Ah yes, almost forgot. This showed up in my in-box back in December. The laurels for my Best Animated Feature Screenplay at the 2014 Nashville Film Festival.
The winner was my screenplay for Tank’s, a story that proves even a fish in water can be a fish out of water.
Tank’s for the love!
To read the opening pages of Tank’s, visit:
For many of us, programs like The Daily Show were our weekly bulwark against the insanity of clashing cultures and ideologies or against insanity itself. Regardless of your personal sociopolitical leanings, shows like this one help many of us to see that we are not going insane or losing our hearing, that the bizarre ironies of peoples’ words and actions are not just figments of our imaginations.
Cain and Abel
But where most of us simply allowed the insanity to flow over us and healed our wounds in the salve that was satirical comedy and commiseration, the world’s woes wear on the people who bring us this salve. Such, I think, was the case this week with the announcement that Jon Stewart will shortly hand the reins of The Daily Show to another.
A couple of months ago, I tweeted Jon and The Daily Show to express my concern about his health, both mental and physical. Over the last several months, it seemed that each episode of the program was taking more and more out of the host, that he had to fight to maintain his composure. And he seemed to be losing that fight.
Several times, his personal comments on recent events bordered on screeching rants, as though the nuanced commentaries we had witnessed for the past 17 years required too much of him. On other occasions, he almost seemed to throw his hands into the air and with a head-bobbing sigh, surrender to the madness that swirled around us all.
Jon Stewart seemed tired, and if not broken, at least seemed wounded.
And please, this is not a condemnation or expression of disappointment. The man has clearly earned his weariness and wounds. (Too Jewy to say he took on our sins?)
Nice hat…where’s my chocolate?
Even the strongest metal abrades to nothingness if repeatedly and relentlessly thrown against a stone wall that seems to regenerate itself at will. For every monolith of stupidity or cruelty that The Daily Show tackled through humour, a dozen others formed behind it. And the show kept pushing.
And so, as much as he will be missed, Jon Stewart will step aside and begin the healing process, while the show will become what it will become under the guidance of another.
As he expressed in his announcement, the first part of that healing will likely be him reinforcing his roles as Dad and Husband. Eventually, will we see him back on stage performing stand-up (sure, we all say we’ll go to the gym)? And after that, who knows? (As long as it’s not acting…dear god, Jon, NO!)
The man has earned his rest, and we will applaud and cheer and cry as he walks out the door (and about two weeks later, we’ll start pitching screenplay ideas to you).
Coming to a theatre near you (please, please, please)
Be well, Jon Stewart, and thank you.
Writer. Director. Lead performer. Possibly the most critical functions in defining how well a movie will do, and often one individual will play more than one role with varying degrees of success. But when a single person plays all three, look out.
For some reason, the movie that results from the triple play rarely seems to work in my experience. And 2013’s Fading Gigolo falls right into that category. (Citizen Kane is one of the few successes I can think of.)
The triple play of Hollywood stalwart John Turturro, Fading Gigolo tells the story of two friends, second-hand bookstore owner Murray (Woody Allen) and florist Fioravante (Turturro), who are both going through some financially tight times. So when Murray’s dermatologist (Sharon Stone) suggests she and her girlfriend (Sofia Vergara) are considering a ménage á trois, Murray immediately thinks about his good looking buddy and suddenly it is American Gigolo for the middle-aged.
Boobs and bums but no climax (Stone, Vergara)
Oh, and all of this happens in the first two minutes of the movie.
One after another, Murray lines up customers for Fioravante, whose kicked-puppy facial expressions and old-world charm sweep the women off their feet and money out of their wallet. To his credit, Fioravante feels some guilt over taking advantage of the lonely women, but he gets past that with the help of Murray’s nebbish logic.
Life becomes more complicated, however, when he meets the widowed Hassidic Jew Avigal (Vanessa Paradis) and in helping her come out of her shell, finds himself developing feelings for the woman.
Fioravante helps draw Avigal out of herself (Turturro, Paradis)
When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I thought it would be a beautifully sweet film about human relationships with the comedic backdrop of Woody Allen as a pimp. And to be sure, there are moments of beauty in the film. But only moments.
