sure I'm missing essential information, so I'd love to be on that show (and a native speaker of whatever language it was), because this mystery stymies me worse than any whodunnit.

I realize I have explored this idea before, albeit in a slightly different premise, but it's a nice theme to return to, don't you think? Isn't this what everybody thinks when they try to fall asleep at night? "What must it be like to be that guy?" As the week progresses, I am hoisting myself out of this silly mood. An opportunity I thought I had lost at the beginning of the week suddenly took shape today and gave me something to work on. As the current projects of the original Becky seem to indicate, sometimes it's not the best idea to leave where you are. As attractive as the prospect of dropping out of your own life for awhile might seem, no such possibility truly exists, so best to sit back and enjoy your ride, or get up off the couch to pursue a career in medical office assistance.

Dateline Time...

Hello Friends.

When I was a teenager, a Friday night at home was considered a missed opportunity. I wasn't the most popular heifer in the slaughterhouse and so spent many such evenings alone in my room. I'd lament my lack of social capital and dream about what my adult life was going to be like. I pictured events of every stripe: house parties, kitchen parties, crowded dance clubs, smoky jazz bars, lively dinners, group Boggle, and late night skinny-dipping with hunky models who go for a midnight swim and I'd discover their hideaway and they'd be like, "Water's fine!" and I'd straddle a pool noodle with stunning masculinity and laugh til sunrise. And I'd never, ever again spend a Friday night sitting at home. Well NBC had other plans for an Adult James.

Friday night is Dateline night in our home. If the program airs at another time in the week, we record it to watch on Friday, as we did earlier this year when the program aired on Wednesday for a few months (not sure who was responsible for that programming blunder, but catching Dateline on a Wednesday was a bizarre, out-of-context experience like seeing your French teacher buying underpants at the dollar store). At this point, I should mention that this is a Dateline-exclusive blog entry and, if you don't watch the show, maybe join me back here next week. But statistically, some of you reading this not only watch the show, but make it appointment television.

For the unfamiliar, I should mention that Dateline is a weekly newsmagazine show that typically deals with a missing persons or murder case. They interview the families of the victims and (alleged) perpetrators, they talk to cops, investigators, and lawyers, they usually introduce a third-act twist, and then the show is over. Finding another Dater (or, if you prefer, a Lineman) is such a life-affirming experience. Next time you're at a party, casually mention Heather, the co-conspirator in the brutal murder of a young woman she met on a train. If another party guest gasps and says, "Was she the one with those hideous drawn-on eyebrows?", you've got yourself a friend forever.

The Doc and I have watched Dateline throughout our entire relationship. We have rituals and rules that coincide with each airing. We're allowed to wildly speculate as to the prime suspect and their guilt or innocence, up until halfway through the program, where we must render our definitive opinion. I don't know why we do this, we just do. Also, we spot "ourselves" in every broadcast. If I see a particularly irritated overweight court stenographer when they cut to a trial scene, I will say, "Oh there's me! Did you see? Go back!" And Doc will often cast himself as the baby-faced uncle of the murder victim, who offers vague platitudes like, "Death is hard."

It is to the point now that my expertise in this program takes me beyond superfan status. I am an aficionado, I am an enthusiast, and I deserve to become a correspondent.

Dream: Become a correspondent for Dateline.

Goal: Achievable. Here's the thing about Dateline correspondents, the bulk of the job seems to be sitting there looking skeptical. I can totally do that! And the show is formatted in such a way that the correspondent doesn't host the show, or even have to inanely chat with the host. They just stand on a street corner or in front of a gorge and say, "Nothing out of the ordinary ever seems to happen here. Oh yeah, except for a triple-murder that happened last year. Let's learn about it for an hour."

Plan: Offer up all I know about this stellar program in the hopes that some NBC head honcho reads this and says, "The kid's got spunk! Let's buy Josh Mankiewicz some bunk beds so James can shadow him and learn the ropes!" Here is all that I know about Dateline.

