You know what I’m talking about.  You can’t find the remote. Your hotel doesn’t have 24 hour room service. The flight attendant informs you they’re out of the tenderloin.  The hipster with the goofy beard wearing selvedge jeans and a stupid Zissou cap standing ahead of you in line for Moonrise Kingdom won’t stop talking about Ryuichi Sakamoto.  The young twerps at work make fun of you because you’ve never heard a Ke$ha song. You don’t have the time to take the family to Europe this year, so you’ll have to settle for a week at the cottage. Your new skin cleanser makes your forehead blotchy.  Your new Louboutins pinch your heels.

By their very definition, first world problems are not that problematic.  They’re the result of reaching the top of the food chain, the peak of Maslow Mountain.  First world problems are what you’re left with when you don’t have any real problems.

I’ve been thinking about first world problems a lot, mostly because that’s all I seem to have these days.  I have no issue with this whatsoever.   What does concern me is the realization that all of my problems may be of the first world variety, including and especially the ones that inspired this blog.   I mean sure, I was in a potentially fatal motorbike accident – which I danced away from with barely a scratch.   Yes, my girlfriend dumped me, but the fact is I was not that unhappy to see her go, and if she hadn’t I wouldn’t have Baby Mama and Ava today.     Yes, finding work in a new town was a challenge, but for the past year and half I’ve had more work than I can handle, and I’m pretty much booked through all of 2013.

So what the fuck was I griping about?

I believe some of the foremost qualities of a Better Man is a sense of humility and gratitude for the good things in his life – and the bad things too, because he learns from them.  The start of a new year is generally reserved for self-reflection and think about the events that unfold to affect the course of your life.  As I go back and read through all my blogs, so clogged with existential angst, about the only conclusion I can reach is this: my shit was not (nor has ever been) that heavy, and I’m really fucking lucky.

If there is a downside to this exercise, it’s that I still wonder how I’ll react when faced with a real crisis, like famine, disease, war, my daughter dating…or being forced to listen to a Ke$ha song. I hear that’s torture.

Of all the things I get queasy at the sight of – needles going into my veins, blood (especially my own), Sex & The City reruns – by far the thing that skeezes me out the most is one individual’s public embarrassment.  When confronted with someone in the act of humiliating themselves, most people will say “Oh, I can’t watch”, but I Literally. Cannot.  Watch.  Every alcohol-induced act of obsession I witness on Bachelor Pad, every wedding I attend where the best man goes on a bit too long about how awesome the groom’s previous girlfriends were – I will almost always cover my eyes with my hands.  I can’t help it.  I’d probably try to pluck out my eyes if I thought I could re-insert them later.  I feel the kind of unease around another person’s public shame that most people reserve for massive rodents, sucking chest wounds or dismembered limbs.

I realize how unmanly this reaction is, and it’s a huge oversight on my part that I haven’t tried to fix it sooner.  That all changes right now.  I’ve decided to take a crash course in confronting other people’s worst moments: I will subject myself to video of people debasing themselves in front of an audience.  My hope is that with enough exposure I’ll be able to view such events with a flinty stoicism, maybe even respond with some kind of wry understatement, like “well, that’s just a goddamned shame.”   And I will start this shock treatment by viewing Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican National Convention.  For those who haven’t heard about it, basically what happened is this: Dirty Harry picked a fight with an empty chair and lost.

Last Thursday, Eastwood was invited by no less than the Mitt Romney himself to come out to the RNC and say a few words just before Romney accepted the nomination as Republican candidate for US President.  Now, it should be mentioned that EVERY SINGLE speaker at this event – from Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice – ALL of them had to have their speeches vetted before going onstage. We’re talking about party stalwarts who’ve probably given thousands of speeches in the past, so for the most part they’re highly skilled public speakers unlikely to go off-message and bad-mouth Romney or have a Tourette’s moment and reveal their disdain for race-mixing or something.

Dirty Harry’s speech, on the other hand, was vetted by nobody. When Eastwood took the stage, not a single person knew what he was about to say. My guess is anytime someone tried to broach the subject he just squinted at them and they shat their pants.   Of course, by now I’m sure they’re wishing they’d had more intestinal fortitude, because Squint Eastwood came out and proceeded to ramble on in some kind of fugue state, ignoring desperate cues from Republican handlers to wrap it up. The Outlaw Josey wailed, engaging in a mini chamber drama with an invisible Obama perched on the chair .  It sounds like the equivalent of watching Calvin talk to Hobbes.

On its face it sounds batshit crazy and hugely embarrassing, which is why I’ve lacked the nerve to watch it so far. A part of me is praying this is a simple matter of a very witty speaker setting up a joke badly, or maybe misreading his audience – kind of like what Steven Colbert did at the White House Press Correspondent’s Dinner a few years back (or maybe not – Colbert’s monologue was amazing as much for its sheer ballsiness as its humor – it just would’ve been easier to laugh if the big butts of his jokes – the Bush family and every reporter  in Washington – weren’t right there, stony-faced, no doubt wishing a Secret Service Agent would cap him on the spot).    On the other hand, I see that #eastwooding (taking a picture of yourself arguing with a piece of furniture) is one of the top trending topics on Twitter, and @invisibleobama (which was started mere hours after the speech) now has almost 70,000 followers. My favorite tweet far? The Obama family portrait.

