Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Internet and how different my life would be without it.
For one, I wouldn’t be writing this blog (obviously). My job would be different (obviously). I would still have a land-line phone (as it is the Internet that has kept me in touch for cheap with my family that’s long-distance).
But there are other things my life would be missing without this thing we call the world wide web — community.
Sure, Facebook makes it easy to stay in touch with people you went to school with, or worked with, or whatever-ed with, but it has also given me a community of people online I have never met, but with whom my life would not be the same had I not come across their net presence.
Sure, Twitter’s a big part of that — I tend to follow/be followed by more people I don’t know, and I really like that on Twitter. I like that aspect of it. Through these people, their tweets and their blogs, I feel like I have a whole community of friends — and it doesn’t bother me that we’ve never met.
A few examples:
@spydergrrl and I found each other because our blog entries complaining about Margaret Wente calling all bloggers male were featured on thestar.com. We’ve read each other’s blogs ever since, she’s been on Spark proclaiming her geek girl status to the world, and I just wanted to bring her chicken soup when she was sick last week. I’ve never met Tanya, but that doesn’t matter to me at all, we converse on Twitter as if we’ve known each other forever.
@opinionatedlizz started following me when I echoed a complaint of hers that she had made on Twitter, and pointed out (sadly) her complaint would never be heard by the company because they’re Twitter feed is automated. We both buzzed around each other’s blogs (hers is great!), and have been conversing ever since (Happy early birthday by the way!).
@saragiguere is a Toronto-based musician, who was kind enough to let me interview her for my blog (look for that feature to come later this month!). Again, it was a matter of two like-minded individuals just happening to connect on Twitter.
I’ve been lurking on @nachosatmidnite‘s blog for awhile (see they’re not all women!) and left my first comment when he went to a restaurant I had a horrible experience with. He found my blog, we started following each other on Twitter and conversing ever since. Even when I don’t agree with him, Chris is willing to publish my comments and respond to them. Not everyone is that open-minded.
@neatebuzzthenet has two great blogs everyone should follow: His Yahoo Junior Hockey one, Buzzing the Net, and Out of Left Field. Neate has been a big inspiration for me as a blogger, and a great supporter of my little blog, here. He was one of the first people to start leaving comments (you know, that wasn’t my mother). He’s so smart and well-versed in every kind of sport, I feel honoured when I have an opinion to share with him that he agrees with. As a blogger, he has my respect.
@laurenonizzle half counts, since I did “officially” meet her at a workshop in May. She is a blogger extraordinaire — the kind of blogger I most definitely could never be. But I respect her immensely for building herself an online persona and brand. Especially for a kid her age. Kudos, Lauren.
Finally, all the people that do @journchat on Twitter every Monday night — they make me think critically about my craft and challenge me to do better. Thank you to all I’ve ever conversed with in that, you have no idea how much I take away from Journchat every single week.
So yes, the Interwebz can be full of crazies. You don’t know what you’re reaching into when you “meet” someone online, but when you’re really lucky, you find amazing stuff!
Thanks to those who inspire me online now, and I can’t wait to see who else is out there!
To put it bluntly: I was skeptical when Rock of Ages debuted on Broadway. ’80s rock songs backing a musical? Really? Had We Will Rock You not already tried to do a rocking musical (and failed miserably at that?)? Had Mamma Mia not shown that pop songs can be a musical and it can be done right? Why bother trying? And don’t even get me started on using American Idol‘s Constantine Maroulis as the lead character in a form of “stunt” casting.
Then the 2009 Tony Awards came. Rock of Ages won best musical, but I still had my reservations (I didn’t even remember the performance for Rock of Ages from the 2009 Tony’s, instead all I remember is Brett Michaels getting hit in the head with the backdrop during the opening of the show).
Late last year, it was announced the show was coming to Toronto. The press had a field day. And the commercials for it played nonstop on the radio. There’s only so much of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ that you can hear before you go crazy. So I decided I wanted to go.
Saturday night, I went with my family for my birthday. I was blown away.
It was nothing like I expected. It was far better than I expected. It may be one of the best things I have seen on stage in a long, long time.
Rock of Ages beats We Will Rock You for so many reasons, but the main one is because Rock of Ages actually has a story and character development something WWRY lacked, in my humble opinion (full disclosure: I saw WWRY twice when it was in Toronto and had problems with it both times).
