Please hang up and try again.

I will never make fun of people who use pay phones again.
Probably.

Until recently, I thought pay phones were for the kinds of people that likely shouldn't be making phone calls in the first place.
Either that or for people who shouldn't be making movies in the first place....

Alexander the no so great.

Maybe it's just me but I've never walked by someone on a pay phone and thought "Man, I hope they're calling me." 

But this all changed when a pay phone recently helped remind me of something I had forgotten.

"Excuse me sir could you please repeat that? I'm having trouble hearing you. Maybe you could go somewhere more quiet?" Her words, while phrased JC Penny neutral, dripped of that special kind of irritation you only get when calling 1800-pleasehold numbers. The lady on the other end of the phone was from MasterCard and she had the all the warmth of the waiting room at an abortion clinic.

Nothing kills like abortion jokes....

I'm sorry?

Annnnnnyways.......

You're welcome for holding

Just getting her smarmy voice on the line had been a battle. I had already plugged a hand full of different sized pesos into this graffiti magnet of a pay phone while trying different arrangements of international prefix numbers. All of these, ending up with the same spanish recording that I'm pretty sure could be Google translated to "Fuck you very much good bye.
I am Jack's soaring blood pressure. What the hell am I going to do if this doesn't work?!

And then it happened:


Finally, a real human voice. I was through. I had broken on through to the other side.

"I said my credit card has been scammed and I need you to put an immediate hold on it!" but even as I said it I knew she couldn't hear me. I might as well have been Ahab calling from inside a whale.
Frustration building.

All she could hear was the little old street musician playing his madness-inducing music box a meter away from me as he busked for changed. The very same "musician" who had been playing this very same ten second long ice cream truck jingle on loop outside of my bedroom window for every day since I had moved in a week ago.
I was dangerously close to making like Nicholas Cage's acting chops and losing it all together.

Serenity now.

I tried saying it again. I covered the mouthpiece and yelled "My credit card has been scammed!"

Nevermind! I want the blue pill!

And then before she could respond, the music finally stopped.

And that's when the earthquake started.

Let's rewind a month shall we?

I was back in South Africa, ticket in hand, about to board a plane to Miami. Saying goodbye to the great friends I met there and to the city of Capetown that I had called home for the last three months was a particularly hard one.

That's what she said.

My three months in Cape Town had been three of the best months of my life. I could easily go on about my travels there, but I'll save that for another post. SA was jammed packed like a little burrito full of adventures and great new found amigos, I could easily see it being a place I settle down in one day. Thing is, I guess I'm not ready to settle down just yet. Still too many empty pages staring at me in the passport. So here I found myself at the airport, watching all of my possessions packed in a single suitcase roll away on the conveyor belt once again. As usual, it was a little hard letting go.

I'll never let go Jack!

But as the 80's hair ballad goes: Here I go again on my own... and so I did.

I flew into Miami International and was met by the big unabashed smile of my always there for me father. Side note: If ever you need to rely on a guy; old Sexy Dexy is the perfect Who wants to be a millionaire lifeline. Sure, he may show up with his shirt on backwards/inside out, covered in please don't hug me stains and smelling like he rode a goat from Burning Man to get there...... but I'm lucky to have a Pops who's there for me like Dexter seniór.
So of course we went back to his retirement complex to hit the pool and pick up chicks. Fifteen minutes later I was bored out of my mind like Bush in a library and ready to jet back to the airport. Don't get me wrong, I love my Dad and it's nice to hear his cyclical/interesting stories but I belong at his retirement community like Jay Leno belongs in comedy.

Soon enough I said good bye and traded in the old people smell for more airline food to find myself in Toronto.
Sans jacket. Muchos snow.

Regret is a funny thing.

Ahhh Toronto. You are like that movie Frozen....only with less singing and more eclectic poofy scarfs. Yet, while you are angrily cold in weather, you're warmth is in the smiles of old friends and quickly enough, you gave me a jacket for my back and a proper Canadian beer for my hand.

"Are you guys laughing in English or Chinese!?"

