Untitled...

Hello Friends.

Because I'm perpetually late to the party, the Doc and I have finally started watching Orange is the New Black. It's a good show with a great premise and a really solid cast, we're about eight episodes in. I particularly like the Brittany Murphy-type who's always going on about her fiancé, the old Creole lady who is mean but not mean, the transsexual hairdresser, and the cute guard who lost his leg below the knee. Oh, and Natasha Lyonne! It's nice to see actresses who all look different and aren't just cast to be versions of the same sort of pretty. That sounds condescending in a sexist, "Way to go ladies!" way, but it's true. There's just one problem I have with that show, and Kashi Good Friends Cereal, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and a bunch of other things: they're all titled wrong, called by a name that doesn't make sense, improperly labeled.  

Orange is the New Black is particularly bad, I'm afraid. What does that mean? I know there's an expression " ____ is the new black" that used to be used in reference to fashion, as in "Once upon a time, everyone wore black to be fashionable, but seeing all the mauve onesies on the red carpet this season proves mauve is the new black!" And prison jumpsuits are orange (even though they're tan colored on the show). So do they mean prison is newly in fashion? Or is it some commentary on the majority of the prison population being black people? Neither really makes sense in the context of the show (although the points about race seem a little ham-fisted; I'm not sure if joking about how segregated the prison population is socially makes it okay to just keep splitting characters up that way). Why not call the show "Oops, I'm in Jail!" or "Lady Lockup" or "Piper and the Cons"? I'm not of the opinion that olden timey descriptive titles are passé. What better title for The Lego Movie than The Lego Movie? Nobody ever forgets what That 70's Show was called, and it's easy to remember the host's name on Oprah. The titles I like the best are the ones I administer myself. For instance, the Doc and I were super into the first couple of seasons of that show Damages, but nobody on that show is called Dr. Damages or Judge Lynda Damages or whatever, so the title didn't stick with an immediate Nurse Jackie-style recognition. But at the beginning of the theme song, it sounds like the guy says, "Little bear..." Give it a listen, it's about four seconds in. Anyone, it's extremely cute that my boyfriend and I would say things to each other after dinner like, "Should we catch up on Little Bear?" or, "Can you believe what happened to Ted Danson on Little Bear?"

Dream: Give some things a new title.

Goal: Achievable. I followed Little Bear religiously, even as it became increasingly convoluted and self-important, chiefly because I was so pleased with the self-anointed title. Likewise, I give Le1f's album several plays during trips to the gym because of the simply titled tracks, Hey, Sup, Boom, Wut, and Buzz (actually, I give Le1f's album several plays because he's a gay hip-hopper and I want him to succeed so badly and I feel like I can listen to him less self-consciously as a white person because we're both gay, which is stupid. It's not as if I could be blasting him in an Escalade, roll up on a car full of black guys and confidently say, "It's alright, fellows, we both like dinguses.".) But anyway, I can't actually change the title of established things, but I can give them new names myself and hope they stick.

Plan: List alternate title suggestions for things and hope enough of you reading adopt those titles yourself and popular usage dictates an eventual title-change (like how That 70's Show was originally called Feelin' Alright or something like that, even in the pilot as I understand it, but enough people were like, "That's stupid"). Anyway, new titles. Oh, and also, I realize I should do something to indicate titles like italicize or underline, which I normally do, but this entry is so stuffed with titles that it just reads distractingly, lIkE tHe WoRkS oF tHoSe MoRoNs WhO tYpE lIkE tHiS. With that out of the way, here are some of the worst titles and alternate suggestions:

• Jeopardy! doesn't have anyone in jeopardy. Let's call it Quiz Show or What Is A Quiz Show.
• Game of Thrones should be called Rape Dragon
• Dragon's Den should be called Business Buttholes
• Q with Jian Ghomeshi should be called Whispered Smugness
• Grape Nuts should be Hard Things
• Orphan Black should be called Tatiana Maslany Presents The Clone Zone
• Instagram should be called Narcissism Examples
• Goatees? Douche Rings!
• Mason jars are Hipster Catchalls
• Sean Saves the World didn't feature him saving anyone and was abruptly canceled. But would it have met the same fate if it was Remember This Gay Guy?
• Tattoo sleeves are Arm Mistakes
• Urinals should be called Pee Walls
• Barbara Walters should be called B Walls
• Graham Crackers with peanut butter on them should be called Shut Up, Children
• Heaven is For Real should be Heaven is Real. I don't know the story, but doesn't it tamper the integrity of something we're supposed to believe if we keep the 5 year old's title? It's lucky he didn't visit the Lord and decide to name his book Super Jesus Dream. Actually, I'd watch Super Jesus Dream.
• Ke$ha - Kesha. Come on.
• P!nk - Pink. Stop it.
• kd lang - You can do whatever you want.
• Baby Shower - Forthcoming Child Celebration. Tig Notaro has a great bit about how absolutely darling a baby showering would be. Just scrubbing up in there with their giant heads and stupid 1 inch feet.
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cups should be The Peanut Butter Cups of Reese
• Sbarro. I never know how you're supposed to combine an S and B in speech, so I'd rather we go with Bad Food Court Choice
• Betty & Veronica - Betty or Veronica. DECIDE, YOU GINGER GOON!
• Tyler Perry Presents Tyler Perry in ______, A Film by Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry, you need to calm down a little bit. I can't begin to understand what it must feel like, as a black writer/director, to not only write, direct, produce, and star in several Hollywood movies, but to see them turn amazing profits and garner a built-in audience. That's amazing. But you've done it! You have the funding and studio backing to get any movie you like into any theatre screen in North America, you don't have to put your name all over it, and maybe you shouldn't. You're a divisive figure among critics, who fawn over your accomplishments while side-stepping the quality of your film-making, or lambast the one-dimensional characters and pedantic pandering in your films as part of your overall shtick. If you put a movie out without your name preceding it's title, more theatregoers might walk in blind, and judge the film on its merit. Not as a black movie, or a Tyler Perry movie, but just as a movie. Wouldn't that be fun? I often wonder what would happen if you took Woody Allen's name completely off one of his projects and got rid of his distinctive opening credits sequence. Would the films be judged better without the spectre of his previous work hanging over them, or would they be completely maligned without the "this isn't great but his other films are SO great that this one gets a pass" excuse?

