June 21, 2010
June 13, 2010
THE BEST BEER IN THE WORLD
Now to be fair, Montreal is a very cool hip happening place. The architecture alone outclasses Winnipeg. And the people, if they aren’t the best looking ladies and gents in all of Canada, I am dumb and blind as well as half deaf. Here’s something worth mentioning. I am not a smoker and am not attracted to those that are. But in Montreal, everyone smokes. And somehow, they even make that seem sexy-cool. In Winnipeg, people smoke to release tension or to get away from their nagging boss/husband/wife/kids. Here...”we smoke because we can, you silly little Englishman.”
Montreal makes smoking cool the same way James Dean made leaning against a wall, “Moody”.
So why do I hate this city? Because of my own stupidity.
On the night of my first show, right after I did a video about how great everything went and how sunshine is coming out of my ass, Phil, who is the guy letting me stay with him and his roommates in Montreal, informed me that I would be able to move into the new apartment. When I arrived here, they were in the process of moving, you see. This is great news for me, because where the new apartment is, is actually a hop skip and a jump from the Theatre I’m performing at. Woo Hoo!
So, I am to pack up my stuff, head to the apartment, unload, come back to the old apartment and help load up some boxes to bring to the new apartment before I crash for the night. I left at 9pm from the old apartment...and from here on, is a prime example of why I call my show “Misadventures of a Massage Therapist”.
Jean-Philippe, (one of the other roommates) asked before I left the old apartment, if I knew where I was going to get to the new apartment. I said, ‘Of course I do! I plugged it into my GPS before I arrived in Montreal!’ If you take a moment to go to YouTube and watch some of the videos of me driving from Winnipeg to Montreal, you’ll see just how much GPS has been a thorn in my side so far. So off I go, I tap the saved location titled, “Phil” on the GPS, and it tells me I have 10 km to go till I “Reach my Destination”.
Well that’s odd, since it only takes me 5 km to get to my Theatre. The one that’s a hop skip and a jump from the new apartment? But I trust in GPS! So I follow it to the letter. I go as far as it would let me at a leisurely 40 kph, until it told me to take a left turn. That left turn took me onto the mother-fucking freeway! I shot up to 110 kph in the blink of an eye. I am shrieking like a banshee because I am totally confused. I DON’T REMEMBER A FREEWAY ON THE ROUTE BEFORE!?!?
I thought I was in the clear when it gave me another left turn up ahead and led me away from the scary traffic. But nope...it just led me onto the freeway going the OPPOSITE way now! FUUUUUCCCCKKKK!!!!
Up ahead, I saw a sign that said, turn here for Boul. St-Laurent. That’s the street I was looking for! That’s where the new apartment is! So I turned down the street, even while GPS squawked at me that I was going the wrong way. “Screw you GPS, you robotic sounding love-child of Hal 9000 and Stephen Hawking! You’re a computer! I have eyes!”
After 3 km down Boul. St-Laurent, I realized that the reason I recognized the street name was not because the new apartment was down there, but because that was the street my Theatre was on.
So...back to the starting point I go. Back over the freeway I go, and yes, back on the one going the opposite way too. And this time, I followed the GPS to its final destination. The destination was the very beginning of St-Hubert. That was the name of the street the new apartment was on, yes, but it was at the very BEGINNING of the street! I was on the outskirts of Montreal! Then I remembered...
When I initially typed in Phil’s address for the new apartment into the GPS, it could not determine an actual address number, I needed a cross street to plug in as well. Which I didn’t have. So coming into the city, I figured, “Well, as long as I’m on the right street, I can just drive down until I come to the right number!”
That works in theory, but St-Hubert is a very unique little street. You go from two way traffic, to one way, to an opposing one way so you are now heading into oncoming traffic, it twists and turns so that other streets are cut off and St-Hubert ends up on an entirely different lane on the other side of a set of traffic lights...
It is the road to madness!
So it took me a while to initially get the hang of the street. But that was three days ago. I have not fixed the GPS to register the new apartment correctly. At this point I should mention that this 10 minute drive is entering 40 minutes.
So after coming face to face with the F1 Racing event taking place here, damn near running over pedestrians, going down one ways the wrong way, I finally found the new apartment by some miracle. Now to unload my stuff and head back before the roommates think I am a complete moron. Here’s where it gets even better.
I bring my suitcase up to the apartment first, come back down and tackle the big blue tub with most of my gear in it next. Only to get to the door to the place, search for the keys in my pocket, and guess what?
