Macho Man is dead.

Who’s next? Hulk Hogan? The Ultimate Warrior? Jake The Snake Roberts? In fact, how the hell did Jake with all his drugging and boozing outlive Randy Savage anyway?

As more of these forgotten heroes enter their 50s and even 60s (yikes!), I guess they’re going to start dropping like flies. All the ‘roids and pills and liquor and drugs. Hard to believe some more of them haven’t met the same fate as good ol’ Randy.

I have to admit I felt a bit empty when I read about Savage’s death in a car crash, after a suspected heart attack. But why the melancholy? It’s been almost 20 years since I watched or even cared about wrestling. I can’t remember the last time my brother pile-drived me into the cement in our semi-finished basement. No idea where my old hard-as-nails plastic action figures are. My ancient Wrestlemania VHS tapes were sold long ago in a garage sale.

That being said, I got a boyish thrill when Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler did so well a few years ago. And I was bummed when Mickey Rourke lost out to his buddy Sean Penn at the Oscars. I even found myself defending the realness of wrestling to my wife the other day. “Yeah, it’s fake, but you have to invent your character and hone your skills. You can’t just be some muscle-bound monkey off the street and be champ the next week.”

What was I saying? Who cares! It’s bloody wrestling. My wife is right. It is fake. Wrestlers are actors. Their antics rival those on the daytime soaps for absurdity. They’re just a bunch of goons in banana-hammocks, pounding each other into oblivion.

But Macho Man was always my favourite. I can still hear my dad mimicking his trademark “oooh yeah!” and “Dig it!” and me and my brother crying for more. Those were great times. Some of the best times we had.

Oh. So I guess that’s why his death hit me so hard.

Sorry for calling you a goon, Randy. Rest in peace.

Dear Randy Quaid:

I hear Canadian authorities have decided to let you stay in Canada, and, indeed, that Canadian citizenship is now in the works for you. That’s because your wife’s dad was Canadian, so she was able to get her citizenship earlier this month, which means you can now get yours (though I don’t know why I’m telling you these things; I expect you already know).

Anyway, welcome. We’re glad to have you here. Frankly, I’ve always liked you better on screen than your little brother, who’s, well, let’s face it, a bit of a pretty boy (and, let’s face it — you’re not). Giving you refuge is in keeping with our best traditions — ones we seem to have lost touch with lately. And I think you’ll find we’re inclined to give you and Mrs. Quaid, and what some would call your wacky conspiracy theories, the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, if you’re crazy, it’s definitely craziness of the vulpine variety, as your now victorious campaign to stay here shows. But I think you’ll also find we’re more likely to believe you that there’s something fishy going on south of the border, that you might be in danger if you ended up in jail in Santa Barbara, even that there’s such a thing as star whackers. And not just because we’re pretty sure that 90% of Americans carry a gun.

We know that your country — your soon-to-be former country — is pretty messed-up right now, and has been since 9/11. That there’s a big gap down there between official reality and the real thing, and that a lot of people have a stake in making sure that gap isn’t closed. (We have similar gaps up here, but ours don’t matter nearly so much.) For all that we are much more deferential to authority in Canada, we are also less propagandized (at least for now), which means that we will not necessarily believe what we hear on FOX or MSNBC (or TMZ, for that matter). And besides, our longest-serving Prime Minister used to use ESP to communicate with his dead mother, so we’re completely down with the whole “offbeat” thing (which also explains William Shatner).

So welcome to you, Randy Quaid, and also to your resourceful wife, Evi, our prodigal daughter. Now, can I pitch you some movie ideas?

I don’t think Ricky Gervais is a homophobe.  But in his Golden Globes opening monologue he delivered a right zinger that was entirely predicated on “gay” being an insult.  Referring to Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor in I Love You, Phillip Morris, he quipped,  ‘Two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay.  So the complete opposite of two famous Scientologists, then.”

Zing, Tom Cruise and John Travolta.  You two dudes like dudes, and that is a ridiculous and comical thing for two dudes to do.

