Area Woman Blows Gasket (9 page)

And What News of the King?

A few days after the gala, my friend Pier and I went to see a movie, and then decided to have a drink before heading home
at midnight to our small sleeping children. The nearest bar was in Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel, in swankest Yorkville, the
home-away-from-home for all the Hollywood folk who drift through town these days to make their movies on the cheap or to promote
them at the festival.

Neither Pier nor I had ever been to this overpriced out-of-towner bar before, but we walked in, worrying faintly about the
fact that we were wearing jeans and juice-stained mommy T-shirts and might even be requested to leave. The sleek brass-and-mahogany
bar was jammed with well-heeled customers smoking and yapping, so we felt lucky when we spied a just-vacated corner spot,
tip and empty glasses still upon the table. We sat down and began pondering what to drink when the waitress came over and
smilingly explained that there was actually a lineup for the tables and that the "two gentlemen at the bar over there have
been waiting for this one."

Ah,
c
}
est la vie.
We weren't surprised or offended. We got up and headed for the bar ourselves, figuring we could order drinks and just sort
of stand about. En route, we bumped into the two middle-aged men who had dibs on the table, one of whom grabbed my elbow and
started gushing about how grateful he was that we'd been kind enough to surrender our seats.

"I have terrible back pain," he explained, blowing booze breath in my face.

He was a faded, rumpled fellow with too-small eyes and a receding hairline, and I was thinking that it was a bit odd for him
to be so profusely thankful when we'd so obviously jumped the queue. It's not like we'd volunteered to climb out of an ambulance
for him, limping off with fractured tibias. But then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me that this man was the actor Liam Neeson,
whom I had last seen towering elegantly over the throngs in the movie
Schindler's List.

Instantly my knees began to shake. I went from being puzzled and uninterested to feeling
physically handicapped
in one fell click of my brain. His celebrity, and nothing more, just the fact of it, had the power to alter my physiological
state. How strange is that? I ask you. Now I needed the table back, and he had only himself to blame. Of course, being a WASP
lady, I refused to even admit that I'd recognized him, instead simply grinned and uttered some reply— which, because I was
trembling, came across as unintelligible, as if I were muttering at him in Yiddish. Then I accepted his offer to buy me and
Pier a glass of wine and proceeded— after he'd settled himself down at "our" table, while we stood at the bar— to pick the
most expensive Chardonnay on the menu.

Pier and I speculated that Neeson had been so thankful to us because he wrongly assumed that we had given up our table to
personally accommodate him, Liam Neeson. One reaches a certain level of fame and ceases believing that people observe decorum
for its own sake rather than because they want to be sycophantic expressly to you.

I was thinking about this strange, unanchored power of celebrity— how an otherwise unremarkable person can make your knees
shake when you find out his name— when I attended the IdeaCity conference in downtown Toronto.

The buzz among attendees at this conference was that the big names, like Peter Jennings, wouldn't be the interesting speakers.
If you wanted ideas, you had to perk up your ears at the mousy scholars and shy inventors who walked onstage. So what was
the function of the big names? When Jennings took the stage, he actually confided: "I haven't got the vaguest bloody idea
why I'm here." I suppose it was simply to excite everyone with his presence. To eat muffins at a conference with Peter Jennings,
why, is that not the ne plus ultra?

With all due respect to the man, this is what's so vexing to me about our present culture. We live in a culture of celebrity,
where famous people can make us tremble, yet they offer no substance— no ideas, no leadership, no inspirational models of
virtue. They are, after all, mostly entertainers by trade; it was never their mission to reincarnate royalty. I'm sure this
is why actors are always yammering on in interviews about how they actually have drug addictions and dysfunctional families
and eating disorders. It is as if they are trying to deflect our hopeless reverence by pointing out that they're not heroes
and revolutionaries and geniuses— they're just
actors
for chrissake.

As Sue Erikson Bloland observed in an essay about fame in the
Atlantic Monthly,
people who achieve celebrity are often characterized by monstrous insecurity and self-loathing, these being the very qualities
that propel them to grasp for approval. For us to take this neurotic drive of theirs and turn it into something worthy of
worship is essentially ridiculous, is it not? All we wind up worshiping is the panicked pursuit of self-aggrandizement itself.
There are exceptions, notable among them the Irish rock star Bono. His amazing efforts to become a gadfly to first world governments
for third world causes reveal the rare alchemy of star dust and altruism. Bono showed up in Canada shortly before the federal
election in 2004 to nag Prime Minister Paul Martin about increasing the foreign aid budget. Martin agreed, which promptly
inspired an opposition candidate to complain. "I think that's just the prime minister trying to get some star power around
himself," Stephen Harper told the press. "We all know what that game is."

