FRIDAY IN A WEEK where there's been too little sleep and too much to do in the P.M. I'm looking forward to a bit of stop-stop this weekend. Go-go is so overrated.
That being said, I think if you've read this blog for a while you probably get a sense of the strange caught-between feeling I get about my dual roots. Simply put, I'm a guy who always feels when I go down south that I'm not quite flashy, forceful or American enough. And here, in Canada, I feel like I'm sometimes a bit too brash, a bit too...you know...American.
God love 'em, the Canadian taciturn-ness, the passive aggressiveness, the occasional provincialism, the fear of speaking up or speaking out -- especially in the producer/writer class of my colleagues, ever facing extinction...well it gets to me.
But then I think that those qualities underlie all the stuff I truly love about this country, and its more measured and informed view of the world. So, you know. It's a wash.
Jim Henshaw today has a lovely story, just a funny and wise reminiscence about how the Canadian character plays when it comes to the arts. It's liable to make you smile, and shake your head a bit, too. And maybe that's not a bad way to enter the weekend.
So go read about Jim, and Andre Bernard Berge, and then think about the woman cutting her hair before the wedding in that YouTube video, and the people that pranked Springer en masse all those years ago -- and ask yourself: "why are Canadians SO GOOD at this kind of thing?"
2 comments:
....so, when you describe all these traits of being "Canadian" - I assume you mean Anglo-Canadian ?
As in English-speaking-Toronto-Maple-Leaf-loving-Tim-Horton's-double-double-drinking-Canadians.
Because almost every "Canadian" who lives in Quebec exhibits none of these characteristics.
Yeah, I've always been a proponent of the distinct society.
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