BEFORE: I've been working both jobs this week, so I need sleep, I think I need to skip a day just to catch up again - I've got extra days to work with, so if I took a day off during the Doc Block it wouldn't be the worst thing, but I'd have one less day to work with when it comes time to connect the Doc Block to the Shock Block. We'll see, I'm only human and I need to rest often.
Celine Dion is another Canuck who has invaded my attempt at a very U.S. themed documentary block, so, umm, what state can I link her to, what would make the most sense here? By now I know the drill, I'm going to Google her name along the names of those still-available states and go with the most relevant response. And today that turns out to be NORTH DAKOTA, because when she got back into touring in 2019 after a period of NOT touring, she announced her first-ever concert in Fargo, ND, to take place October 30, 2019 at the FargoDome. And hey, North Dakota is close to Canada, right? Close as I can get...So here we go with today's "Get to Know a State" feature:
Date admitted to the U.S.: November 2, 1889 (39th or 40th state?)
Claim to fame: The northernmost of all the Dakotas, for sure, yeah, you betcha
Nickname: The Peace Garden State. Sounds nice but probably a bunch of BS
State Motto: Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable. Great guys, but that's not going to fit on the license plates.
State Flower: Wild prairie rose
State Bird: Western meadowlark
State Fish: Northern pike
State Fruit: Chokecherry
State Insect: Convergent lady beetle
State Grass: Western wheatgrass
State Fossil: Teredo petrified wood
State Dance: Square dance
State Tree: American elm
Notable Sports Teams: The state sport is curling, that should tell you all you need to know.
Fun Facts: Ugh, it's all Native American and fur-trading history stuff, isn't it? Like even the "Fargo" movie and all the seasons of the "Fargo" TV show all find a way to mostly take place in other cities, and I can't say I blame them. Well, the states annual murder and violent crime rates have regularly been the lowest in the country for decades, so even their CRIME is boring. Come on guys, let's turn that around, OK? Their most precious resources are soil and minerals, and that just makes me want to take a nap, right now. No lie, it is the LEAST visited state in the U.S., because it has no major tourist attractions - people are staying away in droves. All across the country, the response to "Where do you want to go on vacation, Honey" is always, "Well, anywhere but North Dakota!"
Ryan Reynolds carries over from "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not".
THE PLOT: A raw and honest behind-the-scenes look at the iconic superstar's struggle with Stiff Person Syndrome, a life-altering illness.
AFTER: I have become a very cynical person, it's true, and whether this is from a combination of old age, experience, or the news over the last few years is perhaps a debatable point. We all went through COVID, with everyone stuck at home and weighing in on what to do about the pandemic situation, while only 1% of the people screaming about it were actually qualified to know what the hell they were talking about - and then THOSE people, like Dr. Fauci, are still somehow being held responsible for what they said that was wrong, or perceived to be wrong but still factually correct. Then we've got our lying SOS President, who has more difficulty NOT lying about things, so you know, he's just going to go with what's worked in the past, which is to claim that Rosie O'Donnell is a fat pig and John McCain is not a war hero and we've won the war that we just started, however the war also needs to continue and that is not a contradiction. And thousands, thousands of lies in-between. Then we've got people on social media who are living their best lives, like ALL the time so they can humblebrag about it and make the rest of us feel like we're commoners by comparison. Sure, you post your vacation photos, I get it, but then to be fair and give us the whole picture you should also post pictures from that weekend you didn't go anywhere, you just stayed in and made a fried bologna sandwich for lunch and doom-scrolled for six hours.
