I'm not sure what I think of Geneva. In some ways, it feels like a typical European city. There's the lovely old historic areas where the elite go to dine on fondue and chocolate; the rows of trendy designer stores with names I don't recognize because "these designers are so exceptionally funky their names are uncommon" (little ole me didn't know you could purchase a mini-skirt for a mere $40K); and right outside my shitty little hotel, the red light district with it's late night brawls, scantily clad hustlers and blank-eyed druggies. This part of Geneva I understand. This part of Geneva I embrace.
But from my office window at WHO, the view is somewhat different. Here I am perched high above the city, amidst gently rolling hills and forests of vibrant green. From here Geneva looks very much like Vancouver. Scrubbed clean and shiny for the endless stream of world leaders and diplomats who sweep in to visit the UN offices on a daily basis.
I am disturbed by it all. Here on the outskirts of one of the world's most expensive cities are the spoils of international unity - the United Nations and it's band of self-righteous brothers. I can see crowds of tourists walking around the Palais des Nations... black suited bankers bustling in and out of the International Monetary Fund... middle-aged feminists emerging from the International Labour Organization. Here on the very edge of the city, the organizations that set the course for the world perch on their high hill staring loftily down at the people in the city below. The people working street corners and emptying dumpsters. Total disconnect is one of the best ways I can think of to describe Geneva.
The WHO itself is a museum of artifacts and antiques, most bestowed on the UN by visiting leaders. From the elevator to my office doorway I pass a chinese living room set, gifted to the WHO by some long-dead Chinese Emporer, a painting presented to the Director General from an Israeli president, the bust of a doctor in Nigeria. The artifacts are slowly taking over the office space, crowding out the shelves that I foolishly expected to be filled with earth-shattering research and plans of healthcare renewal for those who suffer the most.
I wish I was more surprised. I wish I had come to Geneva believing that the bright blue flag that so proudly flies in front of these buildings had a magical, overarching power to bring out the best in people, in leaders and in countries. But bureaucracy is bureaucracy, no matter what colour of flag is flying in front of the building. There are people here who want to do good. Who will do good. But there are a lot of people who are here for the prestige, the money, the lifestyle. Who will never touch a foot in any of these countries whose future they are supposedly directing. Who will never experience starvation, desperation, war.
In the words of the immortal Joan Jett, "I know who you are, and I'm not impressed."
September 28, 2008
June 21, 2007
Speechwriting: The fine art of not putting words in other people’s mouths
I sorta kinda hate to do this but... if this is a site where I post all things I publish, then it shouldn't matter if it's actually fascinating reading or... well... not so fascinating reading. Right?
This is an article I wrote for Ragged Right which is a publication of the International Association of Business Communicators. On speechwriting. It isn't that it's bad, it's just that... you know... when you're given a topic and so many words, there's only so much you can do.
Anyway, published it was, so blogged it is. And for those who actually wish I'd write something original soon, rest assured I'm working on it!
=======================================
Speechwriting: The fine art of not putting words in other people’s mouths
A month after writing my first political speech, I was asked to transcribe the audio for a website. I was halfway through the first page when I realized there was no similarity between what I had written and what the Minister said. In fact, at one point he paused and mentioned someone had written a speech for him - but it wasn’t very good. At the next event I unwittingly stomped all over protocol by marching up to the Minister and asking him why he didn’t like the speeches we were sending him. The answer? No one had ever asked him what he wanted to talk about.
Several years, and hundreds of speeches later, I realize I had inadvertently stumbled upon the most important rule of speechwriting - know the person you’re writing for! True speechwriting isn’t putting words in the mouth of a politician or a CEO. It’s organizing their thoughts and ideas in a way that makes their speaking engagement easier.
Speechwriting Rules:
- A few preliminary questions can make the difference between a disaster and a standing ovation. I watched one CEO struggle through an entire speech because I had used 18-point font (his eyesight required 24). Ask them what broad ideas they want to convey, what format they prefer, if they want sentences or bullets, if they like headings, etc.
- Develop an internal database of topics and ideas. I keep a notebook with me to jot down quotes, stories and ideas. The tuna sandwich you ate for lunch, the old man on the corner, a quote from your favourite movie – these can be great speech fodder if you’re creative.
- Remember that speechwriting is not like other writing. An audience doesn’t have instant replay. Keep it fresh. Be conversational. Use simple, emotive English.
- Listen to the little man in your head. Read it to your cat. If you have to reread a bullet to get the inflection or content to make sense, it’s no good.
- Develop a sense of humour and don’t be offended when your speaker changes or omits something.
- A speech has a beginning, middle and an end – leave the audience a few clues as to where the speaker is. It’ll keep them interested.
- After you finish, go back and cut out the unnecessary words, rephrase the awkward bullets and say it to yourself. Do this again and again, until you can’t find anything else to edit.
- Read – books by Michael Waldman (Bill Clinton’s speechwriter) or Peggy Noonan (Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter), will give you an enormous amount of insight.
Your goal is to write a speech that will raise the roof – and then fade into the background when it does. I’ve never had a cabinet minister point to me and ask me to take a bow during his standing ovation. So enjoy the moments of laughter and applause, because that’s all the acknowledgement a good speechwriter gets.
Andrea Burton is the former lead speechwriter for the BC Ministry of Health and continues as a senior writer in government, authoring numerous reports. Under her own company, Babelzebra Communications she provides strategic communications consulting. She can be contacted at andrea@babelzebra.com or call 604-762-4743.
April 11, 2007
If the angels knew us better, maybe we wouldn’t have to scream
Vancouver is strange… you can brush your cells off on thousands of other people daily but never touch another soul.
Sitting in the corner of a dirty coffee shop on Hastings, Arrie pulls stories from inside her with the speed and accuracy of machine gun fire. Her eyes rarely focus, darting instead to the tired waitress manning the cash, or the washed-up pimp playing solitaire in the corner. Her fingers endlessly worry the frayed seam of her tattered shirt, but I’m not expert enough to know if she’s high or nervous or both. She’s throwing stories at me one after the other, and it’s all I can do to keep up.
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
This is where your book begins
For Arrie then… no matter what corner she finds herself on.
==================================
He follows. She rides. They are energy rushing down the hallways of invisible waves, owning the moment until it fades. Adrenaline. Fire. War. She jumps up onto concrete and keeps running, looking back occasionally to watch the railroad police become smaller and smaller and blend into the graffiti art. He laughs crazy disaster laughter. His bones shake when he laughs and then he coughs and spits up blood on the concrete next to her. She hopes it infects the whole city with his virus so that he doesn't have to die alone.
