AND I'M LEAVING THE COUNTRY TOO !

I find it quite funny, and strangely synchronistic, that my decision regarding my job and our final decision on a vacation (togetherness break) destination almost coincided. In both cases, there is a noticable difference in the weight carried on my well-sculpted shoulders.

Alas, we had to give up on our plans for Venice. Because we're working with the money that people gave us for our wedding, our budget is set in stone, and we simply do not have enough to make Venice worth it. We could probably get there, and stay there, but we'd have nothing left to "DO" anything with, and where's the fun in that? And believe me, we tried every possible angle. At one point, we were even considering (thanks to Traudie's suggestion) flying to Frankfurt, renting a car and making the 12 hour drive to Venice through the mountains.

So, true to our word, we called the Flight Centre ans asked them to send us anywhere we could afford. They seemed a little freaked out by our total lack of requests or issues. We told them that we really didn't care what country it was or where we'd be staying as long as it fit our dates and budget. We'll be leaving April 8 for a week in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

I QUIT !

Well, I've done it. I've committed the unthinkable. The original, theatrical, self-employed sin. I've turned down work. Yes indeed. And not one, not two, but three, yes THREE contracts that would have employed me from mid-June to labor Day, and for the month of October. At a time when virtually no one is working in Canadian theatre, I turned up my perfect, aristocratic little nose at three gigs. Has it finally happened? Have I finally lost my booze-soaked-ego-drenched little mind? One might think so. But hear my logic before you pass sentence.

I've been fighting a certain amount of disillusionment about the business lately. I'm tired of trying to do my best for paying customers that treat me as though I were just expensive television; tired of producers who only know how to be cheap as opposed to actually knowing how to manage a budget; tired of Artistic Directors who know very little about art and even less about directing. So I sat myself down and had a talk with myself...actually several talks....over many weeks. I realized that part of this disillusionment has a lot to do with being really, REALLY tired of fretting over money and not having or doing the things I want. For a lark, I sat down one day and did the math to figure out just how much money I make when I work out of town. The results horrified me. I discovered that after the various mandatory deductions, paying my agent, paying for my out of town accommodation, putting money away for taxes and paying for gas to go home once a week, I was actually only making between five or six hundred dollars per week, depending on the contract. How many people do you know that have been doing the same job for 22 years, are making less than $600 a week? And remember, that 600 still has to pay all the bills at home. And God forbid you should afford to go out for a drink once or twice a week, or maybe even put a little money away for when you don't have work.....like, say, in a month! Or what about, say, a trip?? Which brings up another point...... I'm a financial genius to be able to live the lifestyle I do on the money I make !!!!!!!!

So I thought to myself, "That's shit! And I am simply not willing to accept it any longer !!!!"

[As a side note, it occurs to me at this point that the title of my blog seems somewhat prophetic.]

Now, it's one thing to wave your moral outrage around, and another thing entirely to actually decide how you're going to proceed. It became clear very quickly that, if I were going to take a step back from the business for a bit, take a break from my job until it starts liking me again, I was going to need some source of income. Thankfully, I happen to live in a region that has perfected the art of separating tourists from their money and, having worked at The Chamber of Commerce, I am more than just a little connected to the local business community.

Long story short, I pumped some connections, made some inquires, turned on my special brand of charm and will now be spending the summer waiting tables at one of Niagara's busiest restaurants. Now, I don't want Revenue Canada coming down on anyone who has worked there before, so I won't mention the name of the place, nor will I mention exact dollar amounts. However.....THIS is the kind of money daddy needs to be makin' !!!!

Not only that, but I will get to sleep in my own bed for more than 3 weeks at a time. It will be worth it to actually plant something in the garden because I'll actually be around to see it grow. I can spend time in my fabulous new darkroom, cook, have dinner parties, B-B-Q's, see my friends in Toronto now and then. All this while making a shit-load of money.

Crazy? .....like a fox.

I AM MY OWN GRANNY, GOING TO VENICE

I have several girl friends who are actually just gay men trapped in women's bodies. You may have a friend or two like that yourself. I have a feeling that I'm almost the opposite, except that I'm actually my own Lithuanian grandmother trapped in a gay man's body. The reason I think this is that I just cleaned the house, and I mean CLEANED the house. I didn't clean it so much as I waged war on the dust and accumulating cat hair. I mean I vacuumed the baseboards, the door sills AND the picture frames for Christsakes ! And here's the really scary part....I enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I LOVED it, and am now sitting here with a smug smirk on my face, indulging in the satisfaction that every surface sparkles. I'm considering therapy.

On an entirely different bent...
It looks like we are actually going to be able to take our "togetherness break" (thank you Mom for finding a suitable replacement for 'honeymoon') in April. We have a week off at the same time !!! Well, I have several weeks off. A whole bunch of them really. I'm not starting in Grand Bend until the middle of June. So, we're really, really trying to go to Venice with the trip money that people gave us for our wedding. It's one more of the great conundrums of my life that I can be unemployed, penniless, bills piling up to the ceiling....and I'm planning a trip to Venice. Ain't life strange and wonderful.