1) Murderers have poor follow-through. You have to marvel at these people who kill other people. They are callous and soulless and yet possess a calculated cunning that allows them to stab, shoot, drown, poison, etc their nearest and dearest. But for all the planning that goes into Act 1, after they do the deed, they become the party hostess who realizes there aren't enough chairs to seat everybody. They panic and fret and everyone around them thinks, "You didn't realize that this was going to happen, you unbelievable moron?" There was a guy last week who put cyanide in his wife's calcium supplements and so she took them and died. He maintained his innocence, even when police were tipped off, searched his house, found the remaining pills in the bottle, analyzed them, found traces of cyanide. The accused was like, "I don't know, that's really weird." Come on! Or a guy I saw who was an anaesthesiologist whose wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning, while he, in the same house as his wife throughout, never succumbed. Turns out, the night she was poisoned, he slept in a spare room downstairs with all of the air vents and ducts closed off. He told reporters he only did that because he was gassy and didn't want to stink up the house with his farts. I'm serious. This guy also wrote in his diary, "Not getting along with the wife. Maybe I should carbon monoxide her." He wrote that! And when confronted he said, "That was just fantasy. I'd never actually do that." Which is strange because that's how your wife died, buddy! The night you had those bad farts!

2) Lester Holt can't wear his suit jacket. Lester is a kindly man who hosts the show and he introduces the segment standing in a studio in pants, a shirt, and a vest. Behind him is a chair with his jacket slung over it. It is as if he ran into the studio five seconds to air, threw his jacket on the chair and shouted, "LET'S DO THIS!"

3) Every dead person or accused murderer has one really hot relative or friend, and that's who will speak to the folks at Dateline. It's amazing how someone can die in the grizzliest of circumstances, the investigation is open, the case is pending, and their telegenic bombshell cousin is just ready with those soundbites. If I get murdered, I only want my hot friends to say stuff about me. It just lends my life an air of sexy mystery. Plus, people watching at home go, "It sucks that this guy died but I feel even worse because look at how upset his passing has made that hot girl."

4) If you're watching Dateline, and the suspect is being filmed in a very tight shot (as in the camera is only filming his/her face and neck), not only did the suspect commit the crime, but they have been convicted. The reason a tight shot equals guilt is because Dateline has managed to secure a jailhouse interview but they can't film the accused person's body because you'd see the prison jumpsuit right away and the mystery would be ruined.

5) Dateline is one of the most emotional experiences on television. Perhaps there is something inherently exploitative about filming someone during the hardest time in their lives, but I often think the family of the murder victim just wants the chance to tell their story. There's something about the public expression of genuine grief that is so powerful. It reinforces the idea that we are more alike than different; that loss is universal.

6) This program is a master class in structure and editing. Dateline isn't really news, because it rarely presents the facts in a completely straight-forward way. Instead, they dangle clues and red herrings for the better part of an hour. Plus, they often have so little to work with. They might have one picture of the victim, or some grainy home movies, and they have to strategically show us the same thing one hundred times. Ten seconds of a wedding video becomes especially poignant on the 10th viewing once you realize the wife kills the husband five years later.

I can't decide if Dateline is gourmet fare, or comfort food. Do I take genuine pleasure or guilty pleasure in my weekly viewing? I feel a bit sick that the terrible experiences of the show's subjects are so entertaining, but it's also a real look at a human experience that's less contrived than a reality show and not as directly manipulative as scripted television. There really isn't anything else like it, which is reason enough to tune in.

If I was a Dateline correspondent, I'd give viewers the chance to learn a bit more about the ugliness and beauty that surrounds them. I'd deliver that glorious empathic push-and-pull where you watch and simultaneously think, "Oh, those poor people!" and "Glad that's not me." I'd throw my blazer off like Lester Holt, slouch skeptically like Josh Mankiewicz, wax poetic and wear Converse like Keith Morrison, and be the pretty and skillful new kid like Andrea Canning. I'd beam it all into your living room and make you think differently about the world, but I guess if I did that, I'd never be home on a Friday night.

1st Annual Cringe Festival...

Hello Friends.

