I finished shooting the live-action portion of my video a few days ago and showed it to a friend. As I hovered over her shoulder, she watched it. When it was finished she quietly asked me what I was trying to achieve. She didn’t have to say another word. I started laughing. I couldn’t even answer the question. The clip was nothing like I had originally intended when I decided to make this video. The clip looks like what it is: an amateur video of a man clowning around with some kids.

Time to up the ante. I’ve put the following ad up on craigslist:

____________________________________________________________________

I am looking for a filmmaker to produce a polished, sixty-second amusing video. You will receive acknowledgement for the clip and can use it in your reel. All rights belong to me.

____________________________________________________________________

Key elements of the clip:

• One scene – bar/nightclub
• No/minor audio from the scene will be heard – scene will be overlaid with background music (music video style)
• Summary: Bruce (thirty-nine years old) enters bar. Patrons of bar are early-twenties in age. Bruce is drinking aggressively. Bruce is dancing. Bruce is oblivious to the fact that he does not fit in. Bruce is hitting on very young girls. Bruce gets rebuffed.

Post-production, your video will be edited/combined with an animated clip as part of a promotion I am doing for my book. It will be posted on my website as well as Youtube, Metacafe, etcetera.

____________________________________________________________________

I will provide you with:

• Bruce (i.e. me)
• Use of camera (Canon Powershot TX1) & tripod if you need it.

____________________________________________________________________

You will provide me with:

• Location (i.e. bar)
• Customers/bar staff (you will need minimum of five characters: one bartender, two hot/young girls, two background patrons)
• Your filming/directing/editing/creative talents. You lay out the scene. One Night at the Roxbury style, perhaps? (Directing could be quite a difficult challenge, mainly because I cannot act to save my life and have only one expression: vacant).

____________________________________________________________________

My maximum budget is five hundred dollars. Please contact me with your background and your bid. I am ready to shoot immediately.

“Hello, my name is Bruce, and I´m a recovering addict. It´s now been thirty days since I´ve logged on to on either JDate or Lavalife.”

I´ve written about my internet dating experiences a couple of times on this blog. I´m pleased to announce that after a number of failed attempts to kick the habit, I think I´ve finally beaten it. The monkey is officially off my back. I’m no longer using dating websites to meet women. Now, I may be receptive to a long-term relationship. I´m just not on a mission to find it. Or perhaps I´m just not receptive to a woman who is on that mission. I´m also fed up with the indifference of internet daters– both them and me – that precludes any real connection. Too often, I exchanged a few emails with someone I was slightly interested in, but never got off my butt to actually meet up with her. And then there were the countless women I never responded to in the first place as well as the women that did not acknowledge my emails. Is it because the next person was “only a click away” that we were all so apathetic?

Even though “brucefreedman” and “bif2007” have now officially gone AWOL, occasionally I do hear from an old veteran – some woman who I met “back in the day.” I´m always warm to those reunions. We´ll meet up and tell war stories over a Chesterfield cigarette or a Hershey´s chocolate bar.

But if there was any possibility that I might one day return to the world of internet dating, it was shattered by the emails between “Sarah” and myself. I had emailed Sarah four months earlier, which she only responded to a couple of weeks ago. You can read the entire correspondence, just below. Why she bothered to respond the first – let alone the second – time, I will never know. Somebody put a bullet in my brain if I ever internet date again.

_______________________________________________________

On Feb 21, 2007, “Bruce Freedman” wrote:

Hi – I wanted to say i think you have a cool/direct profile and would be up to meet if you’re so inclined.

Best,
Bruce

_______________________________________________________

From: “Sarah”
To: “Bruce Freedman”
Subject: Re: Hi from Jdate
Date: June 11, 2007

Hi,

Just going through my jdate stuff. Don’t remember you. Who are you again?

_______________________________________________________

On June 12, 2007, Bruce Freedman wrote:

Hey - check out my website www.brucefreedman.com

_______________________________________________________

From: “Sarah”
To: “Bruce Freedman”
Subject: Re: Hi from Jdate
Date: June 22, 2007

Hello Bruce,

Sorry for not replying for so long. I’m working hard on something that requires my full concentration, so I’ve been negligent in responding. Going to be very busy until mid-July.

Hope you’re doing well.

