Shyzerblog

1. London Fringe Festival

The London Fringe Festival was a ton of fun, in spite of missing the train to London on opening day (oops), VIA rail strikes jamming up further travel plans, and London transit buses that stopped running at 6pm (6???? Seriously?). Also:

Highlights include an afternoon spent lounging in one of Sarah’s coworker’s pool, great audiences at the Fringe club, staying in a guest room with all Simpson’s decor:

and this thing:

This was a set of chimes in a park near our theatre. One day, while Sarah and I were hanging out in the park before a show. it began to play. The tune seemed familiar, and we both stopped to listen, finally realizing that it was, in fact, playing “It’s a Small World (After All)”. Full chorus and verse. If anyone from London can explain this to me, I’d love to hear the rationale.

2. G20

Well that sucked.

Highlights include not getting the crap beaten out of me by the police for no reason, conversations with people offering delightfully intelligent arguments like “well they should have known” and “the police are just doing their job”, writing hilariously snarky emails to Bill Blair and finally receiving an inadequate form response from an office assistant a month later.

3. Hamilton Fringe Festival

Hamilton was another great festival, although commuting to and from home for every show was a bit trying – mostly because there was no way to predict what kind of awful traffic we’d get snarled in on the way there.

I think Hamilton’s audiences have been the most enthusiastic so far. It was in Hamilton  that the show got its first full standing ovation, and that I had my first request for an autograph (awkward!). Also, it’s the closest the show has been to home since its first incarnation, so it was nice that so many friends could finally come out and see it.

Oddly, I didn’t take any pictures in Hamilton.

4. Friends for Life Bike Rally

Highlights include: Everything. Pretty much the whole damn trip, all six days of riding, and two days in Montreal. Maybe minus the pain in my knees.

5. Minnesota Fringe Festival.

The day after returning from the Bike Rally I flew to Chicago, where I spent the day before taking an overnight bus to Minneapolis. Holy crap, Chicago is a beautiful city.

Highlights of Minneapolis include:

1. Ridiculously friendly people. I was lugging a TV (a prop for the show) down the street the day after I got here, and it was a million degrees out. (That’s a million degrees Fahrenheit, I’m not sure what that is in Celsius, but it’s pretty hot.) A complete stranger passing on the street offered me a ride to the theatre, and then promised to come see the show when I told her about it. And she actually did!

2. There are bunnies EVERYWHERE. Seriously. They have bunnies the way Toronto has squirrels. Every night when I ride home I see little families of bunnies scurrying across people’s lawns. (I am more than a little worried about running one over.) Bunnies!

3. Tons of awesome old neon signs and retro diners/bars/restaurants (most of which I suspect are not trying to be retro in any way).

The festival here is really huge, a lot like Toronto’s Fringe, which I’m finding a little overwhelming and it’s hard not to feel invisible in the middle of it all. Also, in case I didn’t mention it, IT IS A MILLION DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

You don’t have to know me well – in fact, you barely have to know me at all – to know that I am not a reactionary person. I generally contemplate more than complain, and am not one to get bent out of shape over minor scandals or trendy causes. So I hope you will appreciate the extent of consideration and concern I have put into the following, and understand that when I say this is probably the most important thing I have ever asked of you, I really, really mean it.

Awful, terrible, scary things happened in Toronto this weekend. Yet even scarier than the violence and mayhem in the streets are some of the arguments I hear from otherwise reasonable people in defense of the atrocious abuse of charter rights perpetrated by G20 security forces and supported by all levels of government.

Discussions with those presenting these arguments have shown me that many are simply unaware of what happened this weekend. Perhaps you decided to get out of town for the duration of the summit (a prudent move, no argument) and since returning all you’ve heard of what happened is a few snippets from the TV or the radio about violence and riots. My intention was to put together a primer on the events of this weekend, referencing various news sources, but instead all I’m going to say is this: if you read nothing else about what happened at the G20 this weekend, if you do no more research beyond this sentence, then please first read this account of the inexplicable arrest and detainment of a pretty average citizen. It’s a long read, for sure, but it provides a detailed, captivating account of what happened to one Torontonian that is undeniable, compelling, and at times even funny. If you’re still skeptical, a little bit of research will corroborate many of the writer’s claims of police disorganization, contempt, abuse, homophobia, and lies.

