25 RANDOM THINGS

This is the finalized version of this article.






Coaxed by Andrea, the singer-actress, all around entertainer who also goes by Aundrea, I was tagged [ and it may have even been self-imposed] and then "forced" to ponder over this little game that someone came up with on Facebook. First were the rigid rules, oh my, and then the attempt to answer them. As always, it takes far longer than one could ever imagine to complete one of these introspective ditties. Still, after my first attempt and six answers into it, my Mac malfunctioned and I lost all my witty words on the screen. Yet my will power to continue this little, fun memory exercise was put to the test and so I restarted . The real reason I did not simply quit was because my tagged list was already made and what my tagged bunch initially got to see was an empty page and it didn't look too good. I felt that I had to make it up to them. Hence, I recreated my list from scratch trying to remember what exact words I initially used, and then restructuring it more or less in some form of chronology. So enjoy it, it should be fun, starting with the prerequisite rules of the game:



Rules:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people [in the right hand corner of the app] then click publish.)

Oh my God, where do I begin? And I am going to have to leave out things [e.g.: first migraine, hitting a pole, bed wetting, Eurovision, bicycles, etc...]








1.
When I was five or six, my grandfather took me to the very first film that left a lasting impression on me. It was not the typical Tarzan matinee with Johnny Weissmuller that I was used to but a vintage Hollywood musical playing at our local repertory house [Cinema Ramat Aviv]. The film was Anni Eshet Lapidot which I later learned was Hebrew for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN [starring Betty Hutton]. I have not seen it since but am very aware of what I have turned into as a result of this programming mishap.

2.
When I was five or six, to see my reaction, my sister Avital, lovingly, pressed the STOP button of an Elevator and watched me in terror, with much glee. I was traumatized for years and thus avoided elevators everywhere, easy in Israel where we lived on the first floor. Once in Canada, having moved onto the 19th floor, at the age of eleven or twelve, my mom grabbed me, [just imagine a hysterical panic-stricken lanky boy], threw me into an elevator and made me go up and down and up and down, several times with her, until my fear dissipated and I finally calmed down. Until then, believe it or not, I walked up all these flights of stairs. I now officially love elevators and will gladly get stuck in one anytime.

3. When I was eight, my mom took the kids to visit my uncle and aunt in Nairobi for a whole two months. Through my uncle, who lived there for a period of time, I met his pals, the park rangers and Masai tribesmen, I said JUMBO everyday and fell in love with banana milk. I still can't believe that the banana milk concept has not flown off the roof.

4. We left Israel for Canada on my 9th Birthday and I learned my very first three English words through a picture Dictionary on our CP Air plane ride, with a stopover in Rome. However I found it very limiting to construct any useful sentence using the words APPLE, BABY and CAT. Upon our arrival in Montreal at 00:15 on January 15, 1973, technically a day after my Birthday, I saw snow and ethnic diversity for the very first time. The taxi whisked us straight to our Sheraton hotel downtown, today COURS MONT-ROYAL, and I imagine since I like to talk, that I must have repeatedly told the taxi driver, Apple Baby Cat on several occasions through our ride.

5. When I was ten, my impressed musically talented uncle took my sisters and me to his recording studio in Tel Aviv where he first listened to me sing two of my original songs and along with my grandfather recorded instrumentation for them. He then had us three record the song in the studio booth. We made several demos and I called the band Eyal and the Mystery Group. I made sure to label the demos with the song titles and proud name of the band. Side A, roughly translated from Hebrew, was IF I WERE A BOY, while side B, a duet with my sister, was called OVER THERE. I still have some of these demos in my storage and, if you'd like, I can sing you the songs anytime. My dad still does.

6. Between the ages of nine and perhaps fourteen I wrote hundreds of song, first in Hebrew but then mostly in English, which I memorized and continuously sang to myself. Some were actually quite good. I also forced my younger sister and her friends to be my audience members in variety shows that conceived, complete with costumes, hand-written programs, scoresheets and, of course, choice seats. The shows were based on influential Song Contests a la Eurovision. Once my sister and company began scoring the exact same thing for every single song, I would have a fit until they finally changed the scores so that I could announce a winner. Must have been traumatizing for her but, based on how she's been raising her own kids, I think she's over the historic assault by now.




7. When I was most probably twelve, still living at Hill Park, a Montreal high rise that had a protruding exterior garden on its fourth floor [as the building was partly situated on a cliff] my friend Jeffrey and I played with matches next to some shrubs which, in no time, caught on fire. The two of us almost burnt the entire place down but panic and quick thinking [because of the panic] had us running down to the pool, emptying oversized garbage cans, filling them with water and running back to extinguish the fire.