On the one hand, Ricky Gervais is British, which means that he can literally say anything and at least one person in the room will laugh.  Also, he is wildly successful, which means ditto.  Also also, the entirety of the awards show was awesomely or uncomfortably (depending on your tastes) uncomfortable.  And the fact that he meant Tom Cruise and John Travolta but didn’t say “Tom Cruise and John Travolta” but everyone metaphorically looked over at Tom Cruise and John Travolta means the joke landed.  Successful joke, in that everyone got it.  But not a successful joke, perhaps, in its pointed meanness.

Because, ok.  I’m not a fan of making fun of the gays right now, but I support the idea of one day being able to do so.  A sign of the General Non-Oppression of White People is how “cracker” carries no real insultory weight.  We’ll have reached Utopia when we can good-naturedly josh the gays and no one’s hackles will rise because they can get married and be in the military and all-around be treated like people.  We are, obviously, not there.

So until we’re there, I suggest passing on the “You’re so gay” comments.  How about “You’re such a Real Housewife of New York,” for a change, or “You’re so Jersey Shore”?  Things that are actually mean.

One of the things “Glee” has going for it is its wacky normalcy. With the possible exception of Finn and Mr Schuester, none of the characters is Hollywoodily attractive. They look like they legitimately go to high school.

And I hesitate to say that Lea Michele is “normal-looking” because that has become code for “uggers .” What I mean is that she — like most 24-year olds with their original faces — is pretty in some lights, manky in others. If she were unwaveringly flawless (I’m looking at you, Halle Berry), she’d hardly be believable as nerdy, unpopular Rachel Berry.

Likewise I can’t call her a “healthy weight” because that reads as “fat,” even though all I mean is that a good stiff breeze wouldn’t knock her over. I’m only marginally bothered by her skinnying up over the summer, and only because that’s one less reasonable-sized gal in the limelight. Team Healthy-Weight is shorthanded enough as it is.

My main beef is with the oglers. Michele received acclaim for her voice back when she was just slender, but now that she’s downright thin she’s in October’s Glamour in her underthings, in an MTV article titled “Only the Hot Parts,” and has just been offered a place in the pages of Playboy. The voice apparently has a body worth looking at.

I don’t object to Lea-Michele-as-sexpot. She is Of Age, and will need to break free from her Glee-skirts eventually. And I don’t object to her trimming down, because she seems to be doing it smartlike, and for smart reasons. More energy, and so forth. It’s just a shame that in order to be able to flaunt what she’s got, she had to lose a bit of it first.

Could Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel have been any more humourless in his response to Lady Gaga’s cheerful twit-pic from Rexall Place on Saturday? (That’s it to the left.) Crews had removed the letter “O” from a sign to position a spotlight; our lady, or one among her entourage, grabbed a shot of the result and sent it off to her 5.8 million Twitter followers, with the message “Holy mother of laughter.”

“Harrumph, harrumph,” responded Mandel, doing his best imitation of a mayor from central casting. “Some things are disgusting and you shouldn’t have to say they’re disgusting. I think it demeans them more than anything else.”

Look, Edmonton, it wouldn’t hurt you to be known for something other than hockey and mega-shopping for once. Not everyone is exactly down with that “Oil Country” thing anyway, what with the Gulf still recovering from its recent lube job and the oil sands getting the kind of PR once reserved for Tiger Woods. A change to “Oil C untry,” with the world’s most glam pop star as your spokesgrrl, couldn’t hurt for awhile. As for your mayor, his response should be to point out that Ms. Gaga came to Edmonton for two shows while bypassing Calgary altogether, thus proving that, while Calgary may have all the head offices, Edmonton still has éclat. That is all. No more needs to be said. No, really.

Do you still have that “City of Champions” sign on the outskirts? I recommend you switch it up immediately. You know with what.

When I think of burlesque, I immediately picture Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. So when I went to a burlesque show for the first time, I was expecting high heels, garter belts, and tight, sexy clothing. I saw the outfits I expected, but I didn’t expect to see all those items of clothing on the floor when the dance was over.

Though they are not to be confused, burlesque involves a whole lotta stripping. Burlesque has always been theatrical and humourous, frequently involving parody and exaggeration, but it wasn’t until the 20th-century that striptease became the main attraction.

