I Blame, Michael Caine.

The Cockney Bastard

Recently I read Michael Caine’s second memoir. His sequel to the first one he wrote in 1992 thinking his career had gone the way of the dinosaur. I find it marvelous that Michael is one of the few actor’s who was lucky enough to find a resurrection in his career. Just when he thought that the leading man, for which he was famous, was no longer within his grasp, life slapped him on the back and told him to quit whining and get back in front of that camera. Having read both memoirs it’s clear that this is a common theme in his life.  Continuance. Just when things look bleak, life slaps you in the face and says continue. I hope life does the same for me. 

At just about the same time I resigned the leafs of his book to the abyss that is my shelf collection; I lost my day job. Now this job was nothing special, a banal activity to give me a little mula to pay the landlord for my moldy underground shit box, so it was not an emotional loss at all, but it did cause a kind of crisis. Now I had no excuse to stay in Toronto. You see I had always felt kind of out of place in that city. All the stylish folks with their skinny jeans and handle rim glasses seemed to stab their disdain into my chest every time I walked through the cracked streets of downtown. It was like they could tell that my clothes didn’t fit and the body underneath was somehow wrong. I don’t mean wrong in the sense that a malformed beast is wrong. I just mean out of place like a salt shaker on a gourmet chef’s dinner table. I felt useless in the city and, what is more important, that it had no use for me. 

Being cast out from a job I hated and without theatrical prospects; I decided to call it quits. No more was I going to force myself to buy into the ‘Toronto store’. I was going to get rid of the junk I had accumulated through years of stupid struggle and launch into the larger world to find myself, yet again. I have done this many times. Myself seems very tough to find.

Was this a good choice? The jury is still out on that one. I have seen no better theatrical prospect, I have felt even more inadequate in that realm. I know that I am suited for it yet still it feels like French to me. There are moments when the stage feels like second nature and there are moments where it feels like I am a fish swimming up stream. The mantra I have been quoting in my head has been from the example of Michael. Survive. 

You see throughout his life, in the acting realm, he was beset by people who pegged him as this or that. Some called him too feminine to play butch, others called him too erudite to play working class; an utterly absurd claim as he comes from one of the most poverty stricken lives I have ever read about and I am an avid reader of Dickens.  All through this, though, Caine repeated: Survival is key. 

It’s really the only important thing in any artistic life; living with art and not allowing life’s pressures to crush you into a slave. Speaking as someone who suffers the creative journey there are many terrible things that you must contend with. They join conference every night and form demons that haunt you. Demons that sit on a panel that judge you for existing. The key is to survive their nightly trials and just continue marching into that great yonder sunshine; hoping one day to find an oasis that will sustain you.

One sentence that sticks out for me in his long busy life: “Just survive and soon you’ll be the last body in the room and all the jobs will come to you no matter if you are right for them or not.”

Though I am a vehement Atheist as anyone with two eyes, ears and knows me, will tell you, there is one valuable thing to take away from the many legends of the religious. That is the idea of tribulation. A prophet goes through many tests to prove his faith. Sadly, in their existence, this “faith” is in something that is absurd. Never minding that it should be admired in a roundabout way. My faith in coming success, no matter how far, bears striking similarity to these zealots. I know if I remain persistent and send out my cover letters and applications, someone, somewhere, will return and allow me to jump from my life’s motorbike to their minivan. 

A depiction of journey of the artist. 

Survival. 

I blame Michael Caine for causing me such an outlook that keeps me from being satisfied with the mundane. I cant work at a banal job or troll the bars for my future spouse because to me it is my self actualization that needs to be recognized above all else. I cannot feel fulfilled by existing only to exist. I am surviving to create and enrich. 

Curse you, Caine! You cockney bastard.       

Jack Is Not a Bandwagon

Ladies and gentlemen it was a year ago today that Jack Layton died.

Don’t zoom away thinking you are about to read a moaning gushing tome about how great Jack was or how we are all somehow less without his presence. I instead thought I would use this day to discuss what it was like last year at this time for me and my group of friends. Also I thought I’d use this day to talk about Canada since his death. 

My favourite picture of Jack and Olivia. Also what a surprisingly
accurate Tricorder. 

I will concede at the outset of this post that I am a card carrying paying member of the federal and provincial New Democratic Party. I am proud of this but this past year has really put tests upon my activism within the party. I’ll get to that later. First off, let me account what I was doing this time last year. 