I spent a week catching up with good buddies who were gracious enough to let me home their couches in exchange for exaggerated South African adventure stories. A week well spent, Toronto is another one of those cities I could easily see myself calling home.
Just not yet.
And so faster than an online sellout for Cochella tickets, I was back in the air, this time ditching the jacket for a sombrero and heading south to the land of the no shame afternoon nap:
Mexico City.
Realizing I was going to live in an entirely new culture; I decided it would be respectful and smart to show up educated on the ways of the locals.
 So I did my homework.

Months earlier while in Cape Town, I had set myself up with another modelling contract, this time in Mexico City and as is standard arrangement, when I got off the plan, a man holding a misspelled "Kebin Patje" sign picked me up and brought me to my new casa.
Now, after years of doing this whole model to travel pony show, I have no illusions when it comes to the apartment the agency sets up for me. It's invariably a tired, run down apartment, furnished with bunk beds that are crammed full of Russian models who smell like cigarettes and who speak english but chose not to.

This pic usually doesn't make the portfolio

This apartment however was a game changer. A whole-nother-level of suck. It looked like it had just gotten out of a relationship with Chris Brown.
Being inside it was more depressing that reading YouTube comments.
It was a crack house. To be fair, nobody in the house was actually smoking crack, but it was the kind of house that made you think that maybe you should start. It was a 3 bedroom apartment that housed 15 people. The place was packed tighter that a crack-filled piñata at Rob Fords re-election party.
As I opened the door to what would be my room, the door fell off the hinges onto the floor in a perfect foreshadowing what my working relationship would be like with my new agency.

Like Bruce Wayne needing therapy: the writing was on the wall.

But I mean literally. There was actually a lot of writing on the wall.

I don't think I swore enough in this video

So two weeks later, after a lot of carefully worded emails, I finally managed to get out of my contract, said hasta luego to the crack house/bat cave as well as agency and headed out to make things good again.

Green means good.

Soon enough, my newly appointed broski German Will and I found a great new place in the madhouse that is down town Mexico City. We also found a new agency to represent me and get me working. The new place was perfect.....even if the street came equipped with weirdos dressed like hungover Mexican Avengers who didn't make the tryouts.

Side note: Since when have I had a stutter?




Slightly weird? Sure, but I chose to see it as "quirky" and besides; there was even this little old man playing a music box outside our place for us when we moved in.
How nice of him.





So ya, things were looking up. Only problem was that the new agency wasn't advancing me weekly money (standard practice for most contracts) and I had yet to be paid for my Cape Town work. Luckily MasterCard and I had a back up plan. So I started swiping the plastic to help get my new place set up and German Will and I moved in.
Life was good. Green goodness shakes aplenty.
And then it wasn't.

You mean there won't be an "Are we there yet 3?"

In the span of one day Will got his wallet pic-pocketed and my master card got scammed (from a transaction made in Toronto of all places) and just like that I found myself apologizing to a pay phone for years of ridiculing it's cell phone challenged patrons.
I was by myself in the middle of one of the craziest streets in Mexico City, surrounded by the Hungover Mexican Avengers, with absolutely no cash and no way to get more.
And then an earthquake hit.

Now I realize starting this post with a "holy crap an earthquake!" plot twist and then not coming back to it until now was kinda douchey of me. Especially when said earthquake was only enough to shake the buildings and to finally stop the music box from hell....but it wasn't without it's reverberations.

Standing there, about to loose my shit like Axel, in one of the biggest cities in the world with everything going wrong around me. In the middle of a perfectly timed plot device of an earthquake, I was struck with two things:
One being that I'm pretty sure someone had used this phone booth as an emergency baño at some recent point.
And two being that things have a tendency to fall apart.
Sometimes life is a crazy disaster and it just does whatever it wants, regardless of your well laid plans.
Staring at the painted look on hungover Mexican Hulk's styrofoam face as he watched the buildings over top of us sway to and fro, MasterCard lady still squeaking polite annoyance in my ear.........all I could do was laugh.
Much to the dismay of the voice on the other end.
Some things, you just can't control. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things will still go to shit. You can plan for the worst and hope for the best but it doesn't change what's going to happen....and that's ok. Because it's got to be that way so best accept it and get on with finding happiness in the little things:

You can have your issues in a tissue and you can cry in your pie but all it will leave you with is a mess to clean up afterwards.