To those of you who live far from the downtown core of Toronto and had the luxury of staying away: imagine if a crime occurred in your neighbourhood and the police responded by quickly surrounding the area and everyone in it (including you), arresting them, and then releasing people hours later after deciding that they weren’t the perpetrators of the crime. You’d be pissed, and rightfully so – the police have no right to arrest hundreds of people just because a few of them may be guilty. Now consider that this is not an analogy for what happened this weekend – this IS what happened.

Why would the police do such a thing, you ask? What would they have to gain? The Star has a pretty good idea in this article on the Miami Model.

Meanwhile, actual perpetrators of violence got of scott free. Police did not try to apprehend ‘black bloc’ tacticians, allowing windows to be smashed and cars to be burned for hours. When I headed down to Spadina and Queen on Saturday I watched a police car – already surrounded by hundreds of police – burn for a good 45 minutes (and it had been burning since long before I arrived) before the police bothered to move in and extinguish it. And when a few bad apples tried to disrupt an otherwise innocuous gathering, the crowd reacted. At one point a man pointed out a guy who had thrown something into the crowd. “This guy!,” he said, “in the white shirt!”, and at least fifty civilians (no exaggeration – it was hilarious. All that was missing was Yakety Sax.) chased the perpetrator down an alley. Not a single police officer (though there were many to spare) supported the pursuit, and the man got away.

If you haven’t already seen this video of a civilian totally pwning a would-be looter, treat yourself – it’s very satisfying. But it raises the question: why were civilians left to enforce order, and not the $1 billion worth of security forces? Naomi Klein has a pretty good idea in this video.

Instead, police used a tactic known as “kettling” to detain hundreds of innocent people for hours – even though both police and the mayor’s office admit that only a handful of people were responsible for the violence (which, incidentally, had taken place a day before). Police even apprehended journalists. If you haven’t already read Steve Paikin’s chilling account of the beating and arrest of a journalist on Saturday night, please do. And please, please – if you can’t understand how atrocious it is for the police to arrest journalists who are merely trying to document public events, ask a grown up to explain it to you. I don’t have the patience to draw you a picture.

Since the G20 has ended, Police Chief Bill Blair has admitted to deliberatlely misleading the people of Toronto regarding the secret laws that were passed for the summit. He has also admitted to stocking a press conference that was supposed to showcase confiscated protestor weapons with items that in fact had nothing to do with the G20 at all, and weren’t even weapons. On Tuesday evening a group of people (including myself) showed up to protest Bill Blair’s appearance at at Pride Toronto event. When asked if he knew why the group outside was so upset, Blair replied “I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care“. This is the man who now thinks the only review of police conduct at the G20 summit should be an internal one, despite his flagrant failure to uphold the Toronto Police Services values of honesty and openness.

I’m not one to throw around ‘isms, but the events of this weekend and the subsequent attitude of Bill Blair smack of authoritarianism. I firmly believe that this is a watershed moment in Canadian history: either we stand up and demand accountability and redress for the events of this weekend, or we do nothing – sending the message to the government and the police that whatever they say, goes, regardless of whatever rights we think we have.

So please – PLEASE – do something. Write to the mayor (mayor_miller@toronto.ca), your city councillor, your MP, your MPP, and the Prime Minister’s office (you can also quickly send a pre-written email to the PM’s office from Amnesty International’s website) demanding an inquiry into G20 security measures, and the removal of Bill Blair from his position as Chief of Police. And then write to them again. One little email is meaningless, but thousands of them can’t be ignored.