In other words, it sounds like Eastwood’s diatribe could be EXACTLY the kind of cringe-worthy material I need to build up my tolerance to public humiliation, and so…I shall watch.  Here it goes:

Okay…wow.  The speech lasts almost 12 minutes, and I only got as far the 3 minute mark before I was hiding my face in my hands.    That’s just…well…lemme try again.

Shit!  I barely got to 5 minutes that time, and I actually had to get up from the table and hide in a closet.  It’s not so much the chair thing  - he set his up joke up badly, but you can kinda see where he’s going with it.  Rather, it’s the blathering, the repeated derailment of his train of thought.  I’m realizing now that I should’ve started with something a little less…disappointing.  By that, I mean profoundly, unequivocally discouraging – because if Clint Eastwood can go all Crazy Old Man on bunch of unsuspecting yobs, then any one of us can.

Let’s be clear: I’m not exactly a fan of either his movies or his politics, but I’ve always been a huge fan of Eastwood’s comportment, especially in his winter years.  He hasn’t shouted racial epithets at the state trooper arresting him for DUI, there’s no incriminating mug shot featuring wild hair and a stained Hawaiian shirt, no awkward revelations of love children with the hired help.  He seemed to understand that there are few things sadder than a damned old fool, and while he seemed to be okay with getting old, even damned old, he sure as hell wasn’t going to be a fool.  He said as much about four years ago, shortly before his last movie Gran Torino came out: “This will probably do it for me as far as acting is concerned … You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.”

Those are the words of a man who understands the elegance of a quiet exit, someone with no interest in either spiking the football or leaving the house with his underwear outside his pants. Eastwood seemed to take his own advice: he knew his limitations, and he said he’d abide by them. If you think about it, it’s quintessential Eastwood . His entire ouevre is about minimalism, making do with less – first with his acting, then later with his directing.  It makes sense that he’s never had a Pauly D moment and declared his own awesomeness or otherwise put himself in a position to be ridiculed.  He even hoodwinked everyone with a moment of lucidity early in the speech, when he said that by the very nature of the word, conservatives in Hollywood didn’t go around ‘hot-doggin’ it.’

Of course, immediately afterwards he started shouting at a chair, thus dashing my hope that I might possess the self-awareness late in life to avoid a similar indignity.  Clint Eastwood used to make me believe it was possible for me to keep it together in my declining years, rather than complain about my prostate or yell at imaginary kids to get off the real chair on my imaginary lawn. Not anymore.

So bascially, Clint Eastwood’s speech is poignant evidence that I need a lot more practice before I look upon a person’s disgrace with the squinty-eyed detachment of…well, you know.  But there’s also a bigger lesson: an underwear-outside-the-pants moment is coming for every man, regardless of whether he’s Better or not.  The best he can hope for is the Reaper gets to him first, or at the very least his moment doesn’t happen on live television in front of a few million viewers.

As for Eastwood – well, for the sake of aging men everywhere let’s pray he’s realized his mistake and will promptly return to form instead of doing something else that’ll only make me cover my eyes again, like star in another movie or something.

(Eastwood will be starring in Trouble With The Curve, which hits theatres this month)

 

By now I think we all know that celebrity interviews are complete horseshit.  They exist mostly to help the celebrity promote their latest movie/tell-all memoir/Playboy spread/prison release. Illumination is not a part of the design.

Personally, I’ve been party to the most craven of celebrity interviews – the movie press junket.  Studios will spend millions flying journalists in from Wichita or Reykjavik, put them up at a four-star hotel, and grant them a five-minute audience with the stars of the flick being promoted. In exchange for their largesse, the studios insist the discussion be limited to the movie, and that discussion be rather positive.

Suffice to say, the deepest insight you’re likely to get is how much the celebrity enjoyed working with their co-stars, be they human, penguin or Muppet (spoiler alert: they enjoyed it a LOT!).   The biggest revelations I ever had on a junket were that Jay Mohr does a killer Christopher Walken impersonation and Jennifer Aniston’s nipples are even perkier in real life – not exactly the Nixon Interviews.  Bad as they are, junkets interviews are only slightly worse than the stage-managed candor you see on 60 Minutes, or read about in Vanity Fair.   All of which is kind of sad, because I believe there’s something instructive in the lives of famous people, even if it’s just a cautionary tale.