Have you ever been to a Fringe Festival? It's a really easy way to see theatre on the cheap. Small theatre companies are placed in variety of venues around a city and perform plays in them. Often, these ventures are incredibly creative. I've seen fringe shows comprised of puppetry, clowning, pantomime, and other performance techniques that make parents wish they had sprung for a Dale Carnegie seminar. I kid, but when it's done well, theatre like that is incredibly absorbing. But then there's the other kind of Fringe play popular at small festivals because no large, legitimate theatre would ever support such self-indulgence: the autobiographical one-person show. You guys, I don't have a lot going on right now, a lot of bad ideas seem more credible in times of desperation, but be a love and shoot me in the face if I ever turn Big City James into a tour-de-force one-man extravaganza. I've seen approximately one good autobiographical one-person show about a woman with an incredibly interesting life who left her home country to come to Canada and faced incredible odds. I've seen about a dozen one-person shows where a breathy narcissist has a fake realization and says, "I'm gay and that's okay!" Blackout. Applause. Or, "I forgive my parents, and I forgive...myself." Slow fade. Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt swells. Applause.

It's not just that I'm a snob and an asshole (though that's a big part of it). The fact is, this kind of confessional vanity is so personal, but often so poorly executed, with phony gestures of humility and grace, that if I'm sitting in the (small, sparse) audience, I just wish I could crawl into a hole and die. It's not embarrassment, exactly. It's a sharper, less empathic feeling. It's the reason I read Fringe Festival programs very carefully and don't attend evenings of slam poetry. Simply put, stuff like that makes me cringe.

Dream: Reduce my yearly instances of cringe by 50 percent.

Goal: Achievable. I surely suffer from an extremely low cringe-threshold, and I think I always have. One would think that a BFA in Theatre: four years of touchy-feely, sitting in circles and crying, embodying a pencil, breathing from your testicles nonsense would have helped me embrace the cringe-worthy events in life, but it may have only exacerbated the problem.

Plan: Avoid the following people or situations as much as possible (at least 50 percent of the time):

The inappropriate public speaker. I was at a wedding last month--a family wedding I was otherwise very pleased to attend. My cousins and I were drinking too much over at the kid's table when the emcee announced that, in lieu of clinking glasses, people who expected the bride and groom to kiss had to approach the microphone and recite a poem. My blood ran cold. Most people can interpret that simple instruction with middle-of-the-road platitudes like, "Roses are red/Violets are blue/I'm glad you are married/Can someone give me a ride back to the Travelodge?" But there's always an asshole at these things who has to say or do something wholly inappropriate. Sure enough, some drunken moron nobody knew gets on the mic and, to the tune of Skinnamarinky Dinky Dink, launched into a recitation about his own penis. I bolted to the bathroom and stayed there until I knew it was safe to come out.

The loveable loud child. Kids are great. They see the world anew with wonder. They brighten the otherwise dull world surrounding them. They can't finish pizza so you get more than your fair share because their stomachs are small and stupid. But, like the drunken wedding toast, nothing makes me embarrassed on someone else's behalf quite like a child addressing a large audience. Do you remember that show Kids Say the Darnedest Things? Where a child would tell Bill Cosby in earnest about Basghetti and Meatbulbs and Bill would turn to the audience drily, like "Can you believe this stupid kid?" Oh man, I loathe that. It serves no purpose in the world. The kid doesn't know he's being an idiot, so he can't tell why everybody is laughing at him. And the audience chuckles, perhaps thinking, "Oh the innocence of a child!" But what if you were up there and we laughed at your fuck-ups? When I'm talking to a contemporary who says words like, "Conversate" or "Agreeance", I don't go "HA HA HA! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT WORDS ARE!" So how come we get to do that with children?

Open mic comedy nights. God bless and keep open mic comedy nights and the saints who run those rooms. I have done a few myself (and bombed, thank you) and it is petrifying. But sitting in the audience watching someone crash and burn is the worst feeling in the world, especially when the performer is clearly unprepared. I'll say this for my own performances, at least I was working from a script. Every bad joke, no matter how bad it was, had been written and memorized and practiced by me for weeks. So at least the audience wasn't laughing because I wasn't funny, not because I got up there and froze. I barrelled through my seven minutes like a champ and when they didn't laugh I went even faster to fill the silences (Sample joke: "Anybody see footage of that smoking baby on YouTube? It's really sad, but the upside is, I heard he got a part on Mad Men." You have to remember, I told that joke in 2010--it was really topical, you guys. Are you laughing yet?). But SO many people get up there so completely petrified that they have nothing to say. One guy told a Matthew Shepherd joke that (naturally) went over poorly and he said, "I guess I should stop" and walked off. Another woman proceeded as if she was getting huge laughs, the absence of which was made all the more obvious by her milking of the joke. "I went to the beauty parlour the other day and they had age-defying cream and wrinkle-prevention cream and I said, 'Hey, where's the anti-death cream?'.... 'Could I stock up on some anti-death cream, please?'... 'I'm going to bring the car around, can you load it up with anti-death cream?'....'Anti-death cream!'" She was just milking that anti-death cream business and also no one says beauty parlour anymore and even if they did, they'd be referring to a hair salon. Good god!

