Last week I went to the hairdresser for the full works: cut, colour, local real estate gossip. I hate sitting still but I love my hairdressers at Crown of Jewels and wish they still lived in my locker row at the gym so we could carry on our conversations in hushed tones every single day instead of once in a blue moon, which is how often I get my hair did. A couple of years ago I thought I would grow my hair long but I learned in order to reclaim one’s mojo, one does not simply NOT go to the hairdresser. You have to go periodically and get trimmed and de-silvered. I have brown hair mostly and probably two dozen silvers (grey, white, pigment disabled, or whatever you want to call them). They’ve come to populate insidiously around the temple and if I wear my hair down, you can’t see them, but I’m a hair chewer/puller so I wear it in a pony tail to thwart that habit and prevent choking up hairballs.
It’s too many silvers to constantly pull out but not enough leave alone and start the process of reinvention that I am just dying to go through. Women with full silver hair rule. Last weekend, my sister-in-law (dark brown hair) mused out loud if she should let her hair go white. We were all shocked (not really) that she coloured her hair every three weeks! Here’s a pro tip: If you keep your hair dark like that and you miss a week of touch up then stay out of the wind, because when it blows, the white roots make you look bald.
We fashioned a wig out of toilet paper and draped it over her head and we all agreed: Yes, let your hair go white, just don’t forget to wear lipstick.
I get kind of tired of women complaining about the ageing process and how they have become invisible to men on the street. If I’ve learned one thing in my LOCA years, for every woman no matter how thin, fat, young, old, freaky, or dull, there is some man out there with a bottle of hand lotion and a tube sock who thinks she is the ultimate goddess of his imagination. Unless he is sitting in a tree on front of your house, you just may never meet him. The ones who are ignoring you can just go die in a fire. Fuck ’em if they can’t appreciate your unique beauty, clearly they have no taste. If you can’t love yourself than who will? This is why you have to embrace the changes and let the silvers shine.
Here are my top 5 women who rock the silver and keep their mojos in tact:
1. Kristen McMenamy
She was one of those first generation “supermodels” from the 1980s and 90s. Her style wasn’t the kind that inspired your brother to steal your Vogue magazines as convenient fap fodder. She had a Three Stooges haircut and a body that cried: “Nutrients!” She inspired that whole “heroin chic” that is now the Thinspiration movement. I liked her back then because she was super cool and edgy. Now with her long, grey hair, she looks wise, ethereal and slightly damaged like she is one full moon away from the insane asylum. In a good way though. She is the friend you want to have for therapy and diet tips. You can tell her about a weird dream and she would listen to the entire plot with interrupting to tell you about hers. She knows which tea is good for what ailment and she always has cigarettes just in case.
2. Olivia Tracey
Olivia Tracey was Miss Ireland in 1984 and Top Ten in Miss World and Miss Universe 1985 and is now an actress in her early 50s. She let her hair go white in her forties which made look even more glamorous and launched her career. She’s in an episode of the Gilmore Girls where she is at a cocktail party and everyone around her looks dumpy, frumpy and tired while she glows like Glinda the Good Witch. It’s a Celtic thing, all that rain and Guinness that makes the silvers magical.
2. Deborah Harry
Debbie Harry is a portrait of a lady badass. This is how aspire to be when the silvers run rampant. The key here is to never let go of the rock and roll. Note to future self: Do not walk dog in a K-Way windbreaker and corduroy pants. Wear a black leather Gauthier jacket and Vivienne Westwood shoes and carry poop bags in a Chanel wallet along with nude photos taken of myself in younger days. Put pink tips in hair and wear lipstick at all times. Marry Jack White.
4. Carmen Dell’Orefice
Even when Carmen Dell’Orefice was 15, she looked 80. She’s been modelling since she was a malnourished child at the end World War II. She proves that elegance is timeless and poise commands more attention than chicken cutlets stuffed into a bra. It is an attitude that gives an inner strength. She looks like she could take the cinnamon challenge without making her mascara run. She will probably always smell of gardenias even if she dies alone in her Park Avenue apartment and they don’t find her for a week.
