Pop quiz:
I mention Baghdad -- what images pop into your head?
Or how about Moscow?
Hanoi?
Philadelphia?
Phnom Penh?
We all have mental images imprinted into our psyche from who-knows-where 0f places that we've never been to, cities that we've never stepped foot in, oceans that we've never crossed. A lifetime of t.v. and movies and even books have allowed us to create our own, personal storehouse of locations within our mind that probably bear little, if any, comparison to the actual locales that exist independent of our own perceptions of them.
Take Phnom Penh.
More specifically, Phnom Penh at five a.m. on a typical Monday morning. (Then again, is any morning really typical?)
If you had asked me two, three years ago to close my eyes and slow down my breathing and get all contemplative and stuff and imagine Phnom Penh at sunrise, I would have imagined, well, not much at all. Dark streets, probably. Mounds of garbage lining the roads, definitely. Run-down, decrepit buildings having their grimy exteriors illuminated even more by the gradually fading moonlight.
Certainly the streets would have been empty in my vision. Who would possibly be out at five a.m. in a city as a dangerous and notorious as Phnom Penh?
Ah, but I have learned certain lessons in the past few years, and most of them have to do with preconceptions. They have do with judging before experiencing. And if you have not experienced Phnom Penh at five a.m., especially down by the river, then you have missed something fascinating.
What's Phnom Penh like on the banks of the river at five a.m. on a Monday morning?
Crowded, is what it's like. Dozens, hundreds of people doing their exercises, walking in place, walking around, running around, dancing in groups to music pumping from ghetto blasters. You will see couples and families and damged people with twisted legs holding out scales for you to step on, calling out the price, five hundred riel only sir, sir, a good price, mister, a cheap price, just for you my, my friend. You will see the darkness give way to an orange and gentle sun that will soon, very soon, become merciless.
At five a.m., though, it is gentle, this sun, and the air is cool, and the streets, which are emptied out after midnight, which no one in their right mind would wander around after twelve a.m., are full. The streets have been reclaimed from the night and given over to the day. No more fear. No more locked doors. No more sideways glances to the motodopes over your shoulders.
At this time, you see, these streets pulse.
That's Phnom Penh, by the river, at five a.m.
Moscow at five a.m.?
Don't know.
Never been there.
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There was a recent program by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (or the CBC, kind of like Japan's NHK or America's PBS, only without those annoying pledge breaks every twenty minutes) that sought to establish once and for all (or at least for this year) who the 'greatest Canadian' was. I thought it was kind of a silly idea, and still think it's kind of a silly idea, but the results are interesting. Scary, but interesting.
The winner was Tommy Douglas, the creater of universal health care in Canada. Which shows you how important this issue is for Canada. (He is also, incidentally, Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather, Kiefer being the daughter of actress Shirley Douglas, but I don't think that's why Tommy was voted number one. I mean, Canadians like Kiefer Sutherland, don't get me wrong, very cool in Young Guns II and Flatliners, especially, but we don't like him enough to vote his grandfather the greatest Canadian ever.) Given that David Suzuki, the environmentalist writer/t.v. host was also on the list, it's a telling sign of how much weight we give social, humanitarian issues, us Canadians. We do have standards, you know.
At least, I think we do.
But check out the rest of the list.
Because Don Cherry also placed in the top ten. Cherry is a hockey commentator who is always putting his foot in his mouth and insulting Quebeckers or Europeans and he is highly entertain-ing and watchable. A lot of people don't like him. I do. Apparently, a lot of other Canadians do, too.
Is he one of the greatest Canadians ever?
Hmmm...
Even more disturbing, he placed ahead of Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player ever, John A.Macdonald, our first prime minister, and Alexander Graham Bell, who only invented the, oh, what do you call it, um, oh yeah, the freakin' telephone.
I mean, come ooooonnnnnnn...
It's kind of like Rush Limbaugh placing ahead of Michael Jordan, George Washington and, I dunno, Benjamin Franklin. (Didn't he invent electricity? Or discover it or something?)
A hockey commentator placing ahead of a hockey player? Gretzky is god in Canada. And John A.Macdonald is on our money. (Then again, so are kids playing hockey, true, but they're playing it, at least -- not commenting on it. And they're not wearing outlandish ties. And this is on the back of the five dollar bill, the blue one, and I saw Mike Myers when Late Night with Conan O'Brien came to Toronto, and he called it a 'Spock five', and I didn't know what he meant, but then he took out a magic marker and drew some black hair and pointed ears on a giant blow-up version of John A.Macdonald on the five dollar bill, and, lo and behold, he was right -- he does look like Star Trek's Mr.Spock. But I digress...) And did I mention that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone? (Although Joe Mantegna as Joey Zaza in The Godfather III says that the Italian, Marconi, invented it before Bell -- but what do mafioso know anyways, right?)
I know I know; it's a silly poll to begin with. But I'm still surprised that Pierre Trudeau or Gretzky didn't win.
And I think Canadians need to raise their standards a bit.
After all, where the heck is Montreal and McGill University's own William Shatner?
Don't we know anything?