Emotions. I can appreciate how special it is to have a real, one-on-one emotional experience with a friend or loved one. I don't mean to minimize that at all, and I hope I'm good company in those situations. But if I don't know you and you fall to pieces, what exactly is the protocol there? I started a new job, and on my third day, my manager walked in, awash in tears. "James..." he whimpered, dissolving into sobs. "I'm sorry, I just need a minute!" he said, knees buckling and leaning against the wall. I was, as you can imagine, paralyzed by my own sense of unease, but also genuinely concerned that my new boss had his world come crashing down. Finally, when he was well enough to continue, he asked if I minded starting my shift solo because, "My girlfriend's rabbit died!" I mean, can you even? Or one time, I was waiting outside a Booster Juice and a girl got out of her car on her cell phone yelling, "THEN ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS FUCK YOU!" and then she threw her phone on the ground and it smashed (!!!!) and she screamed, "WHY ARE GUYS SUCH ASSHOLES?!?!" I just stared back at her (or more accurately, at her broken phone pieces) until, blessedly, someone yelled, "Funky Monkey!" and I said, "Oh that's me" and claimed my smoothie. Maybe it's how I was raised (by robots), but you don't just...express yourself like that. Not that my family is cold and uncaring, but we'd rather chew our food more thoroughly if it meant not discussing something important, and I think most of us would much prefer to see a bartender than a therapist.

I'm sure a therapist, or at least someone more attune to human behaviour than I am, would point out that my susceptibility to cringe at these things says way more about me, my own failings, my own narcissism, than it does about the situations themselves. I can't bear witness to any discomfort because then it becomes my own. It's as if I've inherited the sensitivity of my mother along with the utter disdain for all forms of bullshit from my father. But I can't blame them for my problems anymore. I forgive my parents and I forgive... myself.

But Someone's Gotta Do It...

Hello Friends.

It's been a bit of a tricky week, back at the ranch. I got a fun opportunity and some bad news, and none of it fit into my work schedule. In brief, the fun opportunity fell on a Tuesday when I was already scheduled to work at my job at the fancy clothes emporium. I called a coworker and pleaded my case for about five seconds before she said, "You need me to take a shift? No problem." The bad news fell on a Saturday when a family member wound up in the emergency room. I was at work when I got the news, then explained the situation to my boss for about five seconds before he said, "You need to go home? No problem." (Without divulging any private circumstances, rest assured that said family member is on the mend and not in dire straits and all is well).

I have great coworkers and a great boss, to be sure, but in truth, it really is the sort of job where, if a life event drops in out of the blue, getting rid of a shift really is "no problem." That's the advantage of having a job that might not be your ideal position, career-wise. It might not be as challenging or stimulating as a high-pressure 9-5 in an exciting field, but it's a relatively stress-free way to make your rent every month, and leaves you time to work on other things you're more passionate about.

That said, until I land some dream professional writing gig that pays well, is creatively satisfying, and somehow makes my penis bigger, I really hope any job changes are lateral moves. I may be folding sweaters in a retail store, but that feels worlds away from flipping burgers at a fast food chain. There is a hierarchy even among what Douglas Copeland calls, "the McJobs." I spend enough time fantasizing about the career I want, maybe it's time to be grateful for the jobs I don't have.

Dream: Have a job like the one I enjoy now, or better, for the rest of my working life.