Finally, I suppose this blog deserves a major title change. Big City James made sense insofar as I began it as a kind of letter home when I lived in Toronto. Now I don't live in a big city anymore (unless you consider Edmonton a big city because you were born in a clearing somewhere), but how else do I package what I write on Thursdays? I suppose I could call it Dream, Goal, Plan but that might confuse people into thinking I've created something helpful (I have not). But really, talk about Tyler Perry narcissism. Who the fuck cares what I call this thing? Call it Big City James, call it Dumb Blog I Read Sometimes, just don't call me late for dinner because all I've had today are a plate of Shut Up, Children and I'm STARVING.

Rigged...

Hello Friends.

I live in a place where money spurts up from the ground. I can't figure out exactly how drilling for oil works, and what this pipeline is about, and why Alberta's livelihood is so completely linked to the practice, but there you are. Since moving here from a much bigger city, I've been trying to determine what makes this place different beyond obvious comparisons like size and population.

Sometimes it feels like the 1920's gold rush here. Maybe it's because our own relocation was prompted by our loss of jobs in Ontario and new opportunities here and so we're looking through a decidedly different lens, but it feels like nobody was born here, and everyone is here for a job. There are obviously people born and raised here who happily stay put. There is a lively arts and culture scene that proves not everyone is a transplant, not to mention well-established neighborhoods and family homes that have been around for generations. The educational opportunities here are amazing and the economy is such that people really build a life for themselves.

I wonder, though, about the startlingly high murder rate and statistics regarding drug-related crime. I think about how to reconcile that with a city seemingly awash in prosperity. It's like how Toronto brags about being a progressive, thriving city (with a thirty year old transit system, obviously corrupt mayoral government, and unbelievably high poverty rate), or how Regina thinks putting in a new stadium will somehow fix the dying centre of town where the soup kitchen is operating at maximum capacity and people get stabbed to death in the mall. I wonder what will happen to Edmonton if the oil wells ever dry up, and what that means for the people on the rigs. I'd like to find out.

Dream: Go to work on the rigs.

Goal: Unachievable in every sense. From what little I do know about the job, it is grueling physical labour for long stretches and any mistake could result in injury or death. I'm Princess Delicate Baby Flower when it comes to things as simple as climbing a ladder or painting a hallway, I can't imagine actually doing what these guys and gals do on a regular basis.

Having said that, part of me longs to be one of those immersed journalists of the bygone era who filed their stories by living among the people they were reporting on, almost like anthropologists. Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of people with jobs of every stripe for his definitive tome Working. Working is thousands of pages of first person accounts of what it's like to be a nurse, a cashier, a factory worker, a brain surgeon, a ditch digger, etc. Barbara Ehrenreich took an assignment from Harper's magazine concerning Bill Clinton's newly introduced Welfare to Work reform bill. She wanted to see if she could actually pay rent and eat three meals a day on a minimum wage job in America without assistance, so she worked at a restaurant, then an old folks home, then a WalMart, while living in a rented room, and then a trailer. The result is her fantastic book, Nickel & Dimed. I can't afford to quit my job to live among the riggers to interview them, and I certainly couldn't do the job myself, so it's my hope that one day I will be able to interview a couple and report back.

Plan: Figure out just what it is I want to know about working on the oil rigs, and what it means for the place where I live. If I could interview an oil rig worker, here is what I would want to know:

What is your work day? Oil patches are (obviously) far away from everything. As I understand it, most workers live on the site for arrangements like two weeks on, two weeks off. The two weeks on have them bunked in cramped quarters, up early, and in bed late, for grueling 12 hour days in conditions that apparently aren't the safest. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics (couldn't find the correlating Canadian findings) as many as 4.2 percent of oil and gas workers are hurt on the job each year, sustaining injuries ranging from burns to head trauma, exposure to toxins, and amputation.  The other day at work I wrote, "extensive" when what I probably meant was "comprehensive" in a press release. It was a mistake, but my arm didn't get blown off and nobody died.

Aren't you bored? A 12 hour day doing anything sounds awfully tedious, but because of the inherent danger in the labour, it must involve a kind of concentrated, focused boredom (which is the worst kind). Plus, working on a weeks on/weeks off system sounds attractive, until you realize that the "weeks on" weeks include weekends too. I have a friend who used to work as a security guard on an oil rig, and from what he described to me, working on the rigs is like going to war but there isn't a war on. It's like being in prison but you're sentenced to two weeks at a time. Drugs and alcohol are absolutely forbidden but there is a lot of fighting and a looooot of porn. My friend would routinely bang on the doors of single-occupancy places because the tenant was blasting hardcore videos as loud as they would go. What does that say about one's state of mind (not to mention their hearing)?

