don't smoke 

last night i saw the best show

So me and Kevvy roll in Theatre Network in a haze of Mary Jane's Perfume, Darren Hagen and the fabulous Katerina in tow. Small talk and hello hi later, the play starts. It's TRUE WEST, the play that macho acting students were made to love. And it was great. Inventive within but true to the heart of the piece.

What is it about, you ask?

It's about the internal condition of Sam Shepard's mind. The constant tug of war between the criminal and the intellectual.

In more practical terms, its about these two brothers who are wrecking their Mom's house.

Maybe it's about class warfare in the US of A circa 1970's. Have and have nots.

Maybe it's about the struggle of hamsters to be taken seriously as pets of the over 10 demographic. Art is what you make it. I guess.

Anyhow, the party raged on and on. And on. Kevvy began speaking french to a lovely large nosed girl. Jesse was there and drunk as a skunk. I ate at the toast bar.

(I forgot how much i love cheese whiz. It's so FUCKING GOOD. )

All that was missing was my man Fem. Where'd that guy go?

I am asshole, hear me roar

So okay. Here's what happened.

I was chilling in the Next Act with Kevin and my sister Carley. I was eating a steak sandwich and drinking too much red wine. And I could not help but notice a girl I knew at the next table. She was hard to miss, because she was telling a loud story.

About me.

And I knew this girl. We had a rather unfortunate encounter and then a better one months later. She was a nice enough girl, and I had nothing at all against her. The feeling was not mutual. She was all -

"Yeah BoyGroove is totally going to Toronto, that Craddock, he is an asshole, but he is so brilliant. I regret sleeping with him, cause he's such an asshole, but he is brilliant."

It was an odd mixture of flattered and offended I was feeling. I was working on a deal for BG in Toronto, but it was far from sealed. I found it funny that she knew about it. I found the whole thing funny, really, which I guess, makes me an asshole.

I was looking over at the table quite a little bit, willing her to notice me. A thick red coat stood in our way. But the guy she was sitting with kept looking over. I couldn't tell if he recognized me, or was just thinking "why is this asshole staring at my girlfriend?" And I was an asshole. You could tell by the loud story.

"What an asshole" she kept saying, and it's hard to argue with. I can be, have been, and probably by the time you read this, I will have acted like an asshole once again. What can I say? It's just the way I am.

Carley and Kevin were well apprised of my situation. They went outside to smoke, but they promised to come back if I needed backup. Minutes later, I did.

The girl and her party were leaving the bar, and when she got up, our eyes met. Being an asshole, I nodded slowly to tell her, yes, yes I did hear it all. I heard the whole thing.

And man did she apologize. She apologized so much, it was embarrassing. She cried even. I found myself unable to asshole, instead hugging her and telling her I was sorry, and she told me why I was an asshole (check the bottom for why I was an asshole), and I said I was sorry for that.

In a way, it was great. Because who ever gets to over hear the kind of story people tell about them when they aren't around. It was educational.

People say I'm an asshole. Fair.

People say I'm brilliant. Flattering.

I am sure some people say one part and not the other. I don't know how many of which camp, and I never will. I don't have time to think about that stuff. All I can say to the haters is: keep complaining. Could well be I don't like you either. And to the lovers, all my love, for it does beat strong and fully in my asshole heart.


Why I was an asshole:

(okay, so about two years after we had our fling, apparently I saw her at a bar. Apparently I went to talk to her. ((I say apparently, for I have no memory of this whatsoever)) She told me she was married and I didn't talk to her much after that, probably because I was worried her husband wouldn't like me. Husbands don't like me. Mothers, however, LOVE ME. So she felt I saw her as a sexual object, cause I didn't talk as much to her married self, and I guess I did, cause we spent a very short time together, in which we mostly had sex. So I am an asshole, in this and other things. If I haven't said sorry yet, I probably will. I apologize roughly twice as much as I offend people. I apologize like a british woman with a large knapsack. I apologize more than the average canadian, and that's saying something. so i am gonna stop apologizing right now, and the first step, is that i am gonna stop being an asshole.

right now.

okay, now.

okay.....now. )

Also - the guy beside her said he recognized me, but he didn't warn the girl. So who's an asshole now?

That was kind of an asshole thing to say.

Sorry.

Last Night

Last Night's show was such a resounding success, that we decided to party a little extra hard last night. And this is why I write to you from a hospital bed, where I am getting my blood supply replaced.

The RFT limo picked up around back, like usual. But instead of a few cocktails in the Liquid Lounges secret VIP room, as is our wont, Kevin suggested somthing a bit different. "Rome is burning," he said "let's be fiddlers".

Before we knew it, we were bundling onto a last minute flight to New York City, centre of the new falling Empire. It's a three hour flight, even at the speeds Jules likes to push the RFT jet to, but the time change was on our side and the party was just getting going when we got there. Kein threw a sweaty handful of money at the cabie and said "Take us to the best place, containing the worst people" Soon we were strolling into the viper club, Joey all the while trying to snort coke off his own beard.

Jules, who is recently single, soon found a bachelorette party, and began to dominate it with his sass. Kevin began to have a freestyle jam with rapper Buck 65, Joey found a table of Amish, who accepted him as their own, and I sidled into a booth with Senator Hillary Clinton, who had a bit too much to drink.