But Bono had a succinct reply. "Yes, I'm being used," he said cheerfully. "I want to be used. That's my job here, to provide
applause when someone does the right and courageous thing and to provide criticism when they don't."

One of my favorite speakers at IdeaCity was the Montreal crime journalist Michel Auger, who became famous for being shot,
in the parking lot of
Le Journal de Montreal,
presumably by the organized criminals he'd been writing about. Ever since, he has won numerous national awards and invitations
to conferences, and even an offer for a lucrative contract to promote Viagra. "This conference is supposed to be a meeting
of minds," he wryly observed, "but I'm here for my body." With wonderful candor and humility, Auger was pointing out that
the fame of the incident itself had conferred upon him greater import as a thinker.

"I was a regular reporter," he explained. "And then, the day I was shot, I became a great reporter."
Figurez-vous.
With leadership and leading ideas framed this way, is it any wonder that truth is up for grabs and that its purveyors are
increasingly mercantile?

To Get Famous in America, You Must Set
Your Alarm

Going on a book tour is an interesting way to measure what it takes to be influential in the modern world. I remember the
shocked revelation I had with my first book, when I learned that— well, I learned two things really— that it was a very bad
idea to publish a book shortly after Princess Diana died in a car accident and that, furthermore, being influential in the
world has very little to do with what you have written down on paper and a great deal to do with how coherent you are on early
morning TV shows.

I learned this because I once had the grand, amazing opportunity to be on
Good Morning America.
It
was
grand and amazing: They flew me down to New York; they put me up in a hotel; they arranged for a limo to collect me in the
morning. The only trouble was that, being a new mother, I was equally captivated by the possibility of watching movies on
the hotel TV without anyone bugging me. I could watch any old movie I liked! It didn't have to be the forty-fifth showing
of
Balto
or a grainy BBC production of
Frog and Toad.
It could be something adult, and I could lie there like a barnyard pig flicking at flies with my ears rather than having
those same ears tuned, tensed as a hunted fox, to the cries of a child down the hall. I ordered room service and had a major
mud wallow. Indeed, I so reveled in this opportunity that I watched two whole movies. Two! And then, I slept through my alarm.

If you wanted to re-create the conditions that child care experts recommend for babies with colic, you would put them in a
hotel room with no sound but the white noise of the air conditioner. Then, block out light with heavy draperies. Ensure an
utter cryptlike stillness. Be certain that they stayed up the night before until two A.M. sobbing as they watched
The English Patient.
And
voila.
Cranky babies and mothers on book tour, sleeping like logs.

I finally— and abruptly— awoke to the impatient rapping of the limo driver on my door and, after glancing at the clock, shot
to a standing position with enough fuck-fuck-fuck adrenaline to catapult a cow to Pluto.
Fuhhhhhk.
I hopped around the room, trying to haul on my nylons. Within seconds I had pulled on my clothes and flung open the door,
still fumbling with the straps of my shoes. The irritated limo driver advised me without sympathy that I had ten minutes,
exactly, until airtime.

In retrospect, words cannot sufficiently commend the makeup and hair crew of
Good Morning America,
who managed to process me from sound asleep to made-over-with-helmet-hair in under five minutes. It was remarkable— it truly
was. If they could have speed-spritzed my brain so that I wasn't seated there on
GMA's
happy set as alert as bread dough, for all the consumers of pancakes in America's entire chain of Denny's to see, that would
have helped too.

"So, Patricia," began the host, as I stared into the middle distance and thought the thoughts of somebody reading the ingredients
on a cereal box, "you have stated in your controversial new book that blahdeeblah, hoo hoo hoo, and we have a critic on satellite
hookup from Texas who has been up since yesterday and is frothing at the bit like Gloria Alfred on crack to oppose you. Can
you defend yourself, please?"

". . . Uh . . ."

