Kate of Late

We're simply too big for their gumboots

THE small town life is not for us.

You can take your country livin’. Give us residents of Vancouver's North Shore (pop. 178,000) the bright lights of Dundarave on a Saturday night (before 7:30), and the hustle of Capilano Mall the day before school starts.

Yes, we’re city slickers. We need 12 movies in two cinemas available to us every day after 6, plus weekend matinees. We require the option of slipping into a black turtleneck and beret to take in the latest art-house films, The Smurfs and Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie, in back-to-back, popcorn-fuelled sessions, followed by a feverish dissection of their plots at J.J. Bean.

A reality-based TV series called “Sex and the City of North Vancouver and Districts of North and West Vancouver” would reveal that most of us own at least three pairs of shoes, only two of them ideal for trail walks.

When it comes to sophisticated drinking, we’re way past cosmos and well into mojitos on the North Shore. And if the Raven Pub served a cocktail called Sex on Cates Park Beach, it would arrive garnished locovore-style, with three barnacles and a miniature Deep Cove honey doughnut.

We’re movers and shakers, and not just when we find spiders in our thongs. Our drive to be cool is so intense that Vancouver magazine and Western Living ignore us. They’re intimidated.

So it’s natural that when a metropolitan dame like myself ventures to the north half of Vancouver Island, its uncivilized ways come as rather a shock. My husband Stanley and I went there once for a getaway at a food fest celebrating the region’s produce and cuisine. Like any self-respecting urban couple, we planned to drink the local mead and sample winkleberry chutney and marmot milk brie. I meant to test out any spa amenities that might be on offer -- Botox, anthrax or whatever keeps the women of Vancouver Island moist-cheeked and glistening.

I also had an ulterior motive. A couple of friends were thinking of moving from Alberta to this fast-growing region, a magnet for Calgarians wanting to spend their oil money on a place that remains green in February. I needed to figure out how often I’d want to visit and mooch off them once they made the jump.

Their reasons for retiring there had so far left me cold. “What’s the big attraction?” I’d asked, having once zipped blandly through the area en route to somewhere else. They’d droned on about cross-country skiing, boating, hiking -- all that stuff that’s a dime a dozen in B.C. In this particular spot on the Island, they claimed, they could do it for half the price it would cost on the North Shore, with no bridge traffic or bears.

“Hmm,” I’d said skeptically. I’d suggested they relocate to Lynn Valley instead, assuming they could handle our relentless pace. But their eyes were dancing with fantasies of breakfasting on freshly made whole wheat cinnamon buns, then hopping into their kayaks, one of them playing jazz flute to rambunctious whales while the other trolled for mermaids.

Anyhoo, Stanley and I arrived, in the pouring rain, at a local resort on the edge of nowhere, but not so close to nowhere that you got any kind of view. Now what were we supposed to do? We couldn’t even get the Food Network. Spa amenities? Ha! Even the hot tub was on the fritz.

The people at the nearby food fest were friendly, I’ll grant you that. They didn’t give you the hairy eyeball like they do here in the bigs when you do something unconventional, like eat your restaurant sushi with ketchup and a fork. An awful lot of them seemed to be growing organic food, and making tasty stuff out of it. Nevertheless, I had a hunch that these godforsaken barbarians hadn’t been to a movie in years, and that nobody there was aware that Justin Timberlake was the new Cary Grant.

Nor were there any newspapers available from central Canada (“Heard of it? Hell-o!” I longed to scream). On learning this, I gazed around our hotel’s shop, aghast. Yes, its dusty shelves were crowded with local products, but how much fireweed honey does a person really need, I asked myself. How would these simple-minded, honey-guzzling rubes find out that yellow was in, Oprah was gone, and that Jersey Shore’s The Situation had been bribed to stop wearing Abercrombie & Fitch?

My heart, such as it is, filled with a briny liquid I suspected was pity as I scraped the naturally sweet heirloom tomato seeds off my faux-cashmere socks and trudged off to read the Globe online – assuming I could find WiFi.

It was impossible to imagine how people coped long-term in such primitive conditions. The next day, when the ferry finally delivered us to Horseshoe Bay, I blew the North Shore’s earth a worldly-wise kiss. Home, sweet home.