Unfortunately, there are no moments of conflict in the film. Nothing against which the characters can really push and grow, with the exception of Avigal, and so the movie feels like the emptiest of emotional calories. You feel good while it is in front of you, but the minute a scene is over, you don’t remember a single moment of it.
Woody Allen still has it, although somewhat sparingly, and there were moments in the story reminiscent of his characters in Bananas or Sleeper, but in some respects, he has just become an older caricature of those characters. Sharon Stone has one or two moments where you can see some vulnerability in her character, but those dissolve pretty quickly. And Sofia Vergara is simply boobs with an accent, as with every role I have ever seen her perform.
A little Hassidic slapstick (Allen, Liev Schrieber)
As mentioned earlier, Vanessa Paradis’ Avigal is the only character with an arc in this story, the only character who is transformed, and the actress does a pretty good job with a relatively straightforward character. Unfortunately, against a backdrop of nothing characters, I can’t tell if she did a good job or just a less bad job.
But again, all of my irritation is focused on Turturro and his failings. Fioravante is a sweet man but has all the internal conflict of Michael Landon’s angel character Highway to Heaven, i.e., too good to be true.
As a writer, Turturro missed every opportunity to enrich a flat screenplay. In the writing vernacular, there was no inciting incident (the reason to become a prostitute is weak), no turning points, no crisis and no climax except in the sexual sense.
And because the writer Turturro seemed satisfied with the screenplay, the director Turturro had nothing to offer to improve a moribund story comprised of high-fructose corn syrup.
So much talent. Such a beautiful concept. Such potential for humour and pathos.
Such a let down.
Movie should have worked just on this line alone
I am so amused by your humours
I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to stand-up comedy. Not in the performance of it, you understand—been there, done that, bear the scars—but rather in simply being an audience member.
For the uninitiated, stand-up is best described as stripping naked, slathering your body in hot sauce and dragging small razor blades across your skin while being judged by a room full of your parents. And your only salve is laughter.
Which is where my problem starts.
LOL Classic
Hi. My name is Randy, and I don’t laugh at stand-up comedians. Okay, perhaps rarely laugh is more accurate.
It’s not that I can’t laugh. Get me together with the right group of friends, and I become a giggling gibbon. Hit me with the right joke or observation at the right time, and you’ll turn me into a hyperventilating tear factory. But for the most part, I only LOL when texting.
If I get where you’re going, I will nod. If I like what you said, I’ll smile. If I really like it, the smile will show teeth. But the laugh is elusive.
At a stand-up comedy show several years ago, a colleague accused me of being a comedy snob, suggesting that I refused to laugh to make myself look cool. Ironically, this made me laugh.
If my name were ever to appear in Roget’s Thesaurus, I can promise you that “cool” would only ever appear as an antonym. (Case in point, I just referenced Roget’s Thesaurus.)
So I knew I was in trouble a couple of weeks ago when the host of The Comedy Store in Los Angeles decided to sit me dead centre in front row, literally at the shins of the comedians.
The Comedy Store
I sat there. A long-torsoed beacon of attention. I was the Lighthouse of Alexandria (yet another cool reference) to those rolling on the oft-stormy seas of stand-up.
Comedian #1 takes the stage. She’s quickly warming the audience and then, “So, where you from?”. Toronto, says I. Cue the Canada jokes.
No problem. I come from a funny country with a funny reputation. Ask me a question, I’ll answer it best I can. I am more than happy to participate to help the comedian.
[Side note: I do not heckle, anyone. Comedy is hard enough without the drunken asshole. Likewise, I do not interject into someone’s set. The audience is there to enjoy the comedian’s wit, not mine.]
When engaged by the comedian, I will play along and maintain the game. I will not (or at least try not to) be funnier than the comedian.
Only one of the three A-list comedians (Argus Hamilton, Bobby Lee, Marc Maron) paid me more than passing attention, each one more than capable of holding their sets to their own material, addressing the audience with little more than a passing “You know what I mean?” or “How many of you…”
Bobby Lee, Angus Hamilton, Marc Maron
They talked to the whole audience, not just those of us they could see.
Then came the B-listers.
Like any artist, comedians at this stage are less able to roll with failing bits. And even when a bit is working, the big guy in the front row who refuses to laugh becomes the focus of attention.
