playing cards seriously

My Mom came from a very large family in Cape Breton. They were particularly enamored of two things. Liquor and playing card games. We learned early. As soon as we could hold a full hand, we were in the game. But Mom insisted that you gamble with your own money. And if you tried to reneg on a card, the hand came down swiftly. Also, if you started saying something inappropriate, there was a quick kick to your shin delivered under the table. One time, she went to deliver one of those to me. She struck out. And my ten year old cousin Wayne yelled out "Ow!". She then began to laugh hysterically, until she put her head on the table and peed herself a little.

Mom

My mom loved to dance. She said that my dad was such an expert partner and they danced to real orchestras, with Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Guy Lombardo. I took dance lessons when I was young. Tap, latin american and ballroom. By the time that I was in my late teens, my father had stopped going to any event. So I remember a wedding of a family friend. Of course, I didn't want to dance with my mom. That was embarrassing. But I could see her tapping her toe, and dying to dance. So I sucked it up, and we went out on the floor and did a cha-cha and a waltz. The floor cleared. She followed my lead perfectly. And we got such a round of applause. And for the first time, I saw a shining 18 year old girl, excited and proud. I never regretted that.

Accidental Me

Next. I'm 16 and I desperately want to be one of the cool kids. So I go to the night devoted to our school at the local ski resort. On the lifts, my cool friends give me drinks from a flask. The irony is that I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SKI. I just find myself speeding on sticks straight down the runs. So far, so good. But a blizzard comes up and the resort turns out the lights to indicate that it is closing. I take my last run in the dark. I don't know how to turn. And somehow, between the cut off, I hit a ski jump. I'm 40 feet in the air. I land on my face, breaking my nose, my left ski jams into the icy crust, but I keep rolling. Instant tortion break of my tibia. I'm unconscious for a while. I wake up in a deep, dark valley and realize that I'm in trouble. My face is bloody and my leg is at a really peculiar angle and there is a bulge in my leg with a bone sticking out. After about 20 minutes, convinced that I would die, the ski patrol arrives. They access the situation. They give we a bar with rubber to hold and bite and tell me that they are going to set my leg. They pull down and twist with my foot. Put it in a splint. Excruciating. Get down to the lodge and find out that the ambulance can't make it for at least an hour in the storm. Not good enough for my mom who was drinking hot toddies in the lodge. She can drive through anything. So she takes me on a 40 minute drive to the hospital. Once they cut off my pants. I see the bone sticking out and I pass out. Stitches and a hip cast. I spend the night under a dryer tent for the plaster cast. Mom deals.

The summer of 1973 was a rough one. I had been mauled by a leopard and severely injured. My family took me up to our place in Grand Bend after the hospital to cheer me up. There were amusement rides for kids on the beach. I rode a little boat around a circle. A rainstorm came and everyone ran into the arcade. The operator turned off the ride, and the kids all jumped out. I couldn't, because my leg was heavily bandaged. I remember just floating in a circle and seeing everyone staring at me in the arcade. And that, my friends, was the birth of my ennui.

Acting in commercials

In the incredibly limited world of commercial casting, an actor’s instincts can lead one astray.  If you go into a commercial audition with any intent, method, or technique prepared, you’ve lost the part already.  Those producers, ad people and clients behind the table may tell you that they don’t want anything obvious and that they don’t want to typecast, they’re not consciously lying, but their instincts will always draw them back to the familiar.  They need to make a safe choice to satisfy the needs of the client.  It’s best not to consider any part of the commercial process an “art”.  It’s a business, and you will benefit by thinking of it as very lucrative whoring.  Your aim is to please the client.  The goal is to sell a product and you are a sellable object.   Keep in mind that those people behind the table determining your fate aren’t necessarily artists.  They are a mix of business people whose primary goal is to sell something.  And they aren’t particularly interested in the different or the daring.  The advertising business is, by nature, risk adverse, and while there may be creative elements involved, marketing and numbers always prevail.  The lone voice that wants something unfamiliar and “different” will always be drowned out by the numbers people.  When they tell you that they want something “subtle”, that is defined by commercial terms.  Subtle in advertising would be broad and caricature in any sort of “real” acting challenge.  It’s really about making readily recognizable faces and aping interest in a product.  If they tell you otherwise, they don’t mean it.

So I made sweet, sweet love to a garden gnome this morning. Is that so wrong?

we lay back, panting, amongst the wild strawberries both glistening with sweat, and post-coital dew Not sated, I lunged again. This time it was going to be rough... locked in a passionate embrace, we rolled across the herbaceous border, legs entwined. His short, stubby, powerful pair desperate to pin my long, lean gams. He pulled a fast move, pistoning upwards and forcing me onto my front, face down in the dirt. "Take it all, bitch!" he squealed. This was far from over. For a moment, he had the upper hand. Rooting against me with that hard, sweaty, little nubbin. Grunting disgustingly, I could smell the Jack Daniels on his breath and in his sweat...I used our safe word. It made no difference. Crying "We'll see who sleeps inside tonight", he thrust up into me. I didn't feel it, but he said it was happening. I knew then that I was truly mastered. Like Lady Chatterly with her Lawrencian groom, I was vanquished, taken, and I had no choice but to give in to the primal and earthly desire.

A favourite childhood memory:

My family was vacationing in Florida. My older brother was 11 and my twin and I seven years old. We were in a hotel room watching tv. My father commented that a woman on tv was a "whore". My brothers and I were so taken with the word. "What's a whore, daddy?" He would not explain. We kept repeating it. My mother said "Great Johnny, look what you started." The next night, we went to a diner for dinner. The waitress started to clear the dessert plates and my twin brother yelled "I'm not finished whore!" My mom spit out her coffee and laid her head on the table, helpless with laughter. My dad was shocked and appalled, without a sense of humour.