"I am, a lonely poet. Naked. Virginal. Prostate. Beckoning. Heeding. Dwelling in a deep, foreboding forest of darkness. Cawing like a crow, a raven, a dark bird of some kind...I am...Caw-caw, Caw-Caw I am nothing! I lunge into the flesh of the city beak first, nibbling at this urbanscape called Montreal. Looking for scraps...but hark, what is this light on the horizon?"
I shit you not, that quote is hanging next to a painting here at the Theatre. I think its one of Alain's quotes from his Cafe Cafe play series. I read it when coming home tipsy last night, tore it off the wall and decided to share it with you. No, I do not feel like a crow.
So it's 11:10am, my eyes are full of sleep, my stomach is full of poutine and I'm slightly hung over. I tried to write about day two last night but good writing rarely happens when you're falling asleep at the keyboard.
As I write this, I can hear Mark Louch downstairs preparing the space for today's festivities. Its a busy day here at Theatre Ste. Catherine. First, there is a birthday for Adele, Alain's beautiful baby girl. My hope is to get this blog written before the screaming children come flying in. Then there are two rehearsals taking place later this afternoon, and both are for shows I will be in. However, Squeegee Nights, the one that goes up in 4 days, is the one I will NOT be attending. How does this make sense? It kinda doesn't. But my scene partner from Moans will be leaving for a few weeks, so we are trying to cram in as much rehearsal before she leaves as humanly possible. On Monday, the mad dash to get Squeegee Nights up on stage will begin. I just vomited in my mouth thinking about it. Its going to be hectic!
After the rehearsals, Sunday Night Improv, the weekly improv series here will take place and I hope to be one of the performers tonight. The show is elimination style, with the audience choosing who goes and who stays. The last time I was in town, early July 2010, I participated and won. When I was in high school, improv was sorta my thing. I was a hyperactive class clown and it acted as a means to channel my manic energy. As I got older, and acting became a more serious pursuit, improv took a back seat to intense, brooding drama and choreographed sketch comedy. It was only in 2008, when UNIT 102 (my little loft theatre in Parkdale) was a home to Toronto's improv darlings PROJECTproject and a plethora of other groups, did improv come roaring back into my life. It was inspiring to watch and man, did it look fun. But it was also really intimidating. So when I periodically got invited to perform in improv nights, I politely declined. It had been years, the active performers so good, that I really didn't' think I could match up. Once, during a PB&J show (Pat Thorton, Bob Banks and Jason De Rosse' pro-pot comedy team) I fell asleep during an improv set.
The story goes: PB&J wanted to do a comedy show where audience members can light up joints during the performance. Being an underground theatre venue, and I being a fan of doing that which other venues could not, I agreed to let them host the night at 102. And they were wild, let me tell you. I remember there being a joint the size of my forearm being passed around at one point. The guys invited me to do a guest spot and so I did. When I finished my set, I climbed off the stage and began to drink and smoke with the audience. What I didn't know, was that the guys planned on getting all the people who performed that night back up on stage for a final jam session. When they called us up, I was three-sheets to the wind. My eyes were pretty much clamped shut and I was slurring like a drunken hockey mom. I was awful, I couldn't pick up anything being thrown at me, I couldn't even really follow the stage action. I stood clinging to the back wall hoping to remain anonymous. At one point, a scene was happening in front of me, and being lost in thought, I wasn't really paying attention to it. Suddenly, Julie Dumais (a wonderful improviser and friend) grabbed my arm and said, "Doctor, what do you make of it?" pulling me into the scene. I had not a clue what the scene was about, but there was Pat Thorton, talking like a retarded baby and miming playing with his cock. What the fuck was going on? I don't' remember what I said, something about checking his temperature and I bolted off into the back stage area and promptly fell unconscious.