There's a person posting on Instagram who's convinced that he's got the dirt on Guy Fieri, famous for his "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" show, where he travels the country in search of funky joints serving delicious and off-beat food that you really, really should check out if you find yourself in that city. Guy has parlayed that hosting gig into a solid job hosting THREE other Food Network shows, at least, and a mega-chain of his own restaurants across the country, which I will have to try sometime in the future - is his BBQ restaurant in Atlantic City still a thing? But now this internet researcher claims that Guy does NOT EAT the food from the diners and dives he visits, because we never see him swallow food on camera. He infers or implies, therefore, that Guy spits out the food off-camera. Look, there could be a dozen personal reasons and another dozen editing/artistic reasons why we never see this - it's unattractive to watch people swallow, it takes too long and interrupts the fast-paced editing of the show, it's time wasted watching him chew and swallow which could be devoted to him telling us more about the restaurant, which he can't do when his mouth is full. Or if he DOES spit out the food, and I'm not saying he does, I don't know, it could be due to an allergy or a personal preference, or he doesn't like the food (that contrary to the message of the show, that this joint is banging) or he has to visit four different restaurants in that city on that day, and if he really ate all that food, he would get full too quickly and also weigh 500 pounds eventually. My educated guess is that for time and artistic editing reasons, we just never see it. But once someone raises the question, now everything is suspect, and people with too much time on their hands are now watching the show more carefully than ever before, picking out clips where it LOOKS LIKE the food was still on the fork when it came out of his mouth. Therefore, I don't know, he's some kind of charlatan or criminal mastermind and he'll have to give back his Emmy or be replaced as the host of T.O.C. Why don't you people do something more worthwhile, like demand that Spielberg give back his Oscar for "Schindler's List" because he was never officially hired by Paramount, he just walked in and set up a fake office and began his directing career?
Anyway, that brings me to Celine Dion and her diagnosis of Stiff People Syndrome, a rare and mysterious disease that affects up to one out of every 8 billion people in the world, in other words, maybe just her. There's no known cause, there are treatments which seem to help but ultimately no known cure, either, really I think more research needs to be done, but she claims it started with vocal spasms years ago, she simply couldn't hit some of the higher notes, and from there it just got worse and worse to the point where now if she gets too excited or works too hard her whole body would seize up and shut down, and so she's got a whole team of doctors and experts on hand to care for her when this happens - and she put her touring schedule on hold for about 10 years, which just happened to coincide with time spent watching her twin boys grow up between the ages of like 6 and 16. You know, when they're easy to deal with and haven't started rebelling yet. Also her husband died in 2016, and sure, I can see how that would be tough to deal with, probably anyone who went through the death of their spouse would have days where they didn't want to leave the mansion, complete with its outdoor boxing ring, pool area and indoor bowling alley and recording studio.
I can't find it now, but I remember hearing some stand-up comedian make a joke about her condition, how she definitely DID NOT come up with this syndrome herself in order to get out of her contract for her Las Vegas residency which was set up by her husband/manager who was much older than her and possibly groomed her for a relationship while managing her career. No, of course not, that couldn't possibly be the case - but we find humor in sarcasm, and in every joke there is quite possibly an element of truth. So therefore I am definitely not saying that she for sure faked her illness, but I want to confirm that she's definitely for sure suffering from the condition known as "Artist Brain". Again, I'm not a doctor, but I happen to be one of the world's foremost experts on A.B. and it comes from my experiences dealing with film and TV directors, the kind who are very full of themselves, think they are very entitled and that the rules don't apply to them. And I keep seeing people who suffer from this condition again and again in these documentaries, they need to be the center of attention at all times, they have a succession of failed marriages (I know, who doesn't) and many of them have drug or alcohol problems as well. A side effect of A.B. is thinking that they're above getting addicted, they've got a handle on their addiction and also their career. No, they don't.
Right or wrong, sick or not sick, Ms. Dion did start canceling and re-scheduling shows at some point, and this led to her greatest fear, that someone who paid hundreds to see her in concert, and had to get a refund, would see her out in public, like in a restaurant or something, having a nice time with her family, and approach her and be very upset with her. That's the fear, like I get it, I have stress dreams now where I'm serving ice cream to a long line of people and I can't quiet get the hang of making the ice cream look nice in the cone, or I can't get the lids on the soda cups, and also I may have forgotten to put on my pants. But you do you, Celine - that did lead to her being something of a shut-in, unable to leave the house - let's be real, she wasn't exactly going to go out grocery shopping herself, she's got staff for that.
