Megan knows arse-all about...

Sidra.

megan — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:14:18 +0000

Kind of had a weird morning.

Well, really, I’ve had a weird few weeks. A lot of medical emergencies in my family and among my friends’ families. I seem to be at an age where people in my cohort are starting to get sick or injured more frequently. Or finding out about lifelong issues that haven’t become a problem until recently. It makes me feel very old, and not just because of the stress of it all.

I had a doctor’s appointment for a full MOT (it was speculumtacular!) and to get a referral for a therapist specializing in attention deficit disorder and anxiety, so that’s fun. It was not fun asking for help, but I’ve been putting it off long enough. I’m still not ready to talk about it much in this space, but may in future. Like, the far away future, since she said the waiting list is pretty feckin’ long. (My words, not hers.)

What did come up, and this surprised me, was BRCA genetic testing, which was a bit of a mindfuck. I have talked about breast cancer here a fair bit, particular how it is bizarrely marketed. (Seriously, we are all VERY AWARE of breast cancer, how about putting more money into research, eh?)

My mother died from it, my aunt had a mastectomy 15+ years ago, but I STILL see it as a foreign thing that happens to other people. Because I’m naive? Because I know that there was no other family history, so I don’t really need to worry until I’m menopausal?* Because I live a healthier life (maybe) than they did (she says while inhaling a bag of cheddar chips)?

Cancer doesn’t discriminate, so really, it’s because I’m a naïve idiot.

It is highly unlikely that I have the BRCA gene (see above), but my doctor offered to set up an interview with a geneticist to see if I’m a candidate for testing. The advantage she said is that, if I am tested, and test positive, I am eligible for MRI breast screenings in future. The disadvantage is freaking myself out thinking about it. (Overtesting can lead to false positives and terrible emotional distress, doncha know.)

That having been said, while I’m now, finally, realizing that (holy shit) I could get breast cancer, or any other cancer, and really having a wee crisis about it, I said yes, hook me up with some science. I want information, it turns out. Like, as much of it as I can get. Somehow, this surprised me a little bit even though, ironically, I hate surprises and always have. TELL ME MORE ABOUT MY BODY, PLEASE. And thank you socialized medicine for making it available to someone as stupidly poor as I am these days.

I’ve also been hooked up with a requisition for a mammogram, so hurrah for tit health all around, eh?
–

In other news, I came in 233rd (kinda – they don’t seem to have accounted for the hundreds of ties) in the World Quizzing Championships last week. Only 2nd in Ottawa, 11th in Canada. I’m blaming that poor result on stress. Well, and that it was MUCH harder this year. The winner overall had 10 points fewer than last year. So, yeah, I did OK.

I still have to learn all the sports before my Jeopardy! audition in a month, though.

* Holy shit, I’m not ACTUALLY that far off from menopausal – who wants to have kids with me, stat?)

Living.

megan — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:36:15 +0000

Edit 1: (Great, that title has put the theme song to that classic (?) Ann Jillian sitcom in my head. Man, 80′s sitcom intro posing was wonderful, eh? Anyone else every practice their turn-to-the-camera-and-smile as a kid just in case a chyron with your name on it appeared somehow?)

Edit 2: (A few minutes after posting, I realised just how attention-whorey this is. I apologise, mostly, kinda, but I’m leaving it up.)

Just checking in to brag and confirm that yes, I am alive. Those who saw my 100 or so tweets on Saturday during the Eurovision final will know that already. Y’know, unless I was hit by a bus during the following two days. Or died of liver failure as a direct result of Eurovision. Alcohol is Free.

I’m 36 today. I’m feel very old. Occasionally, I kinda pitifully wish that someone had thrown me a party (despite my not enjoying being the centre of attention). But that hasn’t happened since I was, like a teenager. Or before that. I don’t even know.

