One thing I have become accustomed to having spent my last couple of years immersed in the glamorous world of radio is meeting celebrities in person. Now most of the celebs I have met have been lesser-known stars, a lot of indie Canadian artists and the like, which has suited me very well, since I am big into indie Canadian artists. I met Mary Murphy when she was judging So You Think You Can Dance and she was as much of a hoot in person as she is on the small screen. I met Tre Armstrong from So You Think You Can Dance Canada and she was kind, humble, and breathtakingly gorgeous. I also met Carole Pope, as I may have mentioned once or twice, and she wasn’t as friendly as I had hoped. And although I had been warned not to expect a warm welcome from k.d. lang, she was as lovely and professional as a human being could be.

So I have learned not to expect anything one way or another from celebrities. You might catch someone on an off day and they could give you the wrong impression, or they might give you exactly the impression they wanted to give. I know better than to wear my hero goggles when meeting famous people, because in the end, once you are face-to-face with them, they cease to be the mythical creatures that fame has made of them and simply become people, and as disappointing as that may be at times, it can also be the biggest relief.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting three celebrities and an unwitting celebrity look-alike. Early in the week, Matthew Morrison stopped by the morning show on The Little Queer Radio Station That Could. He was in town doing a CD signing at a chain record store and was able to pop into the studio in person first, which was a real coup for the producer who booked it; usually someone as famous as a TV star in a top-rated Prime Time show would be too busy to offer anything but a phoner. I showed up early to work to meet him, but as it happened, the morning show hosts were being a bit overly protective of their prized visitor, so I was only very briefly able to catch him for a quick photo. He wasn’t much of a morning person, it appeared, but hey, he was on his way out the door. Plus, he was so incredibly handsome in person that I actually physically felt my breath catch in my throat when I saw him.

Note the photobomber peeking out from the room behind—that’s Pearse, about whom you will hear more in a moment. Hi Pearse!

So that flicker of a brush with celebrity was barely a spark before it faded out. I shrugged and figured I would get a bunch of work done, being that I had arrived so early in the day. However, my buddy Pearse Murray had other plans. After Mr. Morrison was ushered out the door in a cloud of record reps and publicists, Pearse came over to me and said, “Ah, well, that was that. I hope Ms. Cattrall is more receptive.”

I was like, “Ms. Cattrall? As in…Kim Cattrall?!”

And Pearse said, “Yes, I have an interview with her at ten at the Royal Alex Theatre. You want to come? You can be my producer.”

And I said, “HELLS, YES.”

So off we went to meet Kim Cattrall. She was giving a press conference to announce her co-star in the upcoming Toronto production of Private Lives at the Royal Alexandra. Cattrall had starred in the play in London’s West End, and now they were bringing it to Canada before heading to Broadway, but in the leap across the pond the production had lost its leading man to British television. Thus, they had decided to add Paul Gross to the cast in what will be his Broadway debut.

Paul Gross, it turns out, is actually an old friend of Pearse’s, so after the press conference, as the two of them were being ushered from interview to interview with television and newspaper reporters, Mr. Gross would walk by and offer subtle quips in our direction. Our little radio station is pretty low on the totem pole, so we had to wait for nearly two hours before we finally had our chance to sit down with them, but even after having given something like twenty other interviews, they were both still in very high spirits when it came to hanging out with us. They were just lovely. Polite, friendly, passionate… And also, they are both soooooo pretty.

You would think that celebrities would look less attractive in real life, what without the staff of hairdressers and makeup people on hand to keep them photo-ready. Well, actually Kim Cattrall did have a woman dusting her up with a powder puff every ten minutes or so, but still. One thing I have noticed across the board is that many of them are actually sexier in real life. Maybe it is just because I find real people sexy.