8. In 1978, I was leaving for Israel for my summer vacation, only two days after the phenomenon GREASE came out in theaters everywhere.. Since my mom did send us to see it at the Westmount Square on the Saturday, the only thing I felt missing was the Original Soundtrack album featuring YOU'RE THE ONE THAT I WANT and SUMMER NIGHTS. Well, thank God for my neighbour Monica, who had just received it as a gift from her mom. I slyly asked to borrow it, having no intention to give it back right away. Instead, I guess you can say I stole it as I took it with me to Israel, where I became very popular with the neighbourhood kids around my uncle's place. You see, I was the only one with a GREASE album in Israel at that time. While the movie had not yet made it to Israel, and was only due there in another six months, the songs became instant hits on the radio and everyone wanted to hear them over and over again. I returned to Montreal in early September without the album. In due time, Monica and I stopped being friends.








9. Despite what you may be thinking, the English language did not come naturally to me. I was challenged phonetically and otherwise and was placed in speciality classes and given lots of extra attention. I don't know why but for the longest time I just couldn't learn it. It took me several years to improve and to, then, realize my full potential but in grade five, Miss Urban, the attractive vice principal, patiently sat me down on a bench and tried arduously to get me to pronounce the H's and to distinguish them from the A's. Let's just say that I ad to ave taken a lot of time before I made it appen.

10. In Elementary school in Canada, I was not welcomed at first. I looked different, tall and skinny and the kids couldn't pronounce my name. They first called me Eggo Waffles and then teased me and said that my mom was Aunt Jemima. In grade three, during my first year in Canada and in an English elementary school, I politely went over to ask my teacher, Mrs. Gilman if I could go for a pee. I thought the word which I overheard being used was buffy. Mrs. Gilman, could not figure out what the heck I was asking from her so she asked the rest of the class to guess along with her which created an uproar. Everyone in class began to laugh. I was absolutely humiliated before leaving for the bathroom. Buffy, the word I thought I knew, turns out, by the way, to be Jody's sister in FAMILY AFFAIR, a show I loved as a kid.

11. In grade five, my beautiful new teacher, Mrs Scully introduced herself to the class and asked that all the boys stand on the right and that the girls were to go to the left. I complied. Mrs. Scully then spotted me on the right and restated, "no, I had asked that all the girls go to the left". I think I cried as a result of this embarrassment. Mrs. Scully later explained to my mom that I was so pretty that she actually thought I was a girl at first. She also later told me that she loved my name and was thinking of naming her child after me but she ended up with a baby girl. Four years later, Mrs. Scully turned up as my high school English teacher where she boasted to all the ladies in the office of just how pretty a kid I was in grade five.


12. Coming back from Israel in the fall of '78, my father met my sister and I, in Brussels and took us back home via Belgium [he worked for Sabena]. On the plane, a 747, my father took us to meet the pilot in the cockpit. As the captain turned over to chat with us, I got nervous and asked him why he was not looking out the window and making sure that we're okay. He just laughed. Today we all can learn of the importance of looking out for a flock of birds coming your way.

13.
Oh yes, when I was twelve, I ran to buy an ABBA album at the Cote Vertu mall [their first greatest hits in 1976] thinking it was an Israeli band named DAD [Aba in Hebrew] and I tried to convince people of that fact until I later realized that they were actually the Swedish 1974 Eurovision winners]. They eventually became my favourite group in the whole wide world and I have even seen them live in concert back in 1979 when they played at the Montreal Forum. Today I own every imaginable ABBA CD known to man, woman and child.


14. When I was thirteen I purchased a paperback STAR TREK book off its stand at our neighborhood Cantor but, after paying for it, I conveniently replaced it with a very risque paperback novel which my mother found and made me give back. I then went back and "stole" it again. For years I held on to that book for God knows what reason and, funny enough, I remember packing it up and placing it a box in the summer of 2007. Hence, I still have it somewhere in my storage space back in Vancouver.

15.
In High School I was such a goody goody even if I had trouble learning. I was so scared that I never ever skipped a class. Even a girl friend of mine, Robin Kinch, tried to convince me to stray but I would have none of that. I just kept on going to classes and learning almost absolutely nothing . Technically I should have been a genius by now.

16.
In Cegep, I was finally trying to learn and taking courses to help me develop and evolve. Thus, at the end of my first semester, my English short story teacher, a good looking young man whose name escapes me now, selected my autobiographical take on my arrival into Canada, which I called THE EGGO HAS LANDED: MEMOIRS OF AN ALIEN, as one of the best works in that class. He read it out loud, but changed my name ever so slightly, thinking that no one would notice, and brought tears of joy to my eyes while in class. No teacher ever before gave me such acclaim for a skill I was so challenged by. It's a darn shame that I cannot remember his name.