 

The future is now -- it's also unfriendly

Technology has reached a point where it’s possible to control your entire home using one remote, says Philip Tsui, CEO and Chairman of Skylink Group. “At SkylinkHome, we’ve created an affordable and easy to use system that can control almost everything in your house with a simple remote keypad, the SkylinkPad.” – News release

 Act I

Evening. Middle-aged Woman, rolling a suitcase behind her, enters her dark home and walks into her kitchen as the telephone rings. She squints suspiciously at the call display, then presses speakerphone so she can speak to the caller while taking off her coat.

 Woman: Hello?

 Man: Hi, hon, welcome home! The kids and I just got to Whistler, we’re at Earls, and we’ve ordered our appetizers. Sorry we aren’t there to greet you, but a free weekend here was too good an opportunity to miss. Hey, there’s a surprise for you! While you were away, I bought SkylinkHome’s Wireless Control System! So instead of going around turning on lights, turning on the TV, etcetera, you can just sit down in the leather chair and press a few buttons and everything will be done for you! I’ve already recycled all the other remotes so there will be way less clutter. It’s really easy, and I’ve left the remote plugged into the wall by the coffee table and the instruction manual beside it. Oh – our food just arrived – gotta go! Call you later! (Click. Ring tone)

Woman: What the %$#&@?

Woman walks into the unlit living room, sees remote on coffee table. It consists of a white rectangle featuring the numbers 1 to 10, and several icons. She circles it nervously. A large, ice-cold tear forms and rolls down one cheek.

Woman: (Taking off glasses, staring at remote) Is there no end to his treachery?

Woman attempts to turn on lamp so she can read remote. Lamp remains dark. She tries to turn on various floor lamps, table lamps, and overhead lamps, with no success. She seizes remote and glares at it.

Woman: Oh. My. God!

Woman picks up small, thin handbook, gives it the death stare. She grabs the remote and pokes at an icon. Outside the house, the garage door opens with a clunk.

Woman: S---!

Woman presses another button. Fireplace ignites. Woman presses another button. Ceiling fan whirs to life. Woman presses another button. Hip-hop music surges from the basement.

 Woman: (Seizes telephone, dials Stanley’s cellphone) Hello? Hello? Ah, crap, voicemail. Stanley! How do I turn the m-----------g lights on with this @#$%^… Jeez, does it even turn on the coffeemaker in the basement? I smell burning coffee grounds!

Woman slams down phone, stumbles downstairs, where coffee maker, pressed up against a sleeping bag, has ignited a small fire. Woman douses flame with nearby tub of cider vinegar, unplugs coffee maker, throws it on the laundry room floor. She stabs a finger at remote, still searching for light. Washer begins filling with water for a large load as basement fan surges into action. Music switches to Alabama country station, Down-Home Patriots Hour.

Bama Country 98.9 radio host: Thet’s right, Toby Keith, let’s brang our boys and girls right home, whirr they be-long. Comin’ up, Brooks & Dunn’s Only in America. Whoo-ee!

Woman shoves the remote in her pocket, covers her ears and charges upstairs.

Woman: (Incredible Hulk-style) Arrrrrrgggghhhh!

Woman desperately presses remote again. Outdoor lights burst on. Woman staggers onto the deck, holds the handbook under the back porch light, squinting ferociously.

Woman: F---! It’s in Korean! (Seizing the phone, dialing. Yelling over the household din) Hello, Stanley? What, voicemail again? Stanley, if you value your cojones whatsoever you will pick up this damn phone right now and tell me how to turn the m-----------g lights on before I come up there and –”

Woman has been randomly pressing buttons on the remote. Garage door rises, closes, rises, closes, rises, closes. Living-room radio bursts on in the middle of a CBC radio documentary about animal castration techniques, with the sound of unsuspecting bulls mooing in the background.

CBC radio journalist: (Perkily) …but Merle Witherspoon disagrees. He’s the owner of Mulespittle Creek Cattle Ranch, an hour’s drive north of Saskatoon, or “60 minutes, as the cow flies,” as Witherspoon puts it. He uses old school techniques but always hires a local polka band to relax the steers on what he calls “de-nackering day” …

Radio blares a few stanzas of The Chicken Dance over the clamour of outraged bulls being turned into steers. Woman screams, runs out of the house and into the garage, where the door is still going up and down. Remembering that she needs something, she turns to re-enter the house, but finds the remote has locked it. She throws the remote at a curious raccoon, who begins to play with it and instantly closes the garage door, turns on the house lights and turns off both stereos, but Woman is long gone, lurching down the road in the darkness. Woman is later located at Mulespittle Creek Cattle Ranch, happy in her work.