Best,
Sarah

About a year ago, shortly after I started writing my book, I had a conversation with some friends. We were joking about what I would do if my book ever took off and I got famous. I said my ultimate dream – my fantasy – was to get on Oprah. I promised them that if I did get on the show, I would belie all expectations and pull off a great stunt. I would walk onto the stage to the beat of one of my favorite songs. Only instead of sitting down and doing the predictable interview, I would ignore Oprah and start to dance – Napoleon Dynamite style. I would pull off such fresh dance moves that she would immediately fall in love with me, and Stedman – why the hell do I even know his name? – would be forgotten forever.

Two months ago, when I put up this website, I realized I don´t have to wait until my book is famous to live my dream. Rather I can – in the words of The Secret – manifest my own future. I can live my dream now. All it takes is the right vision. So I decided to put together a promotional video. The video would combine two segments. One, a live action storyline of me doing things that might be considered young for my age. Two, an animated storyline of me “doing my thing” on Oprah. Since Oprah was such a big supporter of The Secret I figured she would appreciate my initiative.

The video should have been finished by now; the animation was completed over a month ago. But I´ve been dragging my feet on the live-action portion. I´ve also had some cognitive dissonance over the animation. I´ve showed it to about a dozen people. Now normally I´m the one that is neurotic, but practically every person who´s seen it has warned me that I am asking for trouble. Why? Because I am using Oprah´s likeness without her permission. Two lawyer friends warned me that Canadian entertainment law is far less liberal than the US. I initially laughed it off – the best thing that could happen to my writing career would be for Oprah to sue me. But some scenarios were presented to me that were less appealing. So I´ve decided to “recast” the Oprah role. Who needs Oprah, right? Let´s just turn it into a different talk show.

I asked my animator to make enough alterations so that there is no doubt that this is not Oprah and not her set. But I did not want to spend a lot of money altering it. So most of the changes are colors. Oprah´s purple carpet is now red. Her yellow couch is now green. I also decided to give the set an Asian theme as a tribute to my years living in Hong Kong. I replaced the Corinthian columns and arches with pagodas. I took down the giant blue Oprah sign and replaced it with a silver “Gaia” sign; Gaia was according to Greek mythology the mother of all gods and more recently the moniker of the life energy of the Earth in the Japanese animated series Final Fantasy. Those modifications were all pretty straightforward. Changing a moving character is a far more expensive proposition, so I tried to keep it simple. I figured if we changed her skin color from brown to yellow, gave her some mascara and an Asian hairdo it wouldn´t be a lot of work and nobody would be the wiser. I mean it´s just a cartoon for Christ´s sake. Hence my new dilemma.

You see in the original version, I´m cool. I´m invited on the Oprah show, I dance around a bit, Oprah falls in love with me and the video ends with me making out with her. Cool, huh? I´m making out with Oprah. But unfortunately now that she´s Chinese we have a bit of a problem. You see, Oprah as a Black woman looks – well – she looks like Oprah. I´d make out with her and so would you. But Oprah as a Chinese woman does not look like Oprah. Oprah as a Chinese woman looks like some sort of transvestite. My perception isn´t helped by the fact that the animator´s first draft of a “China doll” haircut looks like it has been inspired by Frankenstein.

This all leaves me very sad. Because instead of making out with Oprah, I´m now making out with some Asian transsexual. Instead of being some cool, hip, “young-for-his age” author, I now look like all those middle-aged German tourists picking up prostitutes in Phuket. I don´t know if that´s the message I necessarily want to be sending out to my audience. I sure hope German perverts buy books because there’s no way I’m re-doing this video again.

In Hong Kong, the locals are fanatics when it comes to property. Everybody has an opinion and knows the smallest details – from the average price per square foot of a luxury condo to the bank with the lowest mortgage rate. I thought returning to the West would give me a respite from this mania. I´ve been proven wrong. The number one question I get in Toronto – after “do you have a publisher?” – is: “do you rent or do you own your condo?”

The fact is I would never buy a property anywhere until I’ve done my research and fully understand the dynamics of the market. I haven´t completed my homework yet on Toronto and even if I had, I wouldn´t offer an opinion here. I´ve got no interest in writing about the Toronto property market outlook. There´s no upside for me in entering this debate. But there is one thing I want to get off my chest that annoys me. To all those people who always argue in favor of buying and flat out tell me that I am throwing away money by paying rent instead of owning. To them I say, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The decision to buy – or rent – should be based on “opportunity cost,” a term I learned back in Finance 101. Opportunity cost measures the returns you would generate if you did something else with your money. For example, to measure the opportunity cost of buying a condo, you need to calculate what else you could have done with that money — if you hadn’t bought the condo. Yes, it is true that if you don’t buy the condo, you will have to pay rent. But it is also true that you would have excess cash that would otherwise have gone into the property purchase. This money could be invested in bonds, the stock market or even a business. You should always consider the returns you could generate on this money, before you make a purchase decision.

