Rotating Pineapple

I think that a village can only really have one restaurant. That doesn't mean that there can't be more than one place to grab a meal; what it does mean is that when the natives talk about "the restaurant," everyone knows what they're talking about. In Williamstown, the restaurant is the Olde Bridge Cafe. It is a place where the old-timers congregate for "coffee college," where high school students and stay-at-home moms might go for an afternoon snack. It is not open for supper, though the nearby Jack's Pub is. Jack's Pub is a fine establishment and they make amazing chicken burgers, but it is not the village restaurant. And who could fault me for saying so? - But I don't live in a village. I live in a town and that means there are a number of places I can go for a meal. There's Christine's - right across the street from me - that offers the standard fare of burgers and fries and hot chicken sandwiches. There's t...

There was a time when you could buy a computer for $5,000. Now you can buy one for about $250. Computers used to be expensive because they were built by Americans who belonged to unions. Now they are built by Chinese workers who belong to factories. The American reality, and the Canadian reality too, is that we are sending all of our manufacturing jobs overseas. We are addicted to flatscreen TVs and iPods and Dr. Pepper. I just picked up my Fujifilm digital camera. On it are the words MADE IN CHINA. Probably a lot of the stuff in my apartment is made in China too. - My friend sent me a TV clip the other day. The clip is purported to be "the most honest three minutes in American television history." In it, a young college student is asking a panel of journalists why America is the greatest country in the world. One of the panelists is played by Jeff Daniels and he snaps back that America is not the greatest. He says that America leads the world in a few ...

If I brought a gun to a knife fight, I would probably win the fight. If I knew what I was talking about, I would probably win an argument with an ignoramus. He wouldn't admit it and neither would his confreres, but perhaps an impartial jury would. We are told that the secret to giving advice is to be thoroughly indifferent whether or not your advice is taken. We know that when someone asks for advice, what they are usually saying is "I have decided on a course of action. Tell me you agree." - In the very first James Bond movie, Dr. No, the titular hero is told that he must surrender his trusty Baretta for the more reliable Walther PPK. Bond is reluctant but he accepts the order from his commanding officer. By the end of the movie, the Walther has become a part of the 007 mystique. I have never held a Walther PPK. I fired a gun once. It was on a skeet shooting range somewhere near Calgary. I fired at a big steel panel and the gun kicked back and lef...

I took a stagecraft course when I was an acting student at Mount Royal College. I was told that black actors look good when bathed in purple light. I was also told that they did not require as much stage makeup as their Caucasian counterparts. This was not racism. This was science. Our teacher shared her theory as to why so many teenagers dressed in black. "They are mourning their lost childhood," she said, and I agreed with her then and I agree with her today. In an introduction to the Gospel according to St. Mark, the rock star Nick Cave said that part of leaving adolesence is that you abandon the faceless rage that seems to live in the soul of so many teenagers. This might be part of "growing up." I think that the teenagers are angry because they know they won't be young forever. They are slowly gravitating to adulthood and they must accept the requisite responsibilities that come with attaining such an age. One can't chase girls and pa...

In junior high school, I was a member of the debate and speech club. This made me an even bigger nerd than I already was. The school did not have a drama club so I had to content myself with debate and speech. There were two or three speech competitions every year. Participants could choose from four categories: - Original composition - Solo acting - Improvisation - Oral Interpretation Original composition was when you wrote a speech and then delivered it. Solo acting was when you recited a monologue (like Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech.) Improvisation was when the judge gave you a topic and you had about 15 minutes to write something and then deliver it. Oral interpretation was when you read a story that someone else had written. I always got stuck with oral interpretation because the club moderator, who also happened to be my English teacher, told me I was good at reading out loud. This was true. It also made be a bigger nerd. (The cool kids ...

