Superstition

They both can scream.

She in movies. He calling strikes.

I was very distracted this night.

This is what I saw in front of me.


In their element

I know, how can the dude in the right even compete with actress-model Tammy Gillis who will appear in Maxim, who just appeared in Sharp, and was a lead model for Ginch Gonch. Notably she was also Mary Magdalene in Guy Maddin's surrealist short Heart of the World. Tammy then moved on to co-star in L Word, Battlestar Galactica, Douglas (Generation X) Coupland's jPod and Endgame. Endgame is a show I love about a crime-solving chess master sequestered in a Vancouver hotel like Howard Hughes (who locked himself inside the Bayshore Hotel). Tammy's also in Shattered, Stealing Paradise (Rachael Leigh Cook) and the critically-acclaimed Less Than Kind.

Above us - above the Park Hyatt rooftop lounge - choppers were flying. It was opening gala night for the Toronto Film Festival. Tammy, about to make a celebrity pancake tossing appearance next morning, said they might be scouting Brad Pitt in town for Moneyball. He's stayed in this hotel before. A friend of mine once drove Brad Pitt in a limo from this very hotel. Pitt stayed at a cottage next door to me once.


Coincidentally, the book Moneyball was in my trunk. I didn't even know a movie was made about it!

The dude next to us wasn't Brad Pitt. But coincidentally, he's a deciding factor in Moneyball.

Ron Kulpa works as an umpire in Major League Baseball - and had worked Derek Jeter's magical hit #3000 game in Yankee Stadium.


My ode to Derek Jeter - The Captain of the Yankees - for whom I've seen every superstition in the book work http://www.twitpic.com/2v81e1

Jeter hit a home run for #3000 and went 5 for 5 in one of the most magical games ever in baseball. I've always believed baseball games were won on magic more so than statistics or Moneyball. Odds were regularly defied.

* * *

I was running late and these two randomly met. He'd seen Shooter (Mark Wahlberg) five times. She'd co-starred in it. She told him someone would be arriving very soon who loved baseball. I told him, Orioles would be very tired after playing the Yankees. He'd be working the Blue Jays - Orioles series soon.

* * *

There's a coincidence tonight. Superstition is prevalent in the paths of both Tammy Gillis and baseball. Tonight they are intersecting like ley lines at the Cross Roads. Everyone who knows me in sports has seen my superstitions work. They don't mess with it. Nor do I.

Sometimes it is like déjà vu.



I took this picture in July, 2007, at Brooklyn's SoundFix. One month later a song-writer for Feist and Broken Social Scene invited us to meet them at McCarren Park where they would be performing in a Brooklyn swimming pool. Within weeks, Feist's career catapulted into arenas and stadiums. Four years later Jeff Buckley's guitarist Gary Lucas played at my New York haunt Caffe Vivaldi. I went with Danielle De Luca who then got invited to sing Mojo Pin and Grace with Gary Lucas (who co-wrote them) weeks later at Caffe Vivaldi. It wasn't lost on me that the first song I'd ever heard at Caffe Vivaldi was Mojo Pin (sung by Kate Sland). It's why I bought this album in the above photo in the first place.

Realistic probabilities can't back this up. No baseball statistics can track magic. No human logic. Not even belief can back it up.

I don't often have superstitions outside of sports, but I do with Tammy Gillis.

It all started after she had a drought of no cool gigs for a long long time. Can we say long? We know droughts in baseball. Just ask the Boston Red Sox.

So one day for her birthday - coming up this month actually - I made this tryptic to summon cool gigs. It symbolized good things to come "in threes."



She got a cool gig right away. And randomly, after unforeseen events, stuff started happening. Calls were coming in regularly after she starred in Under The Applebox- especially from an elite Hollywood agency. I mean what are the odds that Slumdog Millionaire would win an Oscar for best film and suddenly movies like it were in demand.


I love Latika's Theme

The drought was over.

As a superstition I kept on making conceptual photos of Tammy Gillis to keep this going.

And so did she...this profile photo has stayed the same while the streak continues for Tammy Gillis - who just shot Supernatural in Vancouver and returns to Toronto to work on the set of Lost Girl.


I posted on her wall Sept. 28, 2010, to keep this profile pic after getting a Vancouver TV series gig and a Montreal movie. Good things come "in threes." She then landed a Manitoba gig. She is originally from McCreary, Manitoba (population 800).

* * *

What is a dream? Familiar sounds that resonate. Elements of your life that congregate. Symbols that at first don't make sense.

* * *

When I first met Tammy Gillis in April, 2008, I was meeting actress Justine Warrington randomly where Tammy worked. Small world, they had both auditioned for the same movie with Michael Madsen. Justine got the role. Tammy liked this blog I wrote about Justine on coincidences - or more accurately, the magic that can happen on a path. A dream is just that. The world is connected in funny ways. Months later I would buy Tammy's guitar and donate it. It traveled across the country as Tammy started getting gigs. And one day I knew I'd be writing the same blog about Tammy.


Tried out her guitar in kitchen of place where Tammy worked. Then it got carried across Main Street through the Vancouver rain to where I donated it (lawyer for EMI carried it). Then it traveled from Main Street across Canada to Ottawa where I played it again.

November 19, 2010 ("Smile of The Day") - Actress Rachael Leigh Cook snaps a shot of Tammy across Canada in Montreal. "On top of the Mont Royal. Rachael practically had to push me up the last flight of stairs." In 2011, Tammy returned again to Montreal for another project and Julia Roberts was on the next lot.

* * *

I've been playing around with an iPhone app that makes posters with credits fast....and have been making posters of the same photo shot on this rooftop with each gig Tammy's gotten since. I am calling this the superstition photo. Her first gig was Supernatural. The next gig was Lost Girl. I wonder what the next gig will be. Good things come "in threes."

Accidentally the rooftop staff took Ron's beer away. I was imagining what it'd be like if both Tammy and Ron started to scream for it. I think all of Toronto would hear it.

Ed - I know a lot of people don't believe in superstition, but hey, that's your choice. A "choice" in probability is only one variable affecting an outcome. After we left the Hyatt, I drove Tammy by where I'd see her one day...and say, hey, I know that star and wave from afar. Ron Kulpa - "as in Mea (K)ulpa"- told us how the playoffs work alternating umpires in rotation, series to series...and would later work the MLB playoffs calling strikes in Game 1 of Milwaukee vs Arizona. Hey, I know that pitcher on the mound - former Yankee Ian Kennedy.