That’s why I like the regular section in Esquire Magazine called “What I’ve Learned”.  Essentially, it’s a free-form, stream-of-consciousness discussion with famous people about the lessons they’ve gleaned from living unusual lives.  For “What I’ve Learned” Esquire tends choose people who have a few miles on them – which is good, because I don’t give a shit what Justin Bieber or Chris Brown have learned. Guys like Jeff Bridges or Terence Stamp, on the other hand, probably have some bits of wisdom from which we can all benefit.  Unburdened by the need to sell a product or atone for a scandal, these people come across a little more genuine than in other celebrity exposés.  Materially they’ve got less to gain, but a question like “What have you learned?” requires thought, and can really crystallize what it is you believe.  I think that’s the draw – at least, it is for me.

I was reading the most recent issue of Esquire, featuring life lessons from “The Other Guys” – Joe Biden, Gary Oldman, Art Garfunkel, Slash from Guns n‘ Roses, et al -  the kind of people who aren’t famous for being front and centre, who bask in the reflected glory of others.  I can identify with this group, and they inspired me to think about what I may’ve learned in the last few years.  It seems only fitting I should share what I’ve learned with you on this, my forty-first birthday and the second anniversary of this blog.  You may want to think you’ve learned as well – I’d love to see what you come up with.

 

CHRIS NELSON

Low Rent Blogger/

Occasional TV Producer,

41, Toronto 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t understand why people get down on failure. Few things can motivate me to succeed quite as well.

That said, I’ll always depend on a guy whose failed at least once over a guy with an unbroken string of successes.  The guy who failed is less likely to lose his head in a crisis.

The best advice I’ve ever received from my Muay Thai coach is this: when your opponent hits you, shake it off.  Never let them know they’ve hurt you. It’ll only embolden them.

Waiting for the ideal situation is both brave and highly impractical. I’ll work with what’s available, and take comfort in knowing I can adapt.

I used to get vanity and integrity confused, but not since my daughter was born.

My dad joked that he never knew what true happiness was until he married my mother – by which time it was too late.  I think of that line whenever I consider my career choice.

I wish I could say I’m too enlightened to feel regret, resentment, or envy. The truth is, right now, I’m too busy to squeeze them in.

When someone starts by telling everyone how much experience they have, I start wondering how long it’ll be before they fuck things up.

Arrogant is a word insecure people use.

The best leaders I’ve met don’t exercise authority so much as make people feel like they’re a part of something greater than themselves.

I’ve had bosses that were inspiring, and bosses that behaved like contestants on The Apprentice.  I can work with both.

Sometimes you do a better job on things you’re not passionate about nor particularly care for.  Your thinking is clear and un-emotional. You don’t take things personally.

Only the brilliant and the persuasive are allowed to be assholes, which is why I’m obliged to be nice.

Real inspiration visits occasionally.  The rest of the time, I’m creating.

If I walk away from what I’m working on and come back later,  I find it’s actually better than I thought it was.

Right now, I’m making a good living writing jokes about entitled women.  I would do that for free.  I’ve got no business complaining about anything.

I never had a career plan – I just tried things that interested me.  Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn’t, but at least I wasn’t bored.

My best work is still ahead of me, and I’m glad I still feel that way.

There’s a few people who wish I felt worse about the way I treated them.  All I can say is everybody got the exact amount of contrition they deserved, which may’ve been less than they wanted.

Before, when dads told me how great it was to be a dad, I thought they were saying that to make themselves feel better.   I realize now only some of them were.

Louis Armstrong was right: some people if they don’t know, you can’t tell ‘em.

I know it’s a work of fiction, but To Kill a Mockingbird is hands down the best parenting guide I’ve read so far.

A lot of dads look at their kids and see the things they’ll never get to do. I may not turn out to be the best father, but at least I can look at my daughter and know I haven’t missed a thing.

I rarely cry at sad things, but happy things make me weep all the time.  Since my daughter was born, I haven’t cried so much in my life.

When you find something you like, buy two.

I can’t bring myself to get something unless I get rid of something.  It’s the only way to keep things uncluttered.

Next to my daughter, few things make me as happy as swimming at night in a freshwater lake. Preferably on mushrooms.

You may think it’s just a wristwatch, but really it’s an indicator of how seriously you think you should be taken.

I have serious misgivings about anyone who doesn’t like dogs or cheese.

I keep a running list of Baby Mama’s shoe size, cup size, dress size, favorite colors, designers, etc.   Love is paying attention to the details.

Motorcycles are not the defining passion of my life because I look cool and enjoy going fast – although that’s part of it.

Seriously though – we spend so much time limiting our exposure to things.  You can’t do that on a motorcycle.

If I tell the truth today, it’s mostly because I’m getting too lazy to lie.

I feel like I have a book in me.  I may never write it, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

When I look at my face in the mirror, it’s hard to see how moisturizing has helped.  But I’ll keep doing it.  Just in case.

When it comes to women, I’m a little like a gambler on a hot streak who thinks he’s winning with skill and not luck.  Fact is I haven’t punched my weight for years.

It’s not flirting if you mean it.