I have noticed that a lot of women in my cohort who are happily partnered or married up do complain that they don’t get a lot of notice on their birthdays, at least, not nearly as much notice as they give their family members. That’s kind of a bummer. How did that happen? Ladies are pretty special. If you are lucky enough to have a lady in your life who devotes a lot of time and energy to your happiness, and think that she might want a party, maybe you should ask her. Or at least take her for a nice dinner or something.

Anyway, this is not about birthdays. It is, as mentioned about, about bragging. And freaking out. Yesterday, I got an email saying that I made it through to the next round in the Jeopardy! audition process. They referred to it as an interview, but rudimentary Googling reveals that it’s actually 2.5 hours of talking to cameras, taking tests, and playing a mock round of the game.

That’s all very scary stuff. Why did I sign up for this again?

In reality, I can probably handle these things (shaking like a leaf throughout), but I also have to prepare in advance is five anecdotes, in case I do make it onto the show.

Y’know, the anecdotes from the ‘Meet the Contestants’ bit after the first commercial break. The ones that vary between ‘I once went whitewater rafting on a rusted-out pickup truck in the Andes’ to ‘My cat snores like a human!’

The latter could be one of my stories. But I don’t want it to be.

Nor do I have any stories that involve high danger/adventure, unless you count some of my interactions with the crackheads of Rideau Street or that time I thought I would die of a migraine in London. Not great for family entertainment.

Now, I am 36, and I’m sure a lot of interesting things have happened to me, but 99.5% of the time, I think my life is pretty dull, especially televisually. I mean, I only left the house between Saturday night and Monday night to get a tire changed (which wouldn’t make a good anecdote either) and to go to dragon boat practice (which would result in a potentially incriminating anecdote because there was some murderous rage directed toward a woo-girl.)

Apart from playing a circus tent in an as-yet-unfinished film and, possibly, getting my foot caught in a bus door (the resultant late slip I handed to my Phys. Ed. teacher made him cry with mirth), do y’all have suggestions?

Keep it clean, folks. (Though, I’m so boring, that this shouldn’t be difficult.)

Oxbridge-level cleverness.

megan — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:02:23 +0000

My first webpage was called The Future Husbands list. I think I made it in about 1995. Don’t look it up. No, it wasn’t on Geocities, but it might as well have been. It included such people as Ewan McGregor (obviously), Lonely Planet host Neil Gibson, and, at the top of the list (not that it was numeric), Stephen Fry.

Now remember this: in 1995, Stephen Fry was best known in North America for Jeeves & Wooster. Even in the UK, he was not the national treasure that he obviously is now. It was peculiar to admire such a wonderful, tweedy, clever, 90% gay man as a 17-year-old Canadian girl.

I was also on the Schoolreach team in high school for five years and compete in trivia events regularly. It’s a shame I didn’t devote as much time to school as I did to memorising Trivia Pursuit cards. (Some things never change – or at least change very little. Have you seen the Sporcle app?)

I’ve mentioned in this space before that when I moved to Birmingham, I knew no one. I had a friend in Cheltenham who had a spare telly, though, and graciously loaned it to me for the year (since, truly, television-watching was part of my coursework). The week I arrived, something marvellous happened. ‘QI’ premiered.

It was the Television Gods gift to me. HUGH LAURIE was on the premiere as well, a lovely bonus. The style was a bit more haphazard and far less polished than it is now, which suited me fine. Comedians talking about little-known facts? With Stephen Fry as host? What could possibly be better?

I didn’t leave the flat as much as I should after that, because ‘QI’ was a gateway drug to my British panel show addiction.* It is almost the only reason I ever learned how Bittorrents work.

Lately, my comedy ‘problem’ has led me to podcasting, years after other nerds got into them, I expect. Oddly, for me, I largely listen to American ones – Earwolf and NPR are my go-tos – except for the oeuvre of Richard Herring. His podcasts at the Fringe and the Leicester Square theatre are fairly freeform chats with comedians and other funny, clever people where he asks his guests about their careers, but also suggests that they add a Shrek to their works, or asks if they’ve ever tried to suck their own cocks.

