If we embrace Andy Warhols’ idea that every person will be famous for 15 minutes, then I should be getting worried. At last time check, I was getting to be older than ideal for being famous. Let’s see, the athlete me was years ago; same with being a member of a rock band. The potential for great discoveries in science disappeared when I changed my major to economics, and a Noble Prize in Economics went out the window in one of my last exams at university. The course was the scintillatingly titled , “Mathematical and Statistical Applications in Micro-Economics”, where my answer to most problems was, “Huh?” I truly only have one last kick at the can before I will have to turn to infamous instead.
While at this time, my 15 minutes have eluded me, I have had the opportunity to meet many famous people, mostly just through the course of life. The school I went to during my early years were sprinkled with the offspring of many recognizable names. Among them, for example, were the Molson and Seagram families. One of my dorm-mates at the time was Reid Willis, the son of actors Kate Reid and Austin Willis. The school population was liberally sprinkled with a number of Bay Street and political families. But probably the most memorable encounter with someone famous was during my art class that we had every two weeks.
The artist in residence at the school was David Blackwood, who, even in those days had a name for himself, but today is even more renown for his moody landscape paintings of life in Newfoundland. On this particular day he was moving around the class giving us encouragement and pointing out how to use colour to achieve a certain effect. He stood beside my painting of the Rockies with 2 majestic mountains rising up in the air. A soft pink glow of the morning sun was bathing the rocks. “Very good. Now try to get the shadow on this side of the mountain.” It was then that I notice a kind of round man beside him looking at my painting. Because I was reading Lord of the Rings at the time, he reminded me of a Hobbit. He was maybe my height, bushy red hair and beard, and smoking a pipe. He stood beside me for a few seconds then tapped the painting with his pipe and said, “Nice boobs.” My first meeting with Farley Mowat and he thought my mountains were boobs. (And I am using a nicer word than he did.) I didn’t know what to do. I felt a little embarrassed that here I was in art class drawing what he perceived to be half a naked woman before I had even seen a real half naked woman. I hastily tried to make them more mountainous-like so I capped them off with a snow covered peak. When he returned he said, “Even better. Much more life-like.”
It was at that early age that I decided that my creative outlet should not be in art but writing. So I guess I could fudge my resume a bit by saying that it was Farley Mowat who after seeing my earlier work, encouraged me write.
One time I did get close to being famous, famous by proxy, I guess. When I was younger I had a passing resemblance to hockey great Bobby Orr. One night I was with friends at The Pub at the Townhouse Motor Inn, when a local N.H.L. hockey player asked me if he could introduce me to some girls as Bobby Orr. He wanted to impress them with someone famous. Hmm, free drinks and a chance to meet some fawning female fans. For that, I even threw in a free gimpy knee.
More recently, I was at a place I often go to after work. It gives me time to relax, read the newspaper and have a beer before heading home to pandemonium. This time, I noticed someone sit down at the table across from me, facing in my direction. A quick glance up and I saw it was a young guy, kind of scruffy looking, a skull cap pulled down over his forehead even though it was a very warm day. Every so often I could feel him looking up at me and I steadfastly kept my eyes on my newspaper. This internal alarm was from my days as a prison guard . Quite often, if you glanced at an inmate the wrong way, they would often spit out a “What are you looking at!”. So I avoided locking eyes with this guy altogether. It was only after he left and paid for his meal that the waitress came up to me gushing that Gord Downey of the Tragically Hip had just left. Now I knew why he kept looking up at me. He just wanted to say hello. We have crossed paths many times over the years and his sister is a dear friend of my wife and I. He’ll probably never try to say hello again.