And so it wasn’t that surprising that a couple of days later when I ran into a real person who looked a lot like a celebrity, I found myself flirting a bit. I was in this gorgeous new gallery at a party for Paramount Pictures, where they were announcing the year’s new releases in theatres and on DVD. My friend and I stepped out to get some air, and this woman came strolling down the alley into which the gallery opened. She was staring unabashedly at me, smiling with such familiarity that I thought that she must know me. She looked vaguely like someone I might have recognized from somewhere, so I smiled back and said, “Hello.”

It became very clear very quickly that she did not, in fact, know me at all, but that I had thought her familiar because she looked a lot like Elizabeth Berkley.

…but, like, you know, clothed. And kind of arty. And totally hitting on me. Which was very nice. And now, see, here is the difference between how I treat celebrities and how I treat real people. Yes, I make that distinction. While I have learned—mostly—not to go all gaga over the rich and famous, I have not yet learned that trick when it comes to dealing with regular human beings. So here was this very beautiful Elizabeth Berkley-alike trying to get to know me a bit better, and all I could do was stammer and stumble and blush until I decided to take my leave and go back inside.

The entertainment industry is full of tips on how not to lose your cool over celebrities, but if anyone knows how to apply that knowledge to everyday encounters in the real world, I would appreciate the advice. Seriously, I am like, oh, whatever, you’re in Glee, you were in Sex in the City, and you used to be that Mountie guy, but here’s a woman who looks like someone who was in a movie so offensive as to be ludicrously cracktastic, and it’s—ohmigad! I don’t know what to say! HIDE ME!

And this is why I am only ever an *accidental* VIP.

I’m a writer. I like to have time to think about what I am going to say. So when the Programming Director at The Little Queer Radio Station That Could asked me to go out on a chase interview with someone who can only be described as a legend in both the Canadian music industry and in the LGBTQ community, I was quite literally shaking in my boots. This is not what I do—I write commercials, I write events listings, media releases, lifestyle segments. I voice things, but aside from a once-a-week segment on the morning show about what dykey things are going on in the city, I don’t really do live announcer work.

That said, I’m an Accidental VIP. I am not about to turn down the chance to interview the one and only k.d. lang.

Oh. Mah. Gah. I remember when k.d. lang was that crazy country punk that simultaneously wooed the Alberta country lovers with her intense voice and repelled them with her insane fashion sense. When she showed up at the 1985 Junos in a wedding dress and cowboy boots, nobody knew quite what to make of the Most Promising Female Vocalist of the year.

But the voice won out, of course. There was no fighting it when she joined Roy Orbison in duet on “Cryin’.” There is no defense against that song. It just kills you.

So although people made a bit of fun, asked questions and made assumptions about her sexuality, they still bought her music. Even when the Alberta farming industry and the government decided to disavow her many awards and accolades because of their thinly veiled homophobia her participation in PETA’s “Meat Stinks” campaign, she rose to the top of her career. And when she showed up on the cover of Vanity Fair to usher in the era of Lesbian Chic, well… *swoon*.

So anyway, as you may be able to tell, I have followed her career for some time, having shared at least some of that prairie queergirl upbringing myself. I went to this interview pretty well prepared even before doing any research on her new album. And it’s been 20-plus years since I first became aware of the existence of k.d. lang, so when she walked into the room at her Secret Toronto Hideout—yes, she has one, and I got to visit her there—she looked so familiar to me that I fairly blurted, “Well, hello, k.d. lang!”

She kind of laughed and shook my hand. She was so personable I could have cried with pleasure. I had been nervously asking other media-field friends of mine for tips on how to handle this mind-blowing event, and had been warned by more than one of them that Ms. lang could be…prickly. Not mean, but not someone to put up with amateurs, either. They could not have been more wrong. She was a total pro all the way. Thank heavens! I didn’t want to have another Carole Pope experience.

She sat down with me and chatted a bit, and we headed into the interview. I had been listening to her new album, Sing it Loud, non-stop for about a week, so I was really interested in hearing what she had to say about working with a band for the first time in twenty years. And the Alberta girl in me wanted to hear what her thoughts were on the concept of home.