But aren't you on drugs? I probably should have mentioned this bit at the beginning, but all of my evidence is absolutely anecdotal here, aside from a little lazy online research. That said, though drugs are expressly forbidden from any rigging site, I've heard some of these lads and lasses find creative ways to fill their off time. Who can blame them, really? If your job requires you to be hyper-focused for hours on end with no place to escape to at the end of the day, couldn't you be forgiven for indulging in some chemical escape when your work is done? But it's not just pot. I've heard it posited that the reason cocaine, heroin, and other hard drugs are so rampant in this province is because so many of these guys have too much money and too little to do.  It's been proven that long shifts without breaks compromises your health immeasurably. Throw drugs in the mix and I shudder to think what could result.

Are you married? The other side of the "nonstop drug party" mentality must create its own problems. A lot of workers with demanding professions like doctors, lawyers, and labourers like riggers have a strong impulse to seek stability in their non-work life and so rush into marriage (and consequently, divorce). My security guard friend told me that a lot of these guys see their friends making poor life choices and so they put their money into the wedding, the home, and the kids. Trouble is, of course, that hubby and Daddy (or wife and Mommy) are necessarily away a lot of the time. What does that do to a marriage and family?

How much money do you make? Really, how much? Because my understanding is money is far and away the biggest draw for this job. Working in retail here, I noticed how difficult it is to fill vacancies in the service sector. Unlike Ontario, where I battled viciously for full time shifts in lousy jobs, here in Alberta, my full time availability was a godsend. It was not that long ago that people took service sector jobs after high school or university while waiting to find a job in their field.  I suppose a rise in professional internships (and folks living at home longer and being subsidized by their folks) means this pattern is on the decline but to some kids, a job on the oil rig must look like the Golden Ticket. "I work two weeks on, two off and I make HOW much?!" I'm sure the money is good and beats whatever I made folding sweaters then, or what I make now writing copy. But I'd also imagine working on the oil rigs is a very specific skill that can't be applied in too many other fields. Service sector jobs at least teach you how to deal with a variety of people and not be an asshole (in most cases). However, I wonder how else you can parlay your oil rigging skills when you're ready to leave the profession behind? To that end, maybe you can't leave the profession behind. You must get used to the weeks on/weeks off and especially the paycheque!

I say all of this not to denigrate what has to be an extremely difficult and demanding job. Alberta has the oil sands to thank for pumping money into this province and generating the economic boom that has landed the Doc and me into comfy jobs for the moment. But I keep thinking about those men and women that hit all the criteria I just described. The ones with mind-numbing yet dangerous jobs, high paycheques, families they never see, and drug problems.  What becomes of them if something happens to our oil supply? What happens to the cities here when the drills stop drilling and the plenty we currently enjoy becomes scarce? I worry that the wealthy execs and greedy tycoons are becoming wealthier and greedier off the backs of these workers. I worry that counting on one resource to help everyone isn't particularly resourceful. Apparently, we have enough oil in the ground for generations to come, but what goes boom must too go bust, and things can't stay this way forever. I like my new home very much yet I can't help but think that I'm benefitting from the complex machinations of a really shaky system, and that system is rigged. 

Late Shift...

Hello Friends.

The thing about North America is, we have too much of everything. We eat too much, we drink too much, our internet pornography options are nearly endless (though I wish there was more “Well-Read Boys Satisfy Their Appetites In Fully-Stocked Library”-style erotica). We also tend to demand too much of the talent we enjoy, an ideal case in point being David Letterman. I love Dave, I think he’s a genius, but he’s on TV every night! He’s been on TV every night for 30 years! Like that woman says in the viral video, “There isn’t anyone who has time for that.” I’m sad that he’s retiring, but for goodness’ sake, let us allow the man to rest. Same goes for all nightly hosts of things. How can they possibly generate content every single night? Jimmy Fallon, in particular, seems so committed to creating YouTube-ready clickbait that he must never sleep!

Compare us to the UK, for instance, and see what they produce in quantity versus quality. I know not all late night is comedy and not all comedy is late night, but consider that the finest British tv exports are something like 7 episodes long. Most of their “chat shows” are broadcast weekly, not nightly. A comedic mind like David Letterman or Stephen Colbert can be pretty funny on a given night, but they had to produce only 1/5 of their current offerings, think how much of it would be gold.

I’m sad that I’ll likely never see a Letterman taping. Tickets to his remaining shows must be scarce, and I’ve heard of waiting lists being months long at a time. To that end, we may never see Letterman again after he retires. I mean what I’m about to say with the utmost respect: that would be great. For Dave to bow out as a man with a great career in television and spend his next chapter home with his wife and son would be a really classy way to go. Apparently, Jay Leno still performs stand up in comedy clubs every weekend, and that makes me sort of sad.

It is truly the end of an era in late night TV, and, though Dave’s replacement was announced this morning, it’s not too late for CBS to tell Colbert to cool his heels while they take a few moments to really think things through. I can help.

Dream: Revamp late night television.

Goal: Unachievable. Who am I, Lorne Michaels? No one’s gonna listen to me. But on the other hand, broadcast television has worse ratings across the board now than they’ve ever had, and Conan O’Brien was virtually unknown when a show fell into his lap, so let’s work from that premise and assume I get to decide what happens with this time slot.