Take my apartment for instance. The apartment next door – identical in every respect – sold two months ago for $370,000. I am currently paying $1,600 per month rent. So let us assume for simplicity’s sake that I have $370,000 in the bank and instead of renting, chose to buy my unit at the same price. Would that be a smart move? The table below spells it out.

At first glance, it appears I would save $61 per month by buying rather than renting. To reach this conclusion, I assume that — as a tenant —my $370,000 earns a miserly risk-free rate of 4 percent per year and I pay the typical 30 percent tax rate that the average Canadian would face. I then subtract my rental bill. This leaves me short $690 per month. On the ownership side of the equation I add up the recurrent expenses – property taxes, management fees, home insurance – that arise from home ownership. This adds up to $629 per month. The difference between the two — $61/month — is what I lose by renting.

In this analysis, I have not included the one-off costs associated with the purchase of a condo – land transfer costs, legal fees and renovation – which would easily exceed $7,000. Nor have I taken into consideration maintenance or back-end costs – like an agent´s fee – that will arise should I sell this property in the future. All these other costs easily outweigh the $61 monthly deficit I face as a tenant. And let’s not forget that I estimated a 4 percent return on my money when, with a little risk, I should be able to earn more. So all things being equal, it appears buying has no financial advantage over renting, more so the opposite.

The table above assumes no mortgage. But if I do need a mortgage then the calculations argue more strongly in favor of renting. For example, in the case of a 70 percent mortgage –all things being equal – renting would save me $406 per month. And that´s before factoring in the one-off costs of ownership I discussed above!

I keep saying “all things being equal.” By this I mean that I assume nothing – including property prices – changes going forward. So, if I buy a condo and property prices don´t change over the next five years then I will have a property worth $370,000 at the end of five years. But if I were to rent the condo, then five years from now, I will also have $370,000! I may not have $370,000 equity in a home, but I do have $370,000 equity in my bank account. I also have the costs/savings that come from renting that I discussed above.

The reality is that all things are rarely equal. Obviously, if property prices continue to rise then I will regret not buying my condo. That is, if prices rise enough to offset the rental savings I discussed above. A couple of percentage points per year is all it would take. But they do need to rise. Of course, I also need to consider the outlook for rents, and of course interest rates, too. There’s a lot of things to consider before I can make an informed decision. But a snap judgment that buying is always better than renting is the wrong conclusion. Not until I’ve considered all the factors.

A lot of people will not bother with estimating opportunity cost because “property has historically been a great investment. The Toronto market has been rising for years. And only fools do not participate.” But while the Toronto market may well continue to rise, only a true fool would ignore the fact that no market is a sure bet and that all markets ultimately reflect their underlying fundamentals — which are not always apparent at the time of the purchase. Just ask a homeowner in Florida or Las Vegas who bought two years ago when everybody was screaming “buy.” Alternatively, you could continue to talk to fellow Toronto property owners – who will tell you how savvy you are. And if you need a tenant for your new condo, feel free to talk to me, unless my own homework on opportunity cost tells me otherwise.

Submitting articles to magazines is a hurculean task, especially when you have dozens to submit – as I do. There are so many distinct requirements unique to each magazine. The one thing that truly irritates me is the SASE. The SASE is an acronym for “Self-Addressed-Stamped Envelope.” Many editors require you to enclose one with your submission. An anachronistic practice if I´ve ever heard of one, I´ve read that some editors will bin the whole submission, unread, if a SASE is not included.

The original justification behind the SASE was so editors could return a rejected manuscript, at the writer´s expense, should they not be interested. Printing costs “back in the day” were not cheap, and a manuscript – sometimes the writer´s only copy – could then be forwarded on to the next editor. For those writers who did not need their manuscript returned, the SASE could also be used to convey a rejection letter.

For the life of me I cannot understand why in today´s modern age, editors still demand them. For one thing, with printing now cheap and easily accessible, no writer would consider submitting an unwanted, thumbed-through manuscript to a second publisher. And to convey a rejection – or acceptance – why can´t editors use email? Perhaps the editors, mainly concerned with reading, have not seen Al Gore´s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. If they had, then they would have released that waste is bad. Now Al Gore would certainly not be recommending publishers do away with an important source of communication unless he had an alternative in mind – like email. Perhaps that why he invented the internet. Still, it´s only been a few months now that the world seems to have turned green, so perhaps the editors will catch on before long.