"Well," the host swiftly added, "you clearly believe this controversial and complicated argument, as you laid out in your
book, and what is it? We need you to summarize it in a sound bite right this instant before we cut to your critic."

"Um . . ."

Ah, so, you see? This is the quandary. The first step to being influential in America is to wake up on time. If half of the
country is religious and derives its wisdom from the Bible or the Talmud or the Qur'an, the other half derives it from people
who are peppy.

One morning, years later but also very early, I found myself in the studio of a local Vancouver television show, waiting my
turn to sit on a bar stool and chat with the two preternaturally jocular hosts. Ahead of me in the lineup was a broad-chested
man with a brush cut and a pointy nose, somewhat reminiscent of a badger, who was promoting his book,
Law ofAttraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don't!
His name was Michael J. Losier, and his big-shouldered physicality put me in mind of the homicide cops in their ill-fitting
brown suits and shiny black shoes that I used to interview in Long Island when I was on a crime beat.

Losier, I learned, listening to the interview, was a former provincial bureaucrat with the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation,
who had somehow discovered that he knew the universal law of attraction and could parlay his wisdom into a career on the book-and-lecture
circuit. He was very excited, you could tell. Indeed, his excitement and good mood had evidently assisted him with his book,
through some sort of process involving vibes. "Vibes," he explained to the TV hosts, "are really vibrations, which are moods."
I wrote this down in my notebook. Someone handed me a mug of coffee. Then I caught Losier saying, "So, the law of attraction
checks in to see which mood you're in. I've attracted twenty-one people to help me with this book."

He then summarized the steps involved in learning to live your life according to the law of attraction, and I no longer remember
any of them except for the last one, which I jotted down. "Allow it," he advised the hosts, "that's the last step." I couldn't
understand what that meant for the longest time, but then I finally realized that it meant: "believe."

There was a commercial break. Michael Losier left, and I took the stool that had just been warmed by his vibes. The law of
attraction checked its watch, and I said, "Uh . . ."

Speak to Your Dog and Grow Rich

If you are a peppy sort of person who is wondering how to make money, I highly recommend the Learning Annex as a possible
venue for employment. I came to this conclusion after noticing that the Learning Annex itself offered a course— by someone
named Dottie Walters— called "Speak and Grow Rich." In her picture, Dottie Walters sports a lovely leopard print hat, and
she teaches people like you and me how to turn— just stuff we know— into a lucrative speaking and growing-rich career.

I found out about Dottie Walters shortly after I had completed my book tour, to no financial avail, and had just noticed that
Michael Losier was teaching seminars at the Learning Annex on the law of attraction. I figured maybe Dottie Walters was onto
something. This got me wondering who else was on their roster, and that— to make a long story short— is how I wound up spending
two hours in the company of Rochelle Gai Rodney, area pet telepathist, who explained the trick to overcoming all known laws
of nature in order to read pets' minds.

Of course, a cynic would wish to know, who were the chumps surrendering cash for such ridiculous hocus pocus? Well, I was,
for one. I'll do anything to overcome my current domestic impasse, in which I never have even the remotest clue what my dog
wants, and he never has the slightest, faintest inkling what I'm saying to him.

Kevin, who is my dog, is a cross between border collie and basenji, which means that half of him descends from one of the
smartest breeds known and the other half from, easily, the stupidest. He is highly alert, and unable to grasp a single thing.
Kevin's entire communicative repertoire, whether he wants water, food, company, exercise, permission to jump on the sofa,
relief from boredom, some painkillers, a toy, or a conversation about the hydro bill, consists of padding up to me and staring.
He does this about fifty times a day, just stares brightly without moving a muscle, and after seven years of living together,
I still don't know what he wants. We coexist in a state of profound mutual incomprehension.

Sometimes I think it doesn't matter that I don't know what he wants, because we have nothing in common. Whatever he wants
will be something that I don't want. He probably wants me to get up from my desk and go outside for the rest of the day to
barrel after squirrels. I don't want to.

If I were my husband, I'd just let Kevin stare at me until his eyeballs fell out and not worry about it. He takes Kevin for
his walks, ensures that his kibble is replenished, keeps the bathroom door ajar so that Kevin can drink from the toilet, and
lets him sleep on the bed. That's it. Done.