I haven't spent a lot of time in casinos. As a teenager, I fantasized about turning into a sort of James Bond - a debonair, albeit Canadian, gentleman who always won at the card table simply because I was chosen by the universe to be a winner. This sort of fantasy life is disastrous if you believe it will be truthful once you're actually old enough to place a bet. I have only lost big at poker once. This is because I don't play poker very often. Once I decided to try my hand at Texas Hold'Em. The guy who ran the poker room said there were no chairs available but he would put me on a waiting list. He asked for my name and I told him. Whenever he addressed me, he would call me by name. He did not need to consult his list as he'd already committed my name to memory. He had done the same with everyone else in the poker room and I remember thinking that this was quite the amazing skill. I wanted to ask him about it but I didn't think that would be ...

My father likes to tell the story about our family's trip to Disneyland. I was forced to go on the Small World ride, something that did not please 11-year-old me. I made it a point to show my displeasure and I refused to look at the singing automatons that surrounded our boat as we rode through the pavilion. Small World is a mechanical wonder that speaks to the connection we're supposed to feel with people around the world. I, in my adolescent wisdom, dismissed it as a "ride for girls." I sat there and I sulked and looked forward to the next time I could ride Space Mountain. My dad was not annoyed. He laughed at me, which was fine. I knew I deserved derision. My sister, of course, loved Small World. About 25 years later, she would make her own four children very happy by surprising them with a trip to Disneyland of their own. That was surely an awesome family vacation. - Years later, our family went to South Dakota. While there, I wandered into...

Somewhere in there, my old gang became interested in pool. We used to spend our weekends hiking up to the Video Show Place and then McDonald's at Glenmore Landing. Now, whenever one of us had money, we would gravitate to the Haysboro Pool Hall. The place was run by an old Italian guy named Yvonno. There were about 18 pool and Snooker tables in the place, which smelled like furniture polish and French fries. There was a TV on the wall and a sign under the TV said that it was only to be used for sports. That sign was an early example of absolutism for me. Sometimes I would see the remote lying next to the cash register and I'd be tempted to use it to switch the baseball game to Little House on the Prairie. What would happen to me if I did? My guess was damnation. Yvonno had a part-time employee named Phil, a tall tattooed dude with a mullet and glasses. One day he stopped coming in and it was explained to me that Phil had died in a skydiving accident. The back...

I've been a David Mamet fan since I acted in Goldberg Street when I was a 19-year-old college student in 1992. Ten years later, I finally got to realize my dream of directing a David Mamet play. I picked the Water Engine. It was not my first choice. My first choice would have been Glengarry Glen Ross but I doubt that the small town theatre-going crowd - which was used to The Odd Couple and Our Town and silly British farces - would have sat still for 65 minutes of the F-word. The language of the  Water Engine was fairly benign. It told the story of a young man who invented an engine that runs on water. He lives with an invalid sister and he works for a company in depression-era Chicago. He brings his invention to a patent lawyer. Bad guys learn about the invention and decide to destroy it. It is, in essence, a conspiracy theory blended with high drama. The Water Engine is written as a radio play for the stage - which is to say that the actors speak into microphones as i...

When I was a kid, my dad and I were watching a boxing match on TV. One of the boxers was white and one of the boxers was black. That is how I would have differentiated the boxers if someone asked me to do so. I was eight. Then the announcer (probably Howard Cossell) said that Boxer A was wearing the white shorts with ted trim while Boxer B was wearing the white shorts with black trim. I asked my dad why the announcer just didn't say that Boxer A was white while Boxer B was black. My dad said he didn't know. Thirty years later and I still don't know. - I had no idea that racism existed until I started watching Diff'rent Strokes. Every now and then, Mr. Drummond had to deal with some douchebag who didn't like the fact that Arnold and Willis were black. Mr. Drummond would call that person a bigot and then the studio audience would applaud. There was one episode where Kimberly (Mr. Drummond's white daughter) was going to a dance with a white k...