I have been in the same room as Stephen Fry twice, for a recording of the Radio 4 version of ‘Absolute Power’, and one of ‘QI’ (through jetlag and heatstroke, and despite the presence of Jeremy Clarkson, it was one of of the best days ever). But he was ‘working’, had a script, etc. I’d love to see him in a more casual environment.

The worlds are colliding, as Mr Fry will be on the podcast. It records at the Leicester Square Theatre on June 3. I am trying not to cave to my addiction to Britain, even though last year was the first in a long while that I didn’t go for at least a few days en route somewhere else. I don’t have any money anyway. And by the time I finish writing this, I have a feeling tickets will be sold out. So much for starting that Indiegogo campaign, eh?

What’s my point? None at all. Except maybe that by holding a Cambridge-educated gay polymath as the paragon of the ideal man, maybe I’ve been limiting myself a bit too much. I mean, I only work in a movie theatre, for Pete’s sake.

That’s not actually my point. But could someone get me a pile of money and a flat in London for a few months so I can go to a dozen recordings of things and comedy shows and get my fill for the next ten years? Maybe I can see if one of the Eggheads can train me in quizzing.

kthx.

* I was also 26 and living in university accommodation, which, in retrospect, was a terrible idea because 18-year-olds are the fucking worst (though getting hit on by them was pretty hilarious). And my program, consisting of, oh, 12 people, was 90% students who didn’t live in town.

TMI.

megan — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:14:22 +0000

I’ve been fighting a losing PR battle (kinda).

The cinema is full tilt into our renovations; we’re replacing all the downstairs seats, repairing floors, painting the shit of everything, and generally sprucing things up.

By ‘we’, I, of course, mean ‘not me’. I’m doing minimal clerical crap (today included making two phone calls to a courier company, one angry, one slightly apologetic, trying to track down an AWOL package picker-upper and tweaking some web page things) and cleaning my office.

My office. My office the furnace. It’s been sunny (that’s change tomorrow, mind) and my newly cleaned windows + slightly askew blinds (since said cleaning) – working A/C (all the auditorium doors need to stay open for ventilation) = sluggish, stupid, Megan.

By the end of the day, the fumes from the concrete sealant they were using on the floors were part of the mix so I was 100% zombie. My skin itches. My lungs burn. You are all in danger.

Anyway, we (by which I actually me me (and my boss)) have been trying to run a public information campaign about the cinema’s temporary closure. In the last few weeks, this has been most especially focusing on how! awesome! new seats are, and that, hooray, we reopen May 17 with a film that has been requested for months (but could only premiere now – well, on May 17). However, this ‘campaign’ started much earlier.

We made the initial announcement in February in our printed programme (circulation approximately 40000). We have sent out email newsletters, press releases, tweets, Facebook updates over the last two and a half months. There has been a link to a ‘news’ item on our website’s homepage for six weeks. We have been directly contacting local media outlets trying to get any kind of coverage. It wasn’t enough.

This week, suddenly, now that the seats are gone, we are getting daily, some quite cross, messages wondering what is happening to the seats.

Happening? Happened. They are gone. Buh-bye. No more. It doesn’t matter that I posted as much yesterday, more requests, via the same medium came in today.

So, for all our confidence in our attention-grabbing, the message of ‘new seats’ only got to those who were a) paying attention to the cinema at all, b) paying attention when tweets were sent out, and looking at the right pages and paragraphs of newsletters and programmes, and c) reliased that us getting new seats means that the old ones needed to go. A tiny group, in the end.

Obviously, the goings-on at a local cinema are of limited interest to any population, even in this generally friendly-to-the-indie-cinematorium town. But today I was challenged (publicly) on our not adequately letting the universe know that the cinema was getting new seats, nor that seats were up for grabs.

I nearly replied with this.

But I didn’t. I did (quite irritably, I admit) reply, explaining our efforts, but, really, why bother arguing? Unless you are broadcasting information directly into every single human brain, someone will miss out. Professionally whining really accomplishes very little.