When she talks about her music, her eyes just light up. It’s disarmingly gorgeous. I have to say, I have always thought k.d. lang was beautiful, but I had no idea how much more so she would be face to face. I had to concentrate on not swooning or floating away to Cloud 9—I was clenching that microphone like it was my anchor to the earth. At one point I tried to rest my elbow on the table between us and found that my arm was then shaking so noticeably that I was better off just suspending it in midair.

I had come up with some scripted questions and a plan to go off-script if the conversation took us there. However, I found myself so nervous that when I tried to take a thread of conversation and just expand on it, I would up babbling a bit too much and decided to return to the prepared questions for fear of annoying her. She was eloquent and sure in her answers, and I had to restrain myself from fangirling her too much. I think I did kind of gush a little bit at one point, but hey, that’s what editing is for. So you won’t hear it on the podcast—but trust me, it happened. In the end, I felt like it was a fairly successful interview, for a first-timer.

You can listen to my interview with k.d. lang here.

On Friday afternoon, I ended up co-hosting with my best boyfriend Mike Chalut because his co-host and show producer Acey Rowe had gone out of town. It was another first for me, but as Mike and I have such a great rapport together and I had that interview to air, we figured it would work out. Earlier this year I had tried to learn some of the technical operations that Acey undertakes when co-hosting, and decided fairly quickly that I would never want to do her job—there’s just too much to think about with editing interviews on the fly, running the sound board, and being generally personable on air. However, Mike’s job is great! We had another operator on the board for the afternoon and Mike and I just got to be generally funny and friendly on air. It’s a party!

All of that said, I am content to welcome Ms. Rowe back to her job, and to return to my desk and my writing and the precious time I have to think about my words before speaking them. It’s a lot of pressure to be that famous all of the time. And I’m just a no-account girl.

So the other day I had the following exchange with my Programming Director at The Little Queer Station That Could:

Programming Director: [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon] is going to be in town in a couple of weeks, and she’s taking interviews. She won’t be coming into the station, but she’ll be doing media from her hotel. And we’ve been offered a slot, so we need someone to do the chase interview. And you are our Dyke About Town…

Me: Um… I don’t really know anything about doing interviews. I might suck.

Programming Director: Well, there’s only one way to find out!

Me: But… would I be stepping on anyone’s toes?

Programming Director: Well, it’s sweet of you to concern yourself with how other people feel, but I personally don’t care.

Me: Hrm. I do.

Programming Director: Okay, I respect that. You can take some time to think about it, and let me know.

So I went about discussing this exchange with the people with whose toes I had concerned myself and was given the okay by all. Then I thought about all of the things that I could talk about with [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon]. We are from the same background and the same region of Canada, and we both experienced what I think of as an exodus from that region, and I have actually been alive long enough to remember her music as it crossed three or four genres, not to mention her very dramatic coming out which basically opened the door to what would become known as “lesbian chic” in the 90s. And I realised that even if I have no experience doing the announcer thing, I am very likely the perfect choice among the folks at our station for this particular interview.

So I went back to my Programming Director and told him that I am on board. On the 25th I am going to be interviewing [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon]!! I’m kinda freaking out about it. Yaiii!

I’ll fill you all in on the details after the event. And yes, I will also reveal the name of [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon], although some of the more Canadian-music-savvy of you have probably already figured that one out. Watch for it!

So in addition to granting me admission to the seminars and awards ceremonies of Canadian Music Week, my very own delegate’s pass also gave me line-bypass status to all of the gigs and concerts that make up the accompanying Canadian Music Festival. I was almost as stoked for this pass as I was for the Crystal Awards. As you may recall from my foray to NXNE last summer, I do enjoy a free passport into all of the music events I can handle.

And man oh man, was there a lot going on in Toronto last week. Sammy Hagar was here, Melissa Etheridge, Janet Jackson…it was out of the park. Of course, I wasn’t interested in any of those people. I was interested in one name : JD Samson.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Little Queer Station That Could kicked off Canadian Music Week with a queer showcase at the Gladstone. I was a bit late, so I missed out on Kevin Wong, although I heard he put on a fantastic show.