5. Iris Apfel
Iris Apfel is a design icon who is the embodiment of groovy. Last year at the age of 90, she launched a line of wildly coloured lipsticks and nail polish for MAC. Once you get over 90, you can never be too eccentric. And basically you can say what you want, whenever you want and become a Twitter superstar: Shit the Old Bat Says.
Separated at birth! They both look exactly the same! And they are both fettered by one dick! Donald Trump! Jenna Talackova, on the left, is a transgendered and disqualified Miss Universe Canada pageant contestant and Ivanka Trump, on the right, is her father’s daughter. Here’s a question: Why don’t Trump spawn rebel like normal children? His sons are even more vulgarian than he is, shouldn’t douchebaggery skip a generation? Here they are with a dead leopard:
Trophy hunting, now there’s thousands of dollars well spent. As a carnivore and savage mousetrapper, I get the concept of hunting for food and even how this particular African safari helps the local villagers, how ever smug the Trumpzillas are about helping the poor. But there is something grotesque about wealthy men killing endangered animals for sport just for the photo op. You have a guns, of course you’re going to win. Here’s a Trump reality show pitch: Eric and Donald Junior go back to Africa as bounty hunters to kill Kony! In one episode, Donald Junior gets dengue fever and has to hang out at the base camp with a sexy, busty nurse named Ursula. Hilarity ensues when D.J. gets delirious with the fever and strips off all his clothes yelling: “Uuuuurthhhhh-ulaaaaaaaah!” (In real life, I’ve seen a drunk man yell out for his girlfriend “Ursula” just like that, it was even better than Brando’s “Stella”) Meanwhile Eric and Gahiji, the African guide, go off hunting in the jungle. Gahiji gets bitten by a snake! In the bum! And Eric has to suck out the poison! More hilarity! The longer it takes them to find Kony, the dumber it gets. That is a show I would watch.
Score two points for the Donald Senior. Firstly, he was “supposedly” embarrassed by his sons’ safari pictures and secondly, Jenna’s back in the competition! Apparently, the Donald has over-turned the decision to disqualify Jenna from the pageant on the basis that she was born a boy. Jenna, who is now 23, underwent gender reassignment surgery at age 19 and by all accounts is legally a woman. She will get to compete with 65 contestants in Miss Universe Canada in Toronto on May 19, and if she wins, she will compete in the global Miss Universe. Good luck, Jenna!
Anyway, I’m surprised people even care these days. Don’t people watch tv? Phil Donahue in the 1970s had shows on transgender and every talk show since, including Oprah, has had perfectly eloquent guests explaining at how, at an early age, they did not identify with the sex they were born as, it’s really not that hard to understand. Thankfully, it’s no longer a considered freak show by compassionate people. That scene from”The Crying Game” (it’s twenty years ago!) is just a typical one night stand from The Elephant and Castle on half-price wing night, it could happen to you! And so what? Modern men are more concerned about hidden gluten in their food than they are about women with hidden penises. Further more, if you were a space alien and you came down to Earth to learn about human sexuality Kinsey-style and all you had was Google porn for research, you would think the vagina was just there for decoration since everything is up the bum hole. Sometimes I rue the day (not really) I let my nephew remove my parental control block as I have seen golf played in a way that would make even a proctologist wince. Or hand out his business cards. Why must I click on every link? Oh, who am I kidding? I love all the surprises in the jungle that is google safari.
In the meantime, check out this satire on the beauty pageant industry, 1975’s SMILE. I loved this movie as a kid, I still put Vaseline on my teeth when I’m in a nervous situation:
Do you ever think about the 1980s? Me neither. What horrible decade. It was the birth of vulgarity. A lot of the worst trends we have today you can trace back to the 80s. If we could erase that era entirely, people would be speaking proper English and they certainly wouldn’t be tattooing Louis Vuitton logos on their biceps.
Having said that, the 80s was a major growth period for me. Lots happened. High school, CEGEP, university, moving to Toronto, getting married. I lived in 6 different places. I had more than 10 jobs. I dated lots and put out every time. I made friends and influenced people. Nowdays, the past 10 years at least, have been like moving through quick sand in slow motion….Nothing happens and everything takes so long. It took 2 and a half years to get divorced. Last year, it took me the better of 4 months to finish eating a Toblerone bar and 6 months to change a light bulb.