I think the best fiction blends imagination with real life. I prefer a novel that's set in Calgary or New York or Budapest instead of Pickax City or the People's Republic of Oomfoofoo. - In high school, my mother gave me a copy of W.O. Mitchell's novel Ladybug, Ladybug, which actually takes place in Calgary. That knowledge enthralled me. I'd grown up thinking Calgary was relatively unimportant, certainly not deserving the respect of bigger metropolises like Los Angeles or Toronto or Paris. But here was W.O. Mitchell, arguably one of the best novelists Canada has ever produced, setting one of his stories in the great YYC. Yahoo, I say. - I was born in Rosetown, Saskatchewan. Its population is roughly 3,500. Nobody's ever going to write a story that takes part there, right? Well, that's not entirely true. May I introduce to you the great Michael Slade, whose grisly novels may be the best serial killer fiction in the world. Slade is (o...

When we were kids, we got the brilliant idea to do something called Board Game Olympics, which involved us gathering up all the board games in our collective homes, playing them all, and keeping track of the winners. At the end, we'd tally up the results to determine the ultimate board game champion. I don't think we made it through one game of Axis & Allies. Axis & Allies was a military strategy game that used the Second World War as its campaign setting. As such, it required one player to assume the role of the allied troops while the other player controlled Germany. My friend, Matt, loved Axis & Allies and one day, when we were 11 or so, he invited me over to play it. I got to be Germany, which was fine with me and that's because I was completely ignorant of World War II. Today, I can't help but wonder if Jewish people would enjoy playing it. Sometime later, I was in a bookstore and I saw a collection of short stories about what the world...

My grandparents' farmhouse was surrounded by trees. I asked my mother if the trees constituted a forest and she said no, they constituted the woods. To this day, I believe there is a difference between a forest and the woods. A forest is wild and untamed habitat for trees. By contrast, when I think about the woods, I think of a group of trees located in an area where people can enjoy leisure time. You can play in the woods but you can't play in the forest. You can walk through a forest but you don't want to play hide and seek there. A forest has the potential to be haunted. The woods do not. - I wonder if trees would object to be called 'The woods.' I understand that trees are made of wood but when humans talk about wood, they are usually talking about the stuff that has been separated from trees. When I say I need some wood, I am probably wanting to make a fire or build a birdhouse or publish a book. What that really means is that when I say I...

Sports leagues are necessary because humanity cannot shed its propensity for tribalism. We will not kill each other over water rights or potential romantic partners, but we will scream our battle cries when the Calgary Flames beat the Vancouver Canucks. I went to a Flames game in Montreal earlier this month. I saw a guy in a Flames jersey and I ran over to shake his hand. He smiled and we shook and we posed for a picture and I have absolutely no idea who he is or what he's about. His religious, political, economic and social views could be the complete anti-thesis of mine. But in that instant, I didn't care. He was my brother and we were in enemy territory. And that night, we were victorious. - I am a magician. As such, I am a brother to magicians everywhere. Some of the world's very best magicians might not consider me brethren, but that is their problem. I am also a brother to writers, journalists, Calgary Flames fans, Saskatchewan Roughrider fans, ...

David Mamet won the Pulitzer for Glengarry Glen Ross but he's on record somewhere as saying that American Buffalo may be a better play. Yes, and it is now 2015 and American Buffalo was written in 1975 when Mr. Mamet was in his late 20s. He was, by his own description, a "brain dead Liberal." He now considers himself a Conservative and I wonder how he views his old work through the lens of his new right wing ideology. I've said before that Glengarry Glen Ross is an indictment of the American Dream. Budding capitalists are taught that hard work will be rewarded, but they are seldom taught that ethics will hinder you if you want to become wealthy. Someone once said that it's easy to make a million dollars if all you want to do is make a million dollars. Sell drugs, peddle porn, be a pimp. Your wallet will grow but at what expense? Glengarry Glen Ross is a play about middle-aged men, most of them real estate agents whose job is to sell worthless lan...