After the third B-lister, I started to feel sorry for the audience, who quickly learned everything about me and Canada, the information oft repeated as no two comedians paid much attention to anything that happened five minutes before they hit the stage.
Over the five hours I watched the show—I arrived at 8:30 and didn’t leave until 2:00—I swear I was being spoken to or about or was on the microphone for one hour. I literally had more air time than all but one comedian. (Part of my air time included a rousing rendition of Oh, Canada and a duet of Tie a Yellow Ribbon.)
In five hours, I was told that I had an abnormally long torso (I do), I dress like Steve Irwin (I was), I work in maintenance or engineering (I don’t), I have beautiful hair (it is nice), and was asked twice to mimic cunnilingus (I respectfully refused). [Side note: Don Barris is a very very very strange man.]
Don Barris (his cunnilingus face)
And all, I am confident, because I refused to be the giggling gibbon.
I wasn’t defiant (except for the cunnilingus part). I never crossed my arms. I tried to be positive and supportive in my eye contact (perhaps that was mistaken as a challenge). And yet, I received a pretty good workout.
So, I think my choices are: laugh despite my personal opinions or ask to be seated in the shadowiest corner of the bar.
Either way, it will be a while before I attend another stand-up comedy show.
Sitting in back of the bar
Just got back from seeing a preview of The Groundlings latest improv show entitled Slippery When Groundlings and really have only one response: Watch for the names Jill Sachoff-Matson and Alex Staggs. I don’t know when these two artists will hit it big, but I guarantee you they will.
Unlike the standard Second City shows I am used to watching, this one didn’t seem to have much of a theme beyond irritating people…but then, all sketch and improv comedy seems to be reduced to irritating people. And given the reputation of The Groundlings, I was surprised at how many sketches seemed to be one joke spread over 3 or 4 minutes. I expect that from student shows, but I expect more from main stage casts.
The first third of the show was evenly bad with the exception of a piece called “Carl’s Jr.”, where Sachoff-Matson first caught my attention as a dweeby woman who has been run down and then backed over by life.
Jill Sachoff-Matson
The second third picked up somewhat, starting with “Church Camping Trip”, but a solid premise was completely let down by a lack of where to go with it. It’s a good sketch, it just needs more brainstorming. This was followed by Sachoff-Matson’s “Kindergarten”, which actually caused me to laugh out loud. Sachoff-Matson is mesmerizing both physically and in how her mind works, particularly as she portrayed yet another train-wreck character.
But just when I thought I had seen the best part of the show, Alex Staggs shows up with “Giving Up”, a lounge act in which he gets the audience involved with hilarious results. I would be willing to see where Staggs goes with this every night because he exudes comedic range with this.
Alex Staggs
Following the short intermission, Ariane Price gave us her send up of sad-sack informercials with “Emulsion”, another audience participation bit that was incredibly tight because of the character Price portrayed. You felt so sorry for her Eastern European refugee glam-girl wannabe that your heart melted and you wanted to give her a hug.
Ariane Price
The problem was, the crew then wasted all that good will with “Sub”, a throwaway bit about an aged substitute teacher who has trouble reading fine print on an attendance sheet. That’s it. That’s the bit.
But the show was rescued by the big musical dance finale “Brittany” where again Sachoff-Matson showed what she can do with a woman completely at odds with her world and her own body.
If I have one complaint about Sachoff-Matson’s overall performance, it is that her three best pieces all largely portrayed the same character. But where this would normally kill it for me, she managed to do so in such unique ways that it wasn’t the mortal sin it might have been.
I don’t know what other sketches they have in the hopper, but there is a definite need to replace several from tonight before this show will be solid from front to back. And while good, the other cast members are going to be challenged to shine as brightly as Sachoff-Matson and Staggs.
Mel Brooks is a god! Carl Reiner is a god! Carol Burnett is a god! Mike Myers is a really funny Toronto boy, who flew pretty close to the sun. (He may yet be a god, but he has to get back on his feet.)
And among their many talents, these people share the amazingly delicate talent of creating parody…a talent I have yet to seriously attempt beyond the scale of sketch comedy.
Delicate talent? Seriously attempt? Isn’t parody just a matter of picking a genre and inserting dirty jokes and/or completely ham-fisting its various tropes in the mathematical assumption:
Absurd + Puns + Dirty = Funny
I increasingly understand why people think this as I watch more of the recent fare of parodic films that appear to have taken this equation to heart.