Last weekend, when Whitney Houston passed away, I was shocked, sad, and stricken with a bad case of the nostalgies. Back in 1986, I had met her at a boutique I worked at in Yorkville. I do find a celebrity sighting super exciting but when I actually get closed to one, it becomes a big deal and I become emotionally attached. Famous people radiate a different energy like they have super powers. Even mildly well-known ones like local newscasters. Once I saw Gord Martineau at the Summerhill liquor store and I was like all “Wow, it’s Gord Martineau…he’s so short!” They are all so much shorter in real life. It makes them them that much more precious.
Back in 1986, when I was new to Toronto, I was obsessed with fashion. It was all about shoulder pads. Looking back with embarrassment, I’d like to pretend I never wore them but I layered them like a cake boss. I’d wear a set under a shirt, then on a jacket, and then a padded coat over top. In the height of the madness, I got a position as assistant manager at Parachute, where the fashion elite shopped. It was a job that I literally stumbled upon when I was walking on Bellair at Christmas time and saw a sign in the window. Had I have not tripped on the sidewalk, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it because it was a grey, blank looking space in the basement below an antique store. I had just moved to Toronto two months earlier and I had already gone through a handful of jobs that I was a disaster at: Cappuccino maker at Le Select Bistro, I fired steamed milk all over a customer and burned my hands. Receptionist, I kept forgetting the name of the company I worked at and still can’t remember: “Good morning….um…Something Something Designs…” Mannequin dresser at Joy Cherry, I snapped the limbs off one of the “brides” trying to put her gown on. Right away I noticed there were no mannequins in the Parachute store, the display outfits were layed out flat on a step. The clothes were austere and unisex in a monochromatic colour tone of greys and blacks. And heavily shoulder padded. Just like me!
There were two guys my age (early twenties) working there when I walked in. Both were dressed in what looked like a uniform, black jacket and black leggings(LOL! Leggings on boys!) They looked like the imaginary fashion police. And they were scary. One looked like a vampire from the 1800s, he had grey skin and shoulder length black hair slicked back, sharp pointy eyebrows and squinty eyes. The other one was equally sinister but more human looking. He was tall and lanky with zits and a goofy bowl cut. They were both named John. The Vampire John, clearly the alpha of the duo, hired me on the spot; “We like you, you are perfect for us.” I didn’t know whether to be flattered or freaked out but I figured I’d go with it. They looked intimating but it turned out they were the nicest, funniest guys. They were from Newfoundland and when they let their guard down, the accents would come out, and oh, how we laughed.
Aside from the two Johns, there were some part-timers who worked there, one was an aspiring model named Michelle. Michelle was nicknamed Zwiggy because she walked with a hip wiggle like the Carol Burnett character Mrs. Wiggins. She was 19 but you couldn’t tell because wore so much makeup and put on a squeaky, breathy voice like Marilyn Monroe. She was Siouxsie and the Banshees all the way, dyed black hair and with heavy white base, blacked up painted cat eyes, red lipstick in a heart shaped bow, she looked like a punk geisha girl. She and I bonded quite quickly and after work, we would go to Bemelmans, that pickup bar on Bloor and Bay. Arab men would fall over themselves wanting to buy us Long Island Iced Teas. One night in February, after a particularly uneventful Bemelman evening, she came to my place (I rented a room in a shared house at Broadview and Gerrard). She wanted to smoke a doobie and crash at my house. She brought out an unfamiliar mothering instinct in me even though I was only a couple of years older.
“Zwiggy, you have to wash off your makeup or it will clog your pores. And brush your teeth, all the plaque forms at night,” I said. To this day, I have never once gone to bed without washing my face and brushing my teeth. Zwiggy didn’t seem to have the same regimented beauty habits. She layered makeup like she was plastering drywall. Her artistry actually distorted her features. When I first met her, I thought she was Asian and then I found out her whole life story: She ran away from her drunken parents (they were Irish) in Nanaimo, B.C. when she was 13, came to Toronto with her 25-year-old pedo-bear boyfriend and was still living with him after 6 years. She was a chubby teenager and then became a skinny vegetarian after she saw a dead pig carcass dangling from a butcher’s window on the Danforth. She lost 20 pounds and Elmer Olsen, modelling scout extraordinaire, saw her on the street and signed her to his agency on the spot. She wet on go-sees and ended up floundering, probably intimidated by all the competition and that was when she started piling on the makeup. The whole facade was a mask she wore to hide her true self.
