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An evening a few months ago Mar. 6th, 2005 @ 02:19 pm
I’d been in the booth for more than twenty minutes before I realized the cook had gone home. It wasn’t even the waitress who told me; I had to walk to the bar and ask.
I gathered my coat and pushed my way out the door of Free Times Café muttering insults about the service. Once outside, I stood on the corner of College and Spadina, draped in an old, worn out evening and paralyzed with indecision. It took me two hours to even get up the nerve to leave my flat. Now, the only restaurant close to my apartment with a decent Caesar salad was closed and I didn’t know what to do.
As I waited for the light, a Chinese bum on the corner rushed from person to person asking for change, sometimes not even waiting for a response. One particularly rude Greek woman told him she’d give him fifty cents if he’d do ten push ups. The bum looked to me. I gripped a fistful of coins in my coat pocket and told him I didn’t have any change.
This city was an abomination. The most multicultural city in the world was a Frankenstein’s monster made of sewed patches from soulless nations. The tolerance that Toronto touted was just that. People of other races didn’t so much get along as they endured each other’s presence.
A middle aged woman walked up to the corner. She was screaming wildly. She wore an old ratty sweater that couldn’t have been very warm and a long skirt with a flower print that was stained with salt. Everything about her was furious, except her eyes. The eyes were terrified.
“You fuckers! Fuckers!” She flailed wildly, her indirect rage sprayed across the intersection. She caught the attention of some smartly dressed clubbers.
“Shut up bitch!” One of the more shiny men of the group laughed.
“Men! Pricks! Cocksuckers!” Her voice was hoarse. She had been screaming for a while.
The woman crossed the road before the light changed. It was luck that got her across. The cars didn’t slow to let her pass. On the other side, she did more of the same screaming and flailing. So angry.
A cab stopped at a red light. It was filled with men going to the bar.
“All of you are pricks!” She screamed into the cab.
“Hey fuck you cunt!” They yelled back. One of the men lunged out of an open window just to scare her. It startled her and she stumbled backward tripping over the curb. She crashed into the sidewalk and let out a yelp. The light turned green and the men drove off. I couldn’t see if they were laughing.
The onlookers did nothing to help. The woman just lay there crying, glazed in streetlights and drizzle. My guts filled with bile and sorrow and self loathing and pity. Seconds seemed like hours but I did nothing. I just watched her writhe and moan on the curb.
Finally, three young girls got off a street car and noticed the woman. They kneeled down beside her to help. I walked over to see if I could do anything.
“I broke my leg.” The woman on the street cried. “I broke my leg.”
The youngest of the girls touched the old lady’s face.
“Shh.” She culled. “How long was she like this?” She asked me.
“Just a couple seconds. I’ll call an ambulance.” I dialed 911 and told the operator about the situation. The operator sounded bored.
Of the three girls, the one that was speaking to the older woman had the most striking features. The pale headlights of passing cars washed out her complexion and reflected tiny crystal balls of drizzle resting on her hair. She was surrounded by a corona of silver and her sad eyes seemed all the more dark and pronounced because of it.
“Thank you.” She said.
“Yeah. I hope she’s ok.” For a moment I didn’t care if the woman on the curb lived or died so long as this girl just kept looking at me.
“My leg. It’s broken.” Crowed the woman. For the first time, I got a good look at the lady on the street and realized that I had seen her before. It was the day previous and I was in the Free Times Café, having my daily Caesar salad when she walked up to me and leaned into my booth.
“Watcha eatin?” She asked.
“Caesar salad.” I replied resting my hand on the bowl and pulling it slightly toward my chest.
“Very good. Caesar salad is a good salad.”
There was a pause. I didn’t know how to respond.
“Do you work here?” I asked.
“Sort of.” With every sentence, her eyes got more and more desperate. Like someone was watching her and she couldn’t speak her mind freely.
There was a longer pause this time before I finally said,
“I’m a writer.”
“Really? Me too.” She gasped. Her eyes were welling up with tears.
Suddenly the waitress came around the corner.
“Rachel. Don’t bother the customers.” Instantly, the woman backed off and hurried out the door without saying goodbye.
“She comes in here a lot. Bugs the customers.” The waitress was apologetic but distant.
“I think she’s just lonely.”
“Yeah. She’s crazy.” She said. I’m not sure if she heard me.
The ambulance came in about ten minutes. The three girls and I made small talk and guarded the lady from sidewalk rubberneckers. People will walk by a dead man on the street if he’s alone but put two people standing over him and they’ll flock to see what’s happening.
“Your leg isn’t broken.” The paramedic said scolding the lady.
“It hurts! It is broken! I can feel it!” The paramedic and his partner lifted her up onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. She screamed louder than ever. After that, I looked away. I looked to the girl who had helped the lady so tenderly at first. Her eyes were fixed on the ambulance. She unconsciously bit her thumbnail looking more concerned than anyone I’d ever seen in this city.
The paramedic took a deep breath and walked over to us.
“Any of you know her?” We all said no. “Alright.”
“Is she going to be ok?” The girl asked.
“Yeah. She’ll be fine. I imagine she just wants some attention.”
“Probably.” I chuckled. I don’t know why I laughed. Nervous I guess. The other two girls that never really seemed to care in the first place laughed as well. But she didn’t.
The ambulance sped away and I watched as the three girls hopped into the next cab and drove down toward Richmond Street toward their club.