I did make it in time to catch Chris Velan, and I was thankful I did. If you like indie folk rock in the vein of Wilco, Ryan Adams, or Sufjan Stevens, you’re gonna dig this guy. I was really into him.

It was a bit odd that Creature was the act to follow; their music really didn’t fit into the more acoustic indie sound of some of the other bands of the night. But who am I kidding? I didn’t care—they were the band I came out to see. And they were well worth it. They have just enough sass and attitude on stage to keep things entertaining without becoming a stereotype of queer camp. So much fun! I think I danced three inches of my ass off. I would have danced the entire ass off, but they had just the one-hour set, and I had to save some of it for JD Samson. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Brigitte Bardot

I was going to have to get up early the next morning for those Crystal Awards, so I just couldn’t stay for Gentleman Reg. I have seen him numerous times before; he’s kind of that indie-guy-about-town—he’s everywhere. And for good reason. As my buddy Acey Rowe said about it, “If you haven’t seen Gentlemen Reg live, chances are you’re not a real Torontonian. Kind of like if you haven’t killed a cockroach with your bare hand or had a heart attack at Yonge and Dundas induced by the ‘BELIEVE IN THE LORD!’ guy… Seeing a Gentlemen Reg show is the best and most enjoyable way to confirm your Torontonian status.”

The next day, of course, I won that Crystal Award—you know, no big whoop—so I spent the rest of the day celebrating with my co-winner, other staff from our radio group, and pretty much anyone who would raise a toast with me, and consequently I didn’t actually make it out to any gigs. Oops.

And after all of that celebrating, I had to get up even earlier on Friday morning for the Trailblazers’ Breakfast, celebrating women in radio. It took about everything I had to put on my best networking face and schmooze with some very intelligent women in the business. I was pretty much dead set on going home after work and skipping out on the gigs I had planned to see that night. They were with bands I had never heard of before, and as much as I like to discover new music, I like catching up on my sleep even more.

But then that thing happened. You know the thing where a friend updates Facebook with plans to see a gig you hadn’t been aware was going to be going on, and it’s a band you checked out for the first time at last year’s NXNE and you really loved them and no amount of hungover sleep-deprivation is going to stop you from seeing them again? That thing.

In this case the band in question was The Pack A.D.—Vancouver’s dykey answer to the White Stripes and the Black Keys. As soon as we heard they were playing, Michelle and I switched gears from tired and lazy to awesome and fantastic and excited. We got our gear on and headed down to meet some friends at the Bovine, a Queen Street institution that has been around for about 20 years now. Its façade is decorated with a mass of rusted bicycles, hub caps, and various assorted yard tools in a bizarre sculpture. You can’t miss it.

Interesting as it is to look at, it’s a narrow and dank space inside, and it’s always inevitably filled with punk and metal boys, which can be a pain in the butt—literally. We managed to get to the front of the stage for The Pack, but we were so wedged in that I could practically feel the bulge of the fella behind me wedging itself into my…well, my behind. It wasn’t pleasant.

Nonetheless, the show was awesome. There wasn’t much room to dance, but I did my best to rock out. The hotness of Becky Black makes up for a lot of discomfort. We stuck around for their set and then headed out to other, roomier bars in which to find libations.
Cobra Matte

And Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to from the moment I looked at the CMW lineup. I have finally caught up with myself! Saturday was all about JD SAMSON. Specifically, MEN was going to be playing at Sneaky Dee’s. My love for JD stems from my love for Le Tigre, which itself stemmed from my love for Bikini Kill and Kathleen Hanna. There was a time in my life when I believed that Bikini Kill was the best band ever to have existed in history. That time was last week. It comes and goes, actually. From time to time I really need to scream out all of my feminist rage.

