Ladies and Gentlemen - Toronto's newest mayor

About four months ago, I was forced to move from my old apartment.  I wish I could tell you it was for something exciting, like staging a ritual pagan sacrifice in the living room or being caught base-jumping from the balcony.  Sadly, the landlord just sold it to someone who wanted to live there.

I regretted leaving that place – I’d grown to like it, as well as my neighborhood, and especially the people who represented me in government.   My federal MP Olivia Chow was a charming pragmatist, a Humphrey-Bogart-esque antihero in amazing boots.  Her world-weary idealism was nicely complemented by the nerdish übercompetence of my city councillor, Adam Vaughan.    They are both urban progressives representing a progressive urban neighbourhood,  quietly going about the drudgery of being a politician.  They say nothing outlandish nor make cynical promises they intend to break.   With the exception of Olivia’s dubious choice in spouses, there is hardly a whiff of scandal between them.   Unless Olivia decides to come out against abortion, or Adam confesses a jones for kiddie porn, their electorate will probably keep returning them to office.

And therein lies the problem of competent elected officials.  Chow and Vaughan are kind of like NASA astronauts – so good at their jobs that they’ve managed to make what could be intensely exciting seem mind-numbingly boring.   They don’t stir up any intense passions in people (although I do find Olivia rather MILF-y).  Perhaps if they were screw-ups like Toronto’s new mayor Rob Ford,  people would might get more emotional.

It’s a funny quirk of Canadian politics that more votes get cast for the mayor of Toronto than our country’s Prime Minister, and this week more Canadians voted for an amateur Chris Farley impersonator than any elected official in the land.   There was lots of hand-wringing in Hogtown over Ford’s candidacy; that he is an artless, scandalous, homophobic bigot, prone to public drunkeness and outrageous promises. Oh, and his head looks like a blood blister.

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For the record...I do not want this on my gravestone.

Perhaps it’s been the downturn in my fortunes, but lately I‘ve grown fond of planning my own funeral. While some people daydream about spending the vast sums they win in the lottery, or coming home to find Megan Fox vacuuming the rug in the nude, my thoughts linger on that ultimate Going Away Party (I go away, everyone parties). I know it sounds a tad morose, but before anyone starts planning an intervention, please know that I don’t feel suicidal (yet).  In fact,  I’m not really preoccupied with the exact circumstances of my death, although I’d pick a fiery motorcycle crash à la Thelma and Louise if I was certain it could be painless.

Part of my morbid  fascination has to do with that wish every child has when they think they’re in trouble –  to gain the moral high ground by dying (because THEN you’ll be sorry).  Mostly though, I’ve been planning my own funeral because funerals usually suck.

I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels this way. With the exception of funeral directors, no one is jonesing to go to a funeral; there’s no need for a bouncer and velvet rope at funeral parlours, and Owen Wilson will not make a movie called The Funeral Crashers.  Why the antipathy? Well,  there’s that whole “confronting your own mortality” thing, but anyone who’s seen the end of the human safari knows the real reason: funerals are hastily organized affairs done on the cheap – cheap stationery, cheap egg salad sandwiches cut in fours (because that looks fancy), and worst of all…cheap sentiments.

It’s not like we don’t know it’s coming. I suppose most of us don’t give a shit about our own funerals because it’s unlikely we’ll be attending them.   Instead, we’re struck down by an aneurysm, or a drive-by shooting,  and then it’s a mad sprint for our loved ones to get us in the ground before we start smelling like a diabetic hobo on a hot day.  The result is there’s little time to think about how we should truly be remembered. A Better Man would not stand for such a flaccid end to his life.  A Better Man would have a hand in choreographing that moment when the handful of people still alive and willing to admit they knew him come together and celebrate his meagre contribution to humanity.

Hunter S. Thompson - going out with a bang.

Like most people, I want the turd polished – a big reason funerals exist is to salvage dignity from a life where none may have existed.  As Bette Davis pointed out, one should always speak good of the dead, even if the dead were assholes in life, and so it should be with my shuffling of this mortal coil.  Of course, a resplendent funeral where the guest of (dis)honour gets big ups is promised to no one. The only way you can ensure that people leave the church/funeral home/Hooters with an image of you that you yourself helped shape is to be very vocal about what you want at your funeral while you’re still living.  Thanks to my current fixation,  I believe I have it down when it comes to planning my viking send-off.

First off, I don’t want a viking send-off – I’m sure the boat will cost too much, plus nothing kills a funereal mood quite like having firefighters on stand-by to put out your funeral pyre once the thing is over.  In fact, anything grandiose is pretty much a non-starter, because no one will want honour it (unless you paid for it in advance).  So unless you’re Hunter S. Thompson,  forget about having your remains shot out of a cannon.

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Fear is my co-pilot.

Some of you might remember that recent flashpoint of American conservative angst, the dreaded Ground Zero Mosque.  Perhaps you don’t, and in no way is that a bad thing. In fact, if you can’t remember, then stop reading right now – it’s not my place to remind you. Go back to checking Facebook or watching squirrel porn.

Are they gone? Alright.  Let’s proceed.