Last night, for example, I watched Paranormal Whacktivity, a sexed up romp through the found-footage haunted-home segment that includes films such as Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch. This film was horrific, but not in a good way…nor was it particularly funny or sexy. And it wasn’t very good as a parody because it didn’t even stick to its genre, mixing Paranormal Activity with Ghostbusters, which both involve spirits but are hardly cinematic siblings.
It was useful, however, to my understanding of parody.
When I compare Blazing Saddles, Airplane, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery to Disaster Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, and Breaking Wind, I realize that the truly classic parodies have something that the new ones don’t: a strong central story.
Somewhere in the evolution of parody films, the movies became less about story and more about ripping off as many genre clichés as possible, offering no firmer links between these scenes than bad jokes, fart noises or perky breasts.
Blazing Saddles wasn’t about taking a bunch of classic scenes from Westerns and simply linking them. It was more about taking iconic characters from the Westerns and creating a classic, if twisted, story. The sheriff abandoned by the town folk, the washed up gunslinger, the evil cattle rustler, the crooked politician.
Similarly with Shrek; although this film has such a strong central story that I’m not sure whether I should even include it in a list of parodies. Yes, it played up almost every fairy tale gimmick, but the story really didn’t model itself on any given style or pre-existing story.
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is another odd case. With a strong through story led by Steve Martin and Rachel Ward (directed by Carl Reiner), it takes parody to a whole new level by incorporating actual scenes from noir films within the scenes with live actors. Thus, Martin’s character may find himself playing across from Barbara Stanwyck or Edward G. Robinson. Now, that is great film writing and editing.
Interestingly, the Wayans’ brothers first entry into this genre—Scary Movie—offers another lesson about parodies: the challenge of dipping into the same well too often.
Although horror/slasher movies are not to my personal tastes, I thought the first one or two films of this series were particularly well done. But as the series continued, picking on more films from within the horror/slasher genre, it started to become a parody of itself. The jokes were no longer fresh. All the best tropes had been used up in the first two movies and so the later films just seemed to be running in place.
Six Star Wars films, one Spaceballs. That works. (NOTE: Spaceballs is one of my least favourite Mel Brooks movies, much to the chagrin of many friends.)
Even the much stronger series of Austin Powers and Police Squad films showed this sense of comedic fatigue.
The original film is a surprise. The first sequel may be enjoyable. Anything after that is milking a dead cow.
I have no doubt that bad parodies will continue to be made…if nothing else, they seem to require little writing and typically have poor production values, and are therefore inexpensive.
My hope, however, is that another Mel Brooks, Keenan Ivory Wayans or Mike Myers comes along to raise us from these creative and comedic doldrums. (NOTE: At present, my money is on Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, who have the comedic talent and the Hollywood clout to do it right.)
A few personal favourites (hyperlinked to trailer or favourite scene, where available):
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Hot Shots (not so much the sequel)
Silent Movie (I may be only person who likes this one)
Young Frankenstein (all time favourite)
Nature doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t.
I try to be respectful. I not only recycle, but I also reduce…or, at least, I’ve never thrown food away.
I barely leave my apartment, so my literal footprint is pretty small—9-1/2 wide, for those of you keeping track. And other than my laptop and coffee maker, I barely use any electricity. Nor do I use the heat, so if you come over for a visit, bring a sweater.
And I believe that all life is sacred…which is why my apartment is filled with four types of spiders, two varieties of sow bugs, and one rather large species of house centipede. As an aside, if any of you ladies are entomologists or just like to get your arachnid freak on, call me.
Hard to tell how the spider is fairing in this fight, but I’m not holding out hope
Hell, I barely wear any clothes at home, preferring to wander au naturel…again, call first before visiting.
And yet, for all this benign behaviour, Nature wants me dead.
Every Spring, 10,000 species of plants gather around my apartment in a massive botanic circle jerk, spraying me and my immune system with a dazzling array of ejaculates green, gold and white. And they do this knowing full well that in another life, my white cells worked for Al Qaeda. For me, the months immediately following March are Anaphylaxis and Can’t.