"it's fucked. it's all so fucked" whined Hillary. " so I'm concentrating on video game violence. It's something manageable" When I asked her if she was planning to run for president on the democratic ticket in 2008, she said "I will if you kiss me."

What can I say. I did it for their country.

like a heavy hat

Entropy is a part of life. It is only natural that my laptop, after four years of faithful service seems a bit slow now and is plainly missing the V key. It is only natural that after 33 years of drinking daily and practicing a diet of "Selective Atkins" I should find myself lazy and couchful. Things Fall Apart.

It is also natural that the state of the world should depress me. Here we are with all the information in the world available, and news remains bad. We are more enlightened and aware of how the bastards are fucking us and we do nothing. Half of us even go out of our way to help them out. It's naturally depressing, the same way that Lucky Charms are magically delicious. It is just so, and we'd worry if it wasn't.

Anyhow.

The other morning I was rewatching a great film "As Good as it Gets" with Jack Nicholson and Helent Hunt and so forth, and I cried like a baby. And it wasn't that the performances and writing were so good,, though they were. And it wasn't that I was high on a superdose of someone else's Wellbutrin. It was the part where Helen Hunt finally gets a doctor for her sick kid and she's so grateful. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. This is what humans want, more than anything. They want their kids to be okay, happy and healthy. It's a simple thing to want, and the resources exist, so why is it so hard for so many parents to maintain this?

At the same time, I'd like to have a nice car. Like, a really nice car. Like a Tiburon maybe.

Greetings

So I thought, I know my life is strange. But is it strange enough to entertain normal people?

This was the question I mused to myself, as I rustled my way out of the four-way I was having and headed to the fridge for a glass of soy milk. Kevin remarked, life is life, man. All people can relate to all experience, because all people are basically human, dealing with basically human stories, typed out in the form of lives. I though that was astutely put, especially since his mouth was full of cheerleader breast at the time.

I started making a lettuce sandwich. I used my special plastic lettuce knife, because I hate lettuce rust. I am using the word hate now. I feel that strongly.

Lettuce is one of those things that takes more calories to digest than you get from eating it. I feel that way about mainstream television. It takes more than it gives. Commercials are like lettuce rust, fucking up the enjoyment of a perfectly good FamilyGuy sandwich.

The noises are getting intense in the other room. It's affecting my sandwich making. I better go help out. God hates a coward.

Political Semi-Thought

The Arab world is up in arms over a lame comic strip. Comedy - 1. World - 0.

Did you hear. The whole arab world got mad at denmark.


There was this political comic, and they drew a picture of mohammed, the muslim jesus, wearing a bomb for a turban. Now this is offensive to muslims for a few reasons. First, you aren't supposed to draw Mohammed. This is a rule. We have Jesus wrestling Santa on South Park, but this is not how the muslims roll. It's a craven image thing.

Also, and more importantly, it sure generalizes. It sure makes no distinction between muslims and muslim extremists who make jihad. Moderate muslims are insulted. They feel distrusted by a world that distrusts them.

And they are not lazy about their outrage. The internet says a danish dairy is already going out of business cause they can't sell thier cheese. Terror groups are warning the danish to leave all arab countries. For a sixth of the world, all things danish are out. Even toaster danish.
Now I am all for respecting people and all that. But I am even more for respecting the freedom of the press. Governments don't tell the press what to print, even if it's bad for say, international peace. In turn, government's views and policies are not necassarily reflected by the press.
So all these other European capitals printed the cartoon as a gesture to international freedom of the press. So naturally the arabs can't get mad at all of Europe, right? Wrong. Their anger cup runneth over and there's lots for everybody.

So what is going on here?

Here in North America, we like how we do things. We even like to tell other countries to do things more like us. But what is the line between cultural relativism and plain old right and wrong?

Like the Taleban. I know muslims feel differently about women's rights than many non-Cathlolic North Americans. But executing a woman for showing her ankles. I can't get behind that. I can't just say, oh that's just the custom. It's not like putting mayonaise on french fries. That shit is WRONG.

I feel the same way about threatening artists who speak their mind. If you want beauty, if you want there to be landscapes and sit coms and books about how the war affected Grandpa, you have the other stuff too. You have to have the art that makes you mad. And you're not allowed to burn the books, or kill the writers. I have read a lot of Salmon Rushdie since the hit was put out on him, and I thank Odin they didn't get him. He is awesome.

At the same time, the Arab world has many many valid beefs. I have long felt for the Palestinians, and being a lover of intellectual comedy, I like jews better than most.
I like intellectual comedy so much, that I must look askance at a comic with Mohommed wearing a bomb. It's kind of obvious, isn't it? Plainly offensive, judging from the reaction. So while I judge your joke as being poor, perhaps even worthy of a ring of shame, I do not beleive everyday Danes should face jihad over it. It's not their fault.

But on the side of the Arab world, most of their newspapers reflect no opinion besides the government's. Thus a cartoon in the paper is the equivilent to them of being included in an "axis of evil" speech. Maybe the key is more freedom of the press in the Arab world.

That way rich people could buy the papers and influence public opinion fair and square. Just like we do here.