um Feb. 4th, 2005 @ 02:23 pm
At Quiznos now. Eating a sub. I have lost my wallet. But I'm not too concerned. Just a drivers license is gone. And health card. I have met a girrrrrl. A girl I LIKE. Supertimes. I just finished my little speech for CBC. We'll see how that goes. If I get the gig I'll be coming to HAlifax for a month. Yeeha. Of course I get a girlfriend a week before I might be leaving. Get the job or don't, it's a win win lose lose situation as she puts it. Did I mention she's funny? Sense of humor is so key. That and a nice ass. Ass and comedy. A great combo. Alright I'm out like a....like a....guy who just got tagged by a baseball while trying to steal homebase. Um. At least SHE'S funny.

January Jan. 16th, 2005 @ 04:03 am
I'm thinking of coming back to Halifax. I like it here. People are nice. Friendly. Even when they don't like you they're nice and friendly. I go back on the 22nd. Ooo I can't wait. Good fuckin times. Played Nightmare tonight. That was pretty rockin.

Christmas Dec. 24th, 2004 @ 10:12 pm
Merry Christmas. I'm tired

Dec. 20th, 2004 @ 11:06 pm
Shadows cast in dire walketh abreast of me.
Other entries
» Why do people bug?
My parents are on the Atkins diet. I love to tell my friends this because of the solemn reaction I get. It’s as if it were suddenly the fifties and I was confiding to them my parents’ communist tendencies. They feel sorry for me, for my misguided parents and for how they will both be dead soon. I tell them my father has lost fifty pounds. They say it’s at the expense of his cholesterol. Then I tell them his cholesterol has never been better and they tell me his blood pressure will suffer. I tell them since Atkins his blood pressure has lowered to normal. They say it ruins the brain. To which I reply in the case of my father that point is moot. Nevertheless, no matter how much weight he looses, no matter how healthy he is, when he dies whether it’s thirty years from now or tomorrow, it will be because he was on Atkins. ‘My Dad was hit by a bus.’ ‘It’s that Atkins.’
In the case of my mom I have no idea why she’s on it. She’s always been healthy. She works out five times a week getting up every day at five thirty in the morning to drive to work so she can hit the gym before hitting the office. For as long as I’ve known her, which is quite a long time, she’s been like this. The only difference now is that instead of eating nothing but carrots and greens and light cottage cheese, she eats strips of bacon and chunks of beef. Visiting my parents is a different deal too. I have to buy my own food only so I can avoid my mom saying things like “Are you hungry dear? You want me to make you a plate of ham?”
» Skies are falling.
They tell me that people are being slaughtered by the thousands in Rwanda. And that AIDS is rampant in Africa. Iraqis want/don’t want help from the Americans. A schoolteacher was shot in the head by her boyfriend a few days ago. Cancer is killing my friends’ parents. They tell me Coffee bean growers aren’t given a fair price for their beans. Wal-Mart is pushing independent shops out of business. Women are treated like shit in the Middle East and they are ok/not ok with it. People sleep on the street outside my house. Children are born addicted to crack. Racism is still rampant. SO many women are raped but never charge the guy. People who are religious think those who aren’t are misguided. People who aren’t, think those who are, are misguided. People hurt people on purpose. Big business runs the world. We need big business. Species are wiped off the earth every day. Global warming; global cooling. Meteors. South Korea. Schoolyard bullies.
It’s a monthly routine to have these things swim through my head at some point. For some people it’s daily. And for some it’s just not enough to worry. My worry is wasted to the ones out there with their hands in the muck, in amnesty international or greenpeace. To them, I’m the ignorant.
Nevertheless, all these problems are just a small fraction for the shitstorm of suck that’s outside our double hung weather sealed windows. Each problem is a prism of a thousand other problems connecting us to an international web of trouble and strife. And yet, most of us are detached from this which is, in its self, another problem.
To add the stem to the cherry on the cake, all of this worry is just an example of our neocapatalist hand-wringing bleeding heart liberalist hypocrisy that we mistake for a caring opinion. We wear it like a badge. Our causes become our status symbols raising us above the ignorant. The conservatives. The ones who voted for Bush. The ones who just want to buy the nicest house they can afford and get all three of the Lord of The Rings DVD sets.
What we need is a crack addicted homeless twelve year old Afghani/Iraqi/Rwandan rape victim forced to work sixteen hours a day gathering coffee beans for Wal-Mart in the last few acres of a clear cut South Korean rainforest while riding her endangered panda to and from work. On top of that she’s persecuted for being a gay Jewish Catholic Muslim. And she has cancer of the Aids. And she’s bullied at school. Now there’s a cause we can all get together on. Except for the people worried about meteors.