I've never directed a movie but I'd like to. Heck, who among us wouldn't like to direct a movie? I knew a guy in Calgary who was always working on a trilogy of science fiction movies that he claimed would be the most expensive films ever made. "But I won't let anyone direct them but me." Too bad, pal. - My Neptune friend, Stevie G, studied filmmaking at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology back in the mid-90s. He even cast me in one of his student films. I played a nerdy poet who had fallen in love with a chic salesgirl at a clothing store across the street. I never saw the film. The actress is now a regular on the stage at Stratford. - I'm a writer and I have dabbled in screenwriting before but never very seriously. When I tell people that I'm writing a novel, I sometimes feel like I'm telling them about Santa Claus. The odds of my novel getting published are very low. The odds of that novel being successful are even ...

If you take a pad of paper and you move it around, is it still stationary? - When I look at pictures of movie starlets from the 1950s, I immediately notice how hairless their armpits are. It's like there's not even a hint of stubble. This is sexy. I am a misogynist I guess because I don't like it when girls have armpit hair. I only met one girl who was unapologetic about having hairy armpits. Her name was Frederika and I met her in Dublin. I think she was an artist. That is probably fitting. - I think I hate Ricky Jay. Here is why I hate Ricky Jay: I like to think that there are three things I'm reasonably good at - acting, writing, and magic. Ricky Jay is the only person I know who could kick my ass at all three. C'mon Shteevie, I'll kick your ass - No one in my immediate family suffers from the number one fear - which is the fear of public speaking. Not only do we not fear it, all of us thrive on it. I like to think this makes us un...

Maybe I could have had a life in the theatre. Maybe things would be different today if I was just a better student, had a better attitude, was willing to market myself and had a never quit attitude. If I could jump in a time machine and go back to age 14 and imbue those qualities in me, then maybe I'd be a Stratford regular today. Maybe. - In 1992, I got cast in my college's production of Goldberg Street, which was a series of short playlets by David Mamet. A professional actor/director in Calgary came to see the show and he said I was one of the most powerful performers in the show. I was happy to hear it but I know such praise was not coming from the show's director, who found me a pain in the ass. - Mamet wrote a play called A Life in the Theatre. They made it into a movie starring Matthew Broderick and Jack Lemmon and I think it's Lemmon's best work ever. One of Lemmon's greatest strengths, as an actor, was his ability to use subtleti...

I am not sure if I enjoy writing in restaurants. I do it, but I don't often get a lot of writing done there. When I take my computer or my notebook to a restaurant (or a cafe or a coffee shop), I am really hoping someone will ask me what I'm writing. Then I can tell them and, hopefully, they will tell me that it is brilliant concept and so I, by extension, must be brilliant too. Of course if what I want to do is write and I absolutely do not want to be disturbed, I can put on my headphones. - I guess I have some sort of weird disease in that I need to get away from my hometown if I want to devote myself to a writing project. There is a motel about 45 minutes from where I live and I like to go there three or four times a year for a weekend of writing. I am aware of several people in my town who doubt I am going there to write. They have speculated (never directly to me) that I am going there to have sex with various women. I don't blame them for accusing me...

So my dad asks his kids to come into the backyard. He has a cardboard box on the ground and he asks us to guess what's inside. "A dog," I say. "A puppy," says my sister. "A treat," says my brother. Dad opens the box and out comes a tiny St. Bernard. "I was right," says my sister. She claims that I'm wrong because the St. Bernard IS actually a puppy. In a rare fit of eight-year-old generosity, I allow it to slide. The dog's name is Lobo. That means wolf. Tell you what, folks - I was late for school a lot when we had Lobo. I'd start walking to school and I'd hear Lobo jump up and lean his paws over the fence so he could watch me go. Don't turn back, I would tell myself. If you look back, you'll see those sad puppy dog eyes looking at you and you'll just have to go back and comfort him once more. Yeah. Always happened. I don't think we had Lobo more than a couple of years before my parents...