She didn’t want to wash her face but I forced her and when she came out of the bathroom, she looked so much better, and I told her so. For some reason, she got all sulky, and stomped out. After that, she kind of stopped showing up to work after a while, claiming to have “diarrhea” and soon fell off the radar entirely. A strange little lost soul of the 80’s that I almost completely forgot about and now I wonder what happened to her.
In the meantime that winter, the two Johns, who both claimed to be bisexual began to fully come out as exclusively gay. By default and pure loneliness, I became their fag hag. We would go to 101, a gay bar on Jarvis, and all the gay raves, and gay events.
It was the springtime of my discontent, and I was not cut out for fag hagdom. I became disgruntled and non-supportive any time “Church Street” came out of one of their mouths. One of the Johns took pity on me and set me up with the only straight hairdresser in town. His name was Gideon. He was British, which naturally made him seem gay, and he was fashion obsessed. I was suspicious. He was either a gay straight man or a straight gay man. We went out for 3 weeks but it seemed like 300 years. It was before people had cell phones and he would call me from pay phones constantly. It was weird since I spent most of my other relationships waiting by the phone for the douche to call. I did that thing that men do to women, I treated him like crap until he dumped me. Although I happily kept him as a hairdresser until he ran off and married some rich woman and moved to Vancouver. Another past soul who I actually found on Facebook and trolled but didn’t add as a friend, he probably forgot all about me! I will no doubt troll him some more and then add him in a moment of weakness.
In the summer of 1986, the owners of the store told us they were closing the Toronto location for good because it was too expensive to run. They had locations in Montreal, New York, and Tokyo, so they sent us boxes of samples and rejected merchandise to push to the fashion victims for the next month. There were some really strange outfits that we conjured up. Neon green tshirts and plaid jodphurs that we wore ironically. We had a massive midnight sale one night where we partayed until 3 am. The entire store was pretty much trashed. There was still merchandise, but just the weirdest of the weird and maybe some odd sizes of the good stuff. While we were half-heartedly cleaning up, the phone rang and Vampire John picked up. It was Whitney Houston’s manager calling to request that we close the store down in the afternoon so that she could shop privately with her back up singers before her concert that night.
Whitney was a pretty big star back then and it was rumoured that she was a lesbian. That whole closet gay thing excited the two Johns so they worked furiously to clean the place up. Although Whitney was no Grace Jones, she was diva enough to give them fancy pride and big gay boners.
When she arrived late in the afternoon, the place was spotless but sparse. She was wearing giant sunglasses and stayed close to her butch manager while her back up singers gleefully rifled through the racks and tried stuff on. The two Johns were in Heaven.
They all bought matching mermaid dresses that Whitney paid for with a platinum American Express card. I was the one at the cash register. In our primitive store you had to call in each transaction over the phone for authorization from an actual person at a call centre that I would sometimes have conversations with. Awkward…do I go through proper procedure and call in the card or do I just swish it through like a boss and seamlessly fold the merchandise in the tissue and bag it up?
Flustered, I held her card in my hands and called American Express. She took off her sunglasses and gave me a stink eye so potent, my hand started to shake. When the operator answered all I could say was “Fuck.” And I hung up. But Whitney laughed, “Do what you need to do, Sugar.”
And that was that. A celebrity encounter with Diva Whitney. A week later, the store closed and I was out of a job and she went on her way to even bigger stardom, no doubt charging up her Platinum card with bigger and better stuff. The two Johns went their separate ways and we all lost touch but of course, I kept track of Whitney, my celebrity touchstone. She stayed in my consciousness as we led parallel lives, we both had baby daughters the same year, in 1993. I didn’t get into the rock cocaine though. Couldn’t afford it. But I did have some messy, bloated moments and a divorce. When I went to my family doctor and begged for something like Xanax to help me sleep, she told me to try herbal tea. Lucky me. Poor her.