Let's also be real about this - fame is a drug, too - she talks about getting that feeling from performing on stage for a crowd of thousands, like really letting loose and feeling that power, and then she says it, once you feel that you can't wait to feel it again, like WHEN IS THE NEXT SHOW? That's an addict talking, and they will do anything to keep the supply coming - what she did when she could not perform at a high standard was say that she had a sore throat, or an ear infection, and now she says those were little lies told to deal with "Stiff Person Syndrome", or maybe just to kick the can down the road a little longer and stay famous for another year before retiring. There's no shame in retiring, she clearly has enough money to do that, only she doesn't want to - and that's not for our benefit, it's for hers. There are plenty of actors and actresses who retired and stopped making movies just because they got old, and they didn't want to be seen as old on screen. Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, they basically disappeared from sight at some point, as is their choice to do so - it's always a valid option when you have money.
The documentary also shows Dion dubbing lines for her appearance in the movie "Love Again", which I watched in February. Her character there, a semi-fictional version of herself, functioned as the "love expert" in the film. The main characters kept seeking her advice on how to handle their relationship problems, and yeah, I don't know. Again we have to wonder about the circumstances of how she got into a relationship with her manager, who again was much older than her, and how vulnerable as a person she might have been at the age of 21 or 24 or whatever. She got famous and she got three children and she certainly got rich, I'm just not sold on the idea of that being love, or the kind of love that would make her an expert on love. But I'm not going to speak directly about things that I do not know about first-hand, because then I would be part of the problem and not part of the solution.
There's no question that she's talented, there's no question that she's famous and has zillions of fans, and that her albums and tours have been enormously popular and successful over the years. But like with any career, the question does eventually become, when is it time to call it quits? And will retirement be self-imposed, will it be the result of outside forces or changing tastes, or will it come due to age or an illness? I'm just kidding here, because the first one almost never happens, just look at Paul Anka and Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke and Roy Orbison and David Lynch and so money others. Nobody wants to quit, but we all do understand if you HAVE to quit. It's not failing if you just can't do it any more, and you go out on top.
All that being said, I noticed during this documentary that Ms. Dion seemed very energetic when she took the film crew through a tour of the giant warehouse that stores every dress, every pair of shoes and every piece of every costume she's ever worn on stage. So, umm, where was her SPS that day when she spent the day walking around, opening boxes, digging through pairs of shoes that weren't even in her size? Sure, she's going to need to archive all of this someday, or somebody will, but if she's got four of each dress that she's never going to wear any more, why not donate some of those items? Or sell them or auction them and give the profits to charity? She was also RIGHT THERE with the vacuum when her son dropped some coconut husks on the TV room floor. I guess the Stiff Person Syndrome comes and goes, I'm just saying.
The big confession here is that she has the disease - which is kind of backwards and non-PC because people shouldn't have to "confess" they have a disability, however this does mean that she lied about having those smaller illnesses when she was really covering up the larger illness. OK, so she lied then, but she's telling the truth now, got it. Come on, we all know that once you start lying and you get away with it, it's a slippery slope. Like I didn't keep my animation job for 31 years by admitting that I made mistakes, I kept my animation job for 31 years by covering up my mistakes, or by pointing out how they were NOT mistakes, it's what we all do. And we all call in sick from time to time, and sometimes we're really sick and sometimes we're not. So all I'm saying here is that I'm not sure she's really sick, or if she's telling another lie. I'm certainly not in a position to make that call - but I have every right to be cynical about it.
Directed by Irene Taylor
Also starring Celine Dion (last seen in "Paul Anka: His Way"), Eddy Angelil, Nelson Angelil, Terrill Lobo, Dave Platel, Denis Savage,
with archive footage of Rene Angelil, Priyanka Chopra Jonas (last seen in "Love Again"), Sam Heughan (ditto), James Corden (last seen in "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story"), Rick Dees (last seen in "Beatles '64"), Jimmy Fallon (also carrying over from "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not"), John Farnham
RATING: 3 out of 10 video birthday messages (is Celine Dion on Cameo?)
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