Please join me this evening at the Rally for a Public Inquiry Concerning the Actions at the G20. And while you’re at it, join the Facebook group (it’ll keep you informed) and sign the petition.

If you’re not quite convinced yet, here are a few more links you should check out:

Torontoist’s Fourteen Essential G20 Videos

http://backofthebook.ca/2010/06/27/widespread-police-misbehaviour-illegal-activity-at-g20/3402/

http://spacingtoronto.ca/2010/06/28/g20-a-few-questions-to-ask-organizers-of-g20/

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/829515–call-inquiry-on-g20-mayhem

http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/video/compilation-videos-about-police-violence/3897

http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/news/view.php?load=arcview&article=5453&c=Resource+Centre+News

Last July I packed my bike onto a plane and, with almost no training and even less planning, rode across England, Scotland, and Wales.

I’m doing another big bike trip this year, the 660 km Friends for Life Bike Rally from Toronto to Montreal. It’s a pretty similar distance to what I did in the UK, but there are a few things that will make this ride different. Number one, I won’t be riding alone, I’ll be with 400(!) others, including friends both old and new. Number two, it probably won’t rain all day, every day. And most importantly, this time I’ll be riding with a cause.

The Friends For Life Bike Rally supports the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation and helps to raise over half of its annual operating budget. I’ve set a fundraising goal of $2,500, and I’m going to need your help reach it. You can sponsor me here; if you’d like to make a donation by cash or cheque contact me (mark at shyzer.ca) and I’ll see you get the necessary paperwork.

I’m about to head off for a training ride this morning, but before I go, here’s 9 reasons to sponsor me, other than the perfectly obvious charitable ones:

1. You want to get that warm fuzzy feeling (see also #7)

2. You didn’t buy me a birthday present. Not even a lousy card.

3. $2,500 is a lot of money, but if Obama could raise $52 million with an average donation of $86, then $20 from a bunch of you can get me over my target in no time.

4. You can get a tax receipt and stick it to Canada Customs and Revenue (see  also #5).

5. Your tax receipt will be for 2010, and by the time you go to file you’ll have totally forgotten about it. Then as you go through your paperwork you’ll be like, oh man! I forgot about that! I’m such a good person (see #1)! Which is exactly the kind of self-assuring ray of sunshine you’ll need during tax time.

6. I’ll be your friend. Which means I’ll trade lunches with you at recess and let you use my pencil crayons if you forget yours.

7. You’ll avoid gnawing feelings of guilt for letting me down. (see also corollary #1)

8. I’ve provided you with dozens of minutes of online entertainment for free. Remember that song I wrote about wanting to hurt people who get things you want for yourself? You totally identified with that. Isn’t that worth something?

9. I’ll stop nagging you.

It should be no surprise that I love Betty White. Most of my comedic influences are old white women. So I immediately joined the facebook group campaigning for her appearance on Saturday Night Live (even though I usually roll my eyes at that sort of thing, and by ‘that sort of thing’ I mean Saturday Night Live). I was only a little surprised when I heard that White was actually going to host the show – the kind of surprised you get when you hear a good idea come out of someone stupid.

Then I read that White’s appearance was to commemorate Mother’s Day. What??

Betty White has no children. While she has played characters who’ve had children, none of her iconic characters have ever held maternity as their hallmark. There’s no reason to associate her with motherhood. So why was she cast as mother or grandmother in every SNL sketch but one?

Betty White is an 88 year old woman with a gift for comedic characterization and timing. She’s spent more time in television than the entire cast of SNL put together, and she’s still at it. You don’t have a career like hers without a great deal of savvy and a bucket of talent to go with it. And she doesn’t look a day over 60. So I was really irked that SNL’s writers couldn’t seem to relate to her as anything other than somebody’s grammaw; the woman is living proof that an elderly woman can be a hell of a lot more than that.

If, god willing, Betty White is going to host the oscars, somebody’d better campaign for some better writers.

In conclusion…

Dear Mouse,

I’ve had a trap set out for you for months and you seem to pay it no attention whatsoever.