The one and only set of keys? The ones that these people have been complaining about that they don’t have a set made for everyone yet? And that they need some special permit to make a copy because these keys are so rare that they don’t even make them anymore? Those keys? Locked upstairs in the apartment.
I cursed. Loudly. Violently.
I sat in the front of the apartment and tried to call Jean-Philippe and prayed he wouldn’t freak out in French. Cause it would be bad, and I’d have no idea what he would be saying. He wasn’t answering. Shit, was he asleep? I tried texting him. Nothing.
I was realizing that I was going to be ostracized for the rest of my time in Montreal over this one. I have fucked over EVERYBODY! And then I had a moment of desperation. I buzzed everyone in the whole building. And as luck would have it, at 11:40 on a Friday night, there was one guy who was still at home. I mimed as best I could through the glass, “I-DO-NOT-HAVE-A-GUN!” He cautiously opened the door and said, “Oui?”
“Hi!” After that, I spoke very precisely, and very slowly, because that always breaks the language barrier! “I live in apartment five,” I lied. “I left my keys up there.” I am also miming each and every syllable.
The guy just casually opened the door and said, “In you go, dude.”
I ran upstairs, grabbed the keys, put a death grip on them so I would never part with them again. Hey, if it works in relationships, it should work on a pair of keys, right? I unloaded everything from my car and made sure before I left to add my current location into the GPS as the REAL new apartment. I hauled ass down the streets of Montreal to the old apartment, hoping that even if everyone was asleep over there, that I could sneak in like a skinny, bald, white-boy version of Santa Claus and take the rest of the boxes over to the new place.
I walked in and found Jean-Philippe standing in the hallway, smiling. “We’re getting McDonald’s!”
After I sat him down and told him the whole story. He said the most perfect sentence to follow it all up with. “Soooo...you want a beer?”
I haven’t had a beer since I was 21. But after the events of this fucking night? “Buddy, a beer would be great!”
May 06, 2010
July 16, 2009
The Gods Hath Spoken…
I read a review of my show.
By fluke, mind you. I was trying to see if the God awful show I had just paid $9 to suffer through had a review yet. So when mine eventually came out, I’d have something to compare it to. While going down the list of reviews online, I came across a very familiar face…
“Hey…THAT’S ME!!”
And then I saw it. The rating.
See I wanted to stay away from the reviews for both sides of this scale. On one hand, if the review was great, I might get cocky and over-confident for the rest of the run and really leave people with a bad taste for any future work I do. But if it’s a bad review…You know the saying, “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it?” I can’t take criticism. I’m a closet crier when nobody’s around. And I didn’t want a bad review to make me depressed and want to hang my head in shame for the rest of the performances.
I’m stalling. Here’s the review:
“2 Stars”:
Jason Brasher has the makings of a good storyteller — gift for gab, engaging presence, mischievous streak a mile wide — and he obviously loves being the centre of attention. He’s that life-of-the-party guy who’s always cracking up his friends with those "you shoulda been there" yarns, spun out of mundane situations that always manage to take a bizarre turn.
But that guy needs more than a microphone to turn his party shtick into an hour-long show. Brasher has a knack for physical comedy, but his disjointed anecdotes are all set-up and no punchline. And since there’s never a moral or conclusion — or a point, really — they don’t quite cut it as stories, either.
The Winnipegger, who’s making his stage debut here, was probably a hoot as a bartender. But given the gross tales he tells out of school, I don’t know that I’d want to be one of his massage clients.
Ouch.
I read this in between going from one play to another this evening. I was in a great mood after seeing a magic show in one venue and about to see another play later tonight that discusses the idea of feminism in a world where everyone is obsessing over Britney’s va-jay-jay. Something I’ve thought about a great deal. Not Brit’s nether regions, the feminism idea.
But I read this review in between shows. Needless to say, I was gutted. I always wondered what those guys who write screenplays about their lives feel like when a reviewer gives them a shit review. It’s on par with saying, “Your life is shit.” I now know how they feel.
I walked to the theatre for my “feminism-discussion play” and tried to convince myself that it was the wind that was making my eyes water as I walked across the street. But when I had to duck into a corner to compose myself, I guess I wasn’t fooling anyone. I could barely look at other attendees at the play for fear that they read this review and recognized my grill from the posters. That they would point and mumble to one another, something to the effect of, “Don’t go see his show…he only got 2 stars!”
As I sat through what is one fantastic play, I thought about what exactly was written in that review.
“a good storyteller — gift for gab, engaging presence, mischievous streak a mile wide”
Well that’s pretty cool! The review isn’t dissing me as a person…I’m the part they actually like!