I used to think I knew what I needed from relationships, and then I met the woman I’m with today.

When they gave our daughter to me for the first time, I looked at her, turned to Baby Mama and said “I’m in love with another woman.” She seems okay with that.

Life is good. Why spoil it with expectations?

 

For years, I’ve been making myself appear smarter and more interesting than I actually am by quoting dialogue from director David Mamet’s films. At some point, anyone who knows me well has been amused/bored/irritated by some of the following nuggets:

From the movie Heist: 

Jimmy: So, is he going to be cool?

Pinky: My motherfucker is so cool, when he goes to bed, sheep count him.

 

[In a bar]

Betty Croft:  Take it easy, baby, that stuff’ll rot your stomach lining.

Fran Moore:  Yeah, but I get to drink it first.

 

From the movie The Spanish Prisoner: 

Jimmy Dell: Always do business as if the person you’re doing business with is trying to screw you, because he probably is. And if he’s not, you can be pleasantly surprised.

 

Nobody talks like characters in a Mamet screenplay.  His prose is a miracle – at once both profane and poetic, thoroughly colloquial and charmingly anachronistic.  But smart. Always smart. And illuminating – like the line from the movie Redbelt that I quoted a couple of posts ago, and especially this monologue from the movie version of Glengary Glen Ross, written by Mamet and based on his famous stage play of the same name:

Now, a little context – Pacino is playing a vaguely amoral real estate salesman, trying to persuade Jonathan Pryce to buy a worthless piece land by playing on his fear he’s done nothing adventurous in his life.   Of all Mamet’s work, nothing resonates with me quite like this monologue, in particular the question “Where’s the Moment?” It speaks to me not because I think my life has been boring – I’ve had several interesting moments in life. I’ve just managed not to be “present” for almost all of them – I was there in body, but not spirit.

Thanks to my work in TV, I’ve been lucky enough to go places and meet some  interesting people – James Brown to Al Gore to Jack Layton to Lady Gaga – but  I can hardly remember any of these encounters. At the time, I was watching things unfold through the viewfinder of a camera, and less concerned with what was being said than if the shot was composed right, or if it was in focus, or if I was recording clean audio. My lack of mental presence has not been without consequences: The normally affable Ben Harper once flipped out on me during an interview because I was so distracted I asked him the same question twice.   It could be I’ve met my hero Mamet himself, and I’d have no fucking clue.

The result is I’m one step removed from a lot of the things I’ve done, which feels pretty much the same as having not been there at all. People ask me what I remember about all the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, and I tell them I have no idea – I more or less watched the whole thing on TV like everybody else. I was not unlike news photographers killed in Vietnam – viewing the action through a camera rendered them oblivious to the real danger they were in.

(That’s probably why I’m not much of a picture person in civilian life.  When I see people at concerts taking pictures on their smartphones, I feel bad for them. They don’t know what they’re taking themselves away from, and all for a shitty picture that’ll only bore others to see later.)

I haven’t picked up a video camera in a long time, but that doesn’t mean my ability to be present automatically improved.  For a time, that camera was replaced by lingering regrets about the past and worries about the future.  I’d like to think I could push those things out of my mind when I need to, but I could always feel them close by.

Which isn’t to say I remember nothing.   There are some great moments that have stayed with me,  memories that still feel as real as the day they happened; discovering the Beastie Boys could play as a punk 3-piece at Lollapalooza in 1994; racing motorbikes with my uncle in an Eastern Washington desert;  diving in an underwater cave in Mexico and seeing a stalactite that resembled the Virgin Mary; swimming with a six-gill shark off the coast of Pender Island in BC;  a night on Capri I once spent with an ex-girlfriend; kissing the woman I dated after that girlfriend at a concert – The Dears were playing “Lost in the Plot.”

These moments stay with me because I wasn’t holding a camera, or worrying about making a deadline, or ruminating over bad choices – I was just “there.”  I didn’t consciously put things out of my mind, I didn’t meditate (although I’ve tried this, with dubious results) – I just happened to be there when the wheel went round.     Actually, that’s not true – during all those moments I recall being focussed, exhilarated, and full of wonder.

So meditation is one thing, but I suppose the real trick to staying present is to always be doing something you love, something that can still surprise you.   All of which is just a long-winded way of saying that nothing puts me in the moment like being with my infant daughter.  Just today, she giggled as I played with her. It was the first time I’d heard my daughter laugh, and it made me cry.  It’s a funny thing – the world falls away, and it’s me and my little girl, and everything’s just fine.  I’m not missing anything when I’m with her, and that more than makes up for all those amazing events I can’t remember.