Really, you should count yourself lucky that I’ve laid out a humane trap for you. I didn’t have to. And sure, that decision is motivated partly by the fact that I don’t want to have to deal with disposing of your semi-decapitated body or have you eat poison and then die somewhere in the walls, stinking up the whole house. But it’s at least partially motivated by my gentle heart.

If you could talk to any of the mice I’ve had to deal with in past apartments you’d hear how they were humanely captured, sometimes kept (and well fed) for a few days until the novelty wore off, and then released with much fanfare (and occasionally fireworks) near the houses of people I don’t like. (Above, see Winston, who cornered himself inside my printer in second year). Of course, you won’t hear this, because as you and I both know mice are consistently ungrateful and rarely write reference letters.

I realize you may be feeling hostile since one of my roommates may or may not have successfully beaten one of your brethren to death with the kitchen broom after it ran into a bag of garbage. This was, admittedly, a diplomatic mistake. But understand that we experienced loss in this conflict, too; that was once a perfectly good broom.

It seems we’ve been successful in keeping all the food in the house out of your reach. I noticed recently that you’ve chewed the label off the oil bottle under the sink – a sure sign of desparation – and I’m pretty sure I heard you eating paper under the fridge last night. Is that any way to live? I know you’ve been here longer than us, but clearly this arrangement isn’t working for anyone. And it’s my name on the lease. So why not take a free ticket to greener pastures?

Please, just step into the trap. I even baited it with peanut butter, which I hear is like cheese to you guys.

Regards,

MS

I was kind of glad to hear about the provincial government’s proposed changes to sex education last week.

In elementary school I was shipped off to a different school once a week along with the other “gifted” kids from my class. Our teacher there was insistent on thorough sex ed when we were in grade six. Everything was covered, comprehensively, scientifically, and, wherever possible, multimedialy (I remember having to watch at least one birthing video, and an educational video showing the process of a penis becoming erect through thermal imaging. The latter is, surprisingly, not available on youtube. Feel free to look up birthing videos on your own time).

In regular school, none of this was covered. Even in highschool sex ed was scant. I don’t remember whether it was included as part of grade 9 health class. I feel like it must have been there in some form, but the only memory I have of human sexuality being discussed in highschool was in grade 11 biology, and the lesson was, in a nutshell: sperm fertilize eggs. But don’t ask how they get there. I also remember a video we had to watch in one religion class that basically consisted of a bug-eyed man explaining that serial monogamy would lead to inevitable syphilis (way less exciting to watch than the thermal erection, but about as uncomfortable as the birthing video). So thank god for my grade 6 gifted class. I’m still occasionally shocked by how little people my age actually know about human sexuality.

So I was disappointed that the new guidelines have been yanked.

But more than that, I’m annoyed at the arguments being used against them. No 1st grader is going to be traumatized by learning the proper words for their private parts. I’m all for preserving the innocence of childhood as long as possible, but innocence and ignorance are not the same thing. Not teaching kids about puberty isn’t going to stop it from happening. It’ll just make them feel a little less awkward when it does. And I find it absolutely thick with irony right now that the Catholic school boards are demanding that they be able to teach sexuality their own way. The Catholic Church can’t even instill sexual decency in its priests; I hardly trust them with teenagers.

On a personal note, I’m particularly sad to lose early education on sexual orientation and gender identity. These are two items which I’m sure will be the first to go if skittish parents get their way, and which are exactly the topics that won’t be properly covered at home by these same parents.

But at least I can take comfort in knowing that kids can still get the hard facts where they’ve always gone for life’s tough lessons: Archie comics.

I felt the need to comment on this piece in the Globe and Mail in which Sky Gilbert announces that, since the game isn’t going his way, he’s going to take his gay ball and go home. “I am no longer gay,” he writes, “I quit”.