There is just too much information to absorb out there, even if one is dedicated to paying attention to pop culture and the arts goings-on in a city. I mean, sure, it’s fucking ridiculous that my younger brother seemingly didn’t know about Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby (in 3D!) madness until last week, but I only just found that Commander Riker is a sitting boss. And I have never once come up with a current pop music reference in our weekly pub quiz. No one can no everything even in one (admittedly vague) subject area.

But still, man. We tried. We tried our best with our limited resources. And the seats were shitty and decayed anyway. Who wants a lumpen chair that has been sat in by, literally, tens, hell, possibly hundreds of thousands of butts. No amount of steam cleaning is going to completely eliminate that taint. (No pun intended.)

Brian Butterfield.

megan — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:45:58 +0000

If you’ve not heard of Peter Serafinowicz, you should probably try to rectify the situation. A few examples of his genius: He does a stupendous Alan Alda impression (and had a excellent, unappreciated sketch comedy show), he talks openly about his own troubles in order to help others, and he makes videos like this out of the blue (after asking the band, if you can call them a ‘band’, for permission, of course).

Also, last fall he appeared on Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (or, as the cool kids call it, RHLSTP) and seems like a genuinely lovely human man.

Of course, I bring this up for a more selfish reason than just saying ‘Hey, check out this comedian you might only know from bits in Edgar Wright projects and as the voice of Darth Maul’:

I got a haircut, can’t do a normal face in any photo, so did a “The fuck is this”-inspired diptych to show up its ~~asymmetricalness~~ asymmetry.

One of these photos reminds me of Mr Serafinowicz (guess which – my brain might be broken, so the answer is quite possibly ‘neither’). That’s a new one. I’ve been told for years that I make Rik Mayall (and by extension Greg Davies ones I suppose) faces.

Also, I have a lot more jaw than I thought I did.

Addendum: I literally had no idea there was a baseball dude called Brian Butterfield until someone mentioned on Twitter just now. I was talking about this one.

Storytelling.

megan — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:35:49 +0000

I am doing a challenge to write 750 words every day in May (on 750words.com). Day Two and I hit paydirt. Well, dirt. Here are some of the one-line stories I wrote today/in the last hour or so. I might post more on Twitter in the coming days.

There once was a little boy who lived in a marshmallow house with jujube windows. He died of osmosis-acquired diabetic complications.
Once upon a time, there was a cockroach. He was killed by a shoe.
All his life, Tom dreamed of going to Thailand. None of those dreams lived up to the reality: syphilis and a screaming case of the shits.
Hannah got into her first-choice university, then realised that she didn’t know how to read.
In a tiny house, with a rambling garden, at the end of a winding road, some people died.
A writer sat down to write, but ended up watching fifteen episodes on Golden Girls on YouTube instead. (Based on a true story.)
Hannibal Lecter travelled to Polynesia in hopes of finding people who wouldn’t mind being eaten. Turns out, even cannibals don’t like that.
The cat who lived in the bookstore survived on a diet of spilled lattes and tote bags.
Charlie fell asleep at the wheel and ended up turning her fingers into yarn. They made a lovely, if meaty, sweater.
Michael Jackson wasn’t named after Michael Jackson, which was almost a blessing.
The Terminator would have been less angry if someone had bought him some Visine.
The newspaper delivery boy was thrilled about his new job, until her realised that nobody read newspapers anymore.
Filene kept a lot of crap in her attic as well.
The gardener was no pacifist. His black thumb made sure of that.
Oddly, Bran Stark has terrible trouble with constipation.
The cyclist nearly ran into a parked car while distracted by a cyclist who was biking down the wrong side of the road. (Also based on a true story.)

The Canadian Yoda.

megan — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:25:06 +0000

So, survived Kingston, survived highway driving, and maybe came away with more ideas about comedy. I am going to try to go to a local improv show or two and see if it’s something I can work with (again, still no interest in performing). I will finish some scripts and research places to send them (turns out the BBC Writers’ Room doesn’t want submissions from non-residents of the U.K.). I will contemplate my job and life and whatever.