Goal: Pretty achievable, you guys. I feel a little twinge when comparing notes with my contemporaries about our jobs. My high school peers are doctors and lawyers and business executives, I can see their eyes glaze over a little when I talk about the functional versatility of our new non-iron dress pants. So I don't think it's unreasonable to hope to stay, if not necessarily in clothing forever, in higher-end retail where I don't have to wear a uniform, hairnet, or button that says, "TRY OUR NEW CARAMEL FRIES."

Plan: Stay humble and grateful by listing all of the crappy jobs I could have, and speculating on just how awful they would be. Jobs like:

• Concession guy at a movie theatre. I know I've talked about this before, but what a terrible job. Everybody's in a big hurry because nobody gets to a movie early. People just want popcorn and a pop. Those two things cost at least ten dollars, probably more. So the concession guys says, "Okay, small popcorn, small Sprite, that's eleven dollars." And even the most polite among us goes, "Eleven dollars! God in Heaven! What the fuck are you talking about?" Every customer must give them shit.
• Morning cashier at Starbucks. Bless them. Next time you drop in for your morning coffee en route to your fancy office job, just take a look at your fellow man. "Yeah, I'll have a tall, non-fat, triple-foam soy latte with a half-shot of vanilla and can you make it quick? I'm in a hurry." Oh man, you know what I'd love to hear one of these baristas say in response. "Oh you're in a hurry? Maybe you shouldn't have stopped for coffee."
• Bus driver. Can you imagine if your morning commute was your entire day? And instead of driving yourself, you drove a bunch of horrible people? And every few feet you had to stop to let more horrible people on?
• Family restaurant server. Tips are great but children are the worst. I would rather fold a hundred sweaters than clean up the messes of three children under five years old.
• Assembly line worker. How could one even understand the drudgery, the hopelessness, the day-in day-out boredom of working in a factory? Screwing caps on bottles or separating rotten apples from fresh ones or slapping labels on jars? Ostensibly, something they'd rather have a machine do but they have yet to perfect the technology? I read this story once about factory workers who intentionally screw something up on a product (put a label upside down, affix a widget to the right side instead of the left side, etc) because they wanted to make a difference. They wanted to know they existed and here was their proof. Also, don't look too far into how your iPhones are made. A great deal of what we know about factory conditions for Apple products in China was exaggerated and then debunked, but it is true that the factory has nets on all sides of it so that it is impossible for an employee to jump off the building to his death, which I gather was becoming a problem.
• Dishwasher. Being a dishwasher was my first job and I did not last long. Never, ever again.
• Cameraman for a porn film. I know the joke is that any red-blooded straight man dreams of being a photographer for Playboy or something, but can you imagine the technical precision, long hours, and incredible discomfort of being the guy who works the camera on a dirty movie? Awkwardly framing someone's genitals from a bunch of different angles for hours every day? You must come home to your spouse and scream, "If I see one more naked person today!" and then how are they going to feel? Lousy, right?
• Cab driver. See bus driver but add about 200% more drunks.
• Hot dog vendor. I don't notice these guys so much here in Edmonton, but in Toronto, purveyors of "street meat" could be found on every corner, rain or shine. They literally stand in that tiny box for hours on end, feeling a weird mixture of cold from the elements and extreme heat from standing over a barbecue for an entire shift. Plus, these stands stay open all night. How vulnerable they must be to drunken name-calling, theft, or worse. Also, I can't help but consider how the condiments hold up as they just sit there, unrefrigerated, day after day.

There are dozens more, but it's too depressing to think about. If I really knew what went into cleaning the mall I work at, or stocking the apples that I buy, I might never leave the house. The other thing about entry-level labour jobs like the ones I've described, the thing I'm uncomfortable admitting, is that privileged kids like me feel above it all. When I worked at a drugstore in the big city, I'd constantly get resumes from people who were lawyers in Turkey or doctors in Lebanon or mothers of six, wishing and hoping for the chance to stock shelves. I'm ashamed to report that eventually I stopped noticing how unfortunate this was, and instead focused on how much my little feet hurt, waaaah....