“and he obviously loves being the centre of attention.”
Damn skippy I do! If you were fueled on Pepsi 24/7 and lived the life I live, you’d be crackling with energy, bouncing in your seat, yelping, “LOOK-IT-ME, LOOK-IT-ME!!!”
“He’s that life-of-the-party guy”
Okay…that’s the part that’s actually funny to me. You people reading this are not to know the following, but on any given night, I am in bed by 10 pm, reading one of the 10-20 books stacked by my nightstand, or I am doing an all-nighter playing some epically long video game. I don’t go out to parties; much less socialize more than once a month. I’m a 31 semi-agoraphobic, part-time misanthrope.
Who is ALWAYS the life of the party…but on a monthly basis only. Get yer facts straight there, review person!
“who’s always cracking up his friends with those "you shoulda been there" yarns, spun out of mundane situations that always manage to take a bizarre turn.”
THAT! That right there is the point of my show. I’m not an actor, and I don’t pretend to be one either. All I have are a shit load of stories that take place during my lifetime that are there to make people laugh. I have no message, no pearls of wisdom, no God-like statement to make to the masses. And that’s the point! It all comes out of the everyday stuff that just about anybody can or has lived through. When you get to the end of this rant, you’ll see what I mean.
If the review stopped right there, even with the two star rating, I’d be extremely happy. Somebody gets me. But then it delves into the pit of my deepest fears.
“Brasher has a knack for physical comedy, but his disjointed anecdotes are all set-up and no punchline.”
That’s what they call a back-handed compliment, yes? I do agree my stories don’t have punch-lines…because my life as a whole isn’t a joke, and it’s not done yet. So even I don’t know the punch-line. And I don’t know many people who go through life with a definite conclusion to their everyday events or a rhyme and reason to things they live through.
Oh and “p.s.” review person. My spell check says that “punchline” is a two letter word. So, fuck-you-very-much.
HAH! There’s a “punchline” for ya!
“And since there’s never a moral or conclusion — or a point, really — they don’t quite cut it as stories, either.”
This part, I kinda have to agree with the reviewer. There are no morals to my stories, and granted, there’s no real point. It’s just me telling stories to make people laugh. I’m sorry they don’t “cut it” as a story to the reviewers standards, but I’ll stick with good ol’ Webster’s for that one:
Story - [stawr-ee, stohr-ee] noun, plural -ries, verb, -ried, -ry⋅ing.
A narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.
I believe I have achieved a “story” by that definition.
The last bit that was written was the real mean part. SO mean that I don’t want it to appear more than once in this “story”. But when I break it down, the review is pretty accurate. What I set out to do is just tell my tales and get some laughs, and maybe, if I’m lucky, a few individuals will get just that much more inspired, and that much less scared to work up the courage to go out and tell the rest of the world their stories, their adventures, their joys and sorrows, that it is possible to do what you thought was impossible.
And even though some may not like it, it’s unique, it’s true, and you have in fact achieved something. One of the biggest influences on doing my show the way I chose to do it is Henry Rollins. A guy who spends most of his life on a stage telling people what he did that day, that week, that month, where he’s been what he thought, and how balls-out funny life really is. He says, very frequently, “I refuse to live my life under a rock,” and I refuse to let one bad critic make me think any less of myself.
Plus, reviewers get paid by the word and I just copy and pasted her entire little review on here. She won’t see a dime for that, so hah hah, plagiarisms a bitch!
July 11, 2009
WINNIPEG FRINGE FESTIVAL 2009
I've been a very bad blogger. I have abandoned my frequent rants to you all in preparation of this years Fringe Festival out here in Winnipeg.
That's in Manitoba, in case you forgot.
That's in Canada, in case you're from the United States. (You guys do know that there are other countries out there right?)
Anyhow, if you are in town between July 15-25 you can come see me tell a whole whack load of my "misadventures" live and in person.
Check it out:
Venue 11 (Red River College 160 Princess street)
Wed. July 15 - 6:00pm
Fri. July 17 - 7:15pm
Sat. July 18 - 3:45pm
Sun. July 19 - 8:45pm
Mon. July 20 - 1:45pm
Thu. July 23 - 10:45pm
Sat. July 25 - 3:15pm
Ticket Price: $9.00
And for all those who can't make it out, you'll be happy to know that during the entire festival, EVERY DAY, I will be writing new posts on here. Some might be about the festival, some might be stories I haven't even got around to writing yet, it may even be the long awaited completion of my Thailand trip...you'll have to come back and see!
Hope everyone is having a kick-ass summer!