"The fume from the spray paint is probably not too great for you, Fred," she tells him.
"Living ain’t too good for me at this point, Arrie. So I might as well have fun and do what I love." And then he looks up at her and smiles a big smile, exposing the blood dribbling down from the empty sockets of his crack cocaine destroyed teeth into his crazy beard full of sweat and dirt. The top of his head is bald and the hair that remains hangs around in small scraggly clumps. He's got dirt, blood and spray paint staining his shirt. He looks like a cross between Einstein and an old bum who somehow had LSD crystals blown into his wandering eyes, leaving him permanently spun out. Beautiful and revolting are united into a bunch of violent cells that make up Fred.
Soon he’ll be just another stranger of an angel that plays jokes on her from the gutters of heaven. Until then, she’ll make sure he has enough spraypaint to mark his stories on the walls, immortalizing pieces of him for years to come.
==================================
She’s one of those girls in the back of the newspapers. She’ll show up at your door for 60 bucks and then come inside for more. Her smile is infectious and beautiful.
She smokes all your Newports and makes your skin sweat. But you call her and she comes to your door again and again. Sometimes you wander down the street to the bar where everybody knows your name but not your heart. On dark nights she drifts off to sleep next to you and you believe the illusion you’ve created. You joke about how you resemble the characters in "Leaving Las Vegas". That’s her nickname for you, MikeLeavingLasVegas, and you believe in you and you believe in her and you believe in the ad in the back of the newspaper.
When she leaves you to destruct alone, it isn’t hate baby. It’s all love. She knows you so well. You’re in her brain and her veins and her soul. But you don’t know her. She’s just whoever you wanted her to be.
==================================
The old lady shuffles into the clinic with the other broken souls, the sores covering her face marking her as a victim of the virus that keeps killing her extended family. She stops beside a young, tattooed girl, " Arrie, you bitch, why you never call me,” she asks out of breath, angry, but still smiling.
Arrie looks up through bloodshot, invisible eyes, "I did call you Aida. Last Sunday. You were sleeping and I even called you the Sunday before that but you never answered."
The old lady laughs. Choking on her laughter. "I'm such a bad mother!" she says giggling. Arrie laughs.
In the course of Aida's dementia she’s confused the young girl with her daughter. Arrie always plays along, the only one who refuses to call her crazy. Because in Aida’s world, Arrie is her daughter. They embrace and the people around shake their heads.
The counselors at the clinic say Arrie is only encouraging her insanity, but the truth is, she’s only ever seen Aida smile when she loses herself in their special mother-daughter reality.
==================================
On Hastings now, trolling among the junkies and the hard-core street walkers, Arrie stands out. Still young enough to be beautiful, despite the fact that in another five years the opiate will have wrinkled her skin and dulled her eyes.
She saw an old friend yesterday. "Dee what happened to your teeth?"
Dee’s smile spoke slowly of self-destruction. “It makes sucking dick easier" Dee laughed.
Arrie laughed.
They laughed together.
Arrie says you can’t understand unless you’ve seen Dee working the corner, waiting to turn a trick.
Turn a trick.
“I can’t stop using that term”, I tell her “… it gives the illusion of magic.“
Arrie shrugs, “It’s like Maya Angelou said bitch, 'Still I rise'”
==================================
This morning she hitched a ride from an ancient Russian man. He had whiskey breath and was swerving all over the road. He told Arrie she was "too pretty for tattoos" and then held out his arm, exposing faded bluish ink tattooed on his hand.
"What is that?" She wondered.
"Just numbers,” he answered. “I was in the concentration camps when I was a kid. They did it with hot metal." He told her stories that made both of them well up with tears.
At the end of the ride he held his hand out towards her and spoke softly. "Can I touch your hand?" he asked. "I haven't touched a pretty girl’s hand since I was in my twenties."
She held out her hand towards his and his eyes lit up. They accomplished human connection.
==================================
She wasn't supposed to wait
Until her disease escalates
It’s spreading like wildfire
And we all know
Fire can either kill or transform
==================================
All she wants to do is dream. That’s what the opiate needle is for. She just feels things so intensely and everyone around her seems like a zombie wrapped up in a material world of bullshit. She just doesn’t want to feel. He called her an empath. He said it can be a lonely world when there’s so very few of us. She wishes for her dead road dog to sing her to sleep. She can wish all night but reality will always set in. Still nothing grows and beautiful demons come whisper obscenities in her ear… to go reach for that telephone number of her gangster with all of his gun shot wounds, crumpled in a garbage can somewhere and ask him to sell her some of her ex-lover/poison. Her veins are thirsty but her mind is strong. And all the angels that have died before her know just what the answer is… sleep. Sometimes the weakest heart can have the strongest will.
==================================
She sat across from a dark woman with snakes in her eyes, vicious and smiling.
"I don't want to fuck," Arrie told her.
"Well, you don't have to, our agency offers other things, private dances, sensual massage, but all the other girls fuck, its where the money’s at," she replied slyly.
"Well I don't want to."
"Okay" she giggled and her potbelly rumbled "But I guarantee you after working one week you're going to be on your back like the rest of the girls. Don't nobody think you’re special."
==================================
“You want to know what it’s like?” Arrie asks me. “It creeps up real slow like dope-sick vomit rising in your mouth and you look around and nothing makes sense and nothing ever really did.”
She can't write because she can't express this thought the way she wants. She tried to express it the other night and instead ended up in the emergency room choking on charcoal and her own vomit. Opened her red eyes and thought, is this hell? Sure looks like it.
And there was an AIDS patient scratching her skin off through the other curtain, scratching until she saw blood, and for that one moment when she looked up it was like they were sisters in a past life and were connected through this intense energy that died as soon as it was born and then she just kept scratching, digging her fingernails deep into her decaying flesh.
“If I could have spoken I’d have told her she was beautiful,” Arrie says. “And if I had a shotgun, I’d have shared it with her.“
==================================
They stayed up until four am in the alleyways, searching for dumpstered food and other thrown away treasures including roses, pizza, astrology magazines, a scooter and a perfectly good bicycle. It's crazy all the things people throw away.
She’s been sweating all night. Kicking methadone is worse than street dope. She’s on a low dosage but still it hurts and her dreams are insane. They scare her and she lives with that same insanity all day.
“It hurts”, she says turning to stare out the rain-splattered window.
Only certain seconds of life are beautiful.
==================================
Her mother was Chaos, ging 95 miles per hour as if silently whispering to the sky, telling her we were ready to die. ‘”C'mon Baby, Fuck with us.”