At four a.m. I am usually asleep. More often than not, my son is beside me. He does not sleep still. If I lay him down in the middle of the bed, he will fidget throughout the night. It's not at all unusual to wake up in the morning and see him curled up on the corner of the bed. My son has always fought his sleep. Like his father, he resents sleep - he feels it robs him of the joy of the waking world. Sometimes at night, he will lay his head on my chest and close his eyes. He is telling me that I am his pillow. - I used to work for a transport company. Our job was to drive pilots and flight attendants to the airport or their hotels. We also delivered Air Canada's lost luggage. The job was chaotic. The hours were unpredictable. It wasn't unusual to finish a 10-hour shift and then be told you had to spend the next six hours delivering suitcases throughout Calgary and southern Alberta. That job cost me a girlfriend. One day I started working at 8 a.m. and f...

I went to my high school reunion on the 10th anniversary of my graduation. It was a pub crawl. Someone had rented a school bus and I spent the evening riding from bar-to-bar with a group of other 28-year-olds, most of whom wanted to act like they were 16. Someone brought a joint out and started passing it around. It came to me and I refused. Someone made to come over and hold me down and force the joint between my lips. I am not a violent man but I would have kicked him hard if he'd even come one step closer. We former Grandin students exchanged tales of debauchery and where-are-they-now? I heard about one guy who had killed himself because he didn't want to come out as gay. I heard about another girl who'd allegedly slept with two different guys on prom night. I entertained the masses with my story of a chance meeting with the school's former butterball. In high school, the guy was massively overweight and had no social skills whatsoever. I ran into him...

David Mamet once said that when you're writing in a restaurant, you are both observed and unobserved. I think what he's saying is that everyone sees that you're writing but no one is going to bother you about it. That's not because they're courteous; it's because they don't care. - I enjoy writing in restaurants. I prefer writing with fountain pens on either yellow legal pads or unlined notebooks. I am not above taking a laptop to a restaurant, though that restaurant won't be a high end place where three courses will cost me more than a hundred dollars. I'll take my writing to a café or a coffee shop, but not to Gaston's Fine Dining, thank you very much. - I have seen people writing in restaurants. I usually ask them what they are writing. If they are young people on laptops, it's usually a school assignment. If they're professional people in business suits, it's usually a business plan. If they're wearing be...

To me, Haysboro is the old neighbourhood. Haysboro is a primarily white middle class community in southwest Calgary. It is bordered on the south by Southland Drive, the east by MacLeod Trail, the north by Heritage Drive and the west by 14th Street. My family moved to Haysboro in 1977 and we left there in 1990. We never should have left. Talk to my parents today and they'll tell you that moving out of the old neighbourhood caused a lot of financial hardships. My best friends lived in Haysboro. If I wanted to visit them, I could walk to their houses. I sort of had two sets of friends. I had my nice friends - who never swore and liked to play video games and street hockey - and I had my bad friends - who swore and smoked cigarettes and talked about sex all the time. I tried to balance my friendships but I don't think I ever did it well. On Saturday nights, Jason and Larry and I would cross 14th Street, go to the McDonald's at Glenmore Landing, and then rent...

I used to subscribe to Mad Magazine, which arrived every month in a plain brown wrapper. Later, I learned that the plain brown wrappers were usually reserved for girlie magazines like Playboy. It felt scandalous. - I discovered Mad when I was in Grade 4 and recovering from a bout of carbon monoxide poisoning. I'd spotted Mad Zaps the Human Race in the neighbourhood 7-Eleven and begged my father to buy it for me. It launched a love affair with Mad Magazine that lasted into my early 20s. (The publisher, William M Gaines, died in 1992 and Mad has grown increasingly sleazier and more irrelevant since his passing.) - I became a subscriber to Mad when I was in the fifth grade. I read the first issue while vacationing with my family. I remember that issue's cover showed Alfred E Newman waiting in a veterinarian's office with a cooked ham on his lap. The inside included a parody of Scarface. If I could do my life over again, I would have ignored Mad. Mad made me ...

