February 19, 2007
William Gibson
While I'm posting stories about my embarrassing adventures with Canadian celebrities, I should also post this one about the time I embarrassed myself on national television during an interview with William Gibson (noted Canadian author and possible inventor of the entire genera of Cyberpunk fiction):
Well, as if my Jane Siberry story wasn’t bad enough, here is the story of how I met cyberpunk author and legend William Gibson and embarrassed myself on national television.
It was back in the early 90’s, when "Idoru"
was released and I was visiting Toronto. I found out that William was doing a reading from Idoru on the waterfront, so I planned my whole day in the city around going to see him.
While wandering around the city I decided to look through the broadcasting museum at the CBC building and discovered a little setup in the atrium for the show that aired every noon on Newsworld with Ralph Benmergui. There was a little sign that said that today’s guest would be, you guessed it, William Gibson!
Checking my watched I discover that it was 11:30, so I decided that I simply had to stick around and, as a matter of fact, I got a really decent first row stool in the audience.
Now, not that anybody besides Canuckians that were really bored during the 90’s would remember that Ralph’s noontime show involved a lot of audience participation. So, during the course of the interview, Ralph was tossing the microphone into people’s faces and asking them various questions
Sooner or later it became my turn to answer a question and I turned loose with something along the lines of the fact that because of computer communication I no longer considered myself a strict Canuckian, but more of a world citizen. Well, this got Ralph all worked up and he asked me to explain further, which I attempted to, talking about the importance of information in terms of being able find what you need to knowing, not necessarily knowing something specific.
Somehow Ralph took this is a challenge and decided to grill me on Canuckian trivia, asking me which Canuckian province was the first to have provincial healthcare. I didn’t know then, but will always remember that it was Saskatchewan, since Ralph completely embarrassed me for not knowing the answer. With that, the show was over and I went on my way, chuckling to myself about being utterly embarrassed in front of one of the people I admire most and on national TV to boot!
I had called my dad to ask him to tape the show, but thankfully, he forgot and hopefully it has been forever lost in the non-existent CBC Ralph Benmergui archives.
Later that night, after seeing William read, I bought a copy of Idoru and queued up to have him sign it, fortunately the line wasn’t that long and it only took about 10 minutes to make it up to him. He looked up as I passed him the book and he says “Wow, you really blew it on national TV today, didn’t you?” I replied “Yup, but it was it worth it to meet you” and went on my merry little way.
Jane Siberry
I was just cleaning up some files when I came across the following story that I wrote for 43people before they unceremoniously deleted my account. It's a pretty good chuckle, so I thought I'd post it here so that you could enjoy my embarrassment.
So, without further ado, let me present "My Adventures with Jane Siberry" (Noted Canadian recording artist, now known as "Issa"):
I live on Manitoulin Island, where Jane visits from time-to-time in the summer; I had actually met Jane several times while working at a local natural food store, but never bothered to address her directly, always feeling that most celebrity type people would prefer to have their privacy respected.
Anyhow, a couple of years back I was at one of the local farmers’ markets when Jane came by my table. I greeted her, as I would any person visiting my table and spoke with her about some of the pieces that I make. She took a shine to a particular kind of sterling silver pendant that I make and asked me if I had two, going on to explain that she was looking for something to share with a specific special person in particular.
Apparently they had shared rings, but his had been lost in the ocean and hers down an outdoor privy hole.
I told her that I could easily make a second pendant if she gave me a few minutes, she agreed, and then asked me if there was a discount for two. I smiled and said “sure”, just because I knew who she was.
She wandered on, while I started to put together a second identical pendant, explaining to Audrey (my table partner) who she was and that she did a specific song (Calling All Angels) that was really special to me. Audrey didn’t recognize her name until I mentioned that she did (It Can’t Rain All the Time) from soundtrack of “The Crow”, which Audrey instantly recognized as one of her favorite songs of all time.
Jane returned after wandering the full vender circle, I showed her the pendants and she seemed pleased. Then she said “You know, it’s really not fair of me to ask you for a discount, I’m an artist as well and know what it’s like”, to which I responded “Yes, I am familiar with your work and enjoy it quite a bit.” She seemed please, paid for her pendants then apologized for not having any sort of CD or thing to give me, as she had recently switched to a press-on-demand service for all her music.
I told her that it was alright and that I thought that it was cool to move to that kind of system for music distribution and that was that, she left, seemingly happy. I gave Audrey a little high five, as I’m usually not adept enough to handle such situations with any kind of grace.
Well, about 10 minutes later Jane came back, she handed me a CD in a sleeve and explained that it was a demo that she was mailing out and that she wanted me to have a copy. I looked at the label, it had something like 6 songs and I thanked her profusely. Then Audrey completely messed me up by saying “is your favorite song on there?” It was and then all of a sudden I found myself babbling about why it was so special to me and the important time in my life when I first heard it. Basically a ton of irrelevant data that nobody, especially Jane Siberry, would ever care about.
As I babbling she started to get this really disturbed look on her face, like she had just met some sort of really demented fan and had better flee before I locked her in a secret bedroom, broke her kneecaps and forced her to write a sequel to my favorite song. And flee she did!
Audrey looked at me and said “Well, you really blew that, didn’t you?” I said “Yup!”
I saw Jane again this summer and she didn’t stay too long at my market table, but, on the other hand, she didn’t flee in terror either!
April 2008