Truths and Half Truths

Ten Oscar Night Reflections

1.   When they told Chris Rock that this telecast was going to be seen by millions, did he say "Shit ... I'm going to have to REALLY YELL TO BE HEARD!  Oh, I just wish those people who won the technical awards presented by the arm-wavy girl who is so white she's nearly transparent would invent a device to amplify my voice!"

2.  Renee, darlin' ... eat something.  Anything.  You cannot live forever on a diet of cotton balls soaked in consomme.  And the hair?  Too black.  It makes you look almost as white as Scarlett, and seriously?  Not a good look.  Nice dress, though.

3.  Morgan Freeman was way overdue, and does anyone exude more class?

4.  Drew Barrymore is NOT "multi-talented".  She barely gets to "single-talented".  Ditto Adam Sandler, whose desperately un-funny duet with Chris Rock was the lowlight of the evening.

5.  Annette Bening has about the sexiest, most pleasant smile on the planet.

6.  Jamie Foxx had the best acceptance speech of the night.  It brought tears to my eyes.

7.  My daughter, when Samuel L. Jackson appeared:  "God, if he were any more cool he'd be Jack Nicholson."

8.  Hillary Swank was gorgeous in a dress that was both modest and incredibly sexy.  I love when women (or their designers, I suppose) know just what to accentuate.

9.  On a related note:  Gwyneth, darlin' ... shooting has finished on "Shakespeare in Love".  It is no longer necessary to wrap your breasts.

10.  If Jack Nicholson were any more cool, he'd be Clint Eastwood.

Thinking Big

Maybe you've got some time right now to read something that has the potential to make your imagination take flight.  Try this essay from my friend Rob Paterson.  It's long(ish), and the ideas seem complex, but it reads beautifully and, in truth, the ideas only seem complex because most of us tend to approach things from a single, narrow perspective - that of adults taught by school systems firmly planted in the culture of the mid-20th century.  What he's proposing is actually quite simple.

I read Rob's thoughts and immediately started feeling what I think of as "those little bumps forming on my head" - from the ideas richochetting around in there.  I love that feeling. 

If you don't have time to read it now, bookmark it and come back to it when the house is quiet, you've got a glass of good wine or fine Scotch in your hand, and you're ready to allow the universe to expand.

It's that good.

Tour Planning

Doing what I do means I'm either on the road, or just back from the road and getting ready to go on the road again.  Being on the road is the easy part.

Lately, I've been pulling together the first really big tour of the year - three plus weeks in England and France in May.  It's actually a combination tour/holiday, because there was no way my wife was going to let me go without her (yeah, where is she when I'm slogging through Northern Ontario?) and this time I invited my daughters along as well, and one of them is bringing her boyfriend, so there's five of us.  Which is posing a problem.

See, when I'm touring alone, I can rent pretty much any vehicle.  But a vehicle that seats five comfortably is trickier.  And having toured in England before, I know that if there's one thing you can count on when it comes to vehicles, it's that they are small.

We're talking teeny tiny, knees-to-your-chest, luggage space for a shaving kit small.  Even the station wagons ("estate cars", if you please) are small by North American standards.  They say they seat five, but when I go to a site like whatcar  and do a search for, say, a Vauxhall Vectra Estate  , I look at the pics and think "Wow.  Call not sitting on the hump in the back!"

So I've moved up to looking for a van - but the full-sized vans are horrendously expensive to rent, not to mention the cost of filling and re-filling the damn things at $2.00 a litre for unleaded.

Then I stumbled upon this vehicle.  It's a Vauxhall Zafira 5-to-7 passenger van.  Looks cozy, but it's hard to tell from the pictures.  So ... does anyone have personal knowledge of these creatures? 

Reflections on Being Home Again ...

1.   You can't whine about me being away on tour for three weeks AND whine about me being home.  Pick one or the other.  Yes, there is more mess when you add another person into the mix.  But there is also a fire lit when you get home from work, a cozy house, the deck and the walks are cleared, supper is on the go, and the dog has been walked.

2.   It is VERY hard to make the adjustment from "all alone in a king-sized hotel bed" to "Whose goddamn elbow is that?"  I imagine it is equally hard on my wife, who slips into that sleeping-like-a-starfish habit when I'm gone and now wonders why she is reduced to a mere 7/8ths of the bed.

3.   My body clock still believes it is four hours earlier.  I don't seem to get jet lag in the sense of being tired, the way some people do.  It's the reverse for me.  I find it hard to go to sleep at midnight when my body is saying "Oh, get serious.  It's 8 frigging o'clock!".

4.   I will never learn that it's not the smartest thing in the world to call home from a golf course and ask how the blizzard is going.  OK, not entirely true.  I know it's not smart.  But I will never learn that the consequences outweigh the few seconds of evil glee.

5.   I miss my online community when I'm away, and I know how sad that sounds.  But every day when I'm home, I drop by Al's, and Cynthia's, and Craig's and Jodi's and Kyria's and Laura's and Sara's and Rob's and Peter's and Heather's and Linda's and Tess's and ... well, OK, all the blogs you see linked to the right.  They're part of my daily routine, and when I'm on tour in some hotel in Podunk, I can't get to them as easily.  And I feel out of the loop.  Scrolling through archives isn't the same thing.

6.   It is somewhat jarring to be sitting in a living room in Edmonton, talking to a couple of geek types about browsers, and hearing a lovely young woman say, in reverential tones, "You actually KNOW the guys from silver/orange?  Wow ... they're like ... my heroes."  To my credit - and guys, you owe me - I didn't laugh.

7.   Business class rocks.  I am spoiled.

8.   There really is no place like home.  Even if I can't golf till May.