Why couldn't you just eat your emotions like everyone else?

These last couple years of travelling have taught me more than I ever would've thought about not only letting go but in trusting myself to be ok when I do. A lesson just as valuable as all the interesting jobs, adventure-filled memories and smiling friends. This life, for all of its troubles, is so very much worth it. The only thing more astounding than being alive is the realization that one day you won't be so why spend our little flash in the pan of life angry?
But try telling that to the Mexican Hulk.



So with that I will leave you with a choose your own adventure of extremely inappropriate similes to end this post.
I don't know what tomorrow brings but I know that......

Like a midget at a urinal: I'll have to stay on my toes.
Or
Like a blind man at an orgy: I'll have to feel this one out.
Or
Like a Japanese bukakke: I'll take it as it comes

As always, the choice is yours.

;)



Hasta luego amigos.

There’s no feeling like it.

You’ve been sitting there for what seems like forever. "Why did they want me here at 5am? It's already 2pm." you think to yourself. Something must be wrong. You wonder “Did they forget about me?" A PA walks by and says the line that has been said on a million sets before: “Hurry up and wait.”

Hilarious. 

The studio world around you is a buzz with movement. It's the land of make believe and it is a beehive of activity. You see grips and lighting guys running around as they light the set for the next shot. Guys on ladders, hanging off dolly lifts, people carrying all sorts of GAK (general term for film gear), all of it vital for the shot. You're watching a film crew doing what they do best....... but today they seem more like tired and angry deck hands on a pirate ship. Outside of the crew, there's the clients. They are exactly as one would imagine: Starbucks drinking, well dressed artist types with a clear distinction between them and the swashbuckling GAK carriers. The clients sit far off in their little client area, near crafty, huddled around their tiny playback screen. Story boards in hand, they discuss every little detail into infinity. They are flanked by a team of creative and marketing specialists doing more of the same.

Next, you spot the director; the captain of this make believe making ship. Sitting quietly in his chair, headphones on, he is deep in thought knowing all of this is sitting on his shoulders. His general on set is his 1st assistant AD and she's currently telling everyone “WE GOTTA GO!!!” 

You think back.

Getting here wasn’t easy. Your agent messaged you that you have a casting. You showed up excited only to see a hundred other guys who looked just like you. Perfect. 

You sat there in the casting waiting room listening to each guy deliver the same lines, one at a time, waiting for your turn. Your eager enthusiasm depreciating by the second. Finally they called your name: “Number#224?” You went into the black hole that is the casting room, did who knows what and left, only to then do your best take in the parking lot while sitting in your car.

You always nail it in the car.

A week or so later you got the call back against half a dozen guys. That time you think you may have done your perfect parking lot take in the actual casting room. A big plus. Then days later, the second call back, only this time against 2 or 3 actors. At that point, you really wanted the job, had already spent the money in your head and had grown to secretly hate the other men in the room. Just look at number 225. Who does he think he's kidding? Like a lamb to the slaughter. No chance he-

“Number 224?” 

 The black hole summons.

After that, came the waiting. 

God you HATE the waiting.

The next day was spent waiting for the call from your agent. You phone sat in silence. Staring at you. Mocking you. Nothing. 

Check? Was it on silent? Did I miss a text? No....still nothing.

Damn you #225. You and your perfect cheekbones.

What seemed like eons later, the phone came alive and the call ID said “AGENT". You knew It could only be one of two things. Usually, it’s the “Bad news mate, you’ve been released from the option” call. Better luck next time.

But not this time my friend. This time you booked it.

Elation ensues.

Next up you found yourself at the fitting. This is where they decided what you will wear for the shoot. After too many hours gone by and more dress-up parties than the Oscars, they still came up with nothing because for some reason the stylist pulled all XL size clothes for you.

Good thing you wrote on three separate casting sheets that you are a medium.

Good thing.

So they had you come in for a new fitting. 

This time the clothes were a large and they brought pins to “synch" everything up tight on the day.

A well-oiled machine.

