A Bitter Has-Been: How Ugly!

Okay faithful readers...I pledge to you to be more diligent in my blogging!! When last I blogged the year had just begun. It is now May, and the Ha!ifax Comedy Fest is behind me. I had a fabulous time and gave a great performance in Halifax....

.....then Mike Bullard entered my life! Now, when I first approached him to say hi, he responded with "Hi Sweetheart". Those of you who know me know I have a rule about that. If you gave birth to me or you fuck me on a regular basis, you may call me a term of endearment, everyone else should call me Candy.

So, seven of us squeezed into the smallest mini-van in the world for a trip to Membertou. He thinks he knows everything about everything and was clearly not happy to have a larger than life, gay, native comic on board who was his intellectual superior. After 4 hours of obnoxious, we arrive at the venue and he introduces me like this "She's gay, she's aboriginal, and she's a lawyer, can you guess which of those I hate. Here she is now Debra Pompter."

Our relationship went down hill from there and there are too many things to describe. When I got back to Halifax and started telling people, everyone was saying "I'm not surprised, I hated him on his show". See, I think that is why it hurt and disappoint me so badly to find out he was a jerk. I LOVED his show. When I was in law school, I would study until Open Mike came on and then I would watch his show every night. I thought it was so cool how humbled he was when Burton Cummings was on, and I really related to how he must be feeling because I'm a huge fan of Cummings too. I thought it was amazing that I could watch Canadian late night for the first time.I was disappointed when he got cancelled and really looked forward to seeing something else from him.

When I found out he was coming to the festival and that we would be travelling to membertou together I expected to have some fairly decent conversations about his experiences over the years. NOT!! He was only interested in boasting and preaching. He had no respect for the fact that I am a 37 year old woman who is a columnest, a lawyer, a government beaurocrat, an activist, etc. He actually refered to us as "kids" at some point. Now if you are 80, you can call me a kid - premature balding does not give you that right.

I got the sense that there was some part of him that had kindness, but that either my race or gender or his personal and professional disappointments left him unable to show that kindness. I learned one huge lesson, no matter what happens in my comedy career, I will vow to never let my ego get that far out of control. And when I enter the realm of "has been", which we all must, I will do it with Grace. I vow never to be so desperately bitter about my lot in life.

Rock on....