I remembered yesterday that I wrote a very impassioned letter to Lorne Michaels when I was 12 years old, BEGGING for him to make changes to ‘Saturday Night Live’. I wish I had a copy. I don’t remember much about what I wrote, but I think I said the show was getting too repetitive, and I’m sure I demanded to see more of Mike Myers (he wasn’t a full cast member yet).

I was 12. And already an ‘expert’ on comedy. It’s ridiculous. Why was I up so late, even on a Saturday, anyway? Well, the first time I remember staying up for SNL was when Buckwheat was shot. I was five years old when that originally aired. It’s possible I saw it on a repeat, so maybe I was six.

Of course then, like now, on the (very) odd occasion that I do watch, I rarely stay awake for the whole thing.

On the way back from Kingston, I listened to Jeff Garlin’s podcast from this past week, which featured Conan O’Brien. My cheeks hurt from smiling and I was probably in genuine danger of driving off the road from laughing so hard. But there were a few life lessons in there that stuck out too: Stick to your strengths, not everyone gets to follow their dream, and everyone is taking a fucking improv class and veteran comedians are starting to notice that/riff on it.

Perhaps most importantly, Conan brought up that he wanted to do comedy his whole life. When he was at Harvard, he got to meet John Candy. Mr. Candy*>, on hearing that Conan wanted to ‘try’ comedy, said that no, you can only ‘do’ comedy. Like a big, Canadian Yoda: Do or do not, there is no try.

So I will do. Do what? Still working on that. I am very old to decide to pursue a dream like this, but I’ve got to try before it’s too late, right?
–

I got to chat with Mark Watson after the show for a little while, much to the annoyance/amusement of the other comedians who were trying to do photos, then get their drink on? Maybe? Who can say? I don’t know what comedians do after tour shows.

Anyway, found out the tour went pretty well, and the comedians were just as perplexed about the towns they visited as I was. Mark was very, very good. I had heard most of the prepared jokes before, which is totally fine, because, seriously, who else in Canada had? The audience was excellent and playful, so he also got to play with them (including a woman in the audience with the comedy gig equivalent of church giggles) a lot, so his slot was spontaneous and fresh too (oh dear, that doesn’t sound right). He also quoted Stompin’ Tom, which was wonderful; I love when non-Canadians embrace our weird little cultural gems.

I mentioned to him that I would love to go the Melbourne Comedy Festival next year and he told me that I should definitely go. He said it’s a different feel than Edinburgh, more relaxed and less rainy than Scotland. I can tell that just from hearing what comedian say (or reading what they tweet): Edinburgh is made out like some kind of annual war (‘I have PTSD from that glassing at the “Just a Minute” recording’, ‘Yeah, well I nearly lost most of my toes after getting trench foot at the Pleasance‘) and Melbourne is all sunshine and loveliness. (I may be oversimplifying.)

I did mention that going would require the sale of a kidney, probably, and he said that maybe the festival isn’t so great that I should do that.

Whatever. I only need the one, right?
–

In other comedy news, Tig Notaro continues to nail it.

*For some reason, it just naturally made sense to be more reverential and only use the title for Mr. Candy. Sorry, Coco.

Fessing up.

megan — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:38:14 +0000

I’ve been whinging about my back all weekend, blaming biking, moving boxes, painting, etc., all of which are certainly factors in the problem, but in reality? A lot of it has to do with feeling uncomfortably bloated after eating Sri Lankan food on Friday night, finding it hard to figure out a comfortable sleeping position, and subsequently contorting myself stupidly so that I woke up in agony.

Laugh away, jerks!

Waking up refreshed.

megan — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:47:18 +0000

(I wrote this in the very early morning at 750words, but my website’s been down almost all day due to hacking attempts at my hosting service. So yay. I probably should have edited before posting, but eh, I’m at work now.)