Plan: Change everything around about the late night talk show. Here are my suggested tweaks:

The Guests. Talk show guests are so boring and horrible. Even the best ones have to do so many rounds that by the time whatever project they’re plugging comes out, they have another one on the way. Like can Mark Wahlburg just stop making public appearances for a bit? I know he’s in every third movie, but a less charismatic, more stupid man you’d never hope to hear from. The best work David Letterman ever did was when he would decide to make a star of a random person. When I lived in Regina, Saskatchewan as a kid, there was a man who pumped gas named Dick Assman. I guess there’d been a robbery at his gas station or something, and he was interviewed for a piece in the paper, so a picture of him ran along the article with his name, Dick Assman, below the picture. So Dave had this segment where he pointed out funny/stupid things in newspapers, and somehow he got ahold of Dick Assman. He began joking about Dick Assman’s ridiculous name and speculating about his life almost every night. Signs went up all around Regina, “Home of Dick Assman!” and, at the gas station where he worked, “DICK ASSMAN WORKS HERE!” It all came to a head when Dave invited Dick Assman on the show. Dick Assman came out bearing flowers for Dave and stammered through a sweet interview. It was a puerile premise, but I’d watch a hundred Dick Assman interviews than one more Mark Wahlburg, y’know?

The monologue. Monologues are hard, and an overly indulgent audience doesn’t help matters. A joke that doesn’t really land, followed by a blast of music and wild applause isn’t funny to watch anymore. We’ve all seen it. I think between a monologue and an audience, you have to lose one to make the other work. Tom Snyder was an old man who used to host The Late Late Show after Dave, and he did an audience-less monologue, straight to camera, followed by a long form interview. Julie Klausner hosts How Was Your Week, which is my very favourite podcast, and she begins every episode with a lengthy, topical, hilarious monologue that doesn’t have an audience, doesn’t need an audience to work, and succeeds brilliantly precisely because there isn’t one. She, too, has a long interview afterwards with a really interesting person who is not necessarily super-famous. She talks to authors, or comics just on the verge of breaking through, or obscure musicians one wants desperately to Google and download immediately afterwards.

The music. This idea is so simple, I can’t believe no one has thought of it. I understand the appeal of having a house band, but stages always look so crowded when the musical guest for the evening plays their song and the band stands there and watches them. Why not have the musical guest that is traditionally part of the last segment, be the band for the entire show? And when there is no musical guest, have whatever comedian is doing a set that night be a Paul Schaffer-y sidekick throughout? Wouldn’t it be more exciting to have Kanye West select and perform the songs that open the show, bring out the guests, etc? Or have Jimmy Fallon bantering back and forth with Patton Oswalt for a night?

I love Stephen Colbert, but I feel like this deal takes away everything about him that is great. He’s leaving behind his blowhard character, and will surely be encouraged to be less political now that he has a broader audience. Let’s strip him of his finest attributes and see how he does. Nobody owned The Late Show because Dave started it, so why must his successor continue in that forced mold? We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here, but give me a better reason to stay up late.

A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World...

Hello Friends.

When I was in an acting class at university, I had to do a scene from the Chekhov play The Bear. The scene opens, at least as I remember it, with the man (me) yelling, “Oh I’m in such a rage! Such a rage I could grind the entire world to powder!” This line may have even opened the entire play, I couldn’t say. From the sly, subtle dialogue, I intuited the character was mad about something and tried to play it that way. “Oh I’m in such a rage,” I said. “Such a rage I could grind the entire world to powder.”

My instructor for the course, a bombastic woman, didn’t suffer fools and spluttered at me demonstratively. “You’re not in a rage! Nowhere close!” she said. So I thought back to my years of theatrical training, thought about nuance and subtext, objectives and beats, and said the same line, but louder this time. My professor would not have it. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s NOT RAGE!” She got right up in my face, as she was wont to do, and said the line herself, but in a rage. “Do you see the difference? Can’t you feel that?” she asked me. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t.

I am not, generally, an angry guy. I’m a snarky guy, a bitchy guy, and a pissy guy, but not angry. At least I don’t think I am. But the problem with not being angry is that my go-to mode is frustration, which is just the same lump of coal wrapped in slightly different packaging. I can get stupidly, unreasonably frustrated and let it marinate in on itself for hours and days, instead of just expressing anger for a finite period of time, and letting it go.

Dream: Get my anger out, or put it to good use.

Goal: Achievable. I know it would be healthier to deal with anger rather than to let it fester and bitch and moan. And sometimes I can do that. Doc and I don’t have long grudge-holding resentment-fests. We bicker and get it done with. So why can’t I do that with my own issues?

Plan: Put all my anger out there, in an attempt to move through it. Here’s what I’m mad about right now:

The past two days have brought a confluence of events that have made me incredibly frustrated, to the point where I can’t stop bemoaning the injustice of it all. Yesterday, I packed my swim trunks, towel, and toiletry bag in my gym bag to go for a swim at my pool after work. Fortuitously, I happened to check the website for my pool during my workday, only to discover that the pool is closed and would remain so for the rest of the week. That was not the frustrating thing. I decided, instead, to check out the YMCA that is close to where I work. I hadn’t swam in a few days and didn’t want to skip the only exercise I enjoy, so I figured I’d cough up the drop in rate and just, you know, drop in. So I got there and found out the drop in rate is $14. $14! Am I drunk, or is that a really high price for one visit? I remember many childhood trips to the Y and can’t believe it would have cost anything comparable. But, as I said, I really wanted the swim and thought, “Well, maybe I’ll enjoy it so much that I’ll decide to become a member!” and so forked over the $14. This injustice is also not the frustrating thing.