There have been many other famous people over the years. I spoke to NDP patriarch Ed Broadbent at the liquor store one afternoon and chatted up Christopher Walken at the same place when he was here shooting Vendetta. Nice guy and not nearly as scary in real life as he is on the screen. (I was talking about Walken, not Broadbent, there). But you know there is one person I have never run into. One of my brothers actually pitched him a story I wrote and another brother has been to his house for dinner. It is amazing how many people I know who have a Dan Aykroyd story or two. Yet I have still to meet the man. Maybe one day when I sell one of my screenplays and have my 15 minutes.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Get Back To Where You Once Belonged
I am of a certain age where reunions start to gain some sort of significance. I am young enough to know that a lot of my classmates are probably still alive, but old enough to not know that fact for sure. I have marked a date on my calendar to find out. I will be attending the 35th reunion of my graduating class from the school I attended as a youngster. I am not sure which is more surprising; the fact that I am attending a reunion after 35 years or that it has been 35 years since my class graduated. I say my class, because I left after what was called 5th Form (grade 12 to you colonists) so that I could see what life was like with girls in a classroom. I must say that was rather a welcome change. Not that there weren’t benefits to being in an all male school... Okay, so after a few minutes of reflection, I didn’t come up with that many benefits.
One of my old roommates made me aware of the reunion. He now lives in Toronto, or one of those outlying areas that people who don’t live in Toronto, call Toronto. He is a friend of a woman who is the wife of a guy who attended the school and with who works with my older brother - who also went to the school. Try saying that again. My roommate, Eric, got my email address and we started to exchange notes and catch up with each other. Other than the occasional hello and small talk with former students at the school who live in Kingston, I haven’t really seen or even heard of anyone from my class since I left the school in 1972.
Throughout the years I have always kept an eye on the Report on Business from the Globe and Mail to see if any of the guys I went to school with turned up in the pages. You know the articles: “Wunderkind Stock Market Analyst Nailed For Fraudulent Stock Promotion - You Know, The Guy Who Used To Room With Scottie in 4th Form At Brent House”. But the pages of the Globe have constantly been bereft of this sort of salacious news.
Not that I think of these things in a competitive way, but at the School we were raised with a certain amount of competitiveness within what was known as the Little Big Four of the private school circuit. Ridley College in St. Catharines, St. Andrews College in Aurora, Upper Canada College in Toronto and my school, Trinity College School in Port Hope, made up the group. To say that the other schools have best us in this regard is rather shaming in a way. I always did my utmost to pound the other schools as best as I could on the football field, the cricket pitch (yes, it is possible to pound someone on a cricket pitch) or in the gymnasium.
In all honesty, to see their names pop up in news circles when our school was conspicuous in its absence, is a little humiliating. I guess it must be that they taught us ethics or something. I mean we never had the scandals like UCC old boys always seem to have. All we have had were a couple titans of business and few MP’s. What is there to brag about there?
Now, I am not saying that my classmates are not capable of some heinous crime of state or finance; it could be that there have just not been caught. Or to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau -now that would impress my English Master who for the most part was thoroughly unimpressed by me- it may be that my fellow classmates are slaves to their jobs and lead lives in quiet desperation. Either way, it will be interesting to see where their lives have taken them.
I was asked to come up with a specific memory or moment at the school that has endured with me. Try as I may to remember, there really wasn’t a particular moment that crystallized my time there. Perhaps it was because I spent such a long period there that instead of it being a focus of my life, it was more of a constant. I was fortunate that for about half my time there I had two of my older brothers running point for me, paving the way, so to speak. So, in a way it was like family. These were guys I slept, ate, played sports with and learned with (okay, so some learned more than I). I went through times of discovery, disappointment and even at that young age, disillusionment. So to really capsulize a particular moment is difficult. Maybe it in 1970 when I returned from Michaelmas term break (Christmas holidays in the real world) after a trip to The Bahamas with a pair of shockingly white bell bottom jeans. I thought they contrasted particularly well with my tan, but mere moments after stepping out of my dorm, the Headmaster loudly pointed out that indeed, “Mr. Scott, this is not a discotheque!” And for all those years I labored under that misguided belief. Perhaps it is my ability to still be able to conjugate the verb, “to love” in Latin or in an uninterrupted flow of words that seem to come out like one word, still be able to recite the entire dinner grace, again in Latin and in one breath.