“Hitching rides with serial killers and when we heard him talk about the smell of rotting flesh my homeboy reached for his gun and I held him back because I could see the scars in his soul, and they reminded me of mine.”
Arrie crumples the cup and jerks to her feet with a flip of the bird. “Whatcha gonna write anyfuck? 'Dear Life, You are such a bitch… and I want to lick your pussy.”
Sitting in the corner of a dirty coffee shop on Hastings, Arrie pulls stories from inside her with the speed and accuracy of machine gun fire. Her eyes rarely focus, darting instead to the tired waitress manning the cash, or the washed-up pimp playing solitaire in the corner. Her fingers endlessly worry the frayed seam of her tattered shirt, but I’m not expert enough to know if she’s high or nervous or both. She’s throwing stories at me one after the other, and it’s all I can do to keep up.
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
This is where your book begins
For Arrie then… no matter what corner she finds herself on.
==================================
He follows. She rides. They are energy rushing down the hallways of invisible waves, owning the moment until it fades. Adrenaline. Fire. War. She jumps up onto concrete and keeps running, looking back occasionally to watch the railroad police become smaller and smaller and blend into the graffiti art. He laughs crazy disaster laughter. His bones shake when he laughs and then he coughs and spits up blood on the concrete next to her. She hopes it infects the whole city with his virus so that he doesn't have to die alone.
"The fume from the spray paint is probably not too great for you, Fred," she tells him.
"Living ain’t too good for me at this point, Arrie. So I might as well have fun and do what I love." And then he looks up at her and smiles a big smile, exposing the blood dribbling down from the empty sockets of his crack cocaine destroyed teeth into his crazy beard full of sweat and dirt. The top of his head is bald and the hair that remains hangs around in small scraggly clumps. He's got dirt, blood and spray paint staining his shirt. He looks like a cross between Einstein and an old bum who somehow had LSD crystals blown into his wandering eyes, leaving him permanently spun out. Beautiful and revolting are united into a bunch of violent cells that make up Fred.
Soon he’ll be just another stranger of an angel that plays jokes on her from the gutters of heaven. Until then, she’ll make sure he has enough spraypaint to mark his stories on the walls, immortalizing pieces of him for years to come.
==================================
She’s one of those girls in the back of the newspapers. She’ll show up at your door for 60 bucks and then come inside for more. Her smile is infectious and beautiful.
She smokes all your Newports and makes your skin sweat. But you call her and she comes to your door again and again. Sometimes you wander down the street to the bar where everybody knows your name but not your heart. On dark nights she drifts off to sleep next to you and you believe the illusion you’ve created. You joke about how you resemble the characters in "Leaving Las Vegas". That’s her nickname for you, MikeLeavingLasVegas, and you believe in you and you believe in her and you believe in the ad in the back of the newspaper.
When she leaves you to destruct alone, it isn’t hate baby. It’s all love. She knows you so well. You’re in her brain and her veins and her soul. But you don’t know her. She’s just whoever you wanted her to be.
==================================
The old lady shuffles into the clinic with the other broken souls, the sores covering her face marking her as a victim of the virus that keeps killing her extended family. She stops beside a young, tattooed girl, " Arrie, you bitch, why you never call me,” she asks out of breath, angry, but still smiling.
Arrie looks up through bloodshot, invisible eyes, "I did call you Aida. Last Sunday. You were sleeping and I even called you the Sunday before that but you never answered."
The old lady laughs. Choking on her laughter. "I'm such a bad mother!" she says giggling. Arrie laughs.
In the course of Aida's dementia she’s confused the young girl with her daughter. Arrie always plays along, the only one who refuses to call her crazy. Because in Aida’s world, Arrie is her daughter. They embrace and the people around shake their heads.
The counselors at the clinic say Arrie is only encouraging her insanity, but the truth is, she’s only ever seen Aida smile when she loses herself in their special mother-daughter reality.
==================================
On Hastings now, trolling among the junkies and the hard-core street walkers, Arrie stands out. Still young enough to be beautiful, despite the fact that in another five years the opiate will have wrinkled her skin and dulled her eyes.
She saw an old friend yesterday. "Dee what happened to your teeth?"
Dee’s smile spoke slowly of self-destruction. “It makes sucking dick easier" Dee laughed.
Arrie laughed.
They laughed together.
Arrie says you can’t understand unless you’ve seen Dee working the corner, waiting to turn a trick.
Turn a trick.
“I can’t stop using that term”, I tell her “… it gives the illusion of magic.“
Arrie shrugs, “It’s like Maya Angelou said bitch, 'Still I rise'”
==================================
This morning she hitched a ride from an ancient Russian man. He had whiskey breath and was swerving all over the road. He told Arrie she was "too pretty for tattoos" and then held out his arm, exposing faded bluish ink tattooed on his hand.
"What is that?" She wondered.
"Just numbers,” he answered. “I was in the concentration camps when I was a kid. They did it with hot metal." He told her stories that made both of them well up with tears.
At the end of the ride he held his hand out towards her and spoke softly. "Can I touch your hand?" he asked. "I haven't touched a pretty girl’s hand since I was in my twenties."
She held out her hand towards his and his eyes lit up. They accomplished human connection.
==================================
She wasn't supposed to wait
Until her disease escalates
It’s spreading like wildfire
And we all know
Fire can either kill or transform
==================================
All she wants to do is dream. That’s what the opiate needle is for. She just feels things so intensely and everyone around her seems like a zombie wrapped up in a material world of bullshit. She just doesn’t want to feel. He called her an empath. He said it can be a lonely world when there’s so very few of us. She wishes for her dead road dog to sing her to sleep. She can wish all night but reality will always set in. Still nothing grows and beautiful demons come whisper obscenities in her ear… to go reach for that telephone number of her gangster with all of his gun shot wounds, crumpled in a garbage can somewhere and ask him to sell her some of her ex-lover/poison. Her veins are thirsty but her mind is strong. And all the angels that have died before her know just what the answer is… sleep. Sometimes the weakest heart can have the strongest will.
==================================
She sat across from a dark woman with snakes in her eyes, vicious and smiling.
"I don't want to fuck," Arrie told her.
"Well, you don't have to, our agency offers other things, private dances, sensual massage, but all the other girls fuck, its where the money’s at," she replied slyly.
"Well I don't want to."
"Okay" she giggled and her potbelly rumbled "But I guarantee you after working one week you're going to be on your back like the rest of the girls. Don't nobody think you’re special."