And with that, I leave you with my favourite version of “I Will Always Love You” which is Lauren Graham as Lorelai Gilmore channeling Dolly Parton. It doesn’t get better, I don’t care what y’all say:
Last week, Pam Grier was in Toronto for Black History Month to talk about her experiences in film and the current state of African American actors’ movie roles. She’s 62 now and she knows how to age, gracefully and fiercely. She’s still a goddess. This is retro 1970s Pam Grier, probably the baddest ass action lady in all of cinematic history. When you look at a picture like that, you just want to take your bra off and hang yourself with it knowing that no amount of makeup, Photoshop, Spanx, sweet talk, or self-delusion will make you look half as hot. Even her armpit crack is suggestive, check it out. In the 1970s women didn’t have to apologize for nip-slips, they were part and parcel of the bra-burning era. Pam Grier was a reigning star in those “blaxploitation” and campy Roger Corman women-in-prison films from the 70s. To paraphrase Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard: They had faces back then…and tits, and they were not afraid to show them.
Pam Grier, who was influenced by Gloria Steinem, was all about woman-power without compromising her femininity. As Foxy Brown, she was considered a trail blazer, not just for black women but women in general. Nobody was as sexy and strong as her, Jane Fonda looked like Gidget in comparison. Since the 1970s, thanks to the women’s liberation movement, women have come a long way in some aspects like having choices and job opportunities. But not in film, something seems to have gotten lost in the translation. Aesthetically, women have to look like a man with boobs. It’s all about sucking it out and strategically placing parts of it back in: carve out a P90X body, create Pilates abs, stretch out a yoga ass, and insert two Tupperware shaped bowls for breasts. If anything is out of place, the sloppiness will get you fired. No wonder as she pushes 50, Demi Moore is having a nervous breakdown like Norma Desmond. Instead of becoming a hermit, poor thing is chasing the dragon posting bikini self-portraits on Twitter. At the same age, Pam Grier, on the other hand, was rockin’ it like a lady in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.
There are very few Pam Griers in film today. Women over 40 are usually just in supporting roles as the long-suffering wives of dynamic heroes, hysterical mothers of boxers/ballet dancers, bat shit crazy neighbours/co-workers, or stern lady judges. Meryl Streep doing an impression of a historical female character does not count. There’s really no one for the sex pot LOCA (lady of a certain age) to identify with. Maybe every two or three years, to placate us, they will dust off the cast members of Sex and the City and slap some on lipstick and make a movie that is actually a 90 minute commercial for Heritage Halston.
Speaking of LOCAs, I watched the Superbowl on Sunday, this is basically how it went:
Of course I watched it for the half-time show and ended watching the entire thing, as I have a secret crush on Tom Brady. I’m only admitting that to you for limited time only. He’s not really my type, he is too pretty. Anyway, the half-time show was good, in my opinion, you cannot fault Madonna for showmanship. A lot of you think she is the ultimate lady bad ass and I respect that. She is not my kind of LOCA though, her sense of style is contrived by imitating other stye icons and she looks like a veiny penis. Her records, at best, are commercial jingles with lyrics that a prepubescent girl would write in her diary and then burn in Grade 8 out of embarrassment. Her new song is tuneless and the lyrics are just stupid, talk about chasing the dragon…you are not a “girl,” Madge, and methinks the boy toys are just a beards to validate your mojo. Sorry, sister, he doesn’t count as a boyfriend if he has to sign a confidentiality clause.
Gisele Bundchen, on the other hand, is a lady bad ass. Oh horrors, Gisele has a potty mouth…grow up, people. If I was Tom Brady’s wife, I’d be yelling out expletives at the press, too. Because she is a supermodel, she should just look pretty and keep quiet. Here’s the link to the clip here, it’s not so shocking.
I’d rather leave you with some Pam Grier in action, watch it and learn:
It’s not even a week into the new year and I’ve already broken my resolution. Oh, and it’s not NOT Drinking, that is a thing called “Juiceless January” and it’s not a resolution, it’s a lifestyle. But I also broke that, too, although I figure Juiceless January starts whenever you want because it’s not like you stop drinking when the clock strikes midnight… far from it. At 4 in the morning, January 1rst, I was sitting in my neighbours’ backyard, making sure the party fire died so the house didn’t burn down, swilling on the last cleansing Corona after a night of sparkling wine. Needless to say, I needed hair of the dog on the first AND the second….so Juiceless January starts today: January 3rd. I donated a pint of blood just to get it all started. Out with the old crap, in with the fresh hemo-cleanse.