To me, WWRY picked Queen songs and then tried to write a story around them. Book writer Ben Elton just reached too far, and didn’t spend enough time developing Galelio and Scaramouche (the two main characters, and no, I’m not kidding about their names), so we don’t really care for them all that much.
Rock of Ages, on the other hand, not only had a story, but knew there was only one way to get away with telling their story: break — no, wait, make that tear down — the fourth wall: Talk to the audience, and know what you’re doing is crazy.
Like Into the Woods before it, Rock of Ages knows it’s a show — or at least the narrator Lonnie does. He is often interacting with the crowd, talking to them directly, or as an aside. The character of Lonnie is by far the best part of that show. The characters in Mamma Mia sort of wink to the crowd that what they’re doing is silly, but they never really jump out and say it. Rock of Ages tells you from the beginning: This is a show, enjoy the ride.
Then there’s the dancing. Oh, the dancing. I’m not a dance person — can’t do it, don’t really understand it — but all of the movement in Rock of Ages would put any “real” Broadway show to shame. And you just don’t get the full effect of it by the video at the top or from their performance at last year’s Tony’s (it shows that TV really is crap at showing theatre, as Ben Elton said at the press conference for WWRY back in 2006).
Yvan Pedneault, who was in WWRY, kicks butt in this role. He is beyond fantastic as Drew. As for Elicia MacKenzie? One would never know this Sherrie was ever a Maria. I had my reservations when she won How do you Solve a Problem Like Maria?, but in Rock of Ages, MacKenzie knocks it out of the park.
And, while the content is not appropriate for children around the age of 9, it is hilariously funny. I won’t ruin any parts, because it’s more fun to be surprised (in fact, the program doesn’t even list the songs in the show, so that’s a great surprise, too). I can’t wait to go back with someone who has never seen it, just to see their eyes light up the way mine did.
And, like every great musical before it, you leave the theatre thinking dreams really can come true. Even if you are an ’80s rocker.
Don’t let the title of this post fool you — it’s not really my last post. Rather, this is an idea I got from reading Joe Boughner’s blog, 42 Points on a Double Word Score. He issued a challenge to himself and other bloggers — what would you write if it was your last blog post ever? Make sure to check out Joe’s original post, where he is linking out to bloggers he reads as they complete his challenge, and his last post and then maybe try one of your own. I thought there would be no better day to do my last post than today, which is my 28th birthday.
What is there left to say?
When it all melts away, what can be said? Can be written?
In the end, none of this matters. Sure, we all want to be remembered for something, but that’s so selfish of us. Hell, the act of blogging is a selfish act, is it not? Is it nothing more than a testament that we were here and we were important and our thoughts mattered?
But in the end, none of that matters.
In the end, it’s not how many blog readers you have, or how much money you make, or the kind of house you live in that matter. It’s the people you surround yourself with.
The biggest mark you leave is on them.
We humans don’t like to think of our mortality — we would rather pretend we will live forever in order to avoid it. But we can’t escape that mortality coming.
We are even more foolish to think that we are all going to live to a ripe-old age. We’re not. Some of us will die young. Some will die middle-aged. And, yes, some will live until they’re 95.
Maybe that’s our problem. We measure our life in years instead of in experiences. A good life, we say, is one that was lived long. Perhaps a good life is one that is lived to the fullest and measured in experiences. And love.
It’s corny and cliché, I know, but love really is what matters when all the chips fall. When you lose your job or your mind or your car, if you have the love of someone to fall back on, that’s what matters.
The love in our life is too often what we take for granted. What we overlook. We go to bed and wake up with the same person every day, but we don’t even really see them anymore. We don’t see what’s right in front of our face because we become so used to it, we look past it.
Please, take a second to value the love that’s in your life every day — whether that be your partner, your kids, your family or your friends. Stop taking it for granted. After all, a day could come when its no longer there. Then it would be too late.
Live your dreams. Another cliché? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just how we should be living. Why are so many of us slaving away at a job we hate? Why are we so afraid to try? This year, I gave a try for a dream. I threw myself out there, got to take two steps forward before the door slammed shut.
But I took that one step — and that means the world to me.
Following your passion will make you happier than you could ever have imagined you’d be. Reach for the stars — you never know where you might end up.
In case you have been living under a rock, Toronto is in the middle of a municipal election. Currently Councillor Rob Ford is leading the polls (as he has been for most of the race). It seems every week new allegations surface in order to try and knock him down a few knotches.