So as you can imagine, this soured my desire to engage in further improv nights. Not that it was a fair representation of my abilities, its rare that I consume a mickey of rum and a joint the size of my head before a performance. But it certainly had a psychological effect. So I think for tonight, I'll just have a couple bottles of beers.
Day 2 was defined by work. I had an extended 2pm-7pm rehearsal with Gecko and Robin. The scene we worked on is one where I verbally abuse my girlfriend and threaten to punch her in the face. Its pretty intense and Robin wanted to start getting us comfortable with the physicality of the scene. Gecko is a really great actor and we've already started to find a comfort with one another. To be honest, I can be kinda scary when asked to be and when things started getting realer, I began to see the fear in her eyes. But after every take, no matter how much I manhandled her, whenever I asked if what I had done was too much or if what took place was ok, Gekko would smile and say, "yeah". In my experience, its rare to get to that place in so short a time and its actually really exciting.
I may not have mentioned this, but MOANS is a musical. And I have a solo song. This may surprise some, but I am super duper self conscious about singing. Rapping, not so much anymore, I'll do that anytime I'm asked (just ask my friends who are sick of it). But singing, GAH. The last time I sang in a theatrical context was high school, when I played James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause The Musical. In that production, I had a solo. It was Van Morrison's Vehicle. During one of my rehearsals, I was letting out the sounds of herniated cat which prompted my director to come up to me. He tapped me on the chest and said, "Luis, you're singing from here." He then lowered his hand and tapped me on the balls. "I need you to start singing from here." This event is probably why Black Swan had such a profound impact on me. Anywho, our rehearsal had wrapped, Robin turned to Gecko and said, "ok, time to work on your song."
Gecko: Uh, do we have the music?
Robin: No. Do it accupella.
Gecko: Seriously?
Robin: Yeah, you know it. Belt it out, girl.
Gecko:But I need to feel the beat...
Robin:Here's a tambourine. Lets go.
Gecko turned to me and gave me a half smile. Now let me be perfectly honest, what I was watching was my worst nightmare made real. Had it been me up there, asked to sing MY song without the music and a tambourine, I would have burst into tears. And that's the thing, I will probably have to do just that. Suddenly and without warning, Luis is well out of his comfort zone. And that's exactly what I think needs to happen. Not that Gecko needs to worry. She killed that song, with just a tambourine and some good ol' fashioned chutzpah. I clapped in the audience, ignoring theatre protocol that says you should never clap during rehearsals. But I had to, it was awesome. I have a lot of work to do.
My song incidentally is entitled, "Man of the Year". Its a really wicked song that has a David Byrne/Talking Head vibe which is great as I have been obsessed with the Talking Head's "Stop Making Sense" (if you have never watched that live concert, do yourself a favour). Its supposed to be sexy and raw. I guess its time to remember what I learned in High School and sing from my balls. I think for colour I'll throw my dick into the mix as well.
The night ended with me visiting Cassandra and Julia, my two beloved theatre friends from back in my York University days. We sat and reminisced and I talked about, what else, GIRLS. Apparently my love life is amusing when you have the luxury to sit outside of it. They concluded that I am a whiny prick who needs to shut up and enjoy the fact that I have girl problems at all. Many don't and wish they did. I guess. Sometimes I wish I was androgynous and asexual. Then I wouldn't be so needy, so charged, so distracted. But then I couldn't sing from my balls. So I guess all is as it should be.
As a final note, the rise of poutine in Toronto has made the charm of eating poutine here negligible. With Poutini's, Smokes Poutinarie, Stampede bison grill and KFC giving me a constant flow of curds and gravy, the once Montreal exclusive staple possesses very little appeal. I bought one last night as I walked home and upon eating it didn't' get that sensation that I was having something unique and culturally linked. I think today I will go to Shwartz and get me a smoked meat. That should do the trick. Man, I am such a tourist, eh?