 

 

 

 

It’s now been a while now since I started training with my affably sadistic Muay Thai coach, Derwin.   I’m probably a few decades away from stepping into the Octagon with Georges St. Pierre, but nonetheless I’ve improved: my punches come with a nice little snap; I no longer have to remind myself to rotate my hips when I throw punches; I don’t drop my hand and expose my jaw when I initiate a swing kick; and my combinations don’t unravel into series of painfully awkward bitch slaps (as much).   Derwin has used a lot of great methods to achieve this pathetically modest result, but few have proven as effective as when he simply hits me in the head and stomach repeatedly. Seriously – our best workout by far has been when the only thing I’m doing is taking blow after blow.

On its face it sounds a tad perverse, but considering that hits are something of a necessary job hazard for most fighters, knowing how to take one probably isn’t such a bad idea.  Which is not to say a fighter needs to like getting punched, only that taking a knock or two can really teach you something, such as…

1. …You’re Tougher Than You Think You Are. The most illuminating thing about a crack to the melon might be how well you can probably could stand it.   Admittedly, Derwin started light pretty light, but pretty soon he was throwing a few bombs.  He rung my bell more than a few times, and I did spend several days moving my nose around to see if it still ached, but honestly, I thought it’d be much worse. Actually, it probably would be if I’d just stood there and let him tune on me, but thankfully Derwin to took the time to show me how to…
2. …Always Be Prepared.  If you can’t block a punch, then lean into it (not away) – you increase time of impact, and decrease force.  If you’re taking a blow to the gut, tighten your abdominal muscles.  If you’re being hit in the face, clench your jaw, or if you can, lean your forehead into the punch (very hard up there).   Always keep your eyes on your opponent, protect your most vulnerable areas (jaw), and ALWAYS maintain your balance. But being physically prepared is one thing…
3. …What You Do After You’re Hit Is Every Bit As Important As What You Do WHEN You’re Hit.  Derwin hammers (pardon the pun) on this point a lot – martial arts are as much a mental game as a physical one.  Nothing can inspire bad choices quite like getting emotional when you’re hit.  Nothing can embolden your opponent like the sight of you getting angry or down on yourself when they hit you.  The best thing you can do is take it, shake it off, move on.   Keep your cool, and you’re morely likely to avoid costly mistakes, plus your opponent will think his weak ass shit can’t phase you (even if you piss blood afterwards).  There’s another word for this: poise.

I think you can see where I’m going with this – there’s something for a Better Man in every hit, both in the ring and life.  This isn’t news, even to me, but Derwin hitting me relentlessly is such a vividly poignant reminder that it’s almost like a revelation. That’s probably because I’d gone most of my life without getting in a fist fight.  I suppose that’s good, but I also know it made me absurdly afraid of pain.

The thing is, a lot of people are like this: fear of pain is their biggest motivator, and they go out their way to avoid it, putting themselves through all kinds of contortions that are likely worse for them than than the pain they’re trying to avoid.  But if you’re prepared and unflappable when the shit does fly (as it inevitably does), chances are it won’t seem so bad.  You’ll be more able to heed the advice of guys like Al Swearengen, the saloon keeper in the TV Series Deadwood:  “The world ends when you’re dead.  Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.”

So there you go – next time someone threatens to beat some sense into you, chances are that’s exactly what they’ll be doing. Consider it a favour.

I worked at MuchMusic for almost a decade, and unquestionably my biggest contribution to music that whole time was being producer/cameraman/bodyguard to Nardwuar the Human Serviette.  I love Nardwuar like an annoying brother – which is to say I appreciate his merits while admitting that few people on earth can frustrate me as much.  Anyone who has watched (or been a subject of) his interviews probably knows what I’m getting at.

In Nardwuar’s defense, the man has no guile. He’s not Sasha Baren-Cohen, playing a polarizing character for laughs.  He’s not malicious, or calculating, or daring.  Nardwuar is just…Nardwuar.  He can’t help the way he is.

When asked what Nardwuar was like, I would tell people he was a litmus test for the entire human race.  You could really discover a lot about a person based on their reaction to Nardwuar. The ones who were insecure or took themselves too seriously tended to react negatively.  The ones who were most comfortable with themselves were the ones who dug him the most. Essentially, they were like Nardwuar in that they too had no pretense – they were just simply themselves.

In this way I can tell you that Beck is a big fucking baby, Dave Rowntree of Blur is a self-absorbed dick who could use either a hug or anger management therapy, and Peter Murphy of the band Bauhaus knows his contribution to pop culture is marginal at best, and is rather dismayed about it.   On the other hand, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single fake bone in the bodies of Snoop Dogg, Josh Homme, or the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne.  Oh yeah – and Jack Layton too.

Jack was on the campaign trail in 2004 when Nardwuar and I bumped into him.   Nardwuar was in the habit of making politicians….well, maybe just watch the clip:

Personally, a lot of what you need to know about Jack is right there: he was gracious enough to talk with the autistic-savant of celebrity interviewers, he possessed life experience broad enough to impress even Nardwuar, and he had the good sense not to answer the doobie question.  I particularly like that he respected Nardwuar enough to actually prep for the interview – the harmonica and chanting “Doot doola doot doo” in unison are giveaways.  Most importantly, though, the man was genuine  – he did the Hip Flip, then made a mildly blue joke about one day playing it home with his wife. I certainly hope that moment wasn’t the start of his hip trouble.