It was the tail end of a summer that was a big change for me. I had just undergone a major upheaval and left my simple though stressful existence in Mississauga being a slave to acting training. I had just begun to grow roots in Toronto with a permanent real job, with decent hours and not bad pay. Also I had some semblance of a social life with some very decent buds I had acquired over my many trying years in scholarly struggle and we all were more or less enjoying our summer. Politically, the Conservative majority was fresh and hadn’t yet reared its ugly head of bigotry and corruption that we now see daily in the news (when it is not covering the Olympics or the gaffes of bigoted American politicians and their opinions on female genitalia.) Life was generally good, if a tad boring. 

The boredom of a Toronto summer was broken that morning when I went to CBC online and saw that Jack had passed. At first I was shocked. I knew full well the man was ill and had been following the recent leadership change in the party, but like many, I did not expect it to be a permanent change. I can recall actually screaming out in shock, (well as much as I can scream which sounds more like a short blast from an out of tune trombone then a legitimate cry of anguish. Let’s call it a manly yelp). I immediately flipped on my radio and it was confirmed by the dulcet tones of the lady reporting, I do not recall who, that Jack had indeed died. 

After confirming the event through various mediums I knew I had to get in contact with my NDP brother. I am a Leftist who happens to vote NDP when I am in Canada but In truth I hold beliefs that are generally further Left then the party. Since I am in Canada the NDP is my best and really only choice. On the other hand my NDP brother is a staunch supporter/zealot that has an unfailing faith in the party that I can’t even begin to possess. I knew this death was going to hit him like a ton of bricks. 

After some time I did get in contact with him and sure enough this event had brutalized him. He had already hiked out to Jack’s Danforth office and been mired in the grief and shock that was spewing forth. We met up later in the day and went down to City Hall to join in with the chalk writing and the other BS that was going on. I call these things BS because looking back, it was schlocky and sentimental, but I’ll save those observations for later. Anyway, this day was a tough day for me and a much tougher one for the many other NDPers who were more invested in Jack’s legacy then I. 

The week of Jack Grief passed by and I can recall reading tons of literature about Jack’s efforts for the party and how the NDP had grown under his leadership. This information is common knowledge to all those initiated enough to care so I won’t go into it in much detail. I will say that, I think it is safe to conclude that Jack Layton was the most important force in the NDP since Tommy Douglas. I don’t think this is exaggeration. It is only right that there was such an outpouring of sadness from the NDP. I don’t know if the outpouring from Canada as a whole was as warranted. Up until this point in the decade of Jack’s leadership he had largely been written off as an inconsequential third party candidate that was more like a spaniel nipping at the heals of the big dogs named Conservative and Liberal. Right up to his win as Leader of the Opposition, intelligent members of my circle, still were worried about the strategic vote and probably wasted their votes upon the Liberals in effort to stave off a Conservative clobber. I have no basis of fact for this assumption but many of them shared their opinions in the days before the election. There is no doubt in my mind that this voting out of fear played right into the hand of Harper’s majority. Vive la Belle Province is all I’ll say to that. Suddenly these same people who had been spending their summers thinking in fear were crying about the loss of this spaniel newly crowned ‘great man.’ 

I recall in the week of Layton Grief, I began to savor a sour taste in my mouth. Where were all those chalk writers when we needed them in the election? If we had the many who spent hours in Nathan Phillip’s Square and other places, vote NDP, maybe right at current we would not be under a Harper majority. 

The funeral came and went. It really was a wonderful expression of Canadian unity and one that I witnessed firsthand. My NDP brother and indeed our friends were legitimately broken up by the mass of grief and celebration at this funeral. It truly was a sight. 

Tom Mulcair. The William Riker of the NDP. Complete
with beard.

Memory of this sight dwindled fast for me as in the coming months we as NDPers had a choice to make and it was not going to be easy. At times this choice nearly pulled the party apart. Ed Broadbent deserves a half of the blame for this as he tried with all his might to schism the party and it nearly happened. I was not able to attend the full leadership convention as I was forced to make ends meet, but I was heavily involved in the Twitter sphere during the weekend before I came to witness the finale first hand. I tweeted the hell out of Twitter, beginning the day with 130 tweets to my name and finishing the day with 459 tweets. I was even caught in a small debate about Nathan Cullen that was covered by those voices of middle ground opinion; the CBC convention panel. I remember at one point in the day after the many votes, thinking the NDP had it’s chance really to lead nationally and was now squandering the good will of Canada, the titanic gain of support of the prior months, in a civil war. Though it was a long day, Tom Mulcair was chosen and all seemed like the party was ready to take on the new task of really leading the country (or trying to as much as an opposition party can in a majority government). This was not so. For the support of Canadians suddenly went silent. 