» My date with the Police
I was eating breakfast when my father walked through the kitchen in his work boots and hunter orange jacket. I asked him where he was going and he told me, in that way people answer when most of their attention is on something else, that he was going out to the yard to clear brush.
“Have you seen my gloves?” My father asked my mom. She was standing over the stove in her flannel P.J’s, cooking me a second batch of eggs. Without looking up from the pan she told him exactly where they were. Some cupboard he’d never have thought to look in. I sometimes marvel at the elaborate filing system my mother’s brain employs when it comes to odds and ends in the house. She knows the longitude and latitude of every mitten, sock, ring of keys, and remote control in the house.
Both my parents must have been a little tired from the night before. Not only had they hosted a five-course brunch for six guests that lasted until eight in the evening, they also received a call from me at around three thirty in the morning to come pick me up because I had been stopped by the police.
That evening, I was driving back from Halifax from a friend’s birthday party. The evening was drenched in patches of fog and the tops of the Macdonald bridge pushed through into the low laying clouds making it look much bigger than it actually was. Halifax is the one city that I’ve been to that looks more beautiful in the fog.
The party I had been to was an actor’s party, but not the kind I was used to in Toronto. There was hardly any talk of work and very little anecdotes from shows or anything of the sort. It was nice to talk about something other than acting for most of the night. Of course, this could all be because everyone there was out of work actors and had nothing to talk about but really I’ve seen lots of T.O actors in the same situation talk about their fruitless trip to L.A for pilot season like they’d just finished shooting three Hollywood features.
I purposely didn’t drink incase I was stopped by the police on my way home. But, as luck would have it, a km away from my house, two police cars were waiting for me checking for drunk drivers. I slowed down as one of the cops waved me to stop with his lighted baton. Nervously, I pushed the button to roll down my window. But I was driving my parent’s Jeep Liberty and all the window buttons are in the middle of the jeep, not by the doors so when I pushed a window button, I pushed the wrong one and the passenger side window came down at first. I rolled that one up and then got the back seat one half way down before I finally hit my proper window. It was the perfect start to the conversation to come.
The cop had deep accusing eyes and a red moustache. Only policemen have moustaches. He shone the baton in my eyes.
“How are you tonight sir?”
My response would have to be meticulously calculated. The right words coupled with a balanced tone: cool, but respectful.
“Not bad. Not bad.” Could there have been a better response? Even at three thirty in the morning I was at the top of my game. I leaned back in my seat, just a little bit, to show I was comfortable with the situation.
“Where you coming from?”
“Halifax.” Because I was.
“Drinking anything tonight?”
“Me? No.” Because I wasn’t. I was doing well but the questions were getting harder. Under pressure, talking to a cop, the simplest questions rival that of an astrophysics mid term.
“Where do you live?”
“2453 Water St. Toronto actually. But now, Water. For the Holidays.”
“This your vehicle?”
“Nope. My parent’s. Well, my dad’s. My mom drives the car. Usually.”
“Any liquor in the car?”
“Nope. Just a laptop.” Why the hell I said that I’ll never know.
The cop took a moment to try and figure out if I was being smug with him. He sighed a big heavy policeman sigh.
“Can I see your license sir?”
Now for most law-abiding citizens, a request like this was nothing; a final formality to deal with before they could be on their way. I, however, was a criminal. In the front pocket of my blazer, nestled in between a worn out visa card and an old Dal I.D from seven years ago was an expired license with my parent’s old address on it. I reached into my jacket and for a brief moment thought ‘maybe he’ll think I’m going for a gun. I could be a hard nosed killer.’ But then I remembered I’d shaved that evening so there was no chance of that.
The cops breath escaped like dragon smoke as I fumbled though my wallet and handed him the card. He took a quick glance and said,
“This is expired.”
“Yeah. I live in Toronto now so this is the thing. I wanted to get it renewed here cause I’m thinking of moving back. So I was waiting. I just got back yesterday.” During my explanation -er- plea my hands had unconsciously wandered up to the steering wheel gripping it tightly at ten and two. “So I’ll get it renewed Monday?”
“No you wont. You’ll pull over to the side of the road sir.”
Why do cops call people sir? They know they have the upper hand. He might as well have called me peon or assface. It was all the same to me.