So there you go – gracious, knowledgable, too smart to pander, blessed with a self-deprecating humour, treating everyone the way he’d want to be treated – even someone dressed head-to-toe in plaid who speaks in a mild screech that agitates forest creatures.   Combine that with his sense of principle, his willingness to tussle with the Harper cyborg (whilst being flexible enough to work with the guy if he thought things may improve as a result), plus the élan with which he handled his various illnesses, and I think it’s pretty apparent –  Jack Layton was a Better Man in Full.  I may have described him in a previous post as having the countenance of an insurance salesman, but I confess that was mostly envy over his marriage to one of the least self-serving politicians I’ve ever met.  That a woman with as much clarity as Olivia Chow would stay married to him is a testament to the man’s character.

Everybody knows there are lots of phonies, blowhards and sycophants in politics. Jack Layton was none of those things – the Nardwuar Hip Flip Poll proves it. You may not have agreed with him, but theres no reason you couldn’t aspire to be like him.

 

Baby Mama and I went to a movie yesterday – perhaps the last one we’ll see together for a long time (that doesn’t involve Pixar animations).   We saw Horrible Bosses – a benign comedy chosen primarily for Baby Mama’s crush on Jason Bateman.  I didn’t mind it, although I had trouble suspending my disbelief for the part about the guy who hates that his uber-hot boss Jennifer Aniston keeps trying to have sex with him.  During a scene where the guy feels harassed because she’s wearing just a lab coat and panties in the office, one moviegoer in the theatre actually said out loud “How is that a problem?” – thus vocalizing what every straight guy in the place was thinking.

By contrast, I had no trouble at all believing Jason Bateman’s monologue at the start of the movie:  “My grandma came to this country with 21 dollars.  After working hard her whole life and taking shit from no one, she turned that 21 dollars into 2000 dollars.  That…sucks. Grandma’s problem was that she took shit from nobody.  These days, the key to success is taking shit.”

Baby Mama’s boyfriend isn’t wrong – as I learned from my McQueen experiment, standing up for yourself and doing your own thing rarely gets you anywhere (unless you’re Steve McQueen, and he’s dead).  As I mentioned in a previous post, people claim to admire individualists, but in truth they usually try to oppress and kill them. If you’ve read of a true maverick who successfully blazed their own unique trail in life, it’s probably for the same reason you’ve read about a recent plane crash – it happens so infrequently that it’s newsworthy.

For many males, this is perhaps one of the most emasculating truisms of professional life: in the workplace, a handful of us get to call the shots while the rest of us have our shots called by that handful.   In such a top-down management structure,  some shit-taking may be required, and no doubt it’s hard for a man to feel like a man when he’s kissing his boss’ ass – unless, of course, that boss is Jennifer Aniston and he is literally kissing her ass.

Not me, though.  Just like Jason Bateman,  I’ve learned to appreciate the art of going with the flow…basically, of puckering and planting.  Perhaps it’s the failure of my experiments in hubris, or the recognition that fatherhood requires me to place my unborn child (and my responsibility to provide for it) ahead of my own ego – regardless, I now believe there could be few things more manly, more necessary to being a Better Man (and father)  than knowing how, when the occasion demands, to eat shit and call it pudding.

To explain why, it might help to re-frame the discussion using terms other than “eating shit” – that suggests any man who understands the dynamics of his workplace and acts accordingly  is a bit of a pussy.  Really, this is about adaptability, a subject I’ve covered before:  Navy SEALs are expected to adapt to shitty situations all the time, and I doubt they hear people calling them pussies that often.

So maybe it would help to quote some more movie dialogue, this time from a character in the David Mamet film Redbelt: “Everything has a force. Embrace it or deflect it–why oppose it?”  That movie was about jiujitsu, and the character was describing a prevailing concept of that particular martial art.  The meaning is simple enough: resistance is futile.

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I happened to be in New York last week, hiding out from hostile Bruins fans after an ill-advised trip to Boston to watch the Canucks get butchered in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup.  I rode into the Apple as word broke of the teacup sex scandal surrounding New York Congressman Andrew Weiner.   For those of you who’ve recently emerged from a coma,  I’ll summarize; married politician takes pictures of penis then sends them on Twitter to a half dozen women, none of whom happen to be his wife – thus giving new meaning to the phrase “junk mail.” Now, two weeks after news of the dong shots first popped up (along with double entendres like the ones you’ll read in this post),  Weiner has opted to resign, saying the fallout from the scandal has made it effectively impossible for him to represent the constituents in his district. It’s the kind of lapse in judgment that gives late night talk show hosts and cable news networks reason to believe God loves them, and them alone.