But I'm a woman, and a mother, and I worry about how everyone is feeling. So I paid the Learning Annex their fee and took
my chair in a classroom on a cold night, flipped open my notebook, and prepared to read Kevin's mind.

Rochelle Gai Rodney is a former government bureaucrat who suddenly had the revelation that she wasn't meant to push pencils
because she knew what pets are thinking. Rodney arrived for her class carrying a Siamese cat named Moose, whom she introduced
as her teaching assistant. Rodney put him down and Moose shot into the closet, where he remained for the next two hours.

"By the end of this class, you will be hearing Moose communicate telepathically," Rodney assured us, beaming. "She's just
going to be invisible for a while. That will help you get used to communicating with pets at a distance."

The twenty or so women in the classroom nodded avidly. We perked up our senses and eagerly awaited a message from Moose, such
as "Get me the hell out of here." In the meantime, Rodney, a small, happy woman with a disarming giggle, explained what she
knew about animal communication.

"The thing that animals want most in their life is to be heard," she said, sitting on a desk and swinging her legs to and
fro, "especially the birds. They really have a lot to say because they travel around the world." That's true, isn't it? But
they're birds. Surely they aren't going to wing their way back from Florida hoping to discuss the election? "You'll be amazed
at what animals have to say," Rodney insisted. "They may want to design your cottage. I've had a consult with a pug who was
an English banker in its previous life."

Oh God. What if Kevin wants to design my cottage? Forget it— he'd create a giant squirrel baffle with fifteen toilets.

"Don't analyze; don't edit," Rodney warned us, about receiving messages in our minds. "Just be willing to say That was real.'
I'm at the point where I've convinced myself that I'm totally accurate. So, just believe in yourself. It's real. I'm getting
paid to do it, so it must be." I'm just not going to touch that logic.

Rodney had the class divide into pairs in order to practice telepathic communication. The woman beside me was to tune into
Kevin, and I was to pick up the thoughts of her cat. We both looked horrified, which suggested that we shared a certain insecurity
about the task at hand. But what could we do? We'd paid our money, and here we were, so I offered that her cat was under the
bed and wanted to go out. She countered that Kevin was lying in front of the fireplace and also wanted to go out.

We reported our findings to the class, feeling like a pair of Pinocchios. On the way home, I daydreamed of ways to earn money
by teaching at the Learning Annex: how to breed hens that lay golden eggs, for instance, or a seminar on how to wave your
hands up and down and wish upon stars. My husband suggested that I contact Rodney for a personal consultation with Kevin.

"Let her go
mano a mano
with Kevin," he urged. "Just her and him." I hesitated for weeks because Rodney charges $160 an hour for a private session.
That's a lot of coin. That's like a lawyer's fee. In the end, however, while filming a television segment on kids and pets,
I introduced the telepathist to her subject, who was conked out on the dining room floor making snuffling sounds, and asked
her what he thought.

"He says that you, as a family, should lighten up and enjoy yourselves more," Rodney reported. Otherwise, she said, Kevin
is happy with his lot in life, which is to be a teacher to us, to help us connect with our energies, and to receive messages
from him. Oh God, this is just a vicious circle.
What
messages?

My husband interrupted with his own inquiry:"Ask Kevin who killed my nephew's pet gerbil, him or Biscuit?" (Biscuit is my
sister's psycho-frisky golden retriever, who can't be in a room two seconds without knocking something over with her tail.
She also drags socks out of the laundry hamper to chew on, is the neighborhood's principal consumer of poo, and generally
drives my sister bananas.)

Rodney asked the deeply asleep Kevin if he was responsible for a certain gerbil's corpse appearing beneath my nephew's bed
last Memorial Day weekend. Then she looked at me. "Kevin says it was sad, it happened very fast, but his back was turned at
the time." Upon hearing this, my husband had to leave the room and bray with laughter in the yard. Meanwhile, Rodney offered
to tune into Biscuit long-distance in Montreal, to determine if Kevin was evading responsibility here. A moment later, she
announced that yes, it was Biscuit. Biscuit had killed the gerbil, "and she's not sorry."

I thanked the pet telepathist and ran like a bat out of hell to call my sister with the news. "BISCUIT DID IT— AND SHE'S NOT
SORRY!" My sister laughed so hard she fell off her office chair. That's gotta be worth 160 bucks, don't you think?