Death to Faux Hill...

How do you write an epitaph for a blog? How do you eugogolize something nascent and ephemeral; something which exists only on a server somewhere in middle America? I guess you can't really... nor can you scatter its ashes across Spadina and Lonsdale, which if you asked this blog where it would want to be buried - that's where it would say and, like a good Jewish mother, would guilt you into doing what it asked...

When I started Confessions of a Faux Hiller... I was a young, impressionable twenty-something who lived with his parents. I was also unemployed and worried almost daily about my ability to recreate the lifestyle to which I was accustomed. As a newly graduated Bachelor of Arts, who had lived for four years in the elegantly decaying city of Montreal, the Faux Hill of my return, seemed at the time like a foreign entity. Not only was it an affront to my neuroses, it was a seemingly scary place, where even though people knew my name, it never quite exactly felt like home. Confessions existed in an odd binary. Although it documented my life, I (and this may seem high handed) tried to question the Faux, its values, and its structure, even though a part of me was perhaps secretly, and perhaps not so secretly drawn back to the well groomed trees in the Forest I loved to hate.

In the ensuing couple of years my friends and I have grown up and gotten a couple of real jobs. Most of us even moved out of the Hill, or are currently trying to. I personally became a published writer, was turned into a TV character, made some enemies, and made a lot of value-judgments. I even got a fair bit of hate mail. Some of much G didn't make up...

Recently I thought that the Faux Hill joke was played out. Perhaps there was nothing more to make fun of. Maybe the blog had jumped that proverbial shark. Yet - when I moved [temporarily] back home in August and spent half of my summer getting into parking altercations with mummies I realized - that although there was still much to make fun, it wasn't my life anymore. The Village had stayed the same - it was the blogger who had changed.

There will always be much to laugh at in the Village:
- In the Faux there is a hot dog stand selling Kobe Beef hot dogs at $6.00 a pop. "This is how we do street meat on Spadina," you may say.
- Or one could laugh at the fact that the Faux Hill orthodontist has valet parking...
- Or one could giggle at the girl who budded in front of me at the Starbucks line this morning. She was wearing sweatpants, accessorized with a Burberry purse and Fendi sunglasses. Has no one told the poor thing that Burberry was cool circa 2004?

Even my friend Jennif-Er got in on the act: "Faux Hill is ridic," she declared. "13 year-olds have blackberry's. They messenger each other across the intersection. My Club Monaco blouse is like Value Village to these people." She paused. "Oh and if you're going to talk about me - come up with a better alias."

And although all of the above is funny, perhaps even blog worthy... The reality, is that I'm no longer that 22 year-old who sat worrying about his future and wondering why so many people wear Lululemon. The Village will always be funny - I just don't particularly care anymore. I'm now 25 (within a shade of turning 26), I live in Annex, and I'm becoming some sort of professional. I've even sold out and have begun my MBA. It's hard to make sardonic value judgments about a place that you don't actually live in anymore. The raison d'etre of the blog - no longer exists.

So... goodbye Faux Hill. I hardly knew yee. And while over the past three years we've had a lot WWSD moments and not enough Gaygetzym, in the end, its best to bow out when you're still funny.

So:
"Don't cry for me Faux Hillary - the truth is I'll never leave you;
I'll through my wildest days (ie that time at Mashu Mashu...)
I've kept my promise; don't keep your distance."

And in the interim I've gone rogue: Rogue at Rotman.