I put the jeep in drive and drove over to the side of the road, waiting for my fate. The policemen walked up to the window again. This time I rolled it down perfectly.
“Your parents home?”
I suddenly felt sixteen again. This guy was no more than six years older than me.
“Yes.”
“You got a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Can one of them come down to pick you up? You’re not driving this home.”
“Sure thing.” I was almost chipper in my answer. It’s funny how a nervous reaction can sometimes elicit a response that sounds completely opposite to what you’re actually feeling.
I picked up the cellphone and started dialing. Both my parents were dead to the world. Their party had gone through at least three boxes of beer and I don’t know how many bottles of wine. They were probably still half in the bag. After the sixth try a groggy voice answered what I can only assume, having had previous telephone conversations, was a hello.
“Hey dad. I, uh, I’m here with the police.” Through years of unconscious tonal and semantic evolution I had become a master of inadvertently pissing off my father. Always start with a broad general statement like “I’m here with the police” to actualize his imagination thus maximizing the worry whilst bringing the anger to a steady boil.
This time, however, there was nothing.
“Ok.” He said.
He must think the line’s been tapped, I thought. He’s putting on a show for the RCMP.
“They stopped me for having an expired license. I need you to come down and get me." I told him the intersection. “Alright. Stay there.”
“You’ll have to bring mom too so she can drive the car back.”
“I know. She’s up.”
I hung up the phone. As much as I, and my mother, enjoy painting my father as a grumpy, right wing, Archie Bunker archetype, when it comes down to it, he’s one of the most understanding men I know. He’s just an ass over little things like where I left the cap to the camera lens.
The moustached cop came up to the window.
“I’m giving you a warning. But you know you’re driving without insurance if you don’t have your license.” He was actually sounding magnanimous.
“I didn’t know that. Thank you.”
He walked away and I sat in the car waiting for my parents to come over the crest of the hill to pick me up.
Twenty minutes later they arrived.
I hopped out of the jeep to greet them, gracious and apologetic.
“Where are the cops?” Asked dad.
I turned around. They were gone. I’d been left alone for I don’t know how long. Were it not for the warning ticket I would have had no proof of having been stopped by them.
“I should have just driven off! Shit.”
“It’s ok. Let’s just go.”
I went to open the door to the Jeep. It was locked. The jeep liberty has this intuitive feature that automatically locks the doors once they’re closed for a few seconds. Unfortunately, it isn’t intuitive enough to notice that the keys are in the fucking ignition.
“Fuck!” I yelled into the night. “Shit motherfucker!”
Dad laughed. He must have still been half in the bag.
I swung my arms out to the sky in a melodramatic, actory, writery, take pity on my life, kind of way. I hate when I succumb to my natural tendencies, but this was all too much. Even though we were close to home, even though we just had to drive back and find the spare keys, it all just seemed so monumentally fatalistic. Here I was, in the middle of nowhere in the winter standing on the side of the road beside an idling jeep liberty with the keys still in the ignition and cbc blaring from the radio. And all this was a metaphor for my life. Now, thinking back, I have no idea what metaphor I saw in being locked out of a jeep, but it was late, I was pissed off and I’d wanted this situation to have some point to it.
Dad poked his head in to the car and told mom of the situation.
“Oh. I have the spare key right here.” She said and pulled the gleaming polished key from her purse like Excalibur from the stone.
The night air instantly turned from cold to crisp; the grass from damp to dewy and the middle of nowhere became the centre of everything as I stood there with my infinitely understanding parents ready to drive me back home at four in the morning. Just for a second, life was a quiet two lane highway.
» six in the morning
I haven't been sleeping lately. Nights have become days and vice versa. While in Toronto, I went to bed at 9 in the morning and got up at 5. And now that I'm in Halifax, I'm having a hard time keeping to a schedule. Tonight I was stopped by the cops and pulled to the side of the road for having an expired license. My parents had to come pick me up in the car because I wasn't allowed to drive home . I was really embarassed. Espicially when I locked myself out of the jeep. I am too tired to go into any details about anything. Christmas is almost here. I am excited and nervous. I have no presents.
» Haloween eve eve
I’m having one of those days where I can’t look anyone in the eye for fear of falling in love at any minute. The hands of a waitress serving me a Caesar salad; a skater punk’s shoulders straining to walk her pit bull; the strands of stray hair stuck to a University student’s cheek as she waits for the streetcar. We see beauty in pieces.