I swam for a perfectly enjoyable hour or so, hyperextending my arms and legs whenever possible, like I was trying to take up enough space to warrant a $14 expenditure. I showered up, packed my stuff, and went home. This morning, when I went into my gym bag to retrieve my toiletries for a shower, I realized my toiletry bag was missing. This bag is one of those small travel bags that contained, in this instance, soap, shampoo, my swim goggles, and my membership card to my other pool (the one that is closed this week). That was the incredibly frustrating thing. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to leave it behind.

After work today, I went back to the Y and asked if anything had been turned in. The woman at the desk hadn’t received anything, but directed me to a lost and found bin that I rooted through three times. It had a few children’s winter boots, some scarves and mitts, a gross towel, and no toiletry bag. I am so frustrated, mad, angry, whatever you want to call it, because to me, that means somebody stole my fucking toiletry bag. Some asshole took something that didn’t belong to him, and now has my glistening hair and my chlorine free eyes! The soap and shampoo were luckily cheap stuff, as I know enough not to take my fancy hair stuff out of the house, so let’s value them at a conservative $6. I found out today that my pool membership card is $20 to replace. My goggles, which I splurged on, because cheaper varieties just don’t last very long, cost $25. Added up, my trip to the pool yesterday didn’t cost $14, it cost $65. I want to cry and punch the wall.

This situation was preventable on a dozen levels. I could have waited out the repairs on my original pool. I could have refused to pay the exorbitant $14 drop in fee at the Y. I could have packed up my fucking toiletry bag. $65 is a nice dinner out, a new dress shirt, or a balcony seat at the Fleetwood Mac concert. I know it’s stupid, but it’s hard not to look for some kind of cosmic punishment here. Maybe I was meant to leave the toiletry bag behind to learn… what? Don’t leave your stuff behind? I already know that!

It’s like these people who don’t believe in accidents; they think you knock your glass of milk over on purpose, or leave your toiletry bag behind because $65 is just burning a hole in your pocket. How do they justify their beliefs when they get into car crashes? Actually, I think I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating: I had a psychology professor who was just that way, didn’t believe in accidents, you do these things to yourself, etc. Anyway, he fell off the roof of his house and is now a paraplegic. He thinks he brought it on himself somehow! I read an article about him in the paper where he said, “I wonder why I did this to myself. I must be teaching myself something.” Must be nice to be so philosophical in the face of your own shitty circumstances, mad props to holding on to your stupid beliefs!

It’s all bullshit, really, this “articulate your anger” stuff. I read somewhere that “venting” your anger is actually terrible for you. It keeps you angry instead of alleviating it. I have Facebook friends whose wall posts look like a monument to complaining. “OH THIS IS A FUNNY LOOKING SPRING! GRRR!” “THANKS FOR GETTING MY ORDER WRONG STARBUBCKS GRRRR!” That’s not healthy. But neither is circling round and round the hard luck of losing a bag with some soap and goggles in it. People are out there in the world facing actual, real problems. There are people to whom the extravagances of gym memberships are absolutely out of reach. There are people with something to be mad about.

If I had that scene to do over again, ten years later, I’d have a bit more ammo to access my anger. A few more points of reference about marriages breaking up, or miscarriages, or cancer diagnoses. I could think about job loss, friendship dissolution, or alcoholism. I could think about the pitfalls I’ve been lucky to avoid, and the few crummy grown-up things I’ve had to endure. I might realize, just for an instant, how quickly all of it goes by. How I can’t take this life, any of it, for granted. How any time spent worrying over stupid shit is time wasted. I’d think about all the times I’ve succumbed to negative thoughts and fears instead of appreciating what I’m lucky enough to have. And I’d rage.  

A Real Pretty Mouth...

Hello Friends.

My dentist is younger than I am. I really can’t believe it. I guess older people have to deal with this phenomenon all the time, medical personnel being younger than they are, but a recent appointment with a new dentist (closer to work) put me face to open, gaping face with a practicing dentist that I could have babysat on Saturday nights. Having a younger person in charge of my health won’t always weird me out. I hope when I’m 80, my physician isn’t 90, but it feels weird entrusting my mouth to someone who wasn’t born as I began teething initially.

Dr. Baby is perfectly pleasant and he and his baby staff have a really nice practice with comfortable chairs and top of the line spit-suckers, but a visit to the dentist is still one that I’d rather avoid. Not that I’ve been unlucky with mouth stuff, quite the opposite. I haven’t had cavities, or braces, or a root canal or anything beyond a couple of teeth that needed pulling when I was a youngster. Through my 20s, I watched aghast my contemporaries had their faces swell up like pumpkins and often had to stay home for a week as a result of a wisdom tooth extraction. I counted the days until my 30^th birthday, laboring under the false apprehension that if I made it to 30 without wisdom tooth issues, I could sail through the rest of my life unaffected. I’ve recently come to find that is not so.

Dr. Baby is concerned that a wisdom tooth that has come in sideways, while giving me no discomfort now, will present a huge problem later. He says the tooth will continue to grow and cause me great pain. I’m not inclined to believe him, because it’s not as if my straight up and down teeth will keep growing, suddenly meeting in the middle rendering me unable to close my lips ever again. Dr. Baby is, in fact, so concerned that he is outsourcing the job of removing this troublemaker to an oral surgeon. “I don’t think I can do it myself,” he confessed at my last appointment, presumably before going down for his nap. So now I’m really worried that my good dental karma has at last run out, and there will suddenly be a great deal of trauma behind every smile, unless I can change things around in time.

Dream: Revolutionize the field of dentistry.

Goal: Achievable. I may not know anything about medicine or oral health, but I am (or rather Jon’s and my combined benefits are) about to put a great deal of money where my mouth is. As a paying customer, I should have a say in how I am treated, no?