==================================
“You want to know what it’s like?” Arrie asks me. “It creeps up real slow like dope-sick vomit rising in your mouth and you look around and nothing makes sense and nothing ever really did.”
She can't write because she can't express this thought the way she wants. She tried to express it the other night and instead ended up in the emergency room choking on charcoal and her own vomit. Opened her red eyes and thought, is this hell? Sure looks like it.
And there was an AIDS patient scratching her skin off through the other curtain, scratching until she saw blood, and for that one moment when she looked up it was like they were sisters in a past life and were connected through this intense energy that died as soon as it was born and then she just kept scratching, digging her fingernails deep into her decaying flesh.
“If I could have spoken I’d have told her she was beautiful,” Arrie says. “And if I had a shotgun, I’d have shared it with her.“
==================================
They stayed up until four am in the alleyways, searching for dumpstered food and other thrown away treasures including roses, pizza, astrology magazines, a scooter and a perfectly good bicycle. It's crazy all the things people throw away.
She’s been sweating all night. Kicking methadone is worse than street dope. She’s on a low dosage but still it hurts and her dreams are insane. They scare her and she lives with that same insanity all day.
“It hurts”, she says turning to stare out the rain-splattered window.
Only certain seconds of life are beautiful.
==================================
Her mother was Chaos, ging 95 miles per hour as if silently whispering to the sky, telling her we were ready to die. ‘”C'mon Baby, Fuck with us.”
“Hitching rides with serial killers and when we heard him talk about the smell of rotting flesh my homeboy reached for his gun and I held him back because I could see the scars in his soul, and they reminded me of mine.”
Arrie crumples the cup and jerks to her feet with a flip of the bird. “Whatcha gonna write anyfuck? 'Dear Life, You are such a bitch… and I want to lick your pussy.”
November 30, 2006
Mother mother, can you hear me? Sure I'm sober, sure I'm sane!
I recently received an email from an editor friend, asking me to write a 1000 -5000 word story outlining “your strangest or most illuminating university memory – one that ended up contributing to your future, or one other students might relate to and/or learn from”.
Gak. That’s just the kind of thing I hate. First of all, I don’t exactly remember many of my university escapades, and I’m fairly sure some of you who acted as my partners in crime back in the day would agree some things are better left undisclosed. Then there’s the fact that using anything in my past as a How To manual for future students isn’t exactly going to produce a generation of kitchen-capable, mathematically-inclined rocket scientists.
However, dutiful friend and occasional lazy contributor that I am, I spent some time pondering potential ideas (next time she might ask me to describe what kind of tree I’d most like to be, or to share my most embarrassing moment, and I need to have some credit set aside in my Contributor Account to allow me to tactfully ignore those requests.)
So let’s see. Should I talk about how annoyed I was with my roommate Ingrid because she kept calling her sweet boyfriend Chris a ‘psycho’, despite my protests that he was a true gentleman and a delightful overnight guest? Should I provide the details of the drunken night where the topic swung between Vojtech’s sperm donor potential and Joel’s mother’s reaction to his crotch rot? Better yet, how about the day in English class when I asked Lucy for Tampax and she responded loudly with “Do you want the kind you push in with your finger or the ones you smack in with a hammer?”
While these may be true stories, they aren’t going to provide any key life lessons to future students, aside from perhaps “never ignore your roommate’s intuition” (Chris ended up murdering a fellow student in the engineering building over the Christmas holidays); or “don't go near Joel” (whose mother yelled, “Oh God, stay away from the dog!” when he shared his problem); or “enunciate, enunciate, enunciate” (which would have ensured Lucy didn’t start searching for push pins I could use on the residence bulletin board).
Because none of those stories were quite right, I turned to a topic that is shared by all university students. Parent/Student Crisis Communications. At the moment this is a doubly satisfying topic. Not only are there legions of stories I can share, but my mom hasn’t figured out that clicking the links in my email signature will allow her to read my articles.
At 3:30 am one unfortunate morning, about a month after I left home, my mom was awakened by a phone call from a complete stranger. As she answered, the caller slurred, "Hi Mum? It’s me… I’m in jail for drunk driving."
Now, I should point out several important facts:
Gak. That’s just the kind of thing I hate. First of all, I don’t exactly remember many of my university escapades, and I’m fairly sure some of you who acted as my partners in crime back in the day would agree some things are better left undisclosed. Then there’s the fact that using anything in my past as a How To manual for future students isn’t exactly going to produce a generation of kitchen-capable, mathematically-inclined rocket scientists.
However, dutiful friend and occasional lazy contributor that I am, I spent some time pondering potential ideas (next time she might ask me to describe what kind of tree I’d most like to be, or to share my most embarrassing moment, and I need to have some credit set aside in my Contributor Account to allow me to tactfully ignore those requests.)
So let’s see. Should I talk about how annoyed I was with my roommate Ingrid because she kept calling her sweet boyfriend Chris a ‘psycho’, despite my protests that he was a true gentleman and a delightful overnight guest? Should I provide the details of the drunken night where the topic swung between Vojtech’s sperm donor potential and Joel’s mother’s reaction to his crotch rot? Better yet, how about the day in English class when I asked Lucy for Tampax and she responded loudly with “Do you want the kind you push in with your finger or the ones you smack in with a hammer?”
While these may be true stories, they aren’t going to provide any key life lessons to future students, aside from perhaps “never ignore your roommate’s intuition” (Chris ended up murdering a fellow student in the engineering building over the Christmas holidays); or “don't go near Joel” (whose mother yelled, “Oh God, stay away from the dog!” when he shared his problem); or “enunciate, enunciate, enunciate” (which would have ensured Lucy didn’t start searching for push pins I could use on the residence bulletin board).
Because none of those stories were quite right, I turned to a topic that is shared by all university students. Parent/Student Crisis Communications. At the moment this is a doubly satisfying topic. Not only are there legions of stories I can share, but my mom hasn’t figured out that clicking the links in my email signature will allow her to read my articles.
At 3:30 am one unfortunate morning, about a month after I left home, my mom was awakened by a phone call from a complete stranger. As she answered, the caller slurred, "Hi Mum? It’s me… I’m in jail for drunk driving."
Now, I should point out several important facts:
- I was not in jail for drunk driving. I was peacefully asleep in my dorm room.
- I didn’t own a car.
- Between the hours of about 10pm and 5am, my mother enters a strange and confusing head space. During these hours she may or may not remember our names, the city where we are currently living, our ages or exactly how we are related to her.
My mom thought she was talking to me. It didn’t occur to her that it might be someone else (and it couldn’t have been my sister who has made a career out of convincing my parents she’s Ned Flanders to my Homer.) In my mom's mind, I was the only potential culprit, so she settled down to talk to this drunk kid, all the time assuming she was me.