You know when you make pancakes and first pour the batter into the scorching pan? Within moments, the batter bubbles up and bursts? That was me as a kid on a cloudy day. On a sunny day, I could watch Enola Gay footage and jealously think, “At least they had a breeze.”
And the water’s no better. Pond, stream, lake, ocean, they all think of me as chum, and not in the friendly sense. I’ve yet to find a boat I cannot fall out of. A canoe? An outdoor bathtub. A kayak? A restraining device designed to pin me underwater. A rowboat? Topless submersible.
Currents. Waves. Tides. All mechanisms to keep me from remembering where I left the air. I once went body surfing in Oahu and got so disoriented by the swirling currents that I flew home from San Francisco. You worry about an undertow? I’ve never experienced anything smaller than an underfoot.
And regardless of my home BioDome project, all of that goodwill is forgotten the moment I emerge from my apartment and become a blood bank for what must otherwise be the most anemic bugs on the planet. Even the vegan insects view my flesh as hyper-ripe banana paste.
And despite the most astringent soap and strongest deodorant, I apparently offer flies the personal banquet of a 6-week-old corpse vacationing in the Louisiana Bayou. I am the no-pest strip of the bed bug world.
Red-winged black birds strafe me. Squirrels can’t tell walnut meat from finger meat. And wasps see themselves as my personal EpiPen.
I tell you all this because I am travelling to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks, and so I would like to pre-emptively apologize for the events that will finally bring beachfront charm to the Vegas strip.
NOTE: This piece is written as my contribution to a wonderful creative assembly called “Tell Me A Story” organized by my friend Will Ennis, a lovely actor in the city of Toronto. You can see his acting reel below.
Not one to generally participate in the Toronto International Film Festival, it was a rare evening in which I found myself standing in a rush line to see a movie, but a friend of mine wanted to see the latest Ryan Reynolds film called The Voices. This is not your typical Ryan Reynolds film.
Reynolds is Jerry Hickfang, a good-natured if skittish guy who works in the shipping department of a bathroom fixtures company in Milton, the derelict remains of a town in Nowhere, USA. Jerry is a nice guy, who lives above a derelict bowling alley with his dog Bosco and cat Mr. Whiskers. And of course, Jerry has the hots for office cupcake Fiona, a misplaced Brit with a craving for bigger things, played by Gemma Arterton. For her part, Fiona finds Jerry a little creepy, but is not above using his puppy lust to get a lift during a rain storm.
Jerry Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) struggles to understand Mr. Whiskers’ advice
Oh, and the other thing you probably need to know about Jerry is that he is in court-appointed psychiatric treatment, isn’t really good about taking his meds, and has a family history of hearing voices, but that’s not something he likes to talk about.
So far, so harmless. But after a literal run-in with a deer who begs Jerry to finish him off, the blood-letting never really stops and the rest of the movie becomes a giant slip-and-slide of mostly implied blood and offal.
So, The Voices is a thriller…and a drama…and a comedy…and a farce. You squirm in revulsion (never really reaches horror) as often as you LOL.
Director Marjane Satrapi (who brought us Persepolis) attended the screening and describes the story as completely fucked up. She said she was mesmerized by the screenplay and desperately wanted to meet the man who penned it to see what messed up human could conceptualize such a story. So she was surprised when she met Michael R Perry, a tall normal-looking fellow.
Marjane Satrapi
As Perry explained, he wanted to look at the life of someone of multiple personality disorder from their perspective rather than society’s. And in that, he succeeded.
With Satrapi’s help, the two clearly crafted the oddly idyllic yet troubled world within Jerry’s mind, giving the audience only the briefest glimpse of how the rest of the world saw things. With Jerry, it was all perfect love and butterflies. To the rest of us, it was squalor and pain.
Where the story fell down for me was in explaining why everything went wrong so suddenly. In writing circles, we talk about “Why today?” Why does your story begin today, at this moment, and not 6 weeks ago or 5 months from now? In this case, what was the event that caused Jerry to go from lovable schmuck to… Some might suggest it was the deer accident, but even Mr. Whiskers called that bullshit
The other place I felt let down was that the conflict never escalated, it merely accumulated. Rather than find interesting ways for Jerry’s mania to manifest itself, the writer simply repeated the same event over and over, as though each of the characters voluntarily walked into a wood chipper.