Now, given how frequently they seem to occur, you’d think American pundits would be kind of blasé about political sex scandals – yet somehow they always find a way to be shocked (SHOCKED!!) when an elected official does something inappropriate.  So the thing that struck me about being in New York at the time (aside from the ridiculous New York Post headlines – “Pop Goes the Weasel”? Ugh) was how sanguine New Yorkers were.  I made no attempt at an empirical study, but I did speak to several New Yorkers about Andrew’s boner. For the most part they were downright European in their level of concern – which is to say they couldn’t really give a shit.

There was Richie, a bartender at an Upper West Side joint called Malachy’s, who called the whole thing “minuh league bool-shit.”  He’s right – on the radioactive scale of career implosions, this is low grade plutonium: it isn’t the 1963 Profumo scandal, when a member of the British cabinet was caught sleeping with a woman who was also sleeping with an alleged Russian spy.   It isn’t former Florida Congressman Mark Foley harassing teenaged boys.  This isn’t the late Francois Mitterand keeping one family with his wife and another with his mistress, or John Edwards allegedly using campaign contributions to cover up his secret love child, or Berlusconi with…well, with any woman who will let him stick his penis inside her.   It doesn’t even rise to the level of Clinton’s “secret sauce” on Monica’s dress in the Oval Office…the biggest scandal there was the amount of money spent finding out about it.  This IS more scandalous than former NY Congressman Chris Lee’s shirtless pics, but the speed with which that guy resigned makes me think there were even bigger, uglier skeletons lurking in his closet.

On the whole, New Yorkers seem to be “whatevs” about their aptly-named native son.  Rachel, an impossibly gorgeous NYU student from Brooklyn with whom I rode the L train into Manhattan, pretty much summed it up: ‘no crimes were committed, no government funds were embezzled, no public trust was breached, so…who gives a fuck?’ (imagine that said with a Brooklyn accent – it’s way more fun).   Voters in Wiener’s district seem to agree with her: when asked if Andrew’s member should stay in Congress, more than half said yes.  This was in stark contrast to Democratic shrew Nancy Pelosi, who demanded in very shrill terms that he resign.  Mind you, Weiner’s support may’ve been soft – unlike Weiner himself. As Richie put it, he may need to resign “if only to get that Pelosi bitch and all the others to shut the hell up.  Now do you wanna gossip, or do you wanna ‘nother fuckin’ drink?”

I suppose I get the ambivalence -  Noo Yawkers are like Al Pacino -“been around…seen things, y’know” – and they aren’t hung up on personal impropriety as much as people inside the Beltway or the Bible Belt might be.  New Yorkers understand that even smart guys do stupid things in their personal lives (“why hello there, Governor Spitzer”), but that doesn’t mean they’re bad at their job, or should lose their job – if that were the case, unemployment rates would skyrocket.  To paraphrase Walt Whitman, New Yorkers are large enough to contain contradictions – or in Weiner’s case, just large.

Of course, just because New Yorkers are glib doesn’t mean they’re blind to a basic truth – that salting Twitter with pictures of your cock is not exactly smooth, to the extent one has to wonder if Congressman Bonehead isn’t some kind of idiot savant.  This kind of clumsy exhibitionism is right out of the Cro Magnon Narcissist’s dating manual, next to clubbing a woman over the head – neither subtle nor sexy. To call Weiner’s behaviour sophomoric would be insulting to sophomores – at least they’ve tweeted and sexted enough to know if you put explicit photos of yourself online, they will get probably get out – especially if you’re hot and/or hold public office.

So Weiner has joined a sad fraternity, comprised mostly of dim bulb pro athletes – Brett Favre, the horselike Greg Oden, and the porn-handled Grady Sizemore.   It could be these guys were swept up in some kind of celebrity douche-fugue that made them think their reputations were untouchable. More likely it never occurred to them that pictures of their penises would go viral because personal technology arrived rather late in their lives.  They’re still so enchanted by it’s novelty – “FINALLY, I can send unsolicited pictures of my junk to women” – they failed to realize, as author Sloane Crosley put it, that “information technology is like getting undressed with the shades open: if you can see the neighbors, chances are they see you.”

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Dear Ah-nold,

After reading of the indiscretion with your housekeeper, and the love child that came from it, I could only think of one thing…well, okay, two things: 1) next to fucking the nanny, fucking the housekeeper is the BIGGEST cliché ever, and 2) you are a medical miracle.

You’re a miracle because it’s apparent that steroid use has not shriveled your testes in any way.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  People all over the world are talking on cell phones and wondering why their calls keep getting dropped. Now we know – it’s because your balls were blocking their signal.  Thanks to the revelation of your bastard lovechild, cell providers can put communications satellites in orbit around your nuts to correct the problem.