However, one constant that I learned from my time there that has served me well and still serves me today. It was a lesson I have carried from day one of my attendance at the school. It was there on my graduation from university, on my first job interview and as well on my wedding day. I know it will be with me on the day my children get married and every other important marker in my life until the final moment the lid on my casket is shut. The lesson learned that is so important? I know how to tie a full Windsor.
One of my old roommates made me aware of the reunion. He now lives in Toronto, or one of those outlying areas that people who don’t live in Toronto, call Toronto. He is a friend of a woman who is the wife of a guy who attended the school and with who works with my older brother - who also went to the school. Try saying that again. My roommate, Eric, got my email address and we started to exchange notes and catch up with each other. Other than the occasional hello and small talk with former students at the school who live in Kingston, I haven’t really seen or even heard of anyone from my class since I left the school in 1972.
Throughout the years I have always kept an eye on the Report on Business from the Globe and Mail to see if any of the guys I went to school with turned up in the pages. You know the articles: “Wunderkind Stock Market Analyst Nailed For Fraudulent Stock Promotion - You Know, The Guy Who Used To Room With Scottie in 4th Form At Brent House”. But the pages of the Globe have constantly been bereft of this sort of salacious news.
Not that I think of these things in a competitive way, but at the School we were raised with a certain amount of competitiveness within what was known as the Little Big Four of the private school circuit. Ridley College in St. Catharines, St. Andrews College in Aurora, Upper Canada College in Toronto and my school, Trinity College School in Port Hope, made up the group. To say that the other schools have best us in this regard is rather shaming in a way. I always did my utmost to pound the other schools as best as I could on the football field, the cricket pitch (yes, it is possible to pound someone on a cricket pitch) or in the gymnasium.
In all honesty, to see their names pop up in news circles when our school was conspicuous in its absence, is a little humiliating. I guess it must be that they taught us ethics or something. I mean we never had the scandals like UCC old boys always seem to have. All we have had were a couple titans of business and few MP’s. What is there to brag about there?
Now, I am not saying that my classmates are not capable of some heinous crime of state or finance; it could be that there have just not been caught. Or to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau -now that would impress my English Master who for the most part was thoroughly unimpressed by me- it may be that my fellow classmates are slaves to their jobs and lead lives in quiet desperation. Either way, it will be interesting to see where their lives have taken them.
I was asked to come up with a specific memory or moment at the school that has endured with me. Try as I may to remember, there really wasn’t a particular moment that crystallized my time there. Perhaps it was because I spent such a long period there that instead of it being a focus of my life, it was more of a constant. I was fortunate that for about half my time there I had two of my older brothers running point for me, paving the way, so to speak. So, in a way it was like family. These were guys I slept, ate, played sports with and learned with (okay, so some learned more than I). I went through times of discovery, disappointment and even at that young age, disillusionment. So to really capsulize a particular moment is difficult. Maybe it in 1970 when I returned from Michaelmas term break (Christmas holidays in the real world) after a trip to The Bahamas with a pair of shockingly white bell bottom jeans. I thought they contrasted particularly well with my tan, but mere moments after stepping out of my dorm, the Headmaster loudly pointed out that indeed, “Mr. Scott, this is not a discotheque!” And for all those years I labored under that misguided belief. Perhaps it is my ability to still be able to conjugate the verb, “to love” in Latin or in an uninterrupted flow of words that seem to come out like one word, still be able to recite the entire dinner grace, again in Latin and in one breath.
However, one constant that I learned from my time there that has served me well and still serves me today. It was a lesson I have carried from day one of my attendance at the school. It was there on my graduation from university, on my first job interview and as well on my wedding day. I know it will be with me on the day my children get married and every other important marker in my life until the final moment the lid on my casket is shut. The lesson learned that is so important? I know how to tie a full Windsor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