PORN IS GOOD, PEOPLE ARE BAD

I suppose that's much like saying "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", though I still have some trouble with that one. Who made the guns?? But that's not my mini-rant today, it starts with porn. Now let's be frank (or earnest), I like my porn. I'm happy that it's available to me and I'm not shy about talking about it or embarrased to have it seen in our home. I sometimes check my favorite porn websites for updates on a daily basis, just like I might read the newspaper in the morning (which I don't). Porn can be, and IS, a healthy part of a healthy adult's sexual life.

However, you get a bunch of guys arrested in a major kiddie-porn ring and suddenly ANYONE who even speaks the word porn is seen as a trench-coat-wearing-degenerate assumed to be luring children into the car. Pleeeeease don't get me wrong. The kiddie-porn is sick and sad and I'm outraged that everyone is celebrating a 3 year sentance for the distributor. BUT...NOT ALL PORN IS BAD!!! SEX, BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS, IS NOT BAD. And if those consenting adults should choose to video tape their sex and post it on the internet for the world to see, that's ok too. Ya don't hafta watch it if ya don't want ta!

There is a disturbing trend toward wild over-reacting in modern society, and the blame lays firmly at the feet of the media. Instead of sound, balanced stories about same-sex marriage, the flames are fanned and suddenly it's all about polygamy and marrying your animals. Instead of constant, common sense education about alcohol it's place in our lives, suddenly a glass of wine with dinner every night makes you a hopeless alcoholic.

You know, this is one of those topics that I could go on about for hours, but really, what's the use. As Kathi says, "We all end up paying for what a few bad people do." So, instead of preaching, pontificating, moralizing or any other kind of ing, I'm just gonna go relax. Yup, polish off a bottle of gin while my many spouses and I take turns buggering the under-age goat.

AM I BLUE? YOU'D BE TOO...

Yes, I'm singin' the unemployment blues. Not a song I like to sing, but I'm certainly familiar with the tune, at least I've become familiar with it over the past few years. It occurred to me, only today, that this is something that I've never really had to deal with. Through the 20 years that I've been doing this, I've never, really, been unemployed, or not for long enough that it mattered. If I didn't have a job, there was always one close enough on the horizon that I could actually say I was "between engagements". And there have certainly been times when there was a longer space between gigs and money was tight, but it was there. But usually, there has always been some income, some day job, some contract, some form of income, however tiny.

Recently, the span of time between jobs has been longer and whatever those little money-makers that used to keep me afloat may have been seem to have dried up.

THIS is why I've been so grumpy about this particular stretch of 'at home time' as I've decided to call it.

But, what does any good driven, self-motivated, been-around-the-block self-employed person do in times like these?
A) Continue to live normally, which is already on a lower budget than the rest of the world.
B) Formulate a plan.

FARTING IS FUNNY

Robert, who plays Pish-Tush, has a fart machine. This is no dime store whoopee cushion, but a very realistic sounding collection of farts, 7 or 8 in all, that comes with a remote so that you don't even have to be in the room to release a fart from the carefully placed speaker. He's had this thing since early on in rehearsals and it has NEVER stopped being funny. You'd think that once you knew it was machine you'd stop laughing, but no. Every night in the dressing room, we all turn in to a bunch of giggling 10 year olds.

The only person who didn't know it was a fart machine was the on-stage sound tech., a sweet but too innocent kid who's doing this gig for high-school credit. He was simply convinced that Robert had one of the worst cases of gastrointestinal distress ever known to man. Which, of course, we all found HILARIOUS !

It just proves the point that everything you need to know, you really did learn in kindergarten:

-Cookies & milk and a nap makes you feel better
-Anything is more fun naked
-Farting is funny.

Go ahead, .... you know you want to.

THE CHI INSPECTORS ARRIVE

We've been asked to take care of some friend's cats while their house is on the market. The cats arrived yesterday afternoon and by late evening they were pretty much running the house. Maggie (left) is the more shy, delicate of the pair and she takes her lead from Lewis (right) most of the time. Lewis is one of the most eccentric cats I've ever seen. He stomps! And I mean loudly! You can hear him coming from anywhere in the house. And he is the nosiest cat EVER. Doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, he will need to supervise it. A few minutes ago he got up from a sound sleep on the sofa just to come into the office because he heard the printer. Once he'd jumped up on the desk and checked it out, he was happy to return to the sofa.

While we appreciate the fact that they're going to move around the chi in the house for a few weeks, we're going to have to talk about the sleeping arrangements. We both woke up pinned to the bed this morning as both cats had decided that there was room for all 4 of us.

MIKADO & DIAL M PHOTOS

The usual suspects...The "Dial M..." cast: Doug Hughes, James Kall, Deborah Drakeford & Edward Belanger.

The set for "Dial M..."


Keith as Ko-Ko, The Lord High Executioner in "The Mikado". We think he looks alot like Edith Head.

Me as Pooh-Bah. He actually says, 'I was born sneering'. Fitting, don't you think?

Costume shot.