Now I don’t really believe all this “cleansing” because you need toxins flowing inside to keep from being too precious for this filthy world. It’s the theory of homeopathy and vaccines where a bit of the poison that can kill you, will keep you protected. I had a friend who told me she drank one glass of wine a day which is the perfect amount to get a little buzz and keep the demons at bay. I was jealous of her self-restraint because I could never stop at one glass. Once I went to her house while our kids had a play date. She offered me a glass of wine and hello, of course I said yes. The two glasses she hauled out of the cabinet, no joke, were those giant ones you get in Las Vegas for those massive margaritas. I brought one back from the Frontier Hotel to keep fruit in…it holds a bunch of bananas and a box of tangerines. She poured us each “a” glass, draining a liter and a half of Jackson Triggs. I love people and their delusions.
Anyway, I broke my only new year’s resolution: Don’t worry so fucking much, all the live long day and night, 24/7. Of course the minute I tell myself NOT to worry, I worry. I pick my nails, I chew and pull my hair. Then I need a cocktail or 4. I fall asleep easily but wake up in the middle of the night, only to ruminate about my worries. It’s a vicious cycle and so the need to implement Juiceless January. If I don’t drink, at least I won’t worry about drinking.
Now I just went to see “Young Adult” which is about a crazy bitch with a drinking problem. I’m not here to review the movie *per se* because I am biased. I have two girl movie star crushes where I would unapologetically watch whatever they are in no matter how crappy of a flop according to Rotten Tomatoes. One is Cameron Diaz, and she is obviously the man in my lesbian fantasy. She is even more masculine than my butcher crush. The other is Charlize Theron. I even wanted to lick her as le monster. In “Young Adult” I can see myself in her character which made me love this film: a loner with a little dog, consumed by obsessive thoughts, deluded, hungover, and junk food crazed. I even had a dented Mini Cooper at one point in my life. And Hello Kitty!
My friend, Erin, has a blog where she describes “Time Porn” on tv, like where the characters in “Friends” have all the time in the world to hang out at the coffee shop. She went on to say “Northern Exposure” was “Geography Porn,” where the small town of Cicely, Alaska, is glorified by the charmingly whacky citizens and their antics. In reality, nobody has that much time, and small towns are usually not very diverse and full of colourful characters who embrace each other’s foibles. No, they’re usually a cloister of rednecks who will nail you to a tree if you look a little funny.
Anyway, “Young Adult” is definitely “Alcoholic Porn.” Mavis Gary (Charlize) is a hot mess. Even when she wakes up in the morning, with smudged eyes and dry mouth, she manages to make it look glamorous. Swilling hangover liquid from a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke never looked so refreshing. Matted hair and saggy-assed jeans were as chic as her tarted-up, man-hunter look. A drunken rant at her ex-boyfriend’s baby shower got a “You go, girl!” response from me. I said it out loud in the audience and other people seemed to agree: “You said it, lady!” someone in the back row hollered. The movie in the end, really makes you want to try the Star Wars bourbon and have some KFC. But alas, not during Juiceless January, I’ll have to wait til February the 3rd.
Here’s a trailer from “Young Adult.” By the way, it’s set in Mercury, Minnesota and I also think there is a thing called “Minnesota Porn” that has me wearing a Vikings hat this winter. (I’m so susceptible to all the porn of the world, maybe I need to kick the habit):
I think it’s politically okay to celebrate Christmas in public again. Remember when we couldn’t even say the word and the kids had “Holiday” pageants and had to sing “Woot Woot Kwanzaa” sung to the tune of he Fifth Dimension’s “Stoned Soul Picnic?” In class, they made dreidels out of polymer clay with wire hooks so we could hang them on the tree as an ornament, killing the J-bird and the C-bird with one stone. Smart hockey, teacher, keep everyone happy. Just make no mention of the sweet baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, mangers, wise men (they don’t really exist anyway), and from now on Santa has no denomination. But sitting on his lap and giving him your list of wants and desires while he drunkenly calls you a “ho ho ho” has never really gone out of style, thank Gods (plural).