And I don’t know if the ending was presented as written or was something that blossomed out of Satrapi’s mind, but it was lazy and bordered on the ludicrous. It was a bad after-taste on a film that had merits.
Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton, Anna Kendrick
On the plus side, Ryan Reynolds was amazing to watch…this was not the charming goofball romantic comedy, although Jerry was sadly charming when he wasn’t obviously tortured by his snarky brogue-spewing cat. (NOTE: Bosco and Mr. Whiskers easily have the funniest lines in this film.)
Gemma Arterton’s Fiona was a delight. She was delicious to watch as the voluptuous vixen whose biggest fear in life is being bored. Problem solved!
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), as tier-two love interest Lisa (see, the writer even repeated this beat), was largely wasted. Her character was pretty two-dimensional. As nice girl looking for a nice guy, her function was to have Jerry explain his condition to the audience (exposition disguised as opening up).
The Voices is definitely worth seeing, if only for what it attempts to do. I can’t help feeling, however, that if they had rewritten the screenplay a few more times, they would have achieved their goals much better than this.
My recommend (and that of my friend) is that this is a Cheapie Tuesday movie (or whatever your local half-price day is).
PS I was unable to find a trailer for this movie, so I offer the following interview with Satrapi at Sundance London…I will warn you, however, that it does include a lot more info about the plot than I gave above.
Unless this is a satire about satires, I don’t get the new Netflix Original Series BoJack Horseman.
Ostensibly, the zany life of a washed up sitcom star from the 90s, who also happens to be a horse, who is trying to find meaning in a life of idle emptiness, the show is instead an endless string of really bad puns and lame jokes about anthropomorphic animals and Hollywood, punctuated with long speeches to highlight the irony of a scene or episode.
I am surprised the character giving the speech doesn’t hold up a sign reading “Ironic part” or “Satirical condemnation of status quo” just in case the audience was too stoned to realize that’s what the speech was about.
Episode 3 starts with an establishing shot of a bar called The Pelican. We then cut to BoJack sitting at the bar which is being tended by a…wait for it…pelican. Or in Episode 2, BoJack has a run-in with a Navy Seal who is a…here it comes…actual seal. Oh, and at the apex of humour, whenever BoJack’s girlfriend/agent puts him on hold, he listens to music from Cats…oh, did I mention his girlfriend/agent is a cat? Them’s the animal jokes, my friends.
There are attempts at social commentary, of course. In Episode 3, BoJack’s memoir ghost writer tries to make him feel better about a friend by claiming she was a victim of her circumstances and the pressures of society. But silly BoJack…he misunderstands this to mean that no one is responsible for their actions and that the fault universally lies with society, so he can act like a jerk and it’s not his fault. Silly BoJack.
The voice talent is, well, talented. Alison Brie (Madmen, Community), Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Amy Sedaris (Strangers with Candy), Paul F. Thompkins (No You Shut Up!) and Will Arnett (everything else)…these people can act.
Show creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is a mystery to me. An actor and writer, all I can really find out about him is he a member of a sketch comedy group called Olde English.
And the more I read about him, the more I wonder if my original comment wasn’t dead on…this may just be an amazing meta joke perpetrated by a very funny man. Or it’s just not very good.
Because I only lose 25 minutes of my life at a go, I will continue to watch to see if it gets better…dear God, let it get better…or let me in on the divine joke of this comedy.
Laughter has died,
But for a moment,
As the jester reposes
Into tranquility.
Frenzied fantasies
Silenced of a sudden,
Cut off from a world
Unable to keep up.
Rest frightened clown;
Be still and be whole;
Clap hands with peace,
As we clap hands in mourning.
The hurricane is stilled;
Black clouds soften;
Yet we will laugh anew
Bearing scars of ache.
Robin Williams meant the world to me. A supernova of mirth and tears, bravery and anger…and always, just a man.
Today, the man found his end, as so many of his ilk have.
But his legacy will echo for eternity to brighten our nights and nourish our souls.
Sleep, noble prince, assured that we are better for knowing you.
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Mother, Nehiyaw, Metis, & Itisahwâkan - career communicator. This is my collection of opinions, stories, and the occasional rise to, or fall from, challenge. In other words, it's my party, I can fun if I want to. Artwork by aaronpaquette.net
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