smug bastard

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 fear of 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 failure won’t lose his head in a crisis.

Don’t get me wrong – failure sucks.  But it’s like getting punched in the face – the pain doesn’t last forever, and you feel perversely proud for getting through it.

Muay Thai is creative problem solving under duress – a skill I both need and suck at.

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’m neither of those things. 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.

I don’t like to watch awards shows. I’m mad I wasn’t invited.

I’m never convinced when someone tells me how much experience they have, or how much respect they deserve.   Speak through your actions. End of story.

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.

So I like to dress well and look good…who doesn’t?

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?

baby mama's boyfriend

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.

as bosses go, i strongly believe it could be worse.

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.

resistance is futile

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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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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