Last night a friend drug me out to Richmond St. I haven't been downtwon in toronto in a year. We went to one of those fancy shmancy clubs where everyone plays dress up and acts like they're in a Smirnoff Ice commercial. I just do not fit in in those places. I don't know how to small talk. Everyone goes to Toronto for work. No one says: 'I hope to retire in Toronto one day. Get a nice condo on the Gardiner and listen to the constant stream of traffic' If you want to start a conversation in Toronto you start with "What are you doing?" In Halifax it's "How are you doing?" (and in Montreal it's "Who are you doing?")
So yeah. We're there, in the club and my friends meet up with a group of girls he knew. They were all blondes, they all had those zip up in the back pants, and they all had shellacked lips. I hate that kind of varnish lipstick. Why a woman would want her lips to resemble like a lightly glazed donut is beyond me. So yeah me and my friend ended up going to the Madison and talking. That was a lot cooler.
» 3 in the morning
I am tired. It's late. I've been in Toronto for a few days. Met with my friend and talked about comedy shows to pitch. I dunno. I haven't done anything about it. I'm stuck on my script. Hopefully my ohter friend will come over so we can chat about it. I hope we dont just end up playing nhl 2k5. I just bought that. Never really liked sports games but this is fun. Saturday I have four parties to go to. Heh. Im popular. Then Ill have nothing to do for a month. Yee haa.
» torontotonototnoto
I am in Toronto, listening to the Beach Boys, sitting at Subway eating a sandwich. Two Chinese guys just came in and asked for fries. It's good to be back.
» I look crazy
I've realized I look crazy on my blogs. Well at least I don't look as bad as those people who write those shitty poems on these things.

I miss you so much
Why don't you ever see
what you mean
to me?
My eyes are filled with the
softest of tears
and the drip
sadness.

Some day
in an ocean of wanting
I will row to your island
and wait on the shore
for your soft embrace
to fill me
with love
once more.