Maybe this is a little idealistic of me, but I really think everyone needs to work a low-paying service job at least once in their lives. Yes, they can be mind-numbing, spirit-crushing ass-aches, but all jobs can be like that to some degree. There's something to be said for appreciating just how hard everybody works so that we can live our lives taking no notice of them. I'm glad to be out of minimum wage, at least for now, and working a job that, while not perfect, is not something I dread clocking into every day. I know so many dedicated, passionate professionals who live to work, I hope we can all take some time waiting in line for our coffees to think about those who work to live.

The Hungered James...

Hello Friends.

There's this trend I've noticed on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. People make themselves ornate, elaborate dinners, seven nights a week, then take a picture of it, then post that picture. They also have to tell you what the picture is. "Raspberry barbecue lamp chops, thumbtack-infused couscous, baby's butt beets. Chocolate-inspired boiled water for dessert! #YUMTOWNUSA." It's a little much. Yes, it's terribly impressive that you've made this complicated, intricate feast, but also, it's 6 pm on a Tuesday and you're just eating with your dumb husband who just grabs his crotch in repose, even when there's company over, and we're all just supposed to ignore it, but what's he protecting, y'know? To me, there's something a bit sad about crafting a special meal for a regular occasion. But I am in the minority.

Since moving from the big city to a smaller city, we've traded a tiny living-space for a normal apartment. We finally have a kitchen big and functional enough to use the burners AND the stove at the same time, and cut things on a cutting board that rests on a counter, not on the floor. The Doc and I can both stand in the kitchen at the same time without accidentally making love. For this reason, and because I'm too old not to know how, I am cooking. I have mastered the basics (I can burn over 10 meals now!) but maybe I need to take it a step further.

Dream: Become a foodie.

Goal: Achievable. Throughout my life, I've definitely been more of an eatie. However, like a music critic who can't play an instrument, or an internet porn fan who's never had sex, perhaps I should be less of an appreciator and more of a participator.

Plan: Take more cooking risks in order to make delicious, satisfying, and inspiring meals every night.

I could start by buying fresh and occasionally obscure ingredients. There's supposedly an excellent Farmer's Market every Saturday morning here in town, but that sounds like the least appealing place to take my Friday-night hangover. Why does it have to be in the morning? I think I'd be way too ambitious, as well. "Ooh, look at all these radishes! Honey, let's have radishes every night! Pop the trunk, I'm gonna load in these radishes!" Also, I'm sorry, but is insufferable smugness a requirement to attend one of these things? When referring to the Farmer's Market the other day, someone sneered at me contemptibly, "Don't tell me you buy your apples from the store!" Like it was the worst thing in the world. Like Sobeys dips their apples in french fry grease and cigarette butts before putting them in the produce section. Then people wax on about the benefits of organic food. It tastes better, I get that. If given a choice, I'd pick organically produced products over non for that reason. But it's not any more nutritious for you than non-organic food. And of course Monsanto is evil and harmful, of course it is. But in terms of genetically modifying food, salt-tolerant rice will save millions of people from fucking starving to death, so let's keep things in perspective.

Fancy food also gets people to those specialty markets that is just one Tori Amos cd away from becoming a homosexual recruitment centre. Pretentiousness flows from these establishments like the coca-cola they'd never sell. I was forced to go in one the other day looking for anchovies, which used to be a supermarket staple, but is now impossible to find. For the record, I was making Nigella's Slut'sSpaghetti which is delicious and easy to make and requires zero fresh ingredients. Anyway, the nose-ringed, overall-ed, outdoor music festival attendee with a name like Rain or Gazebo working behind the counter behaved like I was a child buying cigarettes. "Anchovies!? We certainly don't sell those!" Then he peered over his horned-rims to ensure I wasn't in a wheelchair, stricken with gout.

The thing none of these holier-than-thou foodies is willing to concede is that making ornate, complex dinners is an expensive and (dare I say) elitist past-time. Maybe we'd all buy farm-fresh pears and free-range Doritos if we had the means. And while I'm sure a bag of lentils is more healthful and even cheaper than the box of frozen hamburgers, just where does one find the lentils section of a Shop'N'Save? I've been volunteering a little bit at Meals on Wheels. I get to write their newsletter now but I started by taking a couple of initial shifts in their kitchen. That is a meat and potatoes operation if ever I saw one. Every meal they eventually wheel contains a meat, a starch, two veggies, and a dessert. That's really all you need, isn't it?