Obviously I didn’t make enough of an impression during my first twenty years.
Because I was drunk off my ass, my parents got little information out of me. They didn't even find out what jail I was in. For a half hour, they panicked. Mom wanted to call a lawyer. Dad was all for letting me stay in jail to “teach the damn girl a lesson."
(Which it did. If I get in trouble, don't call Dad.)
In desperate need of more information, my mother called my roommate to see if she knew what had happened. I answered the phone. This was unexpected.
"Andrea, what are you doing there?!"
"Mom?????? Wha--? I LIVE here!”
"But what are you doing there?"
"I'm sleeping! It's four in the morning!"
"No, you're not. You just called from jail!”
"I'm sleeping!" And in case she had somehow missed my earlier point: "It's four in the morning!"
And then came the inevitable: "Are you in jail or are you in your room?"
Before my sarcasm had a chance to wake up, dad got on the phone to sort out exactly what was happening with his “drunken, no good, loser daughter who might as well just stay in jail because sure as hell no one is posting bail for her any time soon!”
The whole charade began again.
"I'm not in jail," I kept insisting.
My parents couldn't figure this out. They were angry with me for not getting arrested. "You said you were in jail, damnit! Why aren't you in jail?" I felt badly for disappointing them like that, but I wasn’t in jail, so there wasn’t a lot I could do.
Eventually, I had yelled enough, and they had yelled enough, and everyone understood that I hadn’t been arrested.
Meanwhile, somewhere in a jail cell sat a very confused and inebriated young woman.
Initially, I chalked the whole incident up to a practical joke, but I eventually realized that not only do I not know anyone who could come up with that elaborate a setup, there just aren’t that many people in the world who would assume my mother wouldn’t recognize her daughter’s own voice.
I later learned that there had been a misprint in our local phone book, and the drunken kid had no idea she’d asked the police officer to look up and dial the wrong number. Little did she know she’d use her one precious phone call to have a five-minute chat with my lovely mother.
How did this incident have an influence on my future? Well…
- I never sleep with the phone beside my bed.
- I am fully aware that rationale parenting hours are between 6am and 10pm inclusive. Anything outside of that is a crap shoot and should be avoided. Which I do - effectively.
- The next morning I signed up for a crisis communications course - which has proven to be very useful when managing media issues and exploding cowpies for government.
After all, you never know when you'll need to talk a big cheese politician out of jail at 4am.
November 08, 2006
This is My Letter to the World that Never Wrote to Me
Yes, I know. I owe you an email. You think I’ve forgotten, but the truth is, I’m well aware that it’s my turn to contribute to our bungee cord pattern of correspondence. In fact, I’ll confess that I’ve owed you an email for quite some time now. I’ve been meaning to write. I just can’t seem to get my act together.
I almost wrote you yesterday but then I started surfing and before long it was 3am. I can’t send email at 3am because whenever I do, some wise-ass insists on responding with ‘what the freak were you doing up at 3am!?!? I sure hope that was EST not PST! Go to BED woman!’
Ok, but I’d like to remind you that following your pre-approved emailing hours allows me to shift the email tardiness blame by at least a year. Maybe more.
I used to respond to messages within hours – sometimes even minutes. Now it’s more like days… or weeks… sometimes months... Back then, email was exciting. I would write to friends. I would write to family. I would write to complete strangers who stumbled on my website and accepted my invitation to just say ‘hi’. Now I’m lucky if I remember to email myself to-do lists and meeting reminders.
Actually, I’m not sure why I don’t email anymore. Maybe it’s the fact that a little bell shrills from my blackberry within seconds of a new email appearing in my inbox (this would be helpful save for you eager little Toronto beavers who arrive merrily at work by 8am where you proceed to whip off email responses with no thought to us poor sleeping blackberry slaves). Maybe it’s because email is now an obligation, not falling much short of those maternal dictates of “don’t forget to send a thank you note to Aunt Mary if you know what’s good for you!”
Once in a while I’ll sit down with the lofty goal of emptying my inbox. In order to be successful at this, I have to ensure I have several hours of free time yawning in front of me. Why? Because I’m incapable of responding to one or two emails at a time. It’s all or nothing baby! I prefer to let them accumulate and age, leaving enough stories and misadventures to properly distribute across my audience, ensuring no one (myself included) gets bored too quickly.
Despite saving several hours for the task, nine times out of ten my ‘Email hours’ are quickly sucked up by Internet Research (ie, procrastination) – usually in the form of interesting websites, online surveys, celebrity gossip mags or political satire sites. For instance, the other day as I settled in for my allocated emailing time, I stumbled across a riveting article about Tiger Woods and his decision to get into golf course design...
I don’t even like golf. What’s wrong with me?
I’m not sure, but one thing is clear: I am a bad emailer, and that means I am in a constant state of emaipology.
For example, my good friend Leigh, who lives in Korea, emailed me nearly a year ago. True to the nature of all poor emailers, I had prefaced my last missive to him with the disclaimer that I am the world’s worst emailer. True to the nature of my good friend Leigh, he didn’t even pretend to accept my lukewarm excuses. “World’s worst emailer?” he wrote. “Yup!” But in fairness to me, sometimes he takes a while to write too, and quite a few of our emails have begun with, “I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long, I’ve just been busy.” Unfortunately for me, I have a feeling Leigh actually is quite busy. For that reason, I'm not going to mention that my time has been taken up with... well... golf.
Then there’s Jeff, my good friend from New Brunswick, who emailed me last spring to tell me he’d dreamed I travelled to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the fall of 2006. Great! Unfortunately, according to Jeff, I don't behave any better as a figment of someone elses' dream, because I forgot to visit him during my holiday. It's now halfway through the final month of fall 2006, and while Jeff can be assured he's not the next great prophet, I am ashamed to admit there's been no reassurance about my travel plans - or lack thereof - from either the dream me or the real one. Sorry Jeff.
Or my sister, bless her frozen little Winnipeg butt. My mom called a few weeks ago to ask if I was mad at Beth, after all I haven’t responded to her repeated email attempts. I tried to explain that one email from her every four to six weeks is clearly not enough pressure. I need much more frequent nagging than that. The fact that my nieces have gone from diapers to lipstick in the amount of time it's taken for me to answer even one of Beth's emails is something best not brought up over Christmas dinner.