Liv Yorston, founder and director of Studio Sublime Belly Dance in Calgary, has been involved with burlesque for the past seven years. She jokes: “[Burlesque] differs from stripping in the sense that we don’t take change.”

Kidding aside, Liv explains that, while one main element of burlesque is the striptease, burlesque dancers focus on a theatrical performance, often incorporating skits or mimicking the song’s lyrics, engaging the audience with class and sexiness, rather than simply stripping down and broadcasting their bodies. Liv’s burlesque troupe, Kabuki Guns Burlesque, produces shows that are particularly high-end, based on choreography and costumes. Strippers, she notes, are usually just girls getting naked for money: “No choreography, nothing left to the imagination, and half of the time they don’t even look like they are enjoying themselves.”

Burlesque dancers, on the other hand, have a lot of fun. With belly dancing, Liv feels she gets to showcase her more technical side, and 30 years of training. Her background includes a 10-year scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dance, ballet throughout North America, and four years of Russian and Cecchetti ballet in Australia. Another four years of jazz, some African dance work shops, and a year of Indian dance contribute to Liv’s diverse and well-rounded dancing.

It all comes together onstage — and then some. “With burlesque I get to be a little more cheeky, completely liberated, all chains and barriers broken through.”

She describes it as empowering, and notes that many women are eager to join. “Men love it for obvious reasons,” she says. “Women love it even more because they can associate with it. After a show I am bombarded with women wanting to take classes and get involved in any way, even if it’s just helping out behind the scenes.”

After being “harassed into starting a burlesque troupe,” Liz started Kabuki Guns Burlesque in January of 2004. Soon other troupes started popping up in Alberta. Driving the popularity is the women, not the men. “They see it and think, ‘Maybe I could do that?’ Once they start, they become so empowered by it, their enthusiasm spreads like wild fire to their friends and family, which in turn makes them want to get involved too.”

I must admit, seeing my first burlesque show made me want to join too. I oppose stripping on numerous levels, but as I watched the dancer dance down until she had nothing on but her top hat and cane, pasties and panties, I was attracted by the confidence she emitted. The stripping is the most obvious element, but the technically interesting and sexy dancing, combined with applause and laughter from the audience, makes it clear that this dance form is about so much more than just getting naked.

“There has to be something more left to the imagination,” Liv adds. “It is a ‘striptease’ with the emphasis on the tease, rather than the strip.”

So while Liza Minnelli still pops into my mind when I think of burlesque, I also now think of women feeling sexy, strong, and having fun.

In the world of unlikely pairings, Cirque du Soleil and Michael Jackson is right up there with peanut butter and neoprene.  Both are great; both have no business calling each other up on a rainy Saturday to hang out.

One of the more appealing aspects of the 40-year-old Cirque is that the more it changes, the more it stays somewhere along the ethereal-yet-wackily-French-Canadian continuum.  No matter which of its many manifestations you plunk your change down to see, there will be contortionists in body paint and clowns on trampolines and someone will dangle from two sashes for longer than is actually worth watching. 

And while I’m all for changing it up, I’m heartily against fixing what ain’t broke, as well as shoe-horning what will not be gracefully shoe-horned.  Cirque has joined up with the omnipresent Michael Jackson Estate to form a new series of shows which, from the looks of the trailer

will be a mash-up of clips from This is It and the Cirque-robats wasting their trapezial talents popping and kicking and crotch-grabbing. 

These aren’t the first famous coat-tails Le Cirque has attempted to ride on, and the bastards they bore with both the Elvis and Beatles franchises are the ones best forgotten.  Jackson’s dance-floor tunes are even less suited to their majesti-comic atmosphere, leading me to the cynical?  Nay, obvious conclusion that this is a money-grab. 

You break my heart, Cirque.  You are supposed to be a thing of purity and preternaturally strong ladies.  Why can’t you just stand on your own bedizened feet?

Sandy B clearly expected to walk home with a shiny gold man on Sunday, rocking a metallic Oscary dress and buffing her hair to a high Oscary sheen, and it comes as no surprise to the guess-makers and sayers-of-things-about-movies that she made good on her nom for Best Actress.  But as honorable a recognition as the golden KenDoll is, nothing sums up the erstwhile Miss Congeniality quite like her congenial acceptance speech at the Razzies the night before.

