Please Advise! Are We Having Fun Yet?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Last week Mayor Ken Sim was on stage at the Khatsahlano Street Party and shotgunned a beer. Council member Mike Klassen also shotgunned a beverage. Some social media commenters thought it was great while others found it inappropriate. Sim himself tweeted: “We’re serious about bringing fun back to Vancouver.”

Do you think Vancouver is a fun city?

Signed,

Merry

Dear Merry,

Dr. Steve was recently faced with this very question in Stanley Park when a tourist asked him “What do people do for fun around here?”

Dr. Steve was momentarily stymied. He knew the answer ought to be short, punchy and packed with enough activities to rival a Las Vegas promo campaign. Yet Dr. Steve’s first response was to blurt out weakly: “Well — it depends on your definition of fun.”

What is fun? If you want to talk about “No Fun City,” you have to answer that question first. The fact that Barbie and Oppenheimer are both being released in theatres this Friday is a clue that not everybody views entertainment the same way.

The idea of fun demonstrated by the beer-chugging mayor is one variety. Sim’s stage act brings up the related issue of politicians and fun. As some of the responses to the event indicated, politicians are not really allowed to party. Since almost everything they do has a symbolic dimension, a public demonstration of frivolity will always be equated by some with mockery and unconcern. The oath of office ought to contain a clause forbidding beer hats.

Sometimes it seems our idea of fun has been defined by beer commercials. It can lead to that most depressing of phenomena, performative fun. Whoop louder, fool. As Bill Griffiths’ cartoon hero Zippy the Pinhead used to say, “Are we having fun yet?”

But this is not to say it can’t be fun to party with alcoholic beverages. Over $26 billion in annual Canadian alcohol sales can’t all be misery drinking. Dr. Steve does not partake, so his fun parameters are naturally different. Dr. Steve prefers other ways to get crazy. For example, he recently purchased a discounted tub of nearly expired potato salad. Dancing with danger — that’s Dr. Steve’s idea of a thrill.

You want fun? Dr. Steve long ago circled last Sunday on his calendar, for the long-anticipated return of the Great British Bake-Off. Dr. Steve does not even eat baked goods. He just likes watching a crestfallen Brit staring at a failed hazelnut dacquoise and saying, “Oh dear, it’s all gone pear-shaped.”

Dr. Steve is also a professional curmudgeon, which impacts his attitude toward other popular entertainment. Many people look forward to the fireworks festival. As a West End resident, Dr. Steve is not among them. Some of us see the annual appearance of the fireworks barge the way savvy locals must have viewed the arrival of Captain George Vancouver — a disturbing indication that a bunch of annoying visitors are on the way. We hunker down and wait for the wall-rattling explosions to end and the flood tide of humanity to recede.

Yet Dr. Steve appreciates the Celebration of Light all the same. He once enjoyed it himself, about 25 years of annual detonations ago, before he moved into the West End and became the besieged instead of the besieger. It’s a public event that brings people out, brings them together (a good thing sometimes, though not when your hockey team has just lost game seven of the Stanley Cup Final) and offers a free spectacle on summer evenings. If Dr. Steve doesn’t love it anymore, tough. His petty annoyances should not be allowed to rule the day. (Owners of terrified pets have more serious concerns about the event, but on balance Dr. Steve believes we must all bear it for the greater good.)

Dr. Steve does not smoke cannabis either and is not always tickled to be strolling through clouds of pot smoke around the neighbourhood. But a moment’s contemplation of the cruel and nonsensical history of marijuana prohibition (which ensnared the young doctor as a lad) is enough to remind him to be grateful that he lives in a city where such activities are legal.

What then is fun? Dr. Steve’s answer would be: within reason and a degree of prudence, whatever you want it to be.

But regardless of your leisure activities, Dr. Steve pleads with you not to leave the evidence scattered along the waterfront. Turtles and ducks wearing party hats is nobody’s idea of fun.