From my friend Naomi: “everybody wants to talk about weddings, but nobody wants to talk about marriage.” Go to a wedding with your new girlfriend! It’s a great way to ruin the relationship! Open bar. I know it’s expensive, but man does it make the wedding more bearable for the guests. “OhmyGoddidn’tshelookbeautiful?shelookedsobeautifulandtheyareso inlove anddidyouseeherweddingdressandthatring?iwantmyweddingtobe justlikethat!!!“…
Ten things I've learned from the gym locker room
There are ‘naked guys‘ and there are ‘afraid to be naked guys‘. The former strut around clothesless, chatting away. The latter use a towel like a forcefield, desperately trying to put on underwear. Men who brag loudly about sexual exploits are, most of the time, lying. It’s not hard to tell. Why do some guys…
Ten things I’ve learned from selling kitchen supplies door-to-door
People do not like to be bugged at home. Cookies and tea and some real human hospitality are a miracle for a teenage lad in the freezing Toronto winter. If you steal change from a donut store to pay for a day-old bag of donuts, you are a bad human being. If you hire teenagers…
March Guest Post Madness!
So heads up…this March, I will be featuring some guest posts from some of my favourite people in the world! If you would like to be featured and for some reason I have yet to ask you to write a post (because I am a stupid person), please don’t hesitate to holla. These are…
Ten things I've learned from going to raves
When you are a teenager, being allowed to enter bars and nightclubs makes you feel all grown up. The defining moment for me, when I realized that raving might not be all it’s cracked up to be, was when I went to a party and saw a 12-year old girl sitting on the floor, tweaking…
Ten things I've learned from fighting in elementary school
The Karate Kid move, where you stand on one leg, and the other guy looks at the bent leg in the air, and then you kick with the leg you were standing on…that move sort of works. A grade 6 fighting a grade 4 is lame. A grade 6 fighting 3 grade 4’s is bad-ass!…
Ten things I've learned from my Bar Mitzvah
When you learn the parsha for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah, you have to learn both Hebrew letters and notes. The trick is that when you are actually up at the bimah in front of everybody, the Torah doesn’t have notes in it! So you just have to remember. Luckily, your shitty, adolescent breaking voice will cover…
Ten things I've learned from making eye contact
Keep your head up, in basketball and in life. It really helps to see what’s going on around you. Court vision. Holding eye contact can be threatening, powerful, awkward, meaningful, sad, or passionate. It’s hard to be apathetic when you are staring into somebody’s eyes…it evokes some kind of emotional response. When you want to…
Ten things I've learned from being depressed
Depression isn’t a constant…it comes and goes. Being depressed often has little to do with how much you have or don’t have. A good job, a relationship, friends, money…none of those things necessarily mean that you will avoid the emotional or physical manifestations of depression. Being friendly and happy can be incredibly draining when it’s…
Ten things I've learned working for charities
Free is never really free. A friend who helps you as a favour or a volunteer (great as they are) do not have the same accountability of paid professionals. You can get by with a lot less than you think you need to get by. People talk a lot about overpaid non-profit staff, but I…
Ten things I've learned from meeting celebrities
If you have an opportunity to ask one question of a seminal funk and jazz musician, do not ask “who’s your favourite rapper?” Celebrities are just like us, only they aren’t. And both of you know it. “When you try to pull a girl, who is also famous too…it feels just like when you wasn’t…
Ten things I've learned from making speeches
Speak to the back of the room. Keep your chin up. Body language is often more impactful than the words you are saying. You are as confident as you feel. Speeches should be, ideally, memorized. Second best is off-the-cuff with bullet-point notes. Worst is read straight off the page without looking up. The audience is…
Ten things I've learned from my mom
Comedy may not be genetic, but it sure helps to have a funny mom. In my case, my mom was professionally funny (she was in the Air Farce when it was a sketch troupe called “The Jest Society”!). Even if you are 5 feet and change, you can be very intimidating with the right gestures…
Ten things I’ve learned from getting a mohawk in high school
When a seemingly conventional person makes an unconventional statement, everybody around them notices. Maintaining a mohawk is harder than you might initially think. You need “Ice” spray, or egg whites, the right comb, and a lot of time. There was a time when punk music was relevant, exciting, and anti-authoritarian. It may not sound the…
Ten things I’ve learned from passive-aggression
Note: I have both perpetuated and been the recipient of passive-aggressive behaviour. The internal logic that says it is reasonable to, say, steal somebody’s milk because they made too much noise last night does not function the same way in the outside world. Writing a note may still result in a confrontation at a later…
Ten things I've learned from networking events
Over 90% of strangers you meet at any given event will be boring people you have very little in common with. At first glance, most people will probably feel the same way about you. Schmoozing and socializing well is a learned skill. It takes a lot of training to do well, and even then, you…