Culturally digestive,
That Blogging Bastard
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
The Great Montreal Theatre Escape: Day 1
Dearest and most beloved reader,
Today marks day one of a 25 day journey to the Great Quebec City known in some quarters as "Montreal". For the next 25 days you will be treated to my many madcap adventures as I seek enlightenment as Artist-In-Residence at the Nouveau Theatre Ste-Catherine. Please be advised that what you are about read may be the product of a body polluted with cheap steamed hot dogs, $2 late night chow mien, beers with images of polar bears printed on their labels, and smoked meat sandwiches served with large dill pickles and dark cherry pop. You have been warned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outside my plane window I can glimpse heaven. It is beautiful even though a little cliche. Bright sun, Blue to every corner of the earth and clouds lining the open air beneath me like cotton swabs. High above Toronto heading to Montreal, I can only guess at where the next few weeks will take me. Artist-in-residence or, as Alain likes to call it, "Poet-In-Residence". I'm not sure if I'm a poet really. I am prone to writing short and ethereal pieces of writing from time to time, sure, but whether or not these words are indeed "poetic" is really not for me to decide. I tend to think they are honest at best, smug at worse. But hey, call me what you will.
For those who don't know, I am in Montreal for the next three and a half weeks, sleeping at the Nouveau St. Catherine performing in plays, conducting workshops and writing a show for the Toronto Fringe Festival. It is an exciting time, one marked by a true desire to shed my current life for a while as I attempt to recharge depleted batteries corroded with acid. I have amassed a vast collection of distractions at home and my trip here is an attempt to avert my drooling gaze, if for only a moment. I have been in serious regression mode as of late and have tired many of my friends with persistent rants about it. The fact that I can't write a blog in any sort of timely manner has been one of the pronounced effects.
Yes, I promised about a quadrillion times to write Girls Part 2. And yes, there has been an actual response from readers to produce that blog. (and I thank you all for your enthusiasm)
GIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLS. Girls. Girls. girls. g.i.r.l.s.
The word has lost all meaning to me.
The truth is I tried to write it (and this is no excuse for my poor blog production) and twice it was accidentally erased. I mean, I had gone through all of grade 7 and 8 on that second write. But the truth was, even with the blog half written, I was never really happy with it. To be honest, I'm sick of girls. Completely and utterly sick. Puke inducing, fever increasing, pus spouting, stay at home and suck down mama's homemade chicken broth kind o' SICK. Girls have been the only thing I've thought about for the last six months. They are the only thing I ever think about. And in trying to relate my early experiences with them here, I realize I was never any good at understanding them in the first place. It can be said that in some respects I have grown wiser but in regards to my understanding of women? Murky at best. Nothing is as it seems, nothing is what you wish it to be and (and this one applies to most things in life) nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. I love and I bleed and I let the wind pull me off and over the mountain and into the watery rocks below. Where I'll be skewered is any one's guess but skewered I will be. To UNDERSTAND women, to understand any one's motivations really, is well beyond my current capabilities. I can only hope to understand myself and even that is a work in progress. So enough with the women already, as beautiful and mysterious as they may be! My intention here is to get shit done. To work as an artist instead of working as a hotel worker or a beer vendor. Not that I mind working those jobs; they are fine ways to piece together some scratch. But sometimes I forget about the Me that I enjoy, the one that works towards creating something meaningful. The Me that tries to dance with the invisible forces we all know are shaking their booty on the dance floor beneath the surface of our lives, while our cool selves stand slouched against the gymnasium wall. Too cool to dance, too cool to care. I want to find that ME on the hooker laden streets of St. Catherine and St. Laurent as the lights from Pussy Corp (the brothel that sits across the theatre) glint through my bedroom window. I want to sit him down and remind him that he still exists.
The sun is so bright that it glints off my Steam Whistle can like a lit match. (and yes, there is free alcohol on this flight and although its not even noon, I'm on my second). Over the next few weeks I will be sharing my adventures here if only to remember them as nights of Boreal Blonde and St. Ambroise Rouge claw their way into my memory like a sandstorm kicking up a dusty haze. No doubt I will find something here. Perhaps we can even discover it together.