Finally, making a fancy dinner part of your normal routine completely takes the fun out of fancy dinners. I'd love to roast a chicken and serve fresh something on a bed of something else, and damn if it doesn't taste better after last night's dinner of tuna fish and Honey Nut Cheerios. If you are what you eat, I'd rather not be expensive and full of weird tiny bones. I'd settle for being cheap if I meant I got to be tasty and fun. What I'm saying is, eat me.

Coming Attractions...

Hello Friends.

I find that blogging is just like riding a bike. Sometimes I forget how to do it and have to wait for my dad to come pick me up. Geez louise, I skip one week and this blank page is terrifying. And what a week! I went back to the big city for a family wedding and a week-long visit with friends and family. I've never understood the desire to vacation to a place where you don't know anybody. Sandy beaches and all-inclusive nachos are fine, but wouldn't you rather see a whole bunch of friends and watch YouTube and laugh all night? I would and I did.

This preamble is all to say that I've been a lazy git and don't have an original thought or concept in my head. Rather than leave the old blog blank another day, I feel compelled to write something. You know how sometimes the best part of seeing a move is the brilliantly crafted trailer that precedes it? Like this one, holy shit! How goes does that look?! With that in mind, let me offer you a preview of what I might write for you in the future, when my brain isn't post-vacation, days of drinking, bad food-eating mush.

Dream: Plan future entries of Big City James.

Goal: Achievable. I know this is a little precious and meta. I hate when anything gets too self-referential. Like when a tv show alludes to the fact that it's a tv show, or a pop star samples a lyric from an old hit onto a new hit, or when your pimple gets a pimple. But it's this or nothin', so suck an egg.

Plan: List potential Dreams I'd like to address in this blog, like:

• Lose ten pounds for summer
• Gain fifteen pounds for winter
• Have a cameo in something. Is there a way for an actor to skip directly to cameo? I'd love to just pop up in a restaurant scene, observe, "It smells like farts in here" (only I'd say "farts" like an old New Englander, like "fahts", like I was George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and then leave.
• But something practical without considering the price for twenty minutes (a recent new toaster took an afternoon)
• More interviews. I'd love to talk to random people, and somehow get over my fear of approaching them. For instance, there's this woman who cleans the lobby of our building and she must be mid-40s and she wears Calvin Klein's Obsession and I want to know everything about her life.
• Program my own TV channel with just shows I like (BCJTV)
• Try yoga.
• No seriously, I'd like to try it.
• Why do my feet look so fucked?
• Make new friends. Someone told me there's a website that's like a dating site, but just for friends. I'm gonna find it, there's sure to be material there.
• Attend a rally.
• Wear my tanktop. I don't know why, but I bought a tanktop on my trip. I look ridiculous in it but if I don't wear it now, I'll never get that chance again.
• Develop a taste for wine.
• Develop a taste for wings.
• Read or re-read a literary classic. I read Great Gatsby in grade twelve and really liked it. As I recall, we studied it rather intensely and did reports on it and stuff. I saw the movie two nights ago (visually stunning, if a bit draggy at parts) and didn't remember a thing. The whole time I kept thinking, "Did I read something else in grade twelve by mistake? Isn't there a fat woman in this story? What am I thinking of?"
• Go on a picnic. No, fuck that.

Forgive me this terrible self-indulgence. I don't know why it's such a struggle to put fingers to keyboard today. I wanted to write about my adventures last week, but I can't somehow. Treating recent events like cherished memories cheapens the whole thing somehow. People would think I was misrepresenting the fun I had, like I couldn't possibly have enjoyed myself that much. But I really did. I may not be a Big City James anymore in that I no longer live in the Big City, but it's a fabulous place to visit and I'll be back. This blog will also be back, sometime next Thursday, with something more substantial. Or maybe it'll be another rambling, listy, cop-out. You'll just have to wait and see. It smells like fahts in here.

But What If...

Hello Friends.

Remember that song from the 90's that goes, "I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a magazine, I'm a washing machine, I'm a pear, it's a bear" or something like that? Or the Ani DiFranco song about being 32 Flavours and Then Some? I understand the message that no one is one thing, that we are all complex humans being (see how I did that?), but the lyric I always add to songs like that is, "I'm the worst at fun."