Then if you’re lucky, the director wants to do a rehearsal before the shoot day. You met and went over every little detail, planning it all meticulously knowing in all likelihood you would throw it all away once on set. Regardless, it was a good chance to meet the director one-on-one and get to know his style. He seemed nice. After the rehearsal you were pumped. You felt like a true actor. You couldn't wait to get to set. The night before shooting finally came. You got to bed early so you could hurry up and not sleep. As you lay there, your mind played back a million scenarios of the next day. Most ending with an eventual Oscar speech. You closed your eyes for a second only to hear the alarm laughing at you as it screeches its inhuman 4am wail. 

"Maybe I could call in sick?" you thought.

“They're ready for you,” he says. You look up and see the third AD’s tired face looking through you. It brings you back to reality as he starts leading you to set. You suddenly need to pee. Badly.

You’ve never been very good with time management have you? 

He speaks into his walkie “I have him and we are travelling to you now.” Your heart starts going. “Copy that,” you hear the 1st AD say. 

The hurry up and wait ship has sailed.

You’re ushered into set and immediately hit with the stuffy smell of atmospheric smoke and the sweat of 200 or so people. It’s a mix of a dark, packed room with strategically placed blinding lights. The 3rd AD leads you to your mark (a T-shaped piece of coloured tape telling you were to stand). Then he’s replaced with the hair and make-up team. The onslaught begins. They feverishly poke and prod you with “final touches” like a pack of stylish OCD chimps cleaning you for ticks. Next up: the wardrobe department joins in and starts tugging on your clothes. “Your pants are creased. You didn’t sit down in these did you?!" She starts tucking in your shirt for you, hands down your pants. “This shirt really doesn’t fit you. You should've worn a medium”.

What was I thinking?

 “Where you playing with your hair?” the key hairstylist says as she re-sprays hair spray into your forehead. One of them starts smearing lip balm all over your lips with a finger that smells like she just smoked a pack of cigarettes. A likely scenario. The puttering tornado goes on and on until you're dangerously close to going Jerry Maguire when you hear the the 1st AD say those two magic words: “Walk away”. With that, the chic rape and pillage of your personal space comes to an end and the pack scurries off back to the shadows.

Next the director comes up to you and gives you a hurried breakdown of what’s going on. They call it blocking and it means planning out the physical movements of your scene. You remember this from your rehearsal but this time the look on his face is very different. Nice guy gone, this is no longer a discussion. Art class is over.

A camera guy sticks a measuring tape in your face and asks you if you plan on moving? “Make sure to keep it exactly the same as in the blocking or else you’ll be out of focus” he says. No eye contact from him. He seems pre-angry at you.

Don’t move. Got it.

You look up and realize that there are now about 100 or so extras all staring at you and most of them have the same look on their face of “I could do it better.” You recognize some of the guys from waiting room that you did your first casting against. Might be a bad time to go and say hi. Ok. Time to focus. You start to think about your character and what you’re doing in the scene. “Ok, what did the director say about my eyeline and when am I supposed to banana to the left? Do I do that before or after-"STAND BY!” the 1st AD blares into her walkie. “Quiet on set we ARE shooting the rehearsal lock it up.” A sound guy to your left says “Sound speed.” He sounds like he's sound asleep. You however are feeling anything but. Every atom in your body is WIDE AWAKE. Vibrating. You feel yourself sweating through your X-large shirt as one of the pins holding it tight pops out and stabs you in the back. Your mouth feels like you made out with a bag of flour and you would gladly club a baby seal for a sip of water. 

No time. 

There’s a dozen bright lights blaring into your eyes and you can barely see anything now (except for the giant camera staring at you that you're pretending not to notice). You feel your brow begin to cook the make up, hairspray and sweat into a nice, flesh-coloured face mud. You wonder if they can see your heart beating out of your chest. Good thing for that X-large shirt. 

“Don’t look in the lens,” you tell yourself. “Eye line to the left, cheat for camera and banana to the right two beats after my line…. wait. Or was it..”

From out in the darkness you hear the director yell “JUST BE NATURAL”. 

The award for best direction goes to....

The 1st AD blares into her walkie: “Stand by …….annnnnnd roll camera.” A camera assistant to your right puts a clapper in front of your face. “Scene 24 Apple take 1”.