And Al, thanks for sending me the evite, though to be honest, I do live in the same apartment as you and walking to my room would probably have been quicker than logging on. I do plan to attend the party, and I’ll RSVP eventually. It’s just that I went to your evite.com page to tell you I was coming and noticed that everyone else had left a witty comment. Unfortunately it was 3am, and I just couldn’t think of anything. I was going to write “Woohoo!” but then I saw that Brian had already put that down. I considered “Rock and roll!” but that seemed a little too Vroomanesque. I’ll RSVP tomorrow with an appropriately wittified comment. Ok Saturday. Maybe Tuesday at the outside?
These days, I've actually reached the point where I'll just phone or text friends who email me. This makes no sense, of course. Email, after all, was supposed to free us from the phone. When my friend Tracy emails, for example, I simply call or text her. "You live in the apartment downstairs. You don't get e-mail from me," I tell her. I'm too busy not emailing far away friends to write to a nearby friend like her.
I've talked with several friends about this, and they too feel a certain malaise when it comes to email. The thrill is gone. These days, just about everyone has email, and we all receive far too much of it. Even my mother is nagging me. "How come you never call?" has suddenly been replaced with "how come you never email?"
I tell her the truth of course. I’m studying golf.
I almost wrote you yesterday but then I started surfing and before long it was 3am. I can’t send email at 3am because whenever I do, some wise-ass insists on responding with ‘what the freak were you doing up at 3am!?!? I sure hope that was EST not PST! Go to BED woman!’
Ok, but I’d like to remind you that following your pre-approved emailing hours allows me to shift the email tardiness blame by at least a year. Maybe more.
I used to respond to messages within hours – sometimes even minutes. Now it’s more like days… or weeks… sometimes months... Back then, email was exciting. I would write to friends. I would write to family. I would write to complete strangers who stumbled on my website and accepted my invitation to just say ‘hi’. Now I’m lucky if I remember to email myself to-do lists and meeting reminders.
Actually, I’m not sure why I don’t email anymore. Maybe it’s the fact that a little bell shrills from my blackberry within seconds of a new email appearing in my inbox (this would be helpful save for you eager little Toronto beavers who arrive merrily at work by 8am where you proceed to whip off email responses with no thought to us poor sleeping blackberry slaves). Maybe it’s because email is now an obligation, not falling much short of those maternal dictates of “don’t forget to send a thank you note to Aunt Mary if you know what’s good for you!”
Once in a while I’ll sit down with the lofty goal of emptying my inbox. In order to be successful at this, I have to ensure I have several hours of free time yawning in front of me. Why? Because I’m incapable of responding to one or two emails at a time. It’s all or nothing baby! I prefer to let them accumulate and age, leaving enough stories and misadventures to properly distribute across my audience, ensuring no one (myself included) gets bored too quickly.
Despite saving several hours for the task, nine times out of ten my ‘Email hours’ are quickly sucked up by Internet Research (ie, procrastination) – usually in the form of interesting websites, online surveys, celebrity gossip mags or political satire sites. For instance, the other day as I settled in for my allocated emailing time, I stumbled across a riveting article about Tiger Woods and his decision to get into golf course design...
I don’t even like golf. What’s wrong with me?
I’m not sure, but one thing is clear: I am a bad emailer, and that means I am in a constant state of emaipology.
For example, my good friend Leigh, who lives in Korea, emailed me nearly a year ago. True to the nature of all poor emailers, I had prefaced my last missive to him with the disclaimer that I am the world’s worst emailer. True to the nature of my good friend Leigh, he didn’t even pretend to accept my lukewarm excuses. “World’s worst emailer?” he wrote. “Yup!” But in fairness to me, sometimes he takes a while to write too, and quite a few of our emails have begun with, “I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long, I’ve just been busy.” Unfortunately for me, I have a feeling Leigh actually is quite busy. For that reason, I'm not going to mention that my time has been taken up with... well... golf.
Then there’s Jeff, my good friend from New Brunswick, who emailed me last spring to tell me he’d dreamed I travelled to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the fall of 2006. Great! Unfortunately, according to Jeff, I don't behave any better as a figment of someone elses' dream, because I forgot to visit him during my holiday. It's now halfway through the final month of fall 2006, and while Jeff can be assured he's not the next great prophet, I am ashamed to admit there's been no reassurance about my travel plans - or lack thereof - from either the dream me or the real one. Sorry Jeff.
Or my sister, bless her frozen little Winnipeg butt. My mom called a few weeks ago to ask if I was mad at Beth, after all I haven’t responded to her repeated email attempts. I tried to explain that one email from her every four to six weeks is clearly not enough pressure. I need much more frequent nagging than that. The fact that my nieces have gone from diapers to lipstick in the amount of time it's taken for me to answer even one of Beth's emails is something best not brought up over Christmas dinner.
And Al, thanks for sending me the evite, though to be honest, I do live in the same apartment as you and walking to my room would probably have been quicker than logging on. I do plan to attend the party, and I’ll RSVP eventually. It’s just that I went to your evite.com page to tell you I was coming and noticed that everyone else had left a witty comment. Unfortunately it was 3am, and I just couldn’t think of anything. I was going to write “Woohoo!” but then I saw that Brian had already put that down. I considered “Rock and roll!” but that seemed a little too Vroomanesque. I’ll RSVP tomorrow with an appropriately wittified comment. Ok Saturday. Maybe Tuesday at the outside?
These days, I've actually reached the point where I'll just phone or text friends who email me. This makes no sense, of course. Email, after all, was supposed to free us from the phone. When my friend Tracy emails, for example, I simply call or text her. "You live in the apartment downstairs. You don't get e-mail from me," I tell her. I'm too busy not emailing far away friends to write to a nearby friend like her.
I've talked with several friends about this, and they too feel a certain malaise when it comes to email. The thrill is gone. These days, just about everyone has email, and we all receive far too much of it. Even my mother is nagging me. "How come you never call?" has suddenly been replaced with "how come you never email?"
I tell her the truth of course. I’m studying golf.
September 06, 2006
Take Me Away, To A Place Where Good Times Roll
I am 35 years old, at Malkin Bowl on a sunny Saturday night. I’m exhausted. I feel as though I’ve been here forever, waiting for Great Big Sea to take the stage. I’m already cynical and unfair. The crowd is old. Balding men love Great Big Sea. When did this happen? I’m not ready for this realization: that these are the same people who were young, dancing next to me at Great Big Sea concerts 10 years ago. They are old because we are all old.
Even the band is old and I’m rocked by this. They’re pulling songs from my past, as fresh and vibrant as the early concerts, when I pushed my way up front, hoping for a bead of sweat to fall on me. It seems strange to be here in the present with this music. So strange, I find it hard to stay, my mind abandoning the doped up throngs of middle-aged men and peoples’ parents bobbing up and down, hands in the air.