And at other times, I just really need to dance. Saturday was one of the latter times. Let me tell you, MEN provided everything I needed to do just that. Great beats, great energy, and great lyrics—the whole package. In fact, they even covered a Bikini Kill song! My brain would have exploded if I hadn’t been busy dancing the remaining inches of my ass off. It was fan-freaking-tastic!

After the show, I made my way up to the front, where JD was striking the stage in preparation for the next act. I screwed up all of my courage to squeak out that I worked in radio and would really like it if she would like to contact us whenever she was in town. She nodded, took my card, and said, “Thanks, I will.” I turned into a thirteen-year-old fangirl and *died*.
Off Our Backs

I pulled myself together and made my way over to El Mocambo, where Acey’s derby team was having a fundraising dance party. If there was anything left of my ass to dance off, I did so there. My friends arm-wrestled derby girls with varying levels of success, and we spent about four hours on that dance floor. It was the perfect way to cap off the festival.

I don’t know if it was because it was past four in the morning when I got home, if it was the beer I drank, or if it was the fact that I had danced parts of my body into oblivion, but on my way back to my humble abode at last, I managed to fall up the stairs. What I can tell you about that is that it sure beats falling down.

It was time to call it a night, and you know, I’ll also call it one of the best weeks I have enjoyed in a good long time.

Last night I went to see Margaret Cho, and had the good fortune to attend a meet-and-greet first. It was short, but sweet. There were about twenty-five people there, and only a half an hour in which to meet and greet before Ms. Cho would have to go backstage and prep for the show. As most of these things go, it was basically a chance to line up to get a quick photo and an autograph, but it beat watching Uma Thurman breeze by in a cloud of publicists, bodyguards, and hangers-on.

And I got a signed DVD out of the deal. Sadly, I had to pay for the drink.

So that was fun. The show, as one might expect, was hilarious. Good times were had. What more can I really say? Cho!

One of my heroes came into the radio station today. Well, hero is a strong word. A minor celebrity who I had always believed deserved bigger celebrity than she had received, let’s say. Mike and Acey invited me to stay after work and sit in on the interview, not in small part because I was the only one of the three of us who had ever heard of Carole Pope. Beyond that, I was actually something of a fan.

I respected a woman who was singing about creaming her jeans over a girl back when even Joan Jett was in the closet. When Pope’s book Anti Diva came out in the 90s, I bought it and ate up every last shamelessly dropped name. So Mike and Acey figured I would be a good addition to the interview—I could ask her about something more than what I had Googled for the afternoon show prep.

So when she arrived, I met her at the door, which was locked for the after-hours, offered to get her a glass of water, and introduced myself. She was entirely non-plussed. Fine, woman’s busy; I understood.

However, when I returned with the water, I asked whether it would be alright if I sat in on the interview, because I had followed her career and was interested in what she had to say.

Ms. Pope gave me a long once-over with a curl to her lip and said, “I….suppose so,” in a way that clearly meant, “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

So I left. And when I got home in the evening, my copy of Anti Diva went to the curb.

As TIFF continues on, I have been at the receiving end of a few invitations to post-film parties. It both tickles me and annoys me that I couldn’t get tickets to any of the films I wanted to see, but I can still gain access to these VIP parties.

Last night the big shindig was a party for Uma Thurman at Brassaii. I was like, Uma Thurman party? Count me in. I have been starstruck by her since I saw her sporting those ridiculous prosthetic thumbs in the horrible Hollywood adaptation of Even Cowgirls get the Blues.

Mikey was like, “Show up at around 9, before the crowd sets in, we’ll take some photos on the red carpet, and we’ll go in. Done!”

So Michelle and I proceeded to get ourselves dolled up for Uma and for Brassaii. I had not yet been to this club, but had been assured that it was “the place to be” by a number of higher-ups at the radio station. In fact, earlier this summer I recall one of my coworkers making a sidelong remark to another coworker that this club was not really the kind of place where one of the butchier dykes at the station would fit in. I believe the exact words were, “Brassaii isn’t exactly a [Butchdyke] kind of place,” followed by some derisive laughter.