Case in point: I am going away for a week starting tomorrow! I'm going to weddings, seeing family, seeing friends, hopefully enjoying some warmer weather. I booked this excursion months ago, saved up money so I'd be flush with cash, have made great plans with some great pals. Yet tomorrow morning's early, early flight has me absolutely fraught with anxiety. I worry that I'll be unable to sleep tonight, and though part of me has made peace with this eventuality, part of me wonders if what the experts say is true: if I write down everything I am worried about, worry won't consume me at bedtime, and I'll sleep like a baby and wake up alert and ready to vacation.

Dream: Get a great night's sleep by obsessively cataloguing all my worries.

Goal: Achievable. Besides a good sleep, the benefit to articulating the worst-case scenario is that, in the very act of predicting it, I somehow make it less likely to occur.

Plan: Lay out complex, detailed possibilities for any problems that might arise tomorrow.

1. The Doc and I both oversleep. Somehow, despite setting two alarms for the ungodly hour of 4:30, we ignore them both and arise refreshed at 1 pm. We scream at each other for two hours, search desperately for another flight which we cannot find. We miss my cousin's wedding and are no longer invited to family milestones of this sort.
2. We miss the stupid airport shuttle bus. Airport shuttle buses seem like the greatest idea until you realize how inefficient and uncomfortable they actually are. The hotel by our apartment is one of the first stops on the route, so I always get on thinking, "Ooh! I have this whole prison van to myself! We'll get there in no time!" And then we stop at every single hotel in the city and pick up fatter and dumber people with more and more luggage and I become so squashed and resentful that I begin to wonder why I didn't just set aside six hours, get my suitcase with the wheels on the bottom, and just fucking walk to the airport.
3. We can't get on the plane. Have you ever seen that show Locked Up Abroad? It's this harrowing doc series about being imprisoned in a foreign country. The main reason these imprisonments usually occur is because some poor sap decides he's going to try to smuggle drugs out of the country on an airplane. LET ME CLARIFY THAT I HAVE NO PLANS TO DO THIS! But I saw one recently where a panicked trafficker put a brick of hash into a lady's purse while they were waiting in line for security. She didn't even notice, got caught, endured a crazy ordeal. What if someone puts drug tablets in my manpurse, or tapes a bag of weed to my leg while I'm peeing beside them or something? I get pretty single-minded when I'm urinating, I probably wouldn't catch it. Also, I'd like to add that my cousin Jessica and a friend of hers want to start a series where young women find themselves pregnant in a foreign country and call it Knocked Up Abroad. I just think that's clever.
4. We never get off the plane. I know the plane is not going to crash, but what if it DOES, you guys? It's weird, I thought fear of flying would naturally lessen the more I flew, but it's actually getting worse. I remember as a kid being SO AMPED to get on a plane! It was so much fun! Now, any little airpocket and I'm a mess. Also, this is the first time Doc and I have actually taken the same plane at the same time. Because of his schedule or mine, we can never show up to the same thing at the same time on the same day, and in seven years, this is our first plane trip. It seems like the stuff morbid anecdotes, but it probably means we're going down.
5. I don't sleep a wink and am rendered completely useless. My tiredness will give me the judgement and articulation of a drunk. I'll curse at the airline desk agent, or throw up on the shuttle bus, or mumble something transphobic while buying a magazine. My behaviour gets me thrown out of the airport, off of the flight, out of the wedding.

I don't want to play this game anymore. I really wonder what the hell is up with self-sabotage. What impulse within us makes us so neurotic that the prospect an extremely enjoyable experience is terrifying? I recently read about the concept of Defensive Pessimism in David Rakoff's excellent book, Half Empty. Those of us who can't be bothered with the fallacy positive thinking, he argues, might be a bit gloomy at parties, but in predicting negative outcomes, are better equipped to deal with them as they occur. We bring the umbrella! We have Tylenol on hand! We get there early! If the trade-off to this negative thinking is that I'm pleasantly surprised when things go well, then I can certainly handle that. The tremendous relief I feel when all my worries are for naught? That's my vacation.