Sandra Bullock has always seemed nice, right?  Like you could go out for beers with her and she would lend you her shoes and tell you stories about her grandfather the rocket scientist (!) and talk you into flaming shots until you were both too drunk to sneak off with the waiter and stick the other person with the tab?  This may or may not have to do with her constantly playing characters who are exactly that person.

Because honestly, La Bull is almost completely a one-trick pony (like Hugh Grant, but winsome and clumsy instead of charming and rumpled.  Watching Two Weeks Notice was like being at the vortex of the type-cast universe).  And her Oscar win was more a Well-Careered-Actress-Has-Only-Oscar-Worthy-Role-Ever-So-If-We-Don’t-Give-Her-One-Now-She’s-Never-Getting-One-and-Come-On-Guys-She’s-Been-a-Hollywood-Staple-for-Years, because for all that The Blind Side is some two hours of tear-inducing, cockle-warming feelgoodery, no one but no one should win ANY award when they are up against Helen em-effing Mirren and Her Royal Streepness, the Meryl.

But for all that Sandra’s acceptance speech was expectedly adorable, what won my heart more by far was her SHOWING UP at the Razzies, or the Things That Blew About Film This Year awards, to pick up her Worst Actress award for the wretched All About Steve.  Her presence was a bit of a surprise — the Razzies are a fairly two-bit operation, begun by a copywriter in his house in the `80s and still joinable with a few internet clicks and a handful of dollars.  Few actors take the night off to receive their $5 golden raspberries, with good reason.

Miss Bullock not only brought her good-humored self, however, but gave as good as she got.  After gently needling the award system by suggesting that only sliiiiiightly more than half of the voters had actually seen the movie, she hauled out a wagon-load of All About Steve DVDs for everyone in attendance, claiming tongue-in-cheekily that if they just watched the film, “I mean really watch it, you know, with your eyes,“ that they’d get its magic.

I get that the Oscars are political and fairly riggy, and I doubt that Sandra was literally the Best Actress.  But if she has the good spirit to show up at a goofball awards show for kicks, then I’m more than ok with her taking also home a gold-plated doll.  I will pretend it is the award for Most Friendable.

I cringed this past Christmas while purchasing a PlayStation 3 for my husband. It didn’t exceed my budget and the shopping experience was quick and easy, but I was disgusted with myself for finally giving in.

I’ve long had a distaste for video games and have been unapologetically vocal about it. The reasons were partly personal: for years I desperately wanted in on my brothers’ Nintendo playing, and the damn things were also responsible for the downfall of a four-year relationship with a boyfriend who seemed to love his time with Castle Wolfenstein more than his time with me. Less personally, video games can encourage and create isolation and anti-social behaviour and, of course, they have been controversially linked to violent crimes.

My husband loved the gift and I didn’t see much of him in the days following Christmas. I feared my reservations had been confirmed. Since then, though, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to have my expectations set on their head.

It turns out video games aren’t evil, violence-ridden, time-sucking isolation devices after all. Well, they do suck up quite a bit of time. My husband spends a couple of hours each night on the couch navigating his way through Lego Batman. But it’s fine: I watch and we talk.

We’re not the only couple finding quality time this way. Kyle, 30, says he and his girlfriend purchased a Wii specifically because “it’s something we can do together.” Rather than spending evenings on the couch watching TV, they bowl. Nintendo’s Wii is a top seller and has been praised for getting people off their butts, moving, and interacting. Kyle was injured last year in a hockey game and has been sidelined ever since, but he’s been able to get his athletic fix via the Wii.

Joanne, 39, cannot say enough about the Nintendo DS and what it’s helped her eight year-old daughter achieve. Hoping to help her child with concentration and schoolwork, Joanne invested in the handheld game system. Her daughter was soon hooked on games like Sudoku Challenge and Bookworm and “she’s more focused, more confident, and her grades have gone from D’s to high C’s and B’s.” Joanne has even found herself picking up the DS for a few moments of Brain Age.