To me, the mosque fracas was a hollow story, a paper giant intended to frighten Americans by the size of the shadow it cast, even though it posed no threat.  Despite this, the issue tied everyone up in knots, including Barack Obama.  On a Friday, the US president reminded everyone that in America, people are free to practice their religion however and wherever they want.  Then the very next day, Barack walked it back and said his fierce defense of religious freedom should in no way be construed as rendering an opinion on the location of the mosque.  It was flip-flopping at its flip-floppiest.  About the only person who probably struck the right tone in this whole mess was Jon Stewart.  The subtext of his comments, in cased you missed it, was simple: the people who started this story are fuckheads, and you are a fuckhead for getting upset about it.

What made this story especially pernicious was just when you thought it was over, when you thought pundits had found some new way to make Americans shit their pants, or some fact exposed the controversy as a farce (that the mosque is actually several blocks away from Ground Zero, that there’s a mosque even closer to Ground Zero that has operated for years, that the principal investor in the mosque was also a principal investor in Fox News, that the mosque isn’t even a mosque) something happened or got said to keep it alive;  a xenophobic rally in downtown Manhattan, a fringe pastor decides to burn Korans, “revelations” about plans for activities in the mosque, or a new blogger late to the story writes about it (oops). The Ground Zero Mosque frenzy survived well past its sell-by date and promised to continue indefinitely, a festering boil on the ass of public discourse – not life threatening per se, but really fucking ugly, and uncomfortable for anyone who tried to sit on it.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk9QYuslcP8

Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I might become a Better Man through career advancement, and I think I may’ve found a role model.  His name: Rick Sanchez.

Now I admit, Rick is a low wattage bulb, and possibly unstable, but he has made his limited gifts work for him, although I rarely bothered to watch Rick’s List on CNN.  For that matter, I’ve never watched Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Lew Dobbs, Jim Kramer or any other of those frothy-mouthed, Howard Beale wannabes either.   There’s nothing high-minded about my disinterest – I was just jealous.  That these men could be successful in television (even though their qualifications are dubious and their opinions often grossly misinformed) made me think just one thing: Fuck me, I could’ve made it too.

Historically, my exposure to their programs was limited to the selected morsels served up by Jon Stewart (a man with unique gifts, thus making his show bearable for me to watch).  Surely Stewart and his writers must believe in God, because it’s almost as these gaff-prone numskulls were created specifically for mockery by The Daily Show – can you imagine how dull the program would be if they weren’t around?

I suspect Stewart realizes how symbiotic his relationship with the pundit cabal is, and I think some of the sharper ones in that group know it too: thanks to the most trusted newscaster in America (Time Magazine called Stewart that, not me), these guys are exposed to a broad segment of people who would otherwise having nothing to do with them.   A lot of people could happily live out their lives without ever hearing these gentlemen and their rabid gobblygook (I’ve been waiting for an occasion to use that word!), so The Daily Show has had the effect of elevating their presence from “possibly harmful white noise that taints intelligent debate” to “something to which we should pay marginal attention”.

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I'm going to buy some right now. (no I won't)

I dislike running intensely.  Don’t get me wrong – I’ll happily run for a football, or a baseball, or a street hockey ball – anything round, really.  I’m like a dog that way.  It’s running for it’s own sake I don’t get.  I have never felt the runner’s “high” so much as the runner’s “high anxiety.”  I don’t know what it is – it’s common to all runners, but the constriction in my chest as I start induces a weird mortal panic that I’ve never managed to overcome.  As I’ve said before,  running is for people in danger.

Nonetheless, I ran for years, going so far as to compete in the masochistic ritual of 10k runs – I suppose I hoped to be infected with the enthusiasm of running junkies, but apparently I was immune. Despite my profound antipathy, I found running was the about only thing that could effectively stave off the curse of my family’s slow metabolism.  So when I developed severe plantar fasciitis in both feet several years ago, it came as bittersweet news.  I was thrilled to have an excuse not to run, but it also meant I had to find an alternative.   Around this time a friend of mine, a bass player in a popular Canadian band, suggested Bikram yoga.  The man is blessed with perennial thinness and a rock star’s libido, so it was unlikely he was going to yoga for his health. “The women who go are the hottest I’ve ever seen,” he intoned.    I never bothered to point out Bikram yoga is practiced in a heated room, so technically ALL the woman who try it are hot, whether they’re attractive or not.

That said, the majority of women who practice Bikram yoga are empirically beautiful. Now, Bikram isn’t easy, nor does it get easier with practice.  It inspires slavish devotion in some, heatstroke and a desire to vomit in others. I’ve never summited Everest, but I suspect the feeling of scaling the highest peak on earth is similar to finishing a Bikram class – a combination of exhaustion, pride, and joy the ordeal is over.  This is perhaps why I sometimes struggle with the motivation to go to Bikram yoga. However, knowing that I might exercise in the presence of gorgeous, scantily-clad women contorting their bodies in interesting positions has inspired me when both the flesh and spirit were highly unwilling.  For a time, I practiced with a woman I was mad about – perhaps the only woman I knew for certain I wanted to marry – and for us, yoga was a kind of protracted foreplay.

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