!!!CLAP!!!

Then silence.

Everything is quiet now. The set is completely still. No more activity. No more waiting. 200 people stop what they’re doing and all look at you.

Expectations.

I am Jack's raging adrenal gland.

The director:

“Action”

That moment, that feeling...... it's why you put up with all that other stuff. It's why you do what you do. Because there’s no other feeling like it. 


What a rush.

There's no place like home.

It's 1:32 am and I'm sitting on the floor of a friends living room. My gracious hosts have long since gone to sleep and I'm left sitting in their abode feeling a little out of place in the silence. "Make yourself at home" they say in hospitable fashion before they retire. Once again, I'm the guy on the the couch. It's become my go-to move as of late.

But I'm still far from used to it.

Home it is not.

Illuminated by the glow of my trusty laptop, I think back on how I got here as the fridge hums it's dulling tune. My mind cataloguing the last couple months of memories, I stare out the window. It frames me a Toronto snowstorm more miserable than Rob Ford's publicist and an immediate desire for someone to deliver me a fireplace.

I picked a hell of a time to visit this frozen city. Rewind a week and I'd still be in Florida, beach under my feet, flip flops in hand. Look a little further and you would find me back in the cold, this time in the northern city of Edmonton. On a friends snowmobile, I push it towards the disappearing reddish sun as it sets into the frozen horizon of the Alberta countryside. It's a picturesque, perfectly Canadian scene as the soft, pillowy snow disappears beneath me, naked trees whipping by in the distance as the sun, relents to the moon. And yes, under my snow gear, I'm wearing flannel. Playing hockey and sipping syrup.

Canadian indeed.

A week before that, the only snow to see is peaked atop the mountains standing guard over Vancouver. They look through the window of this mornings breakfast diner, stealing my attention.

In front of me is a heart attack inducing creation called the Eggs benny pulled pork poutine. I'm pretty sure it's the reason things like cross fit needed to be invented. Beside my "breakfast" is a long missed friend that I will spend the rest of the day catching up with. No Skype needed this time. It's been a long time coming.

I rewind my mind further still to a week earlier, watching two friends standing at a beachside altar. The minister recites his bonding words as the two lovebirds stare into each others eyes. We're in the Mayan Riviera and our bride is beaming as her soon to be husband tries to hold back his tears. It's a fight he's not winning and soon his cheeks are no more dry than we are under the Mexican sun that has us melting through our nicely ironed shirts. The night brings us a full moon that is the brightest I've ever seen and it illuminates a choreographed wedding dance that won't soon be forgotten.

Back to the timeline. A week earlier and I'm floating in a sea of painkillers that are failing to mute my screaming body. The doctor says it's called Sciatica from a herniated disc and it has me feeling like I'm wearing a pant leg made out of volcano. How it happened is beyond me but walking is no longer a luxury I indulge in. Instead, I've old man hobbled into my friends back yard to watch the sun set into his San Diego skyline. I've always been a sucker for a good sunset and this one doesn't disappoint. It's a stunning mural of yellow, orange, pink and purple. I take it in while giving back a little ukelele but it's a lopsided affair. I doubt the sunset appreciates my ode to Sir Mix Alot's Baby got back as much as I enjoy it's sundown sacrifice but I'm not taking requests. The sound of happy barking turns me around to see my friend flanked by his two dogs, Tucker and Ella. He's wearing a big goofy smile on his face and he soon gets me laughing again, taking my mind off the pain. It seem like it's been days since we last saw each other.

It's been over three years.

Back on memory lane the trip continues. Heading towards the starting line of this journey I'm on a blur of buses, trains, and more than a couple planes (a two month tally of 20), taking me all the way back to where the most uncomfortable mattress in the world lives; my Bangkok bedroom. I find myself lying there, sweat beading on my brow, heart racing as I panic over how I'm going to do this travel-filled 2 month adventure with a back that has all the can-do of Mr. Burns's white blood cell count. Just two hours ago my back went into full go-fuck-yourself mode for no apparent reason. Now I'm panicking like a drug mule who's got the runs at the airport. Going back to this memory, me lying on a mattress that feels like it's stuffed with coat hangers and Xmas lights; I think I may have just put together why my back is angry.