Suddenly I am 24 years old. I am lying on my bed clutching the album he gave me. For time it comes, and time it goes, it makes the strongest tree to bend. It is bittersweet and painfully ominous. I can practically see whatever it is that existed between us disappearing into the night. Love is leaving and I’m dealt the crushing blow of powerlessness, the searing pain of lost love. Kings and Queens have no defence, time brings all things to an end. It is new and cruel and awful and it hurts, it hurts to be alive.
I am 25 years old, huddled at the top of Zobor Mountain while the wind and rain whip around me and lightning streaks across the Danubian Plain. In my pack I have the remnants of the care package I travelled so enthusiastically into the city to collect from the border guards just this morning. Tears and raindrops are running down my face, soothing the new, fist-sized bruise that is throbbing under my eye. I can't bear to return to my sterile room with its ghosts and demons. I prefer to stand alone on this mountain, numb to all but the storm and the grinding of my tapedeck playing the only music the border guards left me. And I was feeling so alone. I was looking for someone or thing to remind me of my home. What I wouldn't give to have somebody nod or wink at me. I am so scared. There are eyes and ears in the walls, strange men lurking in the shadows, fists and shouts that my injured soul can't understand.
I am 26 years old, hurtling through the pitch black night, my sister in the passenger seat. We are driving to meet the rest of our family, already on vacation at Redstone Lake. Midnight has passed long ago and we are delirious with caffeine and chocolate. I've got a smile on my face and I've got four walls around me. Got the sun in the sky all the water surrounds me. My car is zipping across the bridge at Fort Irwin, so narrow it seems that we are skimming the very surface of the water. There are no other cars around. We have the radio turned up full blast, the windows down all the way. We are sharing this moment before our lives branch out and take different directions. At the end of the day, you've just got to say it's alright.
I am 28 years old, standing at the front of the church that raised me, carefully positioning my dad's guitar, his fishing rod, his favourite ball cap, a picture of us. Soon initial bliss will pass, this precious time might be your last. His best friend is telling stories of their childhood, family legends of Newfoundland capers, brand new boots that 'fell' into the outhouse, disappearing bicycle tires and schoolroom pranks. I am full of tears and laughter and comfort. Tried to think of what to say, when words came he'd already gone
Even the band is old and I’m rocked by this. They’re pulling songs from my past, as fresh and vibrant as the early concerts, when I pushed my way up front, hoping for a bead of sweat to fall on me. It seems strange to be here in the present with this music. So strange, I find it hard to stay, my mind abandoning the doped up throngs of middle-aged men and peoples’ parents bobbing up and down, hands in the air.
Suddenly I am 24 years old. I am lying on my bed clutching the album he gave me. For time it comes, and time it goes, it makes the strongest tree to bend. It is bittersweet and painfully ominous. I can practically see whatever it is that existed between us disappearing into the night. Love is leaving and I’m dealt the crushing blow of powerlessness, the searing pain of lost love. Kings and Queens have no defence, time brings all things to an end. It is new and cruel and awful and it hurts, it hurts to be alive.
I am 25 years old, huddled at the top of Zobor Mountain while the wind and rain whip around me and lightning streaks across the Danubian Plain. In my pack I have the remnants of the care package I travelled so enthusiastically into the city to collect from the border guards just this morning. Tears and raindrops are running down my face, soothing the new, fist-sized bruise that is throbbing under my eye. I can't bear to return to my sterile room with its ghosts and demons. I prefer to stand alone on this mountain, numb to all but the storm and the grinding of my tapedeck playing the only music the border guards left me. And I was feeling so alone. I was looking for someone or thing to remind me of my home. What I wouldn't give to have somebody nod or wink at me. I am so scared. There are eyes and ears in the walls, strange men lurking in the shadows, fists and shouts that my injured soul can't understand.
I am 26 years old, hurtling through the pitch black night, my sister in the passenger seat. We are driving to meet the rest of our family, already on vacation at Redstone Lake. Midnight has passed long ago and we are delirious with caffeine and chocolate. I've got a smile on my face and I've got four walls around me. Got the sun in the sky all the water surrounds me. My car is zipping across the bridge at Fort Irwin, so narrow it seems that we are skimming the very surface of the water. There are no other cars around. We have the radio turned up full blast, the windows down all the way. We are sharing this moment before our lives branch out and take different directions. At the end of the day, you've just got to say it's alright.
I am 28 years old, standing at the front of the church that raised me, carefully positioning my dad's guitar, his fishing rod, his favourite ball cap, a picture of us. Soon initial bliss will pass, this precious time might be your last. His best friend is telling stories of their childhood, family legends of Newfoundland capers, brand new boots that 'fell' into the outhouse, disappearing bicycle tires and schoolroom pranks. I am full of tears and laughter and comfort. Tried to think of what to say, when words came he'd already gone
I am 30 years old and I've downed nearly 750mL of Raspberry Stolichnaya in the past five hours. Today I was fired. My staff has come to my home and we are having a wake. The room is full of drunk, angry, loud people having a hell of a good time. I've always said 'all the rules are made for bending'. And if I let my hair down, would that be such a crime? Luke and I stand on the balcony and rant. He tells me he is quitting tomorrow - he does. Sean tells me he is going to kick some ass at that place - he does. Sarah tells me she's going to poke endless fun of the VP - she does. I wanna be where nothing needs to matter. It's enough. What a lucky unemployed bitch I am.
I am 32 years old, a bonafide adult in a black suit and heels that I will later regret. I'm standing behind a bank of microphones feeding lines to Canada's 22nd Prime Minister as he shares his opinions on the softwood lumber issue with the press gallery. The lines are mine, but I agree with approximately 0% of what he has to say. I am embarrassed and frustrated and sick of spinning garbage I don't believe in. The Premier glances over, frowns a bit, considers my set face, leans over and whispers "didja have the egg salad or the tuna?" As long as the rivers still run to the seas, hey lucky you, lucky me.
A jolt to my chair from an overzealous fan brings me back to the present. The crowd is shouting for an encore. Great Big Sea, I imagine, is hanging back until it’s just the right time to deliver. Their return to the stage coincides with my return to the present and the venue fills with a roar. Teebs rubs my back and bounces on his toes. Here, and now. The band sings: It's all brand new and it shines right through…
NOTE: This is not a review, so please don't berate me, yell at me, email me, complain to me, question me or otherwise BUG me for not getting the set list right and yadda yadda. If you want a review, go read someone else's blog. Also, the concept for this came from an as yet unpublished article I wrote about another band, but friendship and sweet memories have made me hesitate about tossing that one out to the public (GT, if I ever change my mind about that, you'll be the first to know).