Goldberg Street. Because they didn't have it. They had Rivka Street. They had Lemkin Street. There was no Goldberg Street. My actor friend, Phil Sarsons, said those words onstage at the Nickle Theatre at Mount Royal College in October of 1992. He was playing an old man who was having a conversation with his daughter. Phil had braces on his teeth. I wondered if the audience noticed and, if they did, if it took them out of the play. But who am I to judge? Phil Sarsons is ten times the actor I'll ever be. - Goldberg Street is one of three short playlets in David Mamet's Three Jewish plays. An old man tells about how he returned to France to visit a battle scene long after the war was over. The old man is Jewish and he is scarred by the anti-Semitism he experienced in the army. I was 19. I wanted to ask the director why there would be anti-Semitism in the army. I thought the play was about World War II and I wondered why the allied soldiers would be anti-...

My grandad used to have a boat. It was orange. I asked him if it had a name. He said it was the Edwin. I think he made the name up on the spot. My grandad's name is Edward. The boat's home was my grandparents' cottage in Cochin on the east side of Jackfish Lake. There was a sort of jack outside the cottage where the boat could be lifted out of the water or lowered into it. I asked why the jack was necessary and was told that in the winter, the lake would freeze and damage the boat. Sometimes in the winter, particularly when it was a very cold night, I would worry about that poor boat. I worried it was cold and lonely. I used to think that inanimate objects have feelings. I still think that. I have not been water skiing since Jackfish Lake. My grandad's boat is the only one that took me water skiing. I also used it for wakeboarding and water tubing. I was in the tube with two of my cousins and we hit a massive wave and all of us were thrown into the w...

Someone once said that it's easy to make a million dollars if all you want to do is make a million dollars. Sell drugs, produce porn, start a grow op on someone's land. It's easy to make a million bucks, but at what cost? Sometimes i think that Glengarry Glen Ross is an indictment against capitalism. The play revolves around four real estate agents who are threatened with termination if they don't sell worthless land to people who can't afford it anyhow. One of the realtors, Richard Roma, is on a hot streak. Why is that? Because he has no moral scruples. We see him manipulate a man who doesn't want to buy, persuades him to buy (possibly by sleeping with him.) The next day, when the man comes in to cancel the contract, Roma enlists another realtor to portray a client who is "happy with his investment." It doesn't matter to Roma that his client's marriage might fall apart - all that matters is that he wins the new Cadillac that is ...

Here is a poster for The Fast and Furious 6, a movie that came out in 2013: And here is a poster for Ida, another movie that came out in 2013: The Fast and Furious 6 is shown in blazing technicolour. Ida is shown in black and white. The Fast and Furious is an English movie with - I'm assuming, here - plenty of what my grandmother might have called "barnyard words." Ida is in Polish (but it has English subtitles.) The Fast and Furious is a sequel - sixth in the franchise. Ida stands on its own. Here is the plot of Ida: "A novice preparing to enter Catholic religious life in 1960s Poland goes off to visit her aunt and discovers a secret about her Jewish history and the struggles her family faced in the holocaust. These discoveries spark an identity crisis for her as she has to decide if religious life is for her. The Fast and Furious 6 is about racing cars really fast and there's lots of cool explosions and stuff. The Fast and Furious 6 grossed almost $2...

The 1980s romantic drama About Last Night, which stars Rob Lowe and Demi Moore as a twentysomething couple, is based on a David Mamet play called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The producers changed the name. They didn't think the movie-going public would go to a movie called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Sounds too much like a porno. - The stage version of Sexual Perversity has only four characters. Danny and Deborah are the couple in love. Bernie is Danny's co-worker. Joan is Deborah's roommate who may or may not be a lesbian. Bernie and Joan do their darnedest to keep the happy twosome apart. Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a tragedy. It opens with Bernie regaling Danny with a story of a sexual conquest (that's probably not true.) It ends with Danny and Bernie lusting after women as they sit on a beach. Between those two scenes, Danny meets Deborah, falls in love with her, moves in with her, falls out of love with her, and moves out. He comes fu...