Says an employee at EB Games: “Gaming companies are really responding to the changing needs of the players. There are still violent games, and lots of them, but there’s also a vast array of fitness-inspired games and educational and thought-provoking games.”

Meanwhile, at my house, we enjoy our PlayStation nights. Instead of watching separate television shows in separate rooms, or sitting in silence while watching a movie, we share news about our day, chew over problems, and joke. And I eat my words and admit repeatedly that video games really aren’t as bad as I made them out to be.

By Jan Beecher ~~

On a gentle west coast evening, Todd Butler is opening the Islands Folk Festival at Providence Farm near Duncan, BC. I have just arrived along with a thousand or so other people for a weekend of music and festival-like festivities. It’s Butler’s job to get the show started and get the crowd “in the mood,” and he does it extremely well. By the end of his set a full audience has gathered and we are dancing, clapping to the beat and, of course, laughing.

Butler is funny. He hits on hippies and parents and wrestlers. In all honesty, my mp3 isn’t loaded with parodies, but who doesn’t enjoy good a laugh?

And then the jester on the stage plays “Home.” It’s about moving from the prairies to Vancouver Island. It isn’t funny — it’s strong and emotional and it blows me away.

That’s the thing about Todd Butler: he isn’t just another funny guy.

He isn’t even just another festival act. This month, Vancouver’s Firehall Theatre premieres Debt –The Musical, a spoof on the theme of bankruptcy written by Vancouver playwright Leslie Mildiner, with songs by Butler. His migration from concert stage to the theatrical variety has been a long time in the works — 19 years, to be exact. The two started collaborating on the project while working as street entertainers in Whistler, BC in 1991. Maybe their dedication to the subject has something to do with the fact that both have lived it.

“There’s a song in the musical that’s called ‘Down Under Ground,’ says Butler, “and it’s about basement dwellers, people who live in basement suites. You buy a house, mortgage up the ying-yang; then you fix the basement suite up and rent it out to some college student or some young couple; and they pay your mortgage. So this is happening all over, and then the economic downturn comes and the house value goes way down, and the young couple in the basement can now afford to buy a house and become above ground dwellers and get their own basement dwellers. Then people get so far in debt that they lose everything and they end up back in the basement. So it’s kind of like this circle.

“And I lived that. So did Leslie.”

Now living in Courtenay, BC on northern Vancouver Island, Butler isn’t a complete stranger to theatre. His father sang with the Edmonton Opera and also ran the Alberta Opera Touring Association, which toured the province, performing productions for schools and communities. Todd toured in The Mikado with them, and also performed in musicals in high school. “I did Oklahoma, Kismet, Carousel, and, in grade 12, I played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof,” he remembers. “[Musicals were] the reason I stayed in high school.”

But it’s his pickin’ that first brought him professional notice. Butler may have made his name as a satirist, but it’s his prowess on the guitar that earns him praise from his peers. “He’s a nimble fingered maniac,” says Spirit of the West Drummer Vince Ditrich, who also drums for Butler’s band. “It’s both his blessing and his curse that he is clever and funny.” Ditrich has known Butler for a long time. “We’re both ‘recovering Albertans,’” he says. Ditrich had heard of Butler long before he met him, “because he is a brilliant musician. People see him on stage and they go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s Butler, he’s the comedian,’ then they go, ‘Holy shit! he can play!’”

Ditrich compares Butler’s conundrum to that of Steve Martin — a famous comedian who is also an exceptional banjo player. Did you know that Steve Martin used to play for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band?

Butler has never worked at anything but music. Well, almost never. “I worked three weeks as a construction schlepper. That’s it. I’ve always made a living as a musician, mainly in bars and pubs. When I got out of high school I went on the road with a rock n’ roll band and just never looked back.”

The comedy came naturally after that. “I guess I have always been able to write satire,” he says. In the late ‘90s, Butler got his big national break thanks to the Vancouver Comedy Festival, where he was a street performer. “I was doing a one-man satirical comedy show — some impressions, some parodies, some satire and stuff — and playing the guitar.” When CBC Radio producer Brian Hill turned to the festival for talent to put on the west coast leg of the radio show “Madly Off In All Directions,” its director gave him Butler’s name.