When I land, I'll have three hours to get to the theatre and rehearse MOANS, a drama written by Alain Mercieca and directed by Robin Henderson. I have yet to meet my cast but already I feel like they are good friends. I'm not sure why, but I somehow know that they will be.
However, Moans opens on Feb. 18th and isn't the first show I'm doing while here. Squeegee Nights, another Alain penned script, opens Feb. 3rd, a week from today. Its a show I did in 2006 at Theatre 314, a small underground space at the corner of St. Laurent and Des Pins. This means nothing, I can barely remember the last 25 minutes. Its like starting from scratch and we only have three days of rehearsal before getting it up in front of an audience. Yeah, I'm kinda freaking out about it. But this is working with Alain and I'm accustomed to throwing myself into the fire.
How far we have come and yet so much remains the same.
Moving from the piecemeal stage of a converted loft to the three-story fully licenced Theatre St. Catherine, I'm really excited for Alain and Mark Louch. They have created something beautiful here.
I realize there is a large spectrum of accomplishment within the sphere of anonymity, and within that spectrum I'm starting to feel quite accomplished. I am like the Bobby De neiro of unknown and unimportant and although this comes with no tangible award and serves no meaningful distinction, I wear this invisible badge proudly. I think it's the little delusions that add up to create our own personal veils of reality. The big delusions are just too phony and too easily crumpled like tissue paper. We need the strong binding of interconnected little lies to make it
durable. Delusion that you can feel between your finger and thumb.
Incidentally, urinating on a plane is an odd sensation. The seemingly mundane act of pissing hundreds of miles above the ground amazes me. Not only have we mastered flight, but we've mastered flight while including the comforts of alcohol, defecation and media consumption. Oh humanity, will you ever cease to amaze?
Now you may be wondering, how did a broke-ass "poet" ever find himself suited up and on a Porter flight? Well it turns out the hotel I work for gets discount flights and apparently this discount means that for $15 more I can fly to Montreal in an hour rather than sit cramped on a bus for eight hours. And if you ever flown on Porter, you will know that this is a significant upgrade indeed. Free coffee+free booze+ free Wi-Fi= free boner. It's almost as heavenly as the clouds billowing outside my window. Almost.
Oh. Apparently the flight is about to land. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm away, that I'm excited and that I'm going to write here on this blog every bloody day. To all those in Toronto, Au revoir. Keep the city poppin' fresh while I'm away. And to all those in Montreal, Benvienue. I'm here to theatrically rip your town a new one.
My third Steam Whistle is on its way. I'll enjoy it. It's all Quebec microbrewery shit from this point onward.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Its now 3:44am. I'm sitting in third floor office of the Theatre St. Catherine. My fold up mattress sits across from me and the desk I write on is covered in Alains' paper work, scripts and scattered DVDs. Pussy Corps sits outside my window like a leering vampire and the hollering screams of drunken revelry continue to mingle with cars cutting through slush. My first rehearsal was uplifting and I'm pleased to announce that my cast were the insta-friends I had hoped for. Karl, Lise and Gekko (a nickname everyone calls Steph, I figure I'll adopt it) are extremely talented actors who seem geniunely excited to be working on the project. And Robin our director worked on Dance Animal, a show that did extremely well at last years Fringe. I am playing Fritz, a drunk and abusive lover. The material is difficult but I knew I was in good company when Robin asked Gekko if she was comfortable with me being rough and sexual with her on stage and Gekko replied, "Bring it on". These are some dedicated individuals who aren't afraid to take risks. I can't wait to dig in.
