Two pieces of news in the past few weeks got me thinking about a made-on-the-North-Shore plan to basically save the world - or at least my job - one tastefully done erotic film at a time.
The first was a message Globe and Mail editor John Stackhouse wrote to subscribers outlining the paper's plans to focus more coverage on sex: "a hot news topic that won't go away anytime soon."
Won't go away anytime soon? Sounds like Mr. Stackhouse has never been married - amiright, fellas?
The second was the CRTC making major headlines for reprimanding three Canadian porn channels for not providing enough Canadian content.
Now, everyone knows that it's tough slogging for the newspaper industry these days and I don't want the North Shore News to shut down - where would people go to get all the latest news on dog-walking and tree-cutting bylaws? - so I'm going to do whatever it takes to increase our readership. If that involves getting all hot and dirty like the Globe and Mail, then so be it.
My plan is to offer a couple of brilliant, North Shore-centric porno ideas for free here in this column. The column will go viral and get our paper lots of exposure, because everyone knows all you need to do to get a lot of clicks is to put the words "sex", "naked" or "Rob Ford" in a headline (please though, for the love of God, let us never see all those words together in one headline).
And it just so happens that the North Shore has its own film studios well equipped to churn out some high-class hanky panky to keep all of Canada's coitus-centric channels satisfied. We'll get the North Shore film industry involved to take these golden ideas and make the magic happen, thus saving our paper, the film industry, and the hard-working folks at the XXX Action Clips channel. That's a lot of birds I'm killing with just one super sexy stone. You're welcome everyone. Here we go:
Script one: Let's Amalgamate
A rugged woman clad from head to toe in Arc'teryx gear and carrying a mountain bike on her shoulder peers out over the balcony of a City of North Vancouver penthouse condo within spitting distance of the ocean. She spits.
"This little shoebox in the sky you've got here is pretty nice, but I'd have a hard time living without the tiny backyard attached to my $1.5-million house in the District of North Vancouver," she says. "I could get used to this view though. Maybe we should hook up and share it all."
A small man riding an electric bicycle in circles around his tiny kitchen table nearly chokes on the $4 fair trade coffee he is sipping on.
"What?! Join with you!" he says. "No self-respecting city dweller would ever agree to that. Maybe if you district folks cleaned yourselves up a bit. I've heard you all have dirty pipes."
The woman drops her bike, and her moisture-wicking compression shorts. "These pipes are clean." They begin amalgamating. A creepy old man lands a jet pack on the balcony.
"Hey, I was just out for an evening flight from my West Vancouver mansion and saw you two amalgamating. Mind if I join?"
"Ew, get out of here you filthy old coot," says the woman."Oh I'm filthy alright," the man says. "Filthy rich!" All three pause, then laugh. They amalgamate. Twice.
Script two: Erecting Towers
A woman sits in her Range Rover on Lynn Valley Road. From her frazzled look, constant honking and the middle finger she flips at on old man with a cane who is taking too long to cross the street, it's obvious she's been stuck in traffic for a long time.
Out of the corner of her eye she spots a man dressed in a grey suit with a hard hat on and blueprints in his hands. He's pacing around a bare patch of land on the side of the road.The woman jumps out of her SUV and gets right in the man's face.
"What are you doing here? You're not building another skyscraper are you?" she screams.
"Well, uh. .. yeah, I was thinking about it."
"Well, stop thinking about it. I already wait a half an hour in traffic to get home every day and I don't want to wait a minute longer."
"But where will your kids live?" the man asks.
"I. .. I don't have kids," the woman says, her eyes softening slightly.
"Well, we can change that," the man says, tossing aside his hard hat to reveal a gorgeous head of luxurious red hair. The tension falls from the woman's face as a smile appears.
"Well, OK. I guess I could at least take a look at your tower," she says. "Oh my, it's so big."
The earth moves. Nearby traffic slows to a stop. No one seems to mind.