Plan: Make suggestions as to how to improve the current state of the profession. For instance:

Complete sedation of every patient for every procedure. People hate going to the dentist, they’d rather every tooth fall out of their head than see a professional, because it is so exceedingly uncomfortable. Regular procedures like checkups and cleanings aren’t painful, exactly, but they’re the most cringe-inducing experiences one can have (next to asking a woman when her baby is due as you simultaneously realize she is not pregnant). I worked with a woman once who had a mild form of autism, probably somewhere on the spectrum like Asperger’s Syndrome, and she was high-functioning, pleasant if a touch awkward, and good at the menial aspects of her job, and she had the worst teeth I’d ever seen. I’m not being mean, and I certainly don’t have the pearliest of whites, but I can state objectively that she was in terrible dental disrepair. I never asked her about it (because how does one broach the “What’s up with your disgusting teeth” conversation?), but I wonder now if an absence of dental care didn’t somehow relate to her autism. Twice yearly is almost too much for me to endure the suction, the scraping, the poking, can you imagine what it must be like for someone prone to sensory overload? If you don’t like to be touched, I can’t imagine you love being orally excavated. Therefore, let’s just put everyone to sleep as soon as they sit in the chair, even if it’s just for a cleaning. Then dentist could stop with stupid tricks like a massage pad on the dentist chair or a TV screen overhead to distract the patient. Not only that, but patients would stop flinching and jerking around. I know that I would look guiltily forward to my drugged-up biannual visits like they were trips to a spa.

Alternatively, if patients must be kept awake, let’s have dentists treat them like children. Stick with me here. I went to a dentist one time who was predominantly a children’s dentist, but took on a few adult patients. She treated me like a five year old and it was delightful! She would say, “Okay, Mr. James, I’m going to have you open big big big!” and I would do so and she’d go, “Good joooob!” Then she’d say, “Okay, Mr. James, time to spit!” and I would do so and she’d go, “Good jooob!” But the best part (and I swear this is true), is when she had to take an x-ray and gave me sunglasses to wear. She said, “Look at you! Mr. Cool!” And I was. I was Mr. Cool. The real reason why her treatment was welcome instead of intolerable is because she explained everything she was doing as she did it, thus making the whole process less foreign.

Enough with the x-rays. I understand why they need to be taken for the benefit of the dentist and hygienist, but why do they always have to show them to me? “And these are your teeth!” “Oh my god, you’ve really captured them. Can I keep this? I can’t wait to show this to my butt, he’ll be thrilled.” What do I care what my mouth bones look like? If anything, it’s unnerving to see oneself as a skeleton. You know what I want to see, though? That machine you have to go through in airport security now. The one that, if you are randomly selected for further screening, somehow takes a picture of the naked body beneath your clothes. You can choose it in lieu of a pat-down, and why wouldn’t you? If they don’t find a bomb strapped to my back or a grenade behind my scrote, why can’t I see the picture? It’s like having x-ray vision and they can’t share what they’re getting an eyeful of? No fair.

Let’s make the dentist work a little harder. Did you know dentists have the highest suicide rate of any profession? I guess it makes sense, insofar as nobody is ever happy to see you, and you have to undergo all the training of a doctor but don’t get the prestige or reputation. And nobody ever says, “Thank you, Dentist, for making me mouthbleed all over the place.” But darn it if those hygienists don’t have it harder. Looking in people’s gross mouths all day, relegated to doing all the annoying cleaning and scraping and lecturing. When a hygienist adopts that holier-than-thou tone to lecture me about my poor flossing ability, I just want to bite her hand off. But it’s not her fault, that’s the bulk of her job! Maybe on a hygienist’s birthday, he or she gets to come in, spend a few minutes chatting vaguely about your mouth problems and scheduling subsequent appointments, but then the dentist has to come in and do the grunt work. It’s only fair.

Finally, let’s be sure our Canadian coverage is extensive and comprehensive enough to lord it over other nations. When I was working a couple of part time jobs, and therefore exempt from any benefits, I just didn’t go. I’m lucky that nothing plagued me beyond plaque in those times between appointments. But I have a friend with a similar wisdom tooth malady who intends to wait until it becomes too painful to deal with, then get emergency care. That’s a rather unpleasant ticking clock. So I guess the next time I lean back and open wide for Dr. Baby’s soft touch, I ought to be grateful. Instead of sharing copious opinions about everything wrong with oral care, I should do my best, in spite of the circumstances, to keep my mouth shut.    

Not Getting Married Today...

Hello Friends.

Here’s all I know about being cool: there is too much cachet in being contrary. Apparently, there’s nothing cool about enthusiasm or support, but it is the coolest thing to denigrate and dismiss. Oh, does everyone like Wes Anderson? Here’s why I HATE him! Is that show Girls good? No, it’s TERRIBLE! Is it supposed to get warmer out soon? I hope not, pleasant weather SUCKS ASS!

I bring up this trend because I’m definitely guilty of participating in it. If something gets too popular, I immediately grow suspicious of its appeal. Instead of thinking, “This many people can’t be wrong!” I think, “I can’t way to prove how wrong this many people are!” For instance, I’ll never understand that show How I Met Your Mother, but it gets huge ratings. Am I wrong for disliking this show, or is everyone else wrong for liking it? The truth is, of course, that there is no wrong or right, it comes down to personal preference.