“Brian called me and said, ‘Would you like to be on ‘Madly Off In All Directions’ with Lorne Elliott?’ and I said, ‘Sure, I’d love to.’ Hill called him every year after that, for the show’s duration. “Whenever they were in western Canada, he would call me and I would be on the show. There were years I did it twice.” He even hosted the show when Elliott took a brief sabbatical. Butler boasts, “I actually hold the record — the show’s been cancelled now, so the record is untouchable — I hold the record for the most appearances on ‘Madly Off In All Directions.’”

Around the same time Butler started with “Madly Off,” he sent a parody he’d written to CBC’s morning show in Vancouver. “It was when Chretién choked that guy? I wrote a parody of a Steve Miller song called “The Joker,” and I called it “The Choker.” And I sang it as Chretié n.” Butler assumes a frighteningly accurate Chretié n voice and croons, “Some people call me the space cadet/ Some call me the gangster of Hull.”

The producers loved it. They invited him in to do a piece about Vancouver and before long they were calling him on a regular basis. “I did a show just about every week — some of them live over the phone,” says Butler. “They’d call me: ‘Todd, you know the salmon are blah, blah, blah . . . do you have any ideas?’ They made it sound like it was off the cuff, but actually they’d phoned a couple of days before. I’d put the phone down and sing into the phone.”

Another CBC connection was a co-producer for “Madly Off In All Directions,” Tracy Rideout. She moved on in her career to become head of comedy acquisitions for the national radio network and brought Todd’s music with her. “I’d produce something, record it, and send it to her and she’d send it out to all the bureaus across Canada.” Early in 2009, Butler sent her “Turkey Gravy,” Billy Bob Thornton’s “Q” debacle, “and it got played all over the place; the whole country was playing it. So the door’s still open for me there. I backed off a bit because it’s fairly time consuming and I’m working on other things.”

“Other things” include his less comedic ventures.

“I‘ve tried to get into the major folk festivals and I haven’t been able to crack it. They just won’t hire me yet. I don’t know why that is, but I think it has something to do with my penchant for parodies. I do a lot of the local festivals like Powell River. I’ve done Powell River eight years in a row and Vancouver Island Music Fest. I did the Calgary Folk Fest too, actually.” Some people would say that the latter is a major festival, but them are mere prairie folk. Apparently Butler has his eyes on even bigger stakes. He wants to be recognized as a guitarist and songwriter, not a musical satirist.

“Home” is perhaps Butler’s most well known song outside of the parody genre. He calls it his micro-hit. “And that’s thanks to one man, David Grierson. Unfortunately, he passed away. David had a morning show in Vancouver, and he asked me to come in when he heard that song, “Home.” And I thought ‘Okay, do comedy,’ because they always wanted me to do comedy, and he said, ‘No, I want you to play that one.’ So I did, and then he was really instrumental in getting that song out.”

Grierson included “Home” on a CD compilation of all his guests, including Canadian favorites like John Mann and Spirit of the West. “All these artists who are serious artists — he put me in there with them, and that really helped to expose people to the fact that I [do other music]. So now I’m really pursuing that.”

Witness his last couple of albums, Idle Canadian and Hamburger Soup. In addition to two CDs with slide guitarist Doug Cox, Butler has released another three of his own, of which only one, Todd Butler Goes Madly Off – Live, a compilation of songs and stand-up from his radio gig, is strictly comedic. Idle Canadian, on the other hand, is a collection of, as Butler describes them, “socially conscious songs.” Social consciousness, mind you, sometimes requires an even bigger sense of humour than parodies. Consider these lyrics from “Bushed”:

I’ve been terrorized, been hypnotized
I’ve been Osama lobotomized and I’m Bushed
From getting’ Dicked around
I been Rums-felled, been Colin-poled
Been Saddam down that rabbit-holed, and I’m Bushed
From gettin’ Dicked around

Socially conscious? Yes. Funny? I’m afraid so.

Next page: “I’ve dug myself into — like everyone else — a financial situation that needs to be fed. It’s this monster that’s in the corner”