Saturday, March 5, 2011

But I Don't Want to be the Black Swan!

russiandancecortes_2This post is inspired by the film, The Black Swan. I loved the movie; even with it's Red Shoes melodrama and totally over the top direction.  I was moved by Nina's hunger for fame and cried when her obsession for perfection destroyed her.  She won the role of Odette, the beautiful white swan of Swan Lake, but was destroyed when the evilness of the Black Swan, Odile possessed her.
Like many, I was very eager to fit in as a teen; especially that period of moving from elementary school to junior high.
I was the kid that other kid's moms loved; always eager to help with the dishes, polite and amusing. Yeah, you guessed it.

And if being gay wasn't enough, I was English in a Acadian Canadian household, my mother (Protestant) wasn't married to my father and we lived in a part of town that "nice" people warned their kids to stay away from.

Unlike my friends in the "Bowery" (as my dad liked to call our street), I took the other tack and choose to live a life as a saint.  This engendered some martyrdom at the hands of one bully in particular, but I was sure that if I stoically suffered through it, that I would sit at the right hand of God and close to Father Kelly.

Now, being the best little boy may have worked in pre-puberty, but once hormones kicked in and  my friends started swapping spit with girls instead of swapping comics with me, I realized I had to pull a "Sandy" and shake things up a bit.

  grease
So I starting sneaking smokes. But because of an unfortunate incident when Tommy and I, in a rush to get rid of the evidence, smoked a whole pack of Export A's behind the church, I couldn't look at another cigarette for at least -  a year.

I tried swearing; no more grammatically correct  sentences with polite "thank you's"  and "you're welcome's".  This, of course didn't apply to my friend's parents. How hard could it be?  Swearing was the lingua franca of home.

The result was humiliating.  My girl friends (platonic), would just giggle. It wasn't working. Seems I was just too good to be bad.

I was to play out the rest of my life as Sal Mineo to James Dean, as Jimmy Olsen to Clark Kent (okay, maybe not the best example).

Even today, I hesitate to let it all out – to let my evil queen reign supreme.  Yes, I may lose my temper on occasion and may not always at my best, but in public, or on a public platform such as a blog; I tend to be "safe for general consumption".

This is not a way to gain a following or to be noticed.

You have to be controversial. You have to have some edge – be a bad ass.
However, I find that there are many very nice people who are huge stars in the blogosphere. Even Perez Hilton has become well, nice. 

Do I have to pull a Sandy again to get noticed?  Is this grade nine all over again?

No, I'll just be me. But if someone thinks they can come by and slap me around, well, this martyr can now kick some butt!

Friday, March 4, 2011

Too Early for Cocktails?


It's Friday!

Is it too early for cocktails?
Seems Spike Jones never thought so. This trailer is from 1945.

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