With this preamble almost complete, I hope that anyone reading this entry will take the viewpoints herein as a difference of opinion and not a denigration or a dismissal of the beliefs and attitudes of others. I don’t mean to be contrary or deliberately “on the wrong side” of this topic just to stand out and/or be cool. I hold the following beliefs for myself only and my attitudes on this issue have no bearing on how I feel about you. I hope I’m being clear here.

Dream: Never get married.

Goal: Achievable. By some lucky roll of the dice, my partner of eight years shares my views on this topic. We love when other people get married. We love going to weddings. We love the speeches and the dancing and the emotion of it all. We just don’t want it for ourselves. But we might change our mind. Maybe a change in the political climate would mean that our rights as a common-law same sex couple would not be the same as a married same sex couple. If, by not being married, either Jon or I would have difficulty in terms of our legal rights, we’d get hitched tomorrow. If we lived in the US or ever have to move there for a professional opportunity or something, we’d want the legal recognition that comes with marriage there (in some states, anyway). But right now, as it stands, we’ll both settle for the “always a bridesmaid” label and here’s why:

Plan: Avoid taking part in the institution of marriage by articulating exactly why it doesn't work (for us! Doesn't work for us! For you, it quite possibly works perfectly). I would not like to get married because:

$. Weddings are so goddamned expensive. According to a survey in Weddingbells magazine (my favourite ‘zine next to Sleddingballs), the average cost of a wedding in Canada in 2013 is $32,358. That’s the down payment on a house! That’s a nice car! That’s a fresh pack of gum every single day for an entire life! I know your wedding was cheaper. I know there are great cost-cutting measures like getting your cousin to officiate and making a bouquet out of garbage, but you know the best money-saving tip there is for a wedding? Not having a wedding. The Doc makes good money, and I make… money, but putting so much of towards a ceremony that’s over in a day hardly seems prudent.

Tradition. I feel really shitty not leaping at the chance to get married as a gay person because so many people fought and are fighting so hard for my right to do so. As I’ve said, as it pertains to legal rights and security, I’m so absolutely thrilled that the option is available. But I think a few generations of gay weddings have to go by before there can truly be gay weddings. As it stands in western culture, so much of marriage is disappointingly archaic. A father symbolically giving a bride to a groom is so absolutely creepy, if you think about it. There’s something so, “she’s yours to take care of now!” about it. Why does the bride have to be “given away” at all? Maybe both parents should walk the bride and the groom to each other. Maybe parents should steer clear of the aisle entirely and the bride and groom can walk down it together! Why is there an aisle, anyway? Also important to note is that neither one of us is particularly religious nor are our families. We don’t feel incomplete without making a covenant before God or anything, but that feeling could change, too.

More troubling than the wedding ceremony traditions are the roles that marriage still carry in 2014. Being someone’s spouse seems to take away a certain autonomy to both parties. His reckless spending destroys her credit rating. Her car accident increases his deductible. What the hell is that about? And parenting without being married is still seen in many circles as raising a child at a deficit, but why? Again, I think what I’m circling back to is a gay issue. We just don’t have to deal with ancient gender stereotypes that don’t make any sense. Society places a pretty high premium on men and women uniting in marriage, but a man needs a husband like a fish needs a bicycle. There’s nothing Jon and I stand to gain by marrying each other that we don’t have already. If we were to wed, there’d only be one unique opportunity open to us that is currently denied us a couple:

Divorce. I couldn't bear to split up with Jon, but statistically, if we get married, there’s a 40 to 50% chance that we’ll get divorced in turn. It’s so weird and sad to know people my age who have already been through a marriage and the dissolution of that marriage. I know more separated or divorced people than I know married people. And I know this says more about the state of relationships than it does about marriage itself; if Jon and I are meant to ever part company, marriage is no more likely to keep us together in this day and age than the lack of a marriage. But let me ask the following question: If you had to get somewhere and your transportation options were a train that moved quickly but had a 40 percent change of derailing, or a bus that didn’t go as fast but gave you the opportunity to get off at every stop, how many of you would choose the train? Gimme the bus! When I meet couples who have been together for a long time and aren’t married to each other, part of me thinks, “Good for you guys!” For whatever reason, I get more of a sense that the couple want to be together than I do with a couple who has been married for the same amount of time. I’ve heard the argument that the covenant of marriage reinforces commitment to love and fidelity, which may be true, but if a piece of paper is the only thing keeping you in love and faithful, you have bigger issues in your relationship that need to be addressed.

I know I’m skirting around the main issue here, which is that people get married in spite of these roadblocks, knowing what they know about cost and divorce rates and antiquated tradition simply because they love each other that much and darn it, they just want to tie the knot. I love those kinds of weddings, the “let’s just have a good time! Let us be your hosts!” of it all. For this reason, Jon and I want to throw a big party someday; maybe for our ten year anniversary in 2016. A real shindig that says, “We love each other and you guys too!” Something that is uniquely our own and expresses just how lucky we feel to have found each other. And everyone will come (even you!) and we’ll celebrate how much fun it is to get another spin around the sun with great friends, family, and our most significant of others. Isn’t that the coolest thing of all?

PS. If I turn around and get married someday, everybody be cool and pretend I didn’t say any of this stuff.

An Open Letter to Justin Bieber...

Hello Friends.

Look, I’m not any happier about this than you are. Like so many of you, I thought Justin would be gone by now! I expected him out of the news cycle, or at least replaced by a younger, babier-faced tween or bween (baby tween). But Bieber remains as topical as ever, though less for his music now than his antics. When a celebrity’s public persona generates more attention than his or her artistic output, problems can’t help but arise. For instance, I don’t know what Jennifer Aniston’s last movie was, but I did read a blurb yesterday saying that she had the gall to appear in public with her fiancé on the SAME DAY that the poster for the new Angelina Jolie movie was released. The article actually insinuated that this was a calculated move on Aniston’s part, to earn more public attention than her ex-husband’s current wife. What a cunning, manipulative bitch. How dare she go out in public? Anyway, someone’s got to straighten out the Biebs, it may as well be me.