17. In University, I was such a zealous Fine Arts cinema student that, to get rid of my shyness, I started to get involved in every possible student body group imaginable. By the end of my first year, I was voted President of the Fine Arts Student association, became editor of the University's Fine Arts magazine and produced [and co-hosted] the Year End Screening of Student Films three years running. Oh where are those days. They seem so long gone now.

18. In 1979, for the Year of the Child, at the urging of my mom's friend Chava, I joined a theater group called CHILDREN'S CREATION, The troupe was putting up a special original show at a major theatre in Montreal during the summer and I got involved with the project from very early on. I also got my sisters to join in on the fun. Eventually, while my older sister worked on sets and props, it turned out, by this point, that my younger sister was seemingly more talented, and got a better role on stage. I was at first livid but I slowly learned to accept the fact that my performing capabilities had diminished.

19. I first began to pick up jogging in Cegep by taking it as an elective class. At the time, the wonderful teacher, Deena, had us running around and across Westmount. IT was challenging but fun. Over the years I had started, stopped and restarted running around the city. Most recently, just over five years ago, dealing with my impending break up and its correlated stress, I rediscovered that passion and drive and began on a journey that for the past several years had me running at half marathon distances. I unfortunately stopped several months ago and am now training to regain that conditioning towards my goals once again.

20. In 1986 I went to Israel and spent a whole summer there trying to retrace my past. I toured the country and connected with old friends and family members. I turned the experience into a wondrous journey of self-discovery. I also got myself a lot of Israeli CD's and came home very very satisfied.

21. In 1993, when I was first introduced to John by my neighbour Daniel, at Daniel's urging, I called John up and asked him out. He flat out said NO. Three days later he called me back and asked if the invitation was still standing and we went on our very first date on a Friday afternoon to a bad movie called HEAR NO EVIL starring Marlee Matlin. We also bumped into my friend Doug on the street. Turned out that he was in John's class at the time as well. Our first dinner followed on that same day, at the Faubourg, but John did not let out yet that he could not eat spicy food [meaning garlic, onion, pepper, etc...]. Three weeks later, on our perhaps fifth or sixth date, I ordered spicy Szechuan and invited John over to my place on a Sunday evening. That evening he finally admitted that he cannot eat anything remotely spicy and soon after he leaped over to kiss me. I guess he wasn't that hungry.

22.
In 1992, my roommate Rudy and I hosted a massive Disco Inferno Party in our modest 5 1/2 apartment on Cote Saint Luc Road - the place we called Kibbutz 5245 or as others would affectionately call "our very own Melrose Place.". We had a record 148 people at our place that night and the event began spilling into the second floor hall and even into our neighbours apartments on the third floor, as we were smart enough to invite them too. Ten years later many of the very same people were celebrating my twelve-hour long, ever important 40th Birthday bash much to my delight.

23. In 1988, not too long after university, I was an Editor of a local downtown chic newspaper/magazine, slanted on fashion and entertainment and got VIP treatments from every entertainment and cultural agent in the city. I received free CD's, premiere tickets and oodles of free gifts and was invited to every event, restaurant and opening one can imagine. I lived this grand life for several months before I fell really ill and the Doctor told me that I needed to take a long rest. I eventually had to quit that job and the whole enterprise just folded soon after.





24.
In university I made my first film in 1983, a documentary called GLORIA: LIVING WITH DIALYSIS based on the weekly life of one of my mom's dialysis patients and friends. I followed her at home, at work and at the hospital for an entire week and made my little film which played to great success at the hospital in nursing class. The Jury of professors, however, told me that my film was less a fine arts piece and more CBC television material and that I should be in the communication media program instead. I then responded by making my second year film an artistic, abstract and ambiguous piece called GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, which combined colorful, stark and exciting images to the sounds of Kate Bush. At the third year selection, when presenting HOUSE, that same jury asked me about influence and I seriously answered that Antonioni was the most influential to my work as an artist. That same jury then told me that my film actually looked a lot like a music video and, at the time, I didn't get them at all.

25.

In 1999, with John gone to Greece, I spent a month in New York hoping to best my previous eighteen Broadway-show record from 1997. I ended up checking out a record of 25 Broadway shows during that visit, something I was finally able to repeat once again this past December. I believe that I have now accumulated about 200 Broadway shows over the past twenty years. My first ever was STARLIGHT EXPRESS and my most recent was BILLY ELLIOT. Among the best were CITY OF ANGELS, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN and, of course PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, way back in 1988.