My copy of Getting Your Book Published For Dummies seems to have figured this out. It suggests I skip the SASE, which it says is “for amateurs.” My copy of Writer’s Market on the other hand suggests I include it. I think I´ll go with Writer’s Market. I´d rather be an amateur than a dummy.

But why do editors still demand it? I think it´s a by-product of the popularity of new media in tandem with the dumbing-down of society. Everybody´s watching TIVO and surfing the internet; nobody´s reading books. Book publishing has gotten so unprofitable, I´m betting editors are using SASEs as a new source of revenue. I envision long rooms full of Asian women and kettles of boiling water, whose steam is used to remove the stamps. These are later sold on the black market to fund the editor´s narcotic and drug use.

Now I´m not so cheap that I can´t afford to give a free stamp to a needy editor. If they want it so bad, then they probably need it more than I do. But here I am preparing all these submissions, when I suddenly realize that most of the publishers I am targeting are based in the US. So I can´t send a SASE, because all I have are Canadian stamps. These won´t work for letters originating in the US. I need US stamps. But I´ve been to two post offices in the last few days, and both did not have any US stamps in inventory. I guess nobody´s getting published or sending out wedding invitations to Americans from my neighborhood.

Writer’s Market suggests Canadians enclose an “international reply coupon,” which can be used cross-border. Good idea, except it only comes in minimum denominations of $3.50, whereas mailing a letter from the US to Canada costs $0.61. Perhaps I´ll just enclose some food with my submission – a granola bar or some beef jerky. At least that way, I´ll know where the money´s going. I don´t want to judge anyone but I also don’t want to contribute to an unfortunate´s vices.

About six years ago, two friends and I went on a ten-day boys trip to New Zealand. Our plan was to have no plan. We would rent a car and drive across the South Island –from Christchurch to Queenstown – each of us taking a turn at the wheel. The scenery was stupendous; we saw lots of beautiful mountains and sheep although no hobbits. The back seat was stuffed with luggage and the three of us were always arguing as to who would get to sit in the front – except when I was driving. When it was my turn to drive, my friends would tense up and argue about who got to sit in the back. They said I wasn´t a particularly good driver. I laughed it off, thinking they were teasing me.

On the fourth day, we were in the hilly terrain surrounding Mount Cook – where they filmed Vertical Limit. I was navigating a particularly windy road. There were no barriers along the side to protect us from a steep fall to our deaths. My friends hollered and screamed on every curve. Again, I thought they were playing with me. But then we stopped for lunch. They turned to me and said something to this effect: “We´re sorry Bruce. We´re not teasing you. This is not a joke. We don´t want to make you feel bad, but the simple reality is: You…can´t…drive…anymore. We´re afraid for our lives when you´re behind the wheel. OK? We´re sorry.”

I bring this up because yesterday I took the G2 road test. All new residents in Ontario have to go through various hurdles to get an Ontario drivers license. A score of forty points or higher results in an instant failure. Anything under thirty-two and you´re safe. In between is the examiners discretion. I scored a thirty-two. Before writing “PASS” on the page, the examiner chastised me for my very first left turn – just out of the gates. I had turned left, but did not enter the left-most lane; rather I slipped into the right-most lane. He also claimed I had cut off a car doing a right-hand turn, although I begged to differ. I did not voice that opinion to him. He suggested I take a driving course before I go for my highway test – which gives me a normal “G” license. Bleah.

Unlike most men, I´ve never loved to drive. There must be something wrong with my brain – something to do with spatial relationships –because I´m never quite sure where the edges of my car are. Either that or it´s the fear of automobiles that was instilled in me as a child by my loving but overprotective parents. I remember one conversation my brother and I had with them as teenagers. We were both new drivers and our parents had forbidden us to drive “when it rains, snows or is dark.”

“But Mom –Dad?” I said. “Is this a good idea for our mental development? We´re going to have to drive in rain and snow one day. What kind of drivers will we be when we´re adults if we have a fear of rain, snow or the dark? And what will this do to our confidence overall?” I probably didn´t phrase it quite that well, but that´s how I remember it.

This was my mother´s answer: “I´m not worried about your driving. It´s everybody else’s driving I´m worried about. There’s a lot of crazies on the road. Let´s worry about the future later. My job is to keep you alive now.”