Dream: Get a letter to Justin Bieber.

Goal: Unachievable. To find my letter, Bieber’s poor PR team would have to sift through dozens of warehouses-full of sacks of letters from even bween in the bworld. I’m certain only a fraction of that mail makes to the right personal assistant, who edits further, and doubtlessly delivers only the most flattering letters to Justin’s hotel room, where they remain, unopened, on a desk, until they are thrown out by a long-suffered chambermaid. That said, there have to be a lot of former Beliebers out there who, through disappointment regarding his public persona, or simply aging out of the pop star bracket, know that he needs a talking to. If you are one of those people and you find this letter, trying forwarding it to him, won’t you?

Plan: Write as if JB is reading this missive, sitting alone in a big hotel room, waiting for something to happen.

Dear Justin Bieber,

First off, I want to make it clear that I’m neither a fan, nor a hater. I think you are often unfairly maligned, by men in particular, simply for existing in the world. You are a baby-faced pop star who has a ubiquitous presence on pop radio and teen culture, but why that should threaten and upset grown men so much is a mystery to me. I’m happy to say that for me, you are easily avoidable, save for the occasional Saturday Night Live appearance or awkward Letterman interview. But while I may not have any of your albums, I think I know the cloth from which you are cut. Take my counsel with a grain of salt, but I think I know the following things about you:

You’re bored. Who wouldn’t be bored, in your position? Because you have been so successful, you must be constantly touring and promoting your output of albums and merchandise, and you must be surrounded entirely by adults. You must hardly ever see friends from your childhood, and the friends you have made since all came with the baggage of knowing you before you knew them. That knowledge must give you the uneasy feeling that they expect something from you. That said, Justin, try to use this excess boredom constructively instead of buying a monkey, crashing a car, and being a dick. I know you can’t go outside and play, but what if you wrote down all your frustrations? Don’t edit them, don’t look for a pop hook, just get everything down on paper. Or find one of your tour musicians and ask them if you could learn at their feet. Find out where they studied (unbelievably, even to play repetitive pop music, sessional and touring musicians got where they are by mastering their craft, and probably had bigger dreams than ever your Luv2LuvUGirl Tour provided), and see what they can teach you about true musicianship. Alternatively, volunteer somewhere, and not for a photo op. Find out where the soup kitchen is on your next tour stop, show up with as little fanfare and entourage as possible, and volunteer to peel carrots in the back. On the face of it, this task won’t necessarily alleviate your boredom, but it will help put things into perspective.

You’re angry. I caught clips on you in a deposition video being terse and rude while someone twice your age and education level asked you some simple questions. And I get it, I’d be angry too if my freedom was taken away, my every move was scrutinized, and my closest friends and family were all on my payroll. The thing is, though, it’s nobody’s fault. From what I understand of your “origin story”, your mother took videos of you singing to send to your grandmother via a password-protected account and granny, being proud as she was, reposted them under a public account for her old lady friends to see. The boy singing without a trace of self-consciousness to his Mom and Gam-Gam was preternaturally talented to the extent that some friends showed other friends and they showed other friends and so on, and the boy became a viral sensation. Apparently, Usher and Justin Timberlake began a bidding war to sign you, and Usher won and offered you (or more accurately, your mother) a deal. I hope you don’t blame your mother for anything now or in retrospect, because to my knowledge, she was a single mom in Stratford, Ontario (alternately a tourist trap and a depressing pit of quaint). I’m sure worried about pushing you into a world you weren’t ready for, but who could have foreseen the megastar you’d become? Monetarily, you’ve provided for your mother in ways she couldn’t have done for you. That has to be weird. But that brings me to another point.

You’re ashamed (and not just for those dumb bangs you used to have). You feel guilty for complaining, because no one wants to hear the woe of poor little rich boy and because, superficially, all of your needs are met. But it has to be the strangest thing, knowing that so many people rely on you for their literal livelihood. If you walked away tomorrow, countless managers, assistants, musicians, dancers, concert promoters, merchandisers, lawyers, and monkeys would be out of a job. That’s too much for anyone to shoulder, let alone a slight if muscled bween.

Justin, I wish I knew what to tell you. Fame is something we can all speculate about, but no one knows what it’s like until he or she experiences it. Maybe that’s why so many famous people befriend and marry other famous people—they know what it’s like. But fame is fickle, and I wonder if your recent bad behaviour isn’t just your clever attempt at self-sabotage. Maybe if you’re smarmy, rude, willfully destructive, and ungrateful, everyone will treat you like the 5 year old throwing a tantrum and ignore you. That’s a fine idea, but a cursory overview of other child stars (Lindsay Lohan comes to mind) shows that fame becomes infamy quicker than a paparazzo’s camera flash, and you’ll have just as much attention as you ever did, for all the wrong reasons.

One time, I waited outside a posh Toronto hotel with two friends and a hundred bweens, all hoping to catch a glimpse of you. You never showed, but I wonder now if you heard the screams from your hotel room as adulation, or just noise. I wonder if you thought you were on the highest pedestal or a gilded cage. I wonder if you thought there was any way out of this, any way to push through the fans and the fame, any way to push beyond yourself and escape to somewhere real.

Your Friend,

James