In a nutshell, here’s just a sampling of the criticism about Ford:
- He’s against gay marriage;
- He thinks Toronto’s population has maxed out and can’t take in anymore people: “We can’t even deal with the 2.5 million people in this city. I think it’s more important that we take care of the people now before we start bringing in more.”;
- It came out this summer he reportedly was asked to step down as a high school football coach after an altercation in 2001;
- It recently was revealed he was charged with driving under the influence in Florida in 1999 — he did community service (Ford had denied the charges until the Toronto Sun ran a story exposing it);
- He allegedly offered to help an ill Toronto man the painkiller OxyContin (Ford says he just told the man whatever he needed to to get him off the phone);
- Oh, and if you do a parody site about him, he’ll have it shut down faster than you can blink.
And he’s still in the lead.
A year ago, I would have wagered that George Smitherman or John Tory (if he had run) would be leading — that this race would have been there’s to lose. Instead, Tory’s still on the radio and Smitherman is a distant second.
People are shocked about this. The Globe’s Christie Blatchford had the city all in a tizzy on Saturday when she wrote a column saying that Rob Ford isn’t all that bad after all. She said in her column that just admitting that fact will cause people’s “heads to explode.”
And they did.
My Twitter feed lit up with people outraged and their heads exploding online in a series of tweets (some expletive-filled). But here’s the rub (as much as it pains me to say it out loud), it’s really not a shock that Ford is leading.
Before your head explodes, here’s why: Ford is a mayor from the boroughs. So while the downtown citizens express outrage about his lead, he’s getting the votes from all those in the boroughs who have been forgotten about (or felt forgotten about) for the last six years under David Miller.
Smitherman is not leading because he’s a downtown man, that’s it. Ford is the guy for those who feel they don’t have a voice anymore.
Can Ford be beat? Perhaps, if enough downtown residents come out and vote Oct. 25. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if he wins.
(Photo courtesy of denmar on Flickr. See more of his photos in his photostream.)
A few things you should know about me to understand why I think this is cool:
- I like Lost (OK, I really like Lost)
- I was so much of a Lost geek, I listened to the podcast with executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (I submitted questions all the freaking time to it, in the hopes they would one day read mine. They never did).
- I paid movie theatre prices to watch the two of them have a discussion with The New York Times days before the finale.
- I refer to the two of them as Darlton and, in conversation, will mention something one of them has said as if I knew them personally (e.g.: “Well Damon disputed that!”) and follow them both on Twitter (I actually saw Inception as fast as I did because Lindelof kept tweeting spoilers and I had to stop following him and didn’t want to forget to start following him again).
So the week started like any other. Knowing that the copy of Entertainment Weekly that came in the mail last week featured an interview with the two of them (as well as loads of information on the contents of the Season 6 and Complete Series DVD sets), I saved it until Friday night and enjoyed it slowly. Taking my time to read and devour every word know this will likely be the last time I read anything from the two of these guys on Lost. Ever.
Flash forward (get it?) to Monday night, there I am at work, my Twitter stream popping up in the background, when I saw this series of tweets from Cuse asking for followers of his to submit questions to television writers for an Emmy panel he’s moderating in a few weeks.
I looked at the list of writers and was torn. I liked Glee, but is there anything I could ask Ryan Murphy that hasn’t already been asked? I needed something original, but something that meant something. I tried to draw on my film theory education as I looked once again at the list of writers Cuse would be talking to. There had to be something there that would tip me off …
And then it came to me. I directed my question to the writers of The Good Wife (a great show and the breakout drama from last fall):
Too many times it’s said that women don’t watch serial TV shows or go to movies that feature strong female characters in the lead role. The Good Wife, obviously, has proved that statement wrong (yet again). Since the show also appeals to men, how do you balance the amount of women’s melodrama you put into it, from what would attract a male viewer (e.g. the court cases). Were you ever worried that telling a story about a woman like Alicia Florrick would not take off because of that old adage about women and strong female characters? Could anyone but Julianna Margulies played that role? Do you think Margulies makes the difference?
I hit send and thought nothing of it.
Flash forward to Tuesday night at work. I happened to glance at my Gmail and saw two unread messages. I clicked over to the tab. And there it was. The Email:
Only eight words, but the sender says Carlton Cuse. Definitely the best email I’ve ever gotten.
Can’t wait to see if my question gets asked and answered in a couple of weeks!