Tonight I visited friends for dinner. I would be specific on who they are but when I told them that I'd be writing about them in my blog, they asked me not to name them. Given that I have openly spoke about my awkward experiences with colonoscopys and pubic hair growth, I'm not at all surprised by their reservations on the matter. We drank wine and ate a pizza that instead of dough used 4 types of meat as a base. A meatloaf pizza if you will. It was fucking awesome. The night was fun and I was introduced to Gary Vaynerchuk, a self-proclaimed wine guru who can be found at tv.winelibrary.com. He's quite the character, tasting and reviewing wine with an unbelievably refined pallet while spitting into a New York Jets helmet. Apparently, his parents worked in a wine store but because he couldn't drink until he was 21 years old, Gary Vaynerchuk decided to seek out the ingredients of the wines his family carried and consumed them to better understand the liquor he could not consume. That just seems crazy and I was skeptical but his plain spoken wine information was actually pretty entertaining and he did know what he was talking about. I think I'll post a video of his on Facebook before calling it a night. Apparently, if you drink a bunch of chardonnays from around the world and then drink a Californian Chardonnay while thinking about buttered popcorn, it will change the way you look at Californian Chardonnay. I can't imagine this to be true, but as soon as I can afford multiple bottles of wine, I'm going to give it try. I don't know why I'd want to link the flavor of wine with popcorn but the more I think about it, the more I'd like to.
And so the night ended with me arriving by Metro back to the theatre but being too restless, I decided to go for a walk and pick up a pack of cigarettes. No, I don't really smoke, but when I'm drunk and restless and there is no pot around, I often opt to have a smoke or two. So I set foot through the snow to find a Deppanneur that was still open. And much to my dismay, there wasn't one. I often hear Montrealers say that they dislike Toronto; that their city is more vibrant than ours. And while I can agree with this sentiment on certain fronts, one thing is for sure: If I'm wandering the heart of the city at 1 am where there is heavy foot traffic in Toronto, I would be sure to find smokes if I needed them. I walked nearly 40 minutes looking until my toes went numb and my nose dripped like boots coming in from the snow. Forty minutes. Not a single open convenient store. I eventually ended up at a bar where the people outside smoking spoke English. The man I spoke to seemed generally uninterested in helping my search but told that being from Toronto I should ask the guy from New York (?) who was standing outside smoking against the wall. So I asked the New Yorker if HE knew a place to buy some cigarettes. Since he himself had gone through a similar futile search, he pulled out his own pack and gave me 5 cigarettes. I shook his hand and thanked him for his generosity. His name was Douglas and he was an intellectual property lawyer. I asked him what he was doing in Montreal. He told me he had come up with his brother who had months ago gone through experimental corrective eye surgery. Apparently, laser eye surgery shaves off the top layer of you retina, taking off the defective part of you vision. However, Douglas' brother had too much of his retina shaved and now the fluids that build underneath the retina had nowhere to collect. So his eye bulged out of his socket, throwing his pupil off to the side of his face. On-line he found an experimental doctor in Montreal who invented a way to reverse this by FURTHER removing yet another layer of his retina and then injecting it with a vitamin compound that would thicken it, thus giving his eye fluids a place to collect and thus taking the pressure off his eye and hypothetically reverting it back to its original shape. Sound far fetched? Yeah, Douglas thought so too. That's why he was here to chaperon, to curb his brother's desperate need for a solution with sobering questions and inquires on the success rate of this operation. An experimental procedure was the reason for this mess in the first place, it seemed illogical that an even more experimental procedure could save the day. I could tell Douglas was drinking to alleviate the stress of it all, though hearing the shriek of the live band playing from inside the bar he was drinking at, I couldn't imagine any true peace could be found until he got back to his hotel room. I told him that I was a Torontonian living at a theatre for the month and we both parted ways wishing each other luck in our current affairs. With smokes aquired, I came back here and started to complete this blog.
And I am so tired. Its lonely here at the empty theatre but already I feel something happening. It might just be indigestion, but it's french indigestion and it comes cheap.
Having a gas.
That Blogging Bastard.