Usually a bed isn't this uncomfortable until the morning after.... but like I said; no apparent reason.

This disc-angering bed housed me for two months after I left Hong Kong and while it was uncomfortable because it was stuffed with what I can only assume were dinosaur bones and car accident scraps, I was ready for it to feel off. I knew it wouldn't feel right before I ever laid down on it's angry, menopausal springs. It was apparent in the way that all beds I've slept on for the last 2 years haven't felt right. They just don't felt like home.

Because they aren't.

But neither were the beds I found during my last two months in Canada.

I had been warned that that might happen when I returned back to the great white north but it still

"hit home"

What can I say? I'm a sucker for puns.

There's a hidden truth that only becomes apparent after you've been gone for too long a time.

You can't go home again.

Of course everyone who reads this has gone on vacations and travelled only to return feeling glad to be "home sweet home"……. but for a select few who travel indefinitely, it's a different welcome when they return. A different feeling.

Some people travel to get a tan and forget work for a couple weeks. Others do it to backpack through Europe before starting a career after uni. But for those who see it how I do, you go for a different reason. You don't go to escape your life but instead you go to find it.

For me, life has never been where you were born but instead where you choose to make it. I've been moving since I was little and maybe that's why I always felt like I had one foot out the door. When people ask me where I'm from, I've never really known how to answer, as a handful of cities come to mind. These days I just say I travel. I say the same thing when someone asks me what I do for a living (a question I don't like answering).

But that's a story for another day.

I remember that exciting feeling of being at the beginning of an unknown new adventure the first time I left North America. It was exactly two years ago today (January 10th 2012) and ever since then things have had no choice but to be different. When I left Canada, I knew that it would be a different experience. That it wouldn't feel like home and I was ready for that (and it certainly didn't disappoint in the "different" category).

But what I wasn't ready for was that when I returned, home wouldn't feel like home either.

Don't get me wrong, this last two months of traveling across Canada has been an awesome experience. I indulged in Canada's greatest resource of quality people and I enjoyed every day I was here. Every breath of fresh Canadiana air but it revealed to me that I'm not ready to find my home here anymore. Not now anyways.

It's a realization that came as I watched my now married friends holding their newly borns in their suburban homes.

I saw it every time I had to jump the ever-widening gap to relate to old friends.

I saw it when I sat quiet in a group of conversing buddies, unable to un-see the North American traits my overseas friends use to see in me.

I saw it there, in between the lines.

That Kinder egg surprise that something was "different". 

I did my best to downplay it's presence; but it was there. Worse still, I knew that I couldn't share it with anyone without further alienating myself. One thing that travelling teaches you is how to figure out things on your own, Han Solo and this one of those situations. 

Somewhere along the way, this whole thing has changed me and while I deeply believe it's for the better, I know that it comes with a price. Whether it's two years abroad or two months back home; the price is there. It's not in the thousands of dollars I've spent on flights or in the airline headaches and hours spent in layover. Nor is it in the lost bags, or the countless times I've been ripped off based on my skin colour. It's none of those.

Tonight, that price is an uncomfortable couch in what should be a comfortable room.

And as my mind plays back a mere handful of valued memories from a trip home, one packed full of good times spent with friends;

I know it's a price I'm willing to pay.

I started this post on a cold Toronto living room floor and while it's writing has taken me down a trip of good days gone by, it's also very literally taken me through the skies above. You see, I was lying earlier when I said I was still sitting on that cold floor in Toronto. Truth is, while you've been reading this, I've been penning it stuffed in crowded planes, flying overhead. Through North America, Europe, the Middle East and finally this last plane, a marathon of many, is about to land me in in my new home of South Africa.

Cape Town to be exact. 303 Blue Waters Holiday Flat Beach Road.

So this is where I'll leave you. 

2 years to the day after my travels started, it begins anew. With it, comes new journeys and adventures to add to invaluable collection of memories. 

Memories that far outweigh the cost.

Thanks for reading

K

My BKK bros wheeling my broken self around through
the airport. A HUGE thanks to them

And Lauren doing the same thing for me in HK.
Big thanks to her too