That question occured to me this morning while riding the subway to work during rush hour. I was reading the National Post and on the front page of the entertainment section I saw the headline: "Is He The Next Ben Stiller?"
Before I could mumble, "Who FUCKING cares!?!?!?!?" Some middle-weight, middle-aged, middle-class mid-town Torontonian muddler said something like:
"Oh, my! Ben Stiller! Isn't that an amusing co-incidence!"
And before I could say, "Amusing? Who!?!? Ben FUCKING Stiller!?!", the guy muddled on.
"My wife and I and group of neighbors of ours from The Annex just came back from a week of whale watching in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and -- my, God -- the beauty of those creatures became so overwhelming we all agreed that whales are the Ben Stillers of marine life on this wonderful planet."
Holy, fuck, I thought, if that's the case, then Greenpeace can fuck themselves: I'm gonna start sending donations to the annual Japanese whale slaughtering expediton! But before I could plan that, another idiot opened his mouth.
"Ben Stiller!!! I'm a surgeon at the Mount Sinai Hospital and just the other day while performing open heart surgery, I paused andasked evryone in the operating room: 'Hey, everyojne!?!? If vital human organs were movie stars, who would be human heart!?!?'
"And they all cried out: BEN STILLER!!!!"
Holy, fuck!!! I thought, What fuckin' funeral home did that butcher's patient end up in!?!?
But before I could unleash a counter-attack, another porridge-faced Humpty beaked in.
"That's amazing, because thanks to Ben Stiller, I have a stronger heart! I'm a recovering caffeine addict, a former 5 cup a day guzzler and when it came to discovering a spirtual higher-power to guide me to sobriety, I decided that Ben Stiller would be my HP."
THat fucking did it!!!!!!!!!!!!
"REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!," I shouted. (Really loud!)
"That's TRULY FUCKING AMAZING because fifteen fucking minutes ago over breakfast, me and my chemist brother had the Periodic Table of Elements out while drinking about six gallons of coffee and writing cheques to the Japanese Kill All The Whales Fund and I noticed something and said, 'Hey, is that a new element on the periodic table: Unfunnyium?
"And my brother said:
"'Yeah! And they immediately called it the fucking Ben Stiller of elements!!!!!' And we fucking couldn't fucking stop fucking laughing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And you know what? All the talking on the subway stopped and everybody turned away and it was silence as usual again...
...until I said:
"And Toronto is the Ben fucking Stiller of cities, you pathetic bunch of motherfucking moops!"
So, yeah, that's why I thought I'd ask: Who do you think the Ben Stiller of Canadian indie-rock singer songwriters is?