As something of a butch myself, I thus felt both vindicated and maliciously pleased when Mike very plainly and publicly offered to me and me alone his invitation to this TIFF party, right in front of the very person who had made that remark. Take that, exclusionist! Fine, I was feeling a bit exclusive myself, but at least I based my elitism on not being a snob, rather than fitting into some heteronormative ideal of beauty. *ahem*

Anyway, so as we were leaving the house, I got an urgent text from Mikey: “Babe, meet me at the corner of King and Spadina and I will let you in. Security’s being a bitch.”

So we went to King and Spadina and met up with Mikey, who was looking very fetching in his black-on-black, if a bit stressed out. He led us not to the front door of Brassaii, as I would have expected, but along Spadina to an alley behind the King Street businesses. As he strode along, seemingly effortlessly picking past the stashes of garbage strewn throughout the alley, he explained that Uma’s publicist was something of a…handful, let’s say. She was throwing Hollywood agents out of their own party, and security was instructed not to let anyone in, even those who had been invited to the event. It was a bit out of hand. He would explain more later, but for the time being, he parked us outside the fence separating the alley from the Brassaii patio.

There we crouched quietly in our fancy pants and suit jackets until Mikey appeared on the opposite side of the fence to let us in through a discreet gate that led in behind the patio bar. We just sneaked into a TIFF party through a back alley. Good times.

I soon learned why Mikey had been so stressed. Uma Thurman’s party was inside the restaurant portion of the building, closed off by a sheer white curtain from the irritated milieu of media folk who had been invited to the event only to be kept outside of it. Apparently nobody is permitted to see Uma eat. The patio was full of disgruntled agents, screenwriters and assorted media personnel in dark blue jeans with black turtlenecks and blazers. One agent complained that she had been thrown out of her own party by Uma Thurman’s publicist.

Apparently the publicist had also called Brassaii about a half an hour in advance of their arrival to demand Mexican food for her charge, although there is no Mexican food on Brassaii’s menu. The publicist, however, was adamant—Uma Thurman, it turns out, is on a Mexican-only diet. That’s a new one for me. I do appreciate a good burrito, though. There’s a Z-Teca down the street, if you want. I am pretty sure Brassaii ordered the food in from somewhere else, though.

The bar had been bought out for the entire week by a certain online social media company, which had hired camera people to film the events for its website. Those camera people were also ousted from the goings on inside the place, even when invited to shoot by guests at the party. This seemed an especially unfortunate choice, because the film hasn’t been picked up yet and doesn’t even have a trailer. In fact, of all of the people I met at this party, nobody even knew the exact title of the film—so one might think that a little bit of publicity on one of the most pervasive social media networks would be welcomed. But…no.

On the glamorous side of things, there were certainly quite a few notable names about. I saw Jason Reitman grabbing some air and texting on the patio. The ousted agent chatted him up for some time, possibly in hopes of regaining access to her party.

Henry Winkler, whose son directed the film, was also there, and let me tell you, the Fonze is no diva. In fact, he was inviting people to take photos with him while he waited for his son to get his coat. Security, of course, nixed the photos, so I didn’t get to pose with him. The best I can offer is this:

‘Eeeeeeyyyyyy. Total highlight of the night. Well, that and the open bar.

Finally, there was a buzz among the media milieu. “She’s coming! Here she comes!” And so, feigning our best Toronto ennui, we banished partygoers sipped at our gins-and-tonics and cut our eyes as though only mildly interested at the Hollywood royalty passing us: Uma Thurman gliding by, escorted by that notorious publicist and an entourage of agents, security burlies, and assistants, with the flash of a pink scarf and that face that stops you and makes you think that the five seconds that it took for her to traverse the length of the patio lasted at least five minutes. She’s just so very, very pretty. It kinda makes the diva antics of an over-protective publicist worth the trouble.

Not enough trouble for me to repeat the process for the Keanu Reeves party tonight, though. I had my TIFF experience, and I think I’ll sit the next one out.