Today marks day one of a 25 day journey to the Great Quebec City known in some quarters as "Montreal". For the next 25 days you will be treated to my many madcap adventures as I seek enlightenment as Artist-In-Residence at the Nouveau Theatre Ste-Catherine. Please be advised that what you are about read may be the product of a body polluted with cheap steamed hot dogs, $2 late night chow mien, beers with images of polar bears printed on their labels, and smoked meat sandwiches served with large dill pickles and dark cherry pop. You have been warned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outside my plane window I can glimpse heaven. It is beautiful even though a little cliche. Bright sun, Blue to every corner of the earth and clouds lining the open air beneath me like cotton swabs. High above Toronto heading to Montreal, I can only guess at where the next few weeks will take me. Artist-in-residence or, as Alain likes to call it, "Poet-In-Residence". I'm not sure if I'm a poet really. I am prone to writing short and ethereal pieces of writing from time to time, sure, but whether or not these words are indeed "poetic" is really not for me to decide. I tend to think they are honest at best, smug at worse. But hey, call me what you will.
For those who don't know, I am in Montreal for the next three and a half weeks, sleeping at the Nouveau St. Catherine performing in plays, conducting workshops and writing a show for the Toronto Fringe Festival. It is an exciting time, one marked by a true desire to shed my current life for a while as I attempt to recharge depleted batteries corroded with acid. I have amassed a vast collection of distractions at home and my trip here is an attempt to avert my drooling gaze, if for only a moment. I have been in serious regression mode as of late and have tired many of my friends with persistent rants about it. The fact that I can't write a blog in any sort of timely manner has been one of the pronounced effects.
Yes, I promised about a quadrillion times to write Girls Part 2. And yes, there has been an actual response from readers to produce that blog. (and I thank you all for your enthusiasm)
GIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLSGIRLS. Girls. Girls. girls. g.i.r.l.s.
The word has lost all meaning to me.
The truth is I tried to write it (and this is no excuse for my poor blog production) and twice it was accidentally erased. I mean, I had gone through all of grade 7 and 8 on that second write. But the truth was, even with the blog half written, I was never really happy with it. To be honest, I'm sick of girls. Completely and utterly sick. Puke inducing, fever increasing, pus spouting, stay at home and suck down mama's homemade chicken broth kind o' SICK. Girls have been the only thing I've thought about for the last six months. They are the only thing I ever think about. And in trying to relate my early experiences with them here, I realize I was never any good at understanding them in the first place. It can be said that in some respects I have grown wiser but in regards to my understanding of women? Murky at best. Nothing is as it seems, nothing is what you wish it to be and (and this one applies to most things in life) nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. I love and I bleed and I let the wind pull me off and over the mountain and into the watery rocks below. Where I'll be skewered is any one's guess but skewered I will be. To UNDERSTAND women, to understand any one's motivations really, is well beyond my current capabilities. I can only hope to understand myself and even that is a work in progress. So enough with the women already, as beautiful and mysterious as they may be! My intention here is to get shit done. To work as an artist instead of working as a hotel worker or a beer vendor. Not that I mind working those jobs; they are fine ways to piece together some scratch. But sometimes I forget about the Me that I enjoy, the one that works towards creating something meaningful. The Me that tries to dance with the invisible forces we all know are shaking their booty on the dance floor beneath the surface of our lives, while our cool selves stand slouched against the gymnasium wall. Too cool to dance, too cool to care. I want to find that ME on the hooker laden streets of St. Catherine and St. Laurent as the lights from Pussy Corp (the brothel that sits across the theatre) glint through my bedroom window. I want to sit him down and remind him that he still exists.
The sun is so bright that it glints off my Steam Whistle can like a lit match. (and yes, there is free alcohol on this flight and although its not even noon, I'm on my second). Over the next few weeks I will be sharing my adventures here if only to remember them as nights of Boreal Blonde and St. Ambroise Rouge claw their way into my memory like a sandstorm kicking up a dusty haze. No doubt I will find something here. Perhaps we can even discover it together.