 

 

 

 

Parking your ego in full view

WHEN did we start to live so loud? What made us decide that attention was the ultimate commodity?

Maybe it’s another unfortunate modern phenomenon that we can blame on Madonna. Warren Beatty said of her, in the documentary Truth or Dare: “She doesn’t want to live off-camera, much less talk. There’s nothing to say off-camera.” Back then, in 1991, we marveled at Madonna’s obsession with being in the public eye. Now countless millions have caught her disease.

Traditional and social media have invited us to unburden ourselves on a mass scale, and many of us have accepted with pleasure. As a columnist and blogger, of course, I seek an audience every week. This summer, my random acquaintances have also had the questionable thrill of watching Stanley’s photographic updates on the building of our new patio on Facebook.

Do they care? Highly doubtful. But it’s summertime, and they’re bored, and – well, honestly, who can explain why people look at these things? Stanley also posts pictures of meats he’s cooked that he believes are stupendous. If any of his FB friends respond, la di da, he’s made a connection.

But is it the fault of the media, or is there something else at work to make so many of us prefer the thought that we are living in a reality TV series, blog or podcast to actual reality? Why are we madly broadcasting data about our lives and interests, like we’re paparazzi stalking ourselves? Next thing you know, we’ll be hacking into our own telephone lines, like reporters at the scandalous Daily Mail, in an effort to unearth something vaguely titillating. When we find nothing there, my best guess is that we’ll report on it anyway.

That’s because over-sharing personal information, no matter its international relevance, is now the norm. In 2009, for instance, one high-profile blogger in the U.S. mentioned in a tweet that she was sitting in a business meeting thankful that she was having a miscarriage because it would be an awful lot of trouble to get an abortion in Wisconsin. People who had tuned in for Penelope Trunk’s usual “Brazen Careerist” advice were obviously taken aback.

Numerous readers reviled her for this disclosure, for a variety of reasons. In a later blog, Trunk wrote that those who commented said they felt the topic was gross, her cavalier attitude was gross, and accidentally getting pregnant was gross, or something along that line.

Quizzed by CNN about her decision to bestow this intimate information on strangers, she said, “I think we each decide when (a subject is) personal…. I actually thought a miscarriage at work was no great shakes.” Since “no great shakes” means unexceptional, you sort-of wonder why she thought it was worth tweeting.

Trunk seems to be just another proponent of the view that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, confidently defending on TV her belief that “you should be your real self at work,” posting her CNN clip on her blog, and boasting afterward about how good her hair looked during the interview. Evidently, being your “real self” means making your every physical act and concern general knowledge. Ladies and gents, I suppose this means that in 2011, you may all pass wind at your desks. Luckily, I work by myself, so that isn’t an issue for me.

The trouble with constantly seeking the spotlight, however, is that you tend to attract censure. Comedian Harris Wittels, for example, has launched a blog documenting the most heinous examples of what he calls the Twitter “#Humblebrag.” Wittels reserves the term humblebrag for celebrities who use Twitter to feign modesty while stroking their own egos.

He cites parties like Fox News legal pundit Greta Van Susteren, who tweeted the world that she’d just “accidentally pocket-dialed the Pentagon,” and Lindsay Lohan (natch!), who wrote, “Omg, I’m so embarrassed, paparazzi just blinded me with flashes again, as I was walking into dinner. They pushed me and I tripped :( hurt…”

Waning movie stars like Lohan are predictable sources of the humblebrag, as are wannabe movie stars. “No makeup on, hair’s not done, toothpaste stains down the front of my shirt, pretty sure I’m not wearing deodorant. Still get hit on. Sigh,” wrote one Trish Adams, who appears to have once had a role in The Town Christmas Forgot.

“I’m truly humbled you follow my tweets,” wrote evangelical Christian minister Rick Warren. “I pray they enrich your life & strengthen your ministry. God bless all 200,000 of you!”