Let’s review the bidding – not only did you lie by omission about an affair and a child, you did it sucessfully for FOURTEEN YEARS!!  That’s like, a millennium in TMZ time (NOTE: TMZ time is measured by taking a calendar year, multiplying it by TMZ’s unrelenting search for smut, then dividing that by an average TMZ reader’s attention span).   As if that wasn’t enough…you let baby mama continue to work for you almost a decade after you knocked her up! She was even pregnant AND working at your house the same time Maria was pregnant with your youngest child!  To be this brazen requires testicles so huge they reside in two different time zones!

So fuck Larry Craig and his wide stance, or Chris Lee and his shirtless pics – that’s petty Beltway bullshit.  You’re the Terminator, man – NOTHING about you is small.

Naturally, people everywhere are feigning righteous indignation as they suck up every detail, but I assure you, I’m not one of them.  I’ve stepped out on enough girlfriends to know I have no business acting as your moral compass.   If I’m no longer a douchebag, it’s partly because I realize the devastation that comes from betraying a loved one’s trust, but mostly because it’s just easier to remember the truth.  I’m getting both lazy and forgetful in old age.

That’s what makes the fact you carried this lie for so long so amazing to me  - to paraphrase Ron Burgundy, I’m not mad,  I’m just impressed. This could be the publicity equivalent of Ebola virus, yet you kept a lid on this tighter than those shorts you wore in Pumping Iron. It probably helps that the circle of trust on this one was pretty small – just you and the maid.   Still, lies are a huge burden (even for a guy like yourself, who benches…what? 300 now?), and most times you can only carry them for so long.  So I suppose you had to lay down your burden eventually, but I can’t help but think you could’ve kept this a secret indefinitely if you’d just expanded your circle to include one more person – your wife.

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Dear Stephen,

 

Let me just say congratulations – you did it! Thanks to the twin miracles of parliamentary democracy and the first-past-the-post electoral system, you have done an amazing thing – get Canadians to elect a Harper majority despite the fact that you lead it. Everyone says America is where anything is possible, but that’s not true.  In America, to be elected leader you have to at least be likable. I doubt that even the people who voted for you would say that about you, and therein lies the genius of your victory.

Up until now all those pesky, insolent opposition MPs had the audacity to question your judgment. Well, no more – now, you are free to do whatever the fuck you want, and if Parliament doesn’t like it, it can suck it. Don’t like how you’ve decorated the government lobby in the House of Commons, replacing portraits of former PMs with pictures of yourself? Suck it. Don’t like that you’ve instructed bureaucrats to change all references to “The Government of Canada” in official correspondence to “The Harper Government”? Suck it.  Don’t like that you tried to cut opposition parties off at the knees by eliminating their public campaign financing (which is what actually forced you to prorogue Parliament the first time)? Suck it. Don’t like that you’ve introduced cybercrime legislation that allows for more government authority to invade personal privacy than the problem requires, and could be open to abuse by politicians who are controlling and mildly paranoid? Suck it.  Don’t like your supplicants impugning the character of whistleblowers on the Afghan detainee scandal? Suck it.  Don’t like that you may’ve bent campaign financing rules to free up more money for attack ads?  Suck it. Don’t like that you regularly punish civil servants and people in your own party for disagreeing with you? Su…well, you get the picture.

I will say it again, Steve – you have succeeded where I have failed, in that you have made being an asshole work for you.  Before, the ‘blessings’ of your autocratic nature were limited to people unfortunate enough to work for you. Then, the excesses of your deeply flawed personality found their way into the operation of government.  Now, everyone in Canada gets to experience your…uh…Harperness.

Of course, at least 60% of Canadians may not find it as charming as you do, and in that regard I can’t help but wonder if you’re going to miss all those pesky, insolent MPs who kept calling you on your bullshit.   Sure, they may’ve kept you from doing everything you wanted, but here’s the thing – were you to do everything you wanted, I believe you’d piss a lot of people off and end up getting voted out of office next time around.   The blind spot in a controlling nature is that you often lack the self-awareness to realize when you’ve gone too far, and by severely punishing even the mildest of dissent there’s no one working for you with the nerve to say when you’re not wearing any clothes.

By keeping you in check, those opposition MPs managed to successfully bring out your better leadership qualities while curbing your much uglier ones.  Maybe you hated those guys (and a few of them were worth hating), but in a funny way they were saving you from yourself.   I suggested in my previous post that if you won a majority, we were much pretty much fucked.  You may not realize this, but by “we” I meant you as well.

Of course, who am I to say? I’ve been wrong before – just ask your Heritage Minister, James Moore.  I once told him (on national TV, no less) that he was high for thinking Gladiator would win the Oscar for Best Picture. Look how that turned out.    It could be you’ll become a Better Man and develop the circumspection to govern a country where the majority of folks don’t agree with you, but will keep you in office if you don’t indulge your Nixon-esque side.  Or maybe people will learn to enjoy being led by a twerp.  This is Canada, where anything is really possible.

In the meantime I will show you the respect you’ve undoubtedly earned.  I will no longer refer to you as a regular old asshole.  From now, I will call you Mr. Asshole.

Good luck!

 

Chris