When I land, I'll have three hours to get to the theatre and rehearse MOANS, a drama written by Alain Mercieca and directed by Robin Henderson. I have yet to meet my cast but already I feel like they are good friends. I'm not sure why, but I somehow know that they will be.
However, Moans opens on Feb. 18th and isn't the first show I'm doing while here. Squeegee Nights, another Alain penned script, opens Feb. 3rd, a week from today. Its a show I did in 2006 at Theatre 314, a small underground space at the corner of St. Laurent and Des Pins. This means nothing, I can barely remember the last 25 minutes. Its like starting from scratch and we only have three days of rehearsal before getting it up in front of an audience. Yeah, I'm kinda freaking out about it. But this is working with Alain and I'm accustomed to throwing myself into the fire.
How far we have come and yet so much remains the same.
Moving from the piecemeal stage of a converted loft to the three-story fully licenced Theatre St. Catherine, I'm really excited for Alain and Mark Louch. They have created something beautiful here.
I realize there is a large spectrum of accomplishment within the sphere of anonymity, and within that spectrum I'm starting to feel quite accomplished. I am like the Bobby De neiro of unknown and unimportant and although this comes with no tangible award and serves no meaningful distinction, I wear this invisible badge proudly. I think it's the little delusions that add up to create our own personal veils of reality. The big delusions are just too phony and too easily crumpled like tissue paper. We need the strong binding of interconnected little lies to make it
durable. Delusion that you can feel between your finger and thumb.
Incidentally, urinating on a plane is an odd sensation. The seemingly mundane act of pissing hundreds of miles above the ground amazes me. Not only have we mastered flight, but we've mastered flight while including the comforts of alcohol, defecation and media consumption. Oh humanity, will you ever cease to amaze?
Now you may be wondering, how did a broke-ass "poet" ever find himself suited up and on a Porter flight? Well it turns out the hotel I work for gets discount flights and apparently this discount means that for $15 more I can fly to Montreal in an hour rather than sit cramped on a bus for eight hours. And if you ever flown on Porter, you will know that this is a significant upgrade indeed. Free coffee+free booze+ free Wi-Fi= free boner. It's almost as heavenly as the clouds billowing outside my window. Almost.
Oh. Apparently the flight is about to land. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm away, that I'm excited and that I'm going to write here on this blog every bloody day. To all those in Toronto, Au revoir. Keep the city poppin' fresh while I'm away. And to all those in Montreal, Benvienue. I'm here to theatrically rip your town a new one.
My third Steam Whistle is on its way. I'll enjoy it. It's all Quebec microbrewery shit from this point onward.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Its now 3:44am. I'm sitting in third floor office of the Theatre St. Catherine. My fold up mattress sits across from me and the desk I write on is covered in Alains' paper work, scripts and scattered DVDs. Pussy Corps sits outside my window like a leering vampire and the hollering screams of drunken revelry continue to mingle with cars cutting through slush. My first rehearsal was uplifting and I'm pleased to announce that my cast were the insta-friends I had hoped for. Karl, Lise and Gekko (a nickname everyone calls Steph, I figure I'll adopt it) are extremely talented actors who seem geniunely excited to be working on the project. And Robin our director worked on Dance Animal, a show that did extremely well at last years Fringe. I am playing Fritz, a drunk and abusive lover. The material is difficult but I knew I was in good company when Robin asked Gekko if she was comfortable with me being rough and sexual with her on stage and Gekko replied, "Bring it on". These are some dedicated individuals who aren't afraid to take risks. I can't wait to dig in.