Warren likely assumed that God was one of his 200,000 twerps and would therefore heed his prayer. In a world that so heartily endorses narcissism, though, that’s an easy mistake to make.

 

 

 

 

 

Talk about fumbling the ball

WE’VE all experienced small-scale failures. We’ve turned out to be the wrong choice for the job; the person we really liked really didn’t like us; we blew a robust A-flat at practice when a tender D-major was called for. Our jam didn’t gel.

These are small, accidental embarrassments, however. Few of us lay ourselves blithely, and apparently fearlessly, on the track in front of an oncoming train. I’m speaking, of course, of the crazy few in our society who decide to get up on stage in front of a live audience. 

Of all our culture’s common fears and phobias – spiders, public speaking, being stuck in a sweltering elevator with Ann Coulter – staging a public performance that flops has to rank near the top.

It’s excruciating to imagine that even your most stellar efforts might not spark an iota of interest. It’s bad when almost no one shows up, worse still when the few who shelled out for tickets leave disappointed.

Which brings us to a small-town mini-Fringe festival I recently attended in Wasagaming, Manitoba. This charming community on the shores of Clear Lake, three hours’ drive northwest of Winnipeg, had decided to host its first modest theatre festival featuring a dozen acts left over from the Peg’s recent Fringe. Performances would take place in several small venues, including a local restaurant and lounge called the Wigwam, a kitschy log building known for its pancakes.

It was an excellent plan. It would give tourists something to do over several nights in this pleasant, quiet place, beyond barbecuing hot dogs and playing gin rummy. The trouble lay in the execution.

The first night, for example, the beer tent opened with no beer available. The other reason to sit in a beer tent – a lively ambience – was also missing, as there were no lights on any of the tables lined up in front of the Porta-Potties. If you and your party wished to enjoy not drinking beer in the beer tent, you would have had to pay two dollars apiece for the privilege of sitting by yourselves in the dark and the heat, wishing there was beer.

Meanwhile, the Winnipeg-based organizers had made certain to give out attractive festival posters and flyers to local businesses. Unfortunately, they listed the shows but did not say where or when they would each take place, or where tickets could be purchased. It eventually emerged that potential audience members were supposed to get these crucial details at a spot whose location only seemed to be available through word of mouth.

One of my companions was a veteran actor whose show was appearing at the festival, so he spent several unpaid hours putting up posters containing specific details for his group’s play. Performers, you see, don’t get paid to appear at Fringes or their offshoots. They just get the revenue from ticket sales, so poor turnout has a distinct effect.

Undaunted by the forbidding lack of momentum for the mini-fringe, we went to see a one-person show by an Englishwoman who had travelled all the way from her country to appear at Fringes across ours. No doubt she’ll be regaling the sophisticates back in Jolly Ol’ E. with the tale of how she performed in a log cabin in the colonies amid the clamour of kitchen staff stacking plates and gusts of karaoke from the adjacent lounge. So much for this actor’s attempt to re-enact the life of Diana Spencer as if she had married into a family of mobsters rather than royals. The other international performers from New York City and Australia doubtless also have embarrassing anecdotes about inept Canuckleheads to take home, if they can ever afford to return.

Before attending a later show at the Wigwam by another Englishman who had trekked over an ocean to tell his hour-long tale, we told festival volunteers that the behind-the-scenes commotion at the venue was disrespectful to the performers and disastrous for the audience. “Well, it is an operating restaurant,” one of them replied coldly.

Against the background noise of the Wigwam, my friend and I found it impossible to fully focus on the actor’s intriguing fact-based story about teaching slam poetry to inmates who had been incarcerated for murder and sex crimes. We could only hope that the cacophony audible every time the bar doors opened during his one-man show reminded the actor nostalgically of prison riots.

The three performances we saw garnered modest audiences of 10 to 20-odd. Somehow a handful of intrepid vacationers had managed to ferret out the information they needed, navigate unlit walkways to the darker venues, tolerate incompetent volunteers, overlook gauche venue staff, and get something out of this badly organized festival debut.

The event, however, reminded me once again that the most courageous people in the world are not extreme sports nuts or practitioners of Jackass-style stunts. They’re live performers, who constantly put their egos on the line, relying on support that can sometimes be as flimsy and unreliable as they got last weekend in Wasagaming. That takes true grit.