a little while …

and finding forrester is on the tv.
what more could i ask for?
a mug of tea.
the end.

i may be drunk and i can’t really read, but i know that this is good news

good work doug, i <3 u.

on the verge of falling asleep, i’ve finally stumbled into an explanation for my inability to relate to other people and the legacy of failure that grows and growwsssssss as a result.
of course it never comes off as failure.
excessive chatter or conversational comedy is a social skill.
when a shrug or grin or ear-to-ear smile would more than suffice, an entire dramatic performance is paraded replete with a grab-bag of hysterical laughter, feigned concern, or wild gesticulations beckoning the use of a menagerie of muscles that would otherwise have remained dormant while forcing tears at your own mother’s funeral.
it’s a kind of licensed dishonesty, but who doesn’t need to do it?
when it comes to masking, i’m formulaic and uni-dimensional. my exaggerated facade is linear; the more i try to hide, the funnier i seem to get. my humour is a manifestation of the effort it takes for me to keep things unsaid.
being a comedian has the double effect of keeping my feelings concealed, while simultaneously allowing me to benefit from the honest joy i see in others. and knowing how to do it so well, spotting it gets to be pretty easy.

but these are things i already knew. the part of it all i only now realized was that managing the dishonesty in others is so much easier when i’m actively siphoning laughter with my humour. i unintentionally fuel the cycle.
it’s obvious. in situations where comedy is entirely inappropriate i’m a land-locked ship; that guy forcibly trying to make jokes at the scene of a murder-suicide.

i wonder though, what things would be like if, on occassion, i just burped out words which, in an awkward explosion of relief, made things just a little more interesting.

the past couple of days have been the kind of days that make taking for granted the luxury of having walls and a roof extremely difficult. but it’s a trade off, see, because where you gain in physical comfort and protection, you start losing in your head. loneliness, the opportunist that it is, uses those walls to amplify in its coherency till you’re left wondering what’s worse, the tumult visible through your window or the one coursing through the synapses between your ears.

i can’t believe i forgot that what-a-bagel gives you a dozen free bagels on your birthday.
my routine, which i adopted a couple of years ago involved taking a walk on yonge st. during my lunch break (back when i had a job) to pick up my 12 bagels, distribute about half to the homeless guys sitting on yonge st. on the way to grocery store, pick up some spreadables and eat bagels for lunch for a few days. and for those few days, i looked forward to the birthday bagel lunch.
usually, the grooves in time and space that the events in my life carve out are rarely distinguishable from each other … one event slowly morphs into another. that birthday bagel routine was one of the few things i could do every year that, for some strange reason, seemed better than the rest.

this year i forgot all about it.

other birthday deals in toronto.

every class in ever society has protective nuclei; collectivist entities that sort of define the rules of the game, creating filters through which our perceptions are framed. a suburban life is the most obvious example of that, that when you’re in it and a part of it everything you do and think is formed in that context. it’s not until you really experience what it’s like to be cast out of that protection and understand what it’s like to be unsafe in the world, and when you realize that you’re not the first, that yours and other’s family’s entire history has been a lifetime of precariousness do you fully realize that however you end up and whatever nucleus you end up within the protective confines of, you can never forget. you’re forever left with an honest apprehension that at any moment the gates will again open up and you will be kicked out, violently or otherwise. you’re forever aware of your own insignificance. you’re always aware that behind those walls lies a violence and disparity you can’t turn away from, though it may be hidden from view. all you can really do is try to understand and love and be loved.

trying to excavate my remains from underneath an avalanche of boredem last night, i decided to get in my car and drive a few minutes up north to catch the leonids in bloom. off i went at around a quarter past eleven with a flask of hot chocolate, a pile of blankets and my fishing rod. i decided, at the last minute, to take a detour. instead of driving north towards lake simcoe, i headed east towards lake scugog where i knew i’d find a patch of emptiness to park my car and use its reinforced steel hood as a bed. a couple of days before the new moon and the skies as clear as ever, the light show started almost immediately. every couple of minutes, the corner of my eye would catch a streak across a patch of sky i’d just looked away from. the meteors were teasing me. i’d since stopped casting my lures into the lake and assumed a static lying down position on my hood. that’s when the relative torrential downpour of fireballs started, somewhere around half past midnight. five, six, sometimes ten streaks would jockey for my attention at the same time, my eyes darting from a once empty region to another euphorically. it was beautiful.

free light show
a drive up north on saturday night anyone?

not sure if this makes me retarded, but i was definitely taken aback tonight by what a cd/dvd release party actually is. not that it wasn’t enjoyable. it was. my soulmate, the woman who – by proxy – introduced me to what became my favourite album ever, performed a couple of songs.

i won’t post any tracks from that here.
as a consolation prize though, here’s my 3.86th favourite sade song:
Sade – Pearls

i can’t remember how long it’s been since i sat down and watched a full episode of saturday night live. closer to my heart a show never there was. but it’s become an hour and a half of dumbass skits with zero comic timing that have no idea how they should end … it’s the era of jimmy fallon-esque comedy, and if jimmy fallon were ever good at anything on that show it was making other people seem funnier by virtue of his inability to not laugh while they tore shit up on screen. the blue oyster cult parody being the greatest example of that. carrot top is funnier than jimmy fallon.
conclusion: the cast lacks good superstars.

what about hosting?
that’s gone to shit too. the current crop of hollywood performers have no idea how to carry a show the way the legendary hosts could. take alec baldwin: a guy with a movie career so prolific that i can’t even name a single fucking movie he’s been in, yet i can name at least 3 legendary skits he’s done as a host on snl (schweddy balls, canteen boy and bill brasky immediately come to mind).
conclusion: today’s episode was funny because of the host.

what about the music?
christina aguilera, though her voice was great and her performance equally so, looks fucking hideous; as if a HIStory era michael jackson, dee snyder hair-do and jack nicholson playing joker from batman 1 all got together and made a dwarf baby with big breasts.
tony bennett was on there too, doing his best not to look like rizzo the rat. he was funny when he wasn’t singing.
conclusion: christina aguilera is loud and tony bennett looks like rizzo the rat.

to wrap things up, those 4 pictures acting as the preface to this entry are totally unecessary.