Hey, I just wrote a Hoobastank song!
» When
Just woke up. I feel weak today. That's what happens when you're up until 5:30. I also smell like I just woke up. Just woke up smell. Im going shopping and going to try and wrap everything up before I go back to Toronto.
» These are my Rules
Make headway. Write. Four in the morning. Speaking it. Making sense. Ram it through the narrow urethra of mind. It’s there. In a kindred sense.
And remember, don’t hate. It’s talent. Unimpressions. It’s not lowering your standards. It’s raising your acceptance. Remove that piece of your mind that doesn’t like a thing. Replace it with brownies. Fresh from the oven. You will smell like Christmas.
And remember, rotten pumpkin in the eyes. Old motor oil in the mouth. Crucifix in the throat. If dreams are from God then God is one of the spice wives.
» where
Back from Kareoke. I smell like cigarettes even though no one is allowed to smoke in the bar. I sang at least eight songs. Can't Touch This, Touch My Self, Bust a Move. All classics. I was hoping to win the fist full of loonies prize at the end of the night but, despite my frequent trips to the stage, another guy won. Three girls asked me to deidicate a song to them. That's when I sang Touch Myself. There were only about twenty people in the bar. Now my throat hurts, it's quarter to two and I feel the quiet lonliness that arrives when you move abruptly from a crowded bar to a silent room at home.
» Going to Kareoke
I'm going to kareoke at the Oasis tonight. Still wroking on my script. I really hope I finish it. I will be sore if I don't. I didn't get that part in the Tom Selleck film. It's been a month since I worked on Cndn Idol and I feel like I've done nuthin. My neck hurts. Maybe it's cancer. I talked to a friend about blogging the other day. I said livejournal was just a bunch of claptrap navel gazing. Bah. I don't know anymore. The internet is weird and I hate being addicted to it. Why do I need to look up every movie I'm watching on the IMDB and find out all the fucking trivia and talk through it while I watch it with friends? Why do I need to be IN THE KNOW about every goddamn stupid piece of comedy that comes across the broadband? Do I really need to see ALL the G.I Joe P.S.As? Why do I constantly check the weather on the weather network when I can clearly see what it's like outside? Oh! Not to mention the porn! DAMN YOU LIMEWIRE! The internet has over-saturated everyone's minds with so much useless knowledge that it's turned them all to mush. And a blog is just another rasin in the oatmeal.
Someone hand me a spoon.
» Even
Lying in bed with my apple laptop. My eyes are sunken into my skull but my spirits are high. I can't seem to keep the few simple lines I have to memorize for this audition into my head. The producers apparently want the "comedy" of the scene to come out. My character is looking at a dead body. Funny. I watched two movies today. The Pretty Dirty Things and Knock Around Guys. Pretty things was great. Nockaround guys, not so much. I have to read more. I am going to pick up the blazer and pants my parents dropped off at the dry cleaners for me.
» That
A friend of mine suggested I take a look at this site, and after browsing local journals I stumbled on a blog of an ex. Heh, stumbled. Right. I, of course, read some entries. One was about me. It was from a year ago. In it, she described how much she missed this boy she'd met. And how all she could think about was ways of getting out of sleeping with me and how she wanted this guy instead of being in my skinny arms. At first I was hurt. Naturally. Even after a year, you cant help but feel that burning sting of betrayl. But then, after a few self-loathing moments, I thought, well, I did bring this on myself. I started seeing her knowing that we hadnt worked in the past, I agreed for her to come to Toronto to see me, I read the blogg.
Suddenly, a profound sense of calm washed over me. Why should I be hurt? She found someone she cared about. And two people finding love in this crazy mixed up world is so much more important than my fragile little ego. Plus she's fat now so what would I want with something like that?

So, lesson learned.

Alright. So Tuesday I have an audition for Tom Selleck. Yes. THE Tom Selleck. I wonder if he will be sans moustache. It's for something shooting in Halifax. I'd really love to get the part as it would mean more time for me in Halifax. Toronto isn't my cup of tea. Too many hoop earings. Besides learning my massive 10 lines for the audition I'm also trying to write some scripts. I watched adaptation the other day. I have the book he makes fun of in the film. I'm trying my damndest to finish at least a short film. But, as you can see by my blogg entry, my focus is always diverted.

It's terribly late, or early or whatever. I'm so tired but my internal clock is off. It is time to go to bed.

I think I'll like bloggs. My mind's filth thrown out into the internet like the contents of an 18th century piss pot into the gutter. Whatever the fuck that meant.

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