It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood and, and yes I have mentioned this in other outlets, the jingle in the ‘hey, Canada, Target is opening some stores here!‘ commercial is still one the most annoying things going these days. Y’don’t fuck around with Mr Rogers and his oeuvre, y’all. I have a whole skeleton to pick with whomever is responsible.

Especially since some folks on YouTube had to ask what the ‘cute’ song was because they didn’t know where it was from. They thought it was a catchy nearly atonal original track.

Really, I should just follow my own advice and not read the bottom half of the internet. I’m no Dave Gorman, so it’s really not going to give me any kind of real inspirations of hilarity. At least not today.

But y’know what? It’s a fine day for an old lady rant. My back hurts, my immune system is waging a war against spring with all its might, and, the other day, Amazon recommended that I pick up the DVDs (or, gawd, were they blu-rays?) of the Father Dowling Mysteries. I’ve been humming this. Sometimes it drowns out the Tarzhé jingle.

As much as I’m writing this on a blog on my own site, and I have written hundreds of thousands of words in this space, and I’m one of those people who tweets more than a little excessively, I’m a little sick of democracy on the internet. I miss the days when opinions in newspapers were only rationally (if not always entirely accurate) written letters from/to the editor rather than numbskulls using the CBC website to post their almost apologetically pro-eugenics rants when Native issues come up, or folks wondering in near-English protowords about how Lady Gaga is so fat now lol.

The instantaneousness of internet commentary has lessened the ‘need’ for critical thinking, which was already at dearth levels (probably – I really have nothing to back this up, which may be more evidence of this).

Of course, in this sea of idiocy, there is plenty of genius. (Someone floated an idea (on Twitter) that Snopes should be integrated into Facebook. Can we get onto that already?) But are the duhhhhhhs winning the word war? Well, my fussy old self doesn’t read much news online anymore because even the BBC’s website allows for commentary on some stories and I don’t care for it.

(And, seriously, H&M finally, eventually, making landfall in town was the top story/talking point on local news outlets this week…until Oprah came to town, girlfriend! I wonder what pablum she served to the people willing to pay $300 to see her. I know, right? What’s wrong with me for not adoring one of the most beloved broadcasters in the world? Well, her cult leader-like status creeps me out a lot, especially since she believes in her own hype and only occasionally knows what she’s talking about, and I find anyone who brands charities with their own name a little suspect. Why not support established organizations instead of building a single, expensive, seemingly disorganized school with your name plastered all over it? See also Madonna. And good on Joyce Banda.)

Obviously, news outlets are not without bias, but really, if one is aware of that, one should be able to figure out which snippets to take with whole shakers worth of salt.

Ingesting and believing things as soon as they are read or heard isn’t really a choice anyone should be taking anymore, she says as she preaches to the non-masses – there are too many uncertainties to do so. One need only compare statistics on protests – rarely do the participants and police report even remotely close attendance statistics – or even look at the Toronto Star’s coverage of Mayor Ford, who has had a beef with the paper for years and refuses to cooperate with them (or even provide them with press releases, FFS). Not to say that their criticisms are wrong, but it provides fuel for a fire that thousands want warm their hands on. Giving the people what they want is exactly why H&M and Oprah were so heavily featured this week. Hell, the CTV News team were positively giddy and calling for O to get in touch with them via Twitter. That seems…cheap/unseemly for media outlets, no?

As usual, I have no solutions. And I will continue to tweet my thoughts on world events/the new episode of ‘Parks and Recreation’ tonight. The difference is that no one HAS to read what I say. Most places, reading reactionary commentary is so visible, it’s impossible to avoid a top comment at least.

Anyway, I just got a Chromebook this week. I am shopping for apps or extensions that will hide most internet comments sections. Anyone got any ideas?

Q.A.

megan — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 03:36:20 +0000

Testing out a thing, since I can’t seem to log into my site directly on my new Chromebook.