Guest Post: Banff 2009: For those left behind…

THIS GUEST POST comes courtesy of Playwright and TV writer Mike McPhaden, who besides being a talented writer is a most excellent affable chap. Which makes the seething jealousy of this post all the more delicious. Like a chicken wing somehow dusted with bacon.

[Reader Advisory: The following post contains references of an Inside Baseball nature. The references could be medically harmful and are not necessarily healthy, safe, or suggested.]

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We are the many, the not chosen.

Whether it’s because we’re too busy, too broke, or the Friday Night Lights spec in our Global Writers Apprentice application just didn’t reach John Callaghan-esque levels of raw humanity, the result is the same:

We are not going to Banff this year.

We will not see the mountain dawn. We will not breathe the mountain air. We will not walk the mountain sidewalks.

We will not enjoy the meditative calm of waiting twenty-five minutes to take a four-minute cab ride. Twice a day.

We will not listen eagerly as U.S. showrunners, brave-faced in these hard times, share their secrets for making a decent episode for only two million dollars.

We will not gape at the cavernous beauty of the Van Horne Delegate Lounge, wishing we’d been way, way more specific about where we’d meet our ten o’clock.

We will not get to make that little “meep” sound when someone casually spoils the finale of the series we’re secretly a season behind on.

We will not taste the delicious awkwardness of having Lunch With A Decision Maker, peopled by 1) a bleary-eyed exec, 2) a guy who’s annoyed he didn’t get a seat with an American decision maker, and 3) and actor in full costume, mumbling the lines to her “Sex and the City in the olden days” pitch.

We will not feel the sting of shame when we hear ourselves try too hard to sound worldly: “ABC? Which one?”

We will not savour the secret that our “big meeting” at 5:30 is actually a yummy nap and some Maury.

We will not gather every night at the St. James Gate, we will not breathe its beery air, we will not brag and glad-hand amid the clamour of obscure TV references. Mutey the Mailman. Robot Santa. After M.A.S.H.

We will not feel the heart clogging ache that only comes from eating Alberta Beef four meals a day, a sensation the locals call “aortal sex.”

We will not get the satisfaction of crashing the Oasis/Blueprint party by arriving late and telling security, "I'm Tecca's ride."

We will not drag our tired, partied-out bodies into Wednesday’s 9am session on “Maximizing Ancillary Revenue Streams,” but then again, neither will anyone in Banff.

No, we will be staying home. And when those who went return, with their stories of meals and deals in Beautiful Banff, where the mountains touch the sky and the streets were named by babies, what will we do?

We will lie, and say we missed them.