July 15, 2006
Roll Over Roberts
So I’m sitting around wondering, as I often do, what is Julia Roberts up to these days? Then I realize that’s not the question I should be asking – not under any circumstances, really. The real question is this: who cares anymore? To which I respond with a resounding, "not me!"
I submit that Julia Roberts' over-exposure on-screen and off, fueled by questionable choices in her "private" life, can only mean one thing: she’s done. We’ve had it. It’s time for her to hand over her official Golden Child sash. Which begets another query: to whom should she hand it? After much careful consideration, I have the perfect nominee…
ME!
I’ve never won an office before. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never run, but I don’t know if that would have made any difference. But this one I’m sure about. I think I’m the ideal candidate for the new Golden Child and in the following paragraphs, I’ll share with you the startling similarities between Ms. Roberts and myself that back my position.
You had no idea, did you?
First, and perhaps most obviously, we both have huge mouths. Hers, in the sense that it is, well, physically huge and, if you ask me, quite off-putting. Mine, in the sense that I seem to completely lack an edit function.
Recently she was widely panned for her Broadway appearance in Three Days of Rain. I can relate. I received mixed reviews for my grade eight performance as Beatrice in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. (In my own defense, our school septic system overflowed the day before opening and I was forced to perform my debut role on a flatbed truck in the nearby United Church parking lot.)
We both played clarinet in middle school.
Or try this one on for size… Our romantic histories are not dissimilar. We have both had "feelings" for Kiefer Sutherland in the past yet neither of us saw that dream come to fruition.
Roberts doesn’t speak to her actor brother, Eric. While I do speak with my sister, albeit rarely, I can say with confidence that if my brother were Eric Roberts, I probably wouldn’t speak to him either. No matter how many times I’ve watched Star 80.
Am I freaking you out yet or what?
Once you start examining her exhausting filmography, you’ll find even more eerie comparisons between the two of us. For example, one of Ms. Roberts’ first films was a little indie flick called Mystic Pizza – and I love pizza. Too weird!
Next, in Steel Magnolias, Roberts won many hearts – and an inexplicable Oscar nod – playing the terminally ill daughter of Sally Field. I can modestly assert that some of my own best performances were as a child, faking illness to avoid having to go to school. (The inequity of the comparison being that, unlike Roberts, I was rewarded only with brusque instructions to march my ass to the bus stop right this minute or it would be marched there for me.)
It doesn’t stop there. Of course it doesn’t. She was in a film called Sleeping with the Enemy. I, in turn, have slept with several people I now consider enemies.
Last but definitely not least, Roberts finally won an Oscar – and about every other award known to man – for her role as Erin Brockovich, where she played a fearless, spunky attorney’s assistant who winds up seeking justice for a town whose contaminated drinking water has been killing its citizens. I, on the other hand, have fearlessly and spunkily drunk many a glass of water of dubious origin – and survived. Who’s the hero in this equation?
There! I’ve said my piece. It’s funny how you think you have a strong case about something until you put it down on paper, see it laid out in black and white and realize – it’s air tight, baby! I’m not the next Golden Child …I’m the Golden Child right now.
So, hit the road, Roberts. There’s a new heroine in town – and if there’s only one thing I inspire women to do during my reign it’ll be something Julia never did – eat!
Thank you! Thank you, very much! Look for my autograph on eBay!
I submit that Julia Roberts' over-exposure on-screen and off, fueled by questionable choices in her "private" life, can only mean one thing: she’s done. We’ve had it. It’s time for her to hand over her official Golden Child sash. Which begets another query: to whom should she hand it? After much careful consideration, I have the perfect nominee…
ME!
I’ve never won an office before. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never run, but I don’t know if that would have made any difference. But this one I’m sure about. I think I’m the ideal candidate for the new Golden Child and in the following paragraphs, I’ll share with you the startling similarities between Ms. Roberts and myself that back my position.
You had no idea, did you?
First, and perhaps most obviously, we both have huge mouths. Hers, in the sense that it is, well, physically huge and, if you ask me, quite off-putting. Mine, in the sense that I seem to completely lack an edit function.
Recently she was widely panned for her Broadway appearance in Three Days of Rain. I can relate. I received mixed reviews for my grade eight performance as Beatrice in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. (In my own defense, our school septic system overflowed the day before opening and I was forced to perform my debut role on a flatbed truck in the nearby United Church parking lot.)
We both played clarinet in middle school.
Or try this one on for size… Our romantic histories are not dissimilar. We have both had "feelings" for Kiefer Sutherland in the past yet neither of us saw that dream come to fruition.
Roberts doesn’t speak to her actor brother, Eric. While I do speak with my sister, albeit rarely, I can say with confidence that if my brother were Eric Roberts, I probably wouldn’t speak to him either. No matter how many times I’ve watched Star 80.
Am I freaking you out yet or what?
Once you start examining her exhausting filmography, you’ll find even more eerie comparisons between the two of us. For example, one of Ms. Roberts’ first films was a little indie flick called Mystic Pizza – and I love pizza. Too weird!
Next, in Steel Magnolias, Roberts won many hearts – and an inexplicable Oscar nod – playing the terminally ill daughter of Sally Field. I can modestly assert that some of my own best performances were as a child, faking illness to avoid having to go to school. (The inequity of the comparison being that, unlike Roberts, I was rewarded only with brusque instructions to march my ass to the bus stop right this minute or it would be marched there for me.)
It doesn’t stop there. Of course it doesn’t. She was in a film called Sleeping with the Enemy. I, in turn, have slept with several people I now consider enemies.
Last but definitely not least, Roberts finally won an Oscar – and about every other award known to man – for her role as Erin Brockovich, where she played a fearless, spunky attorney’s assistant who winds up seeking justice for a town whose contaminated drinking water has been killing its citizens. I, on the other hand, have fearlessly and spunkily drunk many a glass of water of dubious origin – and survived. Who’s the hero in this equation?
There! I’ve said my piece. It’s funny how you think you have a strong case about something until you put it down on paper, see it laid out in black and white and realize – it’s air tight, baby! I’m not the next Golden Child …I’m the Golden Child right now.
So, hit the road, Roberts. There’s a new heroine in town – and if there’s only one thing I inspire women to do during my reign it’ll be something Julia never did – eat!
Thank you! Thank you, very much! Look for my autograph on eBay!
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