As Gilbert isn’t terribly explicit about what he means by “defecting and/or just resigning from the club”, it’s probably safe to assume this is just a punchy bit of rhetoric to make for a dramatic headline. After all, you don’t get invited onto CBC radio for writing an op-ed about how you’re vaguely annoyed with the direction the queer community is moving in but hey, what can you do?

Nonetheless, the headline irks me, not because sensational rhetoric generally obscures otherwise worthy arguments (of which Gilbert has some), not because it ambiguates sexuality, identity, behaviour, and community, and not because it provides fuel for conversion therapy wingnuts. It irks me because it’s just such an asinine thing to say.

It seems the last straw for Gilbert was a TV gay couple who were portrayed as – shock, horror! – “a pair of nice, overweight, unattractive middle-class men”. It’s not clear what Gilbert, a university research chair who is neither svelte nor stunning nor, by any accounts, a raging asshole, would prefer. Should all TV gays be mincing Jack Macfarlands? Blue-balled Wayland Smithers‘? Campy Kurt Hummels? The latter is probably my favourite character on television right now – an unflinching sissy with great courage of conviction. But as far as I’m concerned, there’s room for other types of gays, in tvland and the real world (which also has room for more spontaneous production numbers, if anyone is listening).

It pains me to say it, but everyone, even the gays, have the right to be boring. Not that I encourage it. But I also don’t see deviance as the sole privilege or responsibility of queers. If gays want to settle down, move to the suburbs and live humdrum domestic lives, that’s fine by me. Well actually, it kind of makes me sad. But no more than when straight people do it. And if straight people want to bend gender and eschew societal expectations, welcome to the party.

Gilbert’s “personal solution” to changing gay demographics is to break away from the label entirely and call himself ESP (pronounced “espie”), short for Effeminate Sexual Person. Acronyms are already something the queer world needs like a hole in the head, and Gilbert’s is also two-thirds redundant: who isn’t sexual, or a person?

It all feels like the word games of political correctness that Gilbert faults in the first place (also to blame: Twitter). But it’s just being antagonistic to wield one’s identity as something that is entirely political and not personal. You can’t change your spots – or decide that you’re going to call your spots Orbicular Super-dermal Markings (OSM, pronounced “awesomes”) just because you don’t like what the other leopards are doing.

This weekend I asked my mother for some of her Christmas cookie recipes (for something I’ll talk more about later) and as she was copying them on to index cards for me I poked fun at the sometimes esoteric cooking directions she has given me in the past (along the lines of “It’s done just before it turns brown. Sooner than that and it’s underdone, and if it browns, it’s ruined.”) She countered by pulling up this chili recipe I sent to my brother at University when I was about 15 or 16. I don’t actually remember writing this, but I recognize the recipe, I used to make it exactly like this all the time.

“Mark’s Chili Recipe

Finely chop one onion and fry it in oil until it’s almost burnt. Then add a package of ground beef and try not to burn that either. Add a can of kidney beans and stir. At this point you would normally put in a diced green pepper, but mom doesn’t like them. Celina doesn’t like kidney beans either, but without the beans it’s just fried meat in tomato juice. Pour in a can of plum tomatoes and simmer. Put in a pinch of salt and pepper, and some chili powder. Add some more chili powder, because you probably didn’t put enough in the first time. Then try to scoop some of it out. Sprinkle some baking soda over everything to counter the acidity of the tomatoes. (Brown sugar has the same effect, but it doesn’t do that cool foamy thing.) Allow it all to simmer for 20 minutes, during which time mom will come and pour some of the oil and fat out.

Chili may be stored on the stove with the lid half on for several days.”

I like to think my cooking skills have improved slightly since then.

Hangover

When your head pounds while you’re standing
And swims in circle when you lie,
When you’ve had a bumpy landing
And can’t see from either eye,

When no pill or potion known can mend
The symptoms that have hit you,
The remedy I recommend:
Some hair of the dog that bit you.

Went to Wonderland yesterday. Frankly, I’ve always found roller coasters to be a bit of a bore. This was our fourth ride on The Behemoth.