The silence was overwhelming as Tom took the reigns. People had retired from paying attention to politics. All the issues that they had at the funeral that caused a cacophony of passionate cries; party corruption, the environment and economic disparity, couldn’t even get a single ear in Canadian discourse. Scandals flowed like hot lava from the Conservatives. The Jet Scandal demonstrated that Conservatives were doctoring information and concocting blatant lies. Not a peep from those Summer Layton Lovers. Peter McKay and other Conservatives were using government services as their own private serfdom. Where were the Summer Layton Lovers? Still asleep even though Tom railed at them with the furor of Jack. Most egregiously, Conservatives even circumvented democracy with the Robocall scandal. This is a scandal that seemed better at home in the Ukraine during the Orange Revolution then in the snow drifts of Canada. Yet the Summer Layton Lovers were now more concerned with the NHL. There was more concern with shouting down the coach of the Maple Leafs then about a party violating basic rules of democracy. All the goodwill and interest in the direction that Canada was going, fueled by Jack’s death, had disappeared. 

Today we are being inundated with remembrances of Jack’s legacy again. Once again the Summer Layton Lovers have returned to NPS to write their messages of hope upon the 1960s concrete walls. Once again we are treated to the spectacle of 'peace, love and friendship.' This time though it is ingenuous. These same people have shown they do not care about Canada. As the government collapses around them they give each other flowers in remembrance of a man who supposedly died for Canada. They are not celebrating Jack’s legacy. They are defecating all over it. 

Jack Layton was a great man, do not get me wrong. He was a civil servant, a leader who fought for Canadians and their country. He is a man to be inspired by because he stood for what he believed in. He defended the disenfranchised. These are all truths. What he is not, is a political deity. He is not a symbol for the Occupy Movement as I have seen him used for. He is not a symbol for idle protest about nothing coherent but mild uninformed anger, an occurrence all to common now, especially amongst folks of my generation. He is not a bandwagon. 

Dear viewer, reader, or whatever the great fuck you are; I repeat Jack Layton is not a bandwagon. I’ll write it again for extra measure. Jack Layton is not a bandwagon.  OK. I concede that parts of this post are more passionate and angry then they are full of fact. I concede that perhaps I am generalizing. I do this out of frustration with a year of inaction. I say to you if you go out today and join in the remembrance, if you flip on your television and get swept up by the hype, really think about the people who are participating. Do not just join in blindly. Jack is not a Che Guevara like image to be hijacked and placed upon the hipster counterculturist shirts who don’t know what he stood for. He is the first of many in Canada who are (yes this is a cliche, esp. if you have seen the film)  ‘mad as hell and wont take it anymore.’ I implore you come join in the movement to finish Jack’s real legacy of change. Come join in what Stephen Lewis passionately spat at Stephen Harper during the funeral. Come be a participant daily in Canadian politics. Stay connected to the issues and be educated. For God's sake, vote! Don’t just idly bemoan the loss of a charismatic figure. Come be one of those disenfranchised and mad Canadians that have much to do in the toppling of the Conservative tyranny. Be one of those, inspired to use all their fibre in achieving the end of a foul and corrupt majority government. Only then are we honouring Jack’s legacy. 

The Pub

Ladies and Gentleman yesterday I went to the pub. This is not news to anyone really. I often go to the pub, but yesterday I had a realization while enjoying my libation: the Public House is the ultimate place of ideas and thoughts. 

A picture from last night. I am the gentleman on the left performing an impromptu Puccini Aria. I was not aware we should have been armed.

It is all too common in the busy technological world that we roll around in to forget our relationship to history. Sure we read about it through articles and books (if you are one of the dwindling few who still read books). We may watch it pass by on the movie screen with Colin Farrell in a cowboy hat attempting another lame brain accent. In contact with these pseudo historical presentations and these pseudo cultural passion plays, we usually remain distanced from our local history and culture. To remedy this we could go off to local plays, but they are too expensive and usually of such dubious quality that they are not worth the effort. We could go to the library, but then again we would have to grit our teeth and bite our tongue to stop the vomit spurred on by the sea of body odour assaulting the nostrils, wafting from the may patrons that use the place as a hotel. Where do we go then? We go to the local bar. 

