leroBlog

National newspaper review!

I wrote this thinger for the Significant Objects project, which describes itself LIKE THIS: …

I’ll actually describe it. The description on the website is long. The curators, Rob Walker and Josh Glenn, find rummagey objects at rummagey sales, buy them for a pittance, and then assign them to writers who then use the TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF NARRATIVE to make the objects significant. Little objects embiggened by tales and lore. The objects are then put on EBay along with the story and folks can bid on them. And bid and bid and bid. Mine started at 0.50 and is now at a HANDSOME $11.50. Maybe you’d like to own this object! Here is a horrid screencap of it (it’s the first screencap I’ve ever taken. I just busted my screencapturing virginity. Oosh.)

And here’s the link to the story.

Please bid! Please please please! It’s the only way of knowing that you read this blog! (I mean, that and email, I guess. I guess you could just email me. BUT JESUS, you guys never do? And you NEVER comment! Except for the spammers!!!!!!!!!)

This happened today. And even though this happened, something else happened (an end happened), and that something else made me sad (the ending thing), and the something else (end) is eclipsing the happiness of the Significance Project. Because the thing that happened (you know, the ending something) is more significant than the Significance Project and t’will always be t’thus.

And now, I eat BEEF STEW.

My friend Josh went camping with his parents last week in California, America. Rene, his father, is French. Not long after arriving on the grounds, Rene made a little broom out of sticks so he’d have an implement with which to clear the path each day, as well as makeshift mattresses out of pine needles. Please notice Rene’s decorative pine cones leading up to the tent. Please also note that when Josh, a virtuoso guitarist, suggested he record an album of his father’s favourite songs on the pedal steel, Rene’s top request was La Marseillaise. Please also also take note of the fact that I will likely fly to Los Angeles to shadow this man in an attempt to either get him to 1. Marry me, 2. Agree to being the subject of my 2nd book, therefore relegating me to the esteemed literary genre of “Dad memoirist” forever and ever, amen.

And what about that hand flourish? Such a man.

i wrote this email to my friend adam while drunk. afterward, i puked in the toilet.

begin

my stupid hotel has king sized kings. which is great. for me… the lover of kings. i am going to love me some kings tonight. goddamnit i love kings. they will wait.

…

until i LOVE THEM. those kings.

they will be lucky (kings)

lve
th kng

fin

Hi! It’s me! Remember me? It’s me from, like, a post or two ago. To be honest, that was me on BOTH posts… and all the others.

My tour of book touring has been busy and good. I sabered a bottle of champagne on live breakfast television in Vancouver, I developed a large journo-crush on Pierre Landry for CBC Montreal. Also, I began bleeding profusely from my right pinky finger, which I assume means I will die very soon. This doesn’t really matter, as the book is now published and there’s a goodly amount of publicity momentum behind it… so, you know, I have a legacy. And let us be honest here, as we are among friends… if I die, book sales will go gangbusters and my ghost will dance and dance and dance like a running back at the Superbowl.

I have an event in one hour, at which I will read and probably say things that will make people squirm a bit. Like, “This book started by accident. I mean, it started very literally when I had a car accident and killed a man and then my life changed because I developed an unhealthily all-consuming fear of death. For a while, I wanted to commit suicide. And you know what they say about suicide, it’s our way of telling God, ‘You can’t fire me, because I quit!’” Etc.

I am very tired! This is what I wish I was doing. (BUT I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD!)

i have been staying in many hotels of late, as i am on BOOK TOUR. one of my great skills is identifying when the toilet paper point in the bathroom could have been folded tighter and better.

oh.

wait.

i took a couple of before and after photos of inferior vs superior toilet paper points, but apparently the files are too large to upload.

check this space. i’ll be back. for now, here are some crappy photographs taken with my crappy crappy macbook.

AIRPORT! (this is the Porter airline lounge. no one becomes angry here because there are unlimited supplies of salted nuts, shortbreads, ginger snaps, coffees, soda, internet, chairs, and new carpet smell. and pr0n. and prawns.)

ME BEFORE THE HOTEL GYM IN MY HOTEL ROOM (i have a king sized bed. for what? FOR WHAT, i ask YOU, renaud, the cherubic blond boy who checked me in?? do you know how much not-getting-laid happens to writers on tour? A LOT of not-getting-laid, renaud. that’s how much.)

brent bambury is a gorgeous muscle-bound man who hosts this radio program. radio is like a sort of special television with only words and zero pictures. sometimes when my four-year-old nephew hears me on the computer radio (”podcast” — see previous post), he will thrust his big melon head right into my brother’s computer monitor to see if he can find me in there. four-year-olds do not work on the high cognitive plane you parents like to romanticize the living FUCK out of!

(i love my nephew so much. he calls centaurs “clippity cloppity mans”!!!)

brent is as gorgeous as the gorgeous iPhone, but in human form. david carroll is the senior producer and writer of the show. he runs ultra-marathons like we go out for pizza. basically, GO! is the greatest radio program on planet earth and these men are as close to deities as they come… and TODAY they had me on the program for an entire hour-and-a-half. i don’t have any kind of link to an MP3 of it. however, it was a real gut-wrencher and tear-jerker, thanks to david’s unbelievable writing and brent’s unbelievable hosting.

ANYWAY, MY POINT… it all went so well for me and my career that i was approached by some germans and asked to join the Blue Man Group!

i’m beside myself with excitement and now i have to go practice playing my instrument, which is a metal garbage can attached to an 80 schedule PVC pipe with wind chimes all over it.

goodbye, goodbye!

are you tired of hearing my stupid voice? i am! but if you’re not, here it is AGAIN. (i’m being featured on the CBC computer internet Book Club. i had to field listener questions. i gave parenting advice at one point! and i don’t even care about children at all. except for that baby i found last month. that tree baby for whom i shrank all the shirts.)

THIS IS A PODCAST WHICH IS LIKE A BROADCAST BUT INSIDE SOME CIRCUITS