Tonight I visited friends for dinner. I would be specific on who they are but when I told them that I'd be writing about them in my blog, they asked me not to name them. Given that I have openly spoke about my awkward experiences with colonoscopys and pubic hair growth, I'm not at all surprised by their reservations on the matter. We drank wine and ate a pizza that instead of dough used 4 types of meat as a base. A meatloaf pizza if you will. It was fucking awesome. The night was fun and I was introduced to Gary Vaynerchuk, a self-proclaimed wine guru who can be found at tv.winelibrary.com. He's quite the character, tasting and reviewing wine with an unbelievably refined pallet while spitting into a New York Jets helmet. Apparently, his parents worked in a wine store but because he couldn't drink until he was 21 years old, Gary Vaynerchuk decided to seek out the ingredients of the wines his family carried and consumed them to better understand the liquor he could not consume. That just seems crazy and I was skeptical but his plain spoken wine information was actually pretty entertaining and he did know what he was talking about. I think I'll post a video of his on Facebook before calling it a night. Apparently, if you drink a bunch of chardonnays from around the world and then drink a Californian Chardonnay while thinking about buttered popcorn, it will change the way you look at Californian Chardonnay. I can't imagine this to be true, but as soon as I can afford multiple bottles of wine, I'm going to give it try. I don't know why I'd want to link the flavor of wine with popcorn but the more I think about it, the more I'd like to.
And so the night ended with me arriving by Metro back to the theatre but being too restless, I decided to go for a walk and pick up a pack of cigarettes. No, I don't really smoke, but when I'm drunk and restless and there is no pot around, I often opt to have a smoke or two. So I set foot through the snow to find a Deppanneur that was still open. And much to my dismay, there wasn't one. I often hear Montrealers say that they dislike Toronto; that their city is more vibrant than ours. And while I can agree with this sentiment on certain fronts, one thing is for sure: If I'm wandering the heart of the city at 1 am where there is heavy foot traffic in Toronto, I would be sure to find smokes if I needed them. I walked nearly 40 minutes looking until my toes went numb and my nose dripped like boots coming in from the snow. Forty minutes. Not a single open convenient store. I eventually ended up at a bar where the people outside smoking spoke English. The man I spoke to seemed generally uninterested in helping my search but told that being from Toronto I should ask the guy from New York (?) who was standing outside smoking against the wall. So I asked the New Yorker if HE knew a place to buy some cigarettes. Since he himself had gone through a similar futile search, he pulled out his own pack and gave me 5 cigarettes. I shook his hand and thanked him for his generosity. His name was Douglas and he was an intellectual property lawyer. I asked him what he was doing in Montreal. He told me he had come up with his brother who had months ago gone through experimental corrective eye surgery. Apparently, laser eye surgery shaves off the top layer of you retina, taking off the defective part of you vision. However, Douglas' brother had too much of his retina shaved and now the fluids that build underneath the retina had nowhere to collect. So his eye bulged out of his socket, throwing his pupil off to the side of his face. On-line he found an experimental doctor in Montreal who invented a way to reverse this by FURTHER removing yet another layer of his retina and then injecting it with a vitamin compound that would thicken it, thus giving his eye fluids a place to collect and thus taking the pressure off his eye and hypothetically reverting it back to its original shape. Sound far fetched? Yeah, Douglas thought so too. That's why he was here to chaperon, to curb his brother's desperate need for a solution with sobering questions and inquires on the success rate of this operation. An experimental procedure was the reason for this mess in the first place, it seemed illogical that an even more experimental procedure could save the day. I could tell Douglas was drinking to alleviate the stress of it all, though hearing the shriek of the live band playing from inside the bar he was drinking at, I couldn't imagine any true peace could be found until he got back to his hotel room. I told him that I was a Torontonian living at a theatre for the month and we both parted ways wishing each other luck in our current affairs. With smokes aquired, I came back here and started to complete this blog.
And I am so tired. Its lonely here at the empty theatre but already I feel something happening. It might just be indigestion, but it's french indigestion and it comes cheap.
Having a gas.
That Blogging Bastard.
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