I have many local bars surrounding my dank little basement home. The Village Idiot stands not a stone’s throw from my door. This place is a cute little pub that goes on operating as if the 30s never ended, while offering upmarket Belgian beers to attract yuppie art connoisseurs or American tourists who have found themselves abandoned by the red double-decker tour beast that strolls the city. This little place only holds my patronage once, maybe twice, a month. 

Further down the dusty path that is College Street lies the trio of ‘counter culture hangouts,’ Sneaky Dee’s, Toby’s Eatery and Crown and Tiger. The first is a spicy cultural icon that I don’t often enter unless invited to accompany my more hip and with it friends. The second used to hold my patronage often, but then they hiked the terrible chanting rhythms of  that sweaty urban artistic expression called Hip Hop to an astronomical level even the Vulcans can hear it nightly in their neck of the woods, if that planet does indeed exist. (I contend that it does.) The third, is for lack of a better word, a ‘dive’ that revels in the cheap bohemian patron that so often haunts the streets of Kensington Market scavenging sunglasses and copious fedoras before they go to an acoustic concert of moaning folk music. I sometimes find myself in this locale mainly to visit with my less motivated friends who are quite content with their lives slinging Ventis to passersby only to go home to the newest hot thing on HBO (something I can definitely identify with). Alas, none of this trio calls to me in any special voice. 

The voice that calls to me rises up not too far from the T-shaped intersection of Carlton and Parliament. This place is a marvelous medium sized pub that serves excruciatingly good food and brilliant southern Ontario beers by the cask. Stout is the name of this marvelous place. It is a place that has board games at the ready for any socially malignant group of twenty somethings who need an excuse to see their friendzone and share a recent story about her boyfriend ‘not appreciating her.’ It is a place that serves naturally grown produce alongside extremely good meat. It is a place that keeps its music low, except for the occasional Sunday night that a Finnish transient amolodically sings Billy Joel songs that he only knows half the lyrics too. Last night he regaled me and my drinking buddy with his version of the lyric “play me a song Mr. Piano Man - Lai lai diddi kayaee.”  This place is in short a haven. For you see this haven, as I just called it, is the perfect place  for a lengthy conversation. 

This is why we go to the pub. We don’t go to drink, for we can just buy a tall boy of Carling and sit in our room enjoying reality TV. We don’t go to find a person to mate with, for you can go to any club with DJ flipping buttons that trigger a change from one beat to the next. We don’t go to eat because we could go to a real restaurant with a Head Chef that concocts sauces and other things. We go to communicate. We hope it is through our booze filled conversation that we arrive at some answer to what ever question we are asking at the moment. 

Last night I was asking why I feel a need to go to pubs to think? It can’t be just my indeterminable need to live my life ALA one of those actors of old who drank themselves silly, slept all day, then did marvelous Hamlets at night. This is not a recommended way of life as any one who has read anything about Richard Burton will agree (but he did get Liz Taylor; so there might be something to it.) Old dead Welsh actors aside, I go to the pub to think because it is a connection to my and indeed our past. If Carl Jung is right, then there is a collective unconscious that drives us to arrive on the things that we do. There have been Public Houses since Augustus rode around being a golden clad jerk and probably before him under a different name. When we go to one today and sit and watch the booze filled sloppy discourse going on around us, we are partaking in a ritual that reaches into the past. This ritual draws you closer to the ghosts of ancestral drinkers around you or the ghosts of ancestors past that enjoyed your choice of drink or the ghosts of ancestors you bring up in passing conversation. You are paying homage to the thoughts that have flowed before you in that room and any room that ever held two brains in liquor addled talk. 

Dear viewer, reader or whatever the fuck you are I implore you go to your local pub. You will see what forces make your neighborhood tick  and it will show you the importance of people you have never met but also share the common ground in Toronto (or wherever you hale from). Your conversations will inspire you. You will reach a state of heightened passion no matter however you define it. Hell! If nothing else occurs, you will get tanked which is always an advantage. Just as long as you know that you are participating in the oldest exercise in humanity; drinking, talking and thinking. To you I say go to your pub and drink a few for we all have much to do!