TO BE HOME

It occurs to me that many, many people don't experience the longing to sleep in their own bed, or the intense joy of being once again being surrounded by their own 4 walls as often as I do.

It was only during my drive home after the matinee yesterday that I started to realize how exhausting these past 3 weeks have been, and my body decided it was going to collapse whether I was ready or not. Michael, true to his word, had martinis and home made pea soup waiting. My exhaustion exhibited itself in several ways. I had option paralysis and couldn't decide if I wanted to eat, drink, unpack, take a hot bath, sleep, watch a movie or all or none of those things. I became very emotional, on the verge of tears, mostly from joy of being home. And I couldn't get warm. I started to shiver at one point and decided to take a hot bath to warm up. Then we watched a movie on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, with Michael feeding me soup and martinis. In spite of going through sweat and cold cycles, I actually slept well and feel great today. So great, in fact, that I didn't even mind driving to Burlington to begin my active dental therapy (deep cleaning below the gum line !!!)

I am so grateful to Dr. Dave for his generosity because there is now way I could afford the kind of intensive therapy my poor, diseased gums need right now. Thanks to him, I'll be able to keep my teeth for a few more years. And it was all pretty easy really, even though my mouth is still frozen to the point where I managed to chew open my bottom lip without noticing. None of that is stopping me from drinking my martini however.

Look around your house and love where you are.

AD LIBBING FREELY...PRICELESS

One can certainly tell that we're all feeling a little more relaxed about the show because the shenanigans have begun. Keith was feeling particularly impish last night and doing his best to crack up the chorus boys. I thought it was time he had a taste of his own medicine, knowing full well that he looooves playing ball with someone who is as shame-free as he is.

In the second act of 'The Mikado', he is part of a trio called "Here's a How-Dee-Doo". They do the song 4 times, each time getting faster and each time with Keith doing something goofier and schtickier. At one point, he rides a tricycle across the stage tooting the horn incessantly. Shortly after that, I have a scene with him where he tries to bribe me to commit perjury on his behalf, saying, "You'll be grossly insulted as usual". To which I am supposed to reply, "Will the insult be cash down or at a date." In an effort to keep the script slightly updated and understandable, I have been given license to say something like, "Will the insult be cash up-front or American Express?" The other night I replied, "Will the insult be cash down or MasterCard", then, turning to the audience, "Ad libbing freely and getting away with it, priceless."

However, my coup de grace last night was this reply, "Will the insult be cash up front, or will I have to chase you on a tricycle like a cheap comedian?" For a moment, Keith's eyebrows started to crawl over his head, then he turned to the audience with a 'can you believe him' face, and I followed suit with my own 'can you believe me' face. He then gave me a faux slap across the face and we carried on with the scene.

Offstage, he congratulated me on not only crossing the line, but obliterating it completely.

Oh, and in an earlier scene, he lost his mind completely and called my by HIS character name..... TWICE !!!!

I THINK I'M TURNING JAPANESE

"The Mikado" is finally up and running. Well, I shouldn't say finally because it only had two weeks of rehearsal....not nearly enough. I have never felt so under-rehearsed or unprepared to put a show on stage in my life. And I wasn't alone. For the first three public performances, if you should happen to have the presence of mind to look into a fellow actor's eyes, all you would have seen was sheer terror. All of us felt as though we'd been shot out of a cannon with no net to catch us. As of last night though, we actually started to have some fun. It was great to look into Keith's eyes during one of our scenes and see that old devilish sparkle back.

Two shows today and then a matinee tomorrow and then....I can go home and sleep in my own bed for the first time in 3 weeks !!!!! Yay !!!!!

WHAT DO YOU VALUE - A SEMI-RANT

In a recent email, I had mentioned to my mother that I was about to enter into a fairly long span of time (3 months) when I would be 'unencumbered by employment'. She said that it must be demoralizing to have to get a waitering job. I thought about it for awhile and came to the conclusion that being a waiter is not a problem at all, in fact it can be a nice change of pace, and fun depending on where you're doing it. No, the problem I have is that in any other job, once you had been doing it for 20 years, and you were actually pretty good at it, you wouldn't have to consider supplementing your income by waitering.

Have you ever stopped to think about the enormous commitment any artist has to have in order to keep being an artist? Have you ever heard of a doctor, teacher, engineer or chef supplementing their income with another job so that they can continue with their chosen career?

Part of the problem is that we are not taught to value any art form as a past-time, a leisure activity, so that means less attendance, less money, fewer jobs, lower pay. Also, especially when it comes to theatre, we are not taught to value talent. There was a day when people would crawl a mile over broken glass to see a great actor because they were a GREAT actor. Now, we value only success and, thanks to Hollywood, you don't really need any talent at all to be a success. In fact, I've noticed a similar trend in theatre as well. All too often I've watched a show thinking, "Who the hell did that talent-free hack fellate to get this job?"

What's the answer? I don't know that there is one. Change will happen. It makes me sad, however, that most people's ideas and opinions about art, the arts and a life in or with art are based on what they've seen on t.v.