I love Christmas and I will say it loud and proud. It’s all about the build up: The lights, the decorations, the shortbread, the Brie wheels, the booze, and best of all the bombardment of made-for-tv movies on the W Network. There’s a bunch of them, all filmed in Toronto, all starring Hollywood D-list “ageing” actresses with Can-con leading men, that they replay over and over again. A typical plot: A woman, once married to an evil rat bastard who leaves her for his sex-atary, becomes homeless. She gets a job at a diner and starts baking cookies that sell like hotcakes. The man (whose name is always Nick) that runs the diner is a nice but seemingly hapless hunk that she is sexually attracted to but she has no time for because she has to get back on her feet for the sake of her hipster daughter who is away at college and doesn’t yet know she is broke. The story-line arcs when there is a misunderstanding involving false pride (hers) and blue balls (his) and she falls into the depth of despair. But! It turns out he is actually super wealthy. Her cookies become a multi-million dollar industry and she and Nick fall in love just in time for Christmas and her daughter comes home to her happy mom and new daddy and a house full of prezzies. The end.
And speaking of baking cookies, I gave that chore up for Lent 4 years ago and never really got back to it. I used to get invited to various “cookie exchange” parties…I know, right? Bake a dozen million cookies, put them in a trunkload of cookie tins and take them to covenant of estrogen-based ho-bags and sit around and drink wine and talk. That’s not really party *per se,* Not without bone and mistletoe! Bitch, please. What is with all these grown women wanting to go out on “girls’ night?” A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends e-mailed me: “We’re going out on a girls’ night, want to come?” I e-mailed: “Can I bring my nephew?” To which the reply: “Ladies only!” Ugh, to that! Seriously, I can’t handle being in a mass of women, or a “snatch of beavers,” plural form. I need man energy to drive me to take the next breath. This is why I don’t mind when my teenage son has a room full of boys sleep over in the tv room. The sweat and Axe Body Spray all condense in one spot over night so that when you open the door in the early afternoon to see if they are still alive, you are bombarded with a pheromone bomb so potent, you have to wear panty liners for a week.
But I’m looking forward to this cookie party. My friend who invited me has called this the “rebel cookie exchange where anything goes!” I asked: “Do you mean there will be man-whores and bourbon?” “Oh, goodness, no,” she laughed, “You can actually bring squares, before they were sticky about that rule and it was cookies only. Lindsay is making fudge!” Fudge! I love fudge. And cookies. Nothing says Christmas more than a chunk of extra ass-flab made out of butter. Ho ho ho!
And with that I leave you with some Can-con, my mother’s favourite Christmas carol, Little Drummer Boy, done by Sean Quigley of Winnipeg. This is cool and love his teenage ‘stache:
In yesterday’s slow news day, the brouhaha was whether or not to ban the kilt in the Durham Catholic school board. Apparently some of the school boards, like Toronto, have already banned them because the girls have been rolling down the waistbands to pull the skirts up. “The uniform represents the students when they’re in the community as well. So if they’re in the community, and people only remember that girls wear short skirts when they go to that school, is that the image we want to convey?” said trustee Chris Leahy. The girls like wearing the kilts and raised a stink that only girls can do so Leahy lost his battle. What a buzz-kilt.
And what exactly is he saying anyway? He didn’t exactly say the “s” word, or imply that the above kilt-wearer will graduate into this after Grade 12:
Isn’t the image of a Catholic school girl as a trollop tease so classic that it negates itself and becomes wholesome? I think if you’re raised with guilt and oppression, you are going to naturally become defiant. Tarting up the uniform gives the girls a sense of empowerment and identity. You can take the girl out of the uniform, but you can never take the Catholic out of the girl, even on the tennis court:
Live and let live, is my motto for raising the modern teenager. I don’t ban anything, and my daughter morphed into my mother. In fact, she thinks those kilts are too short. Which means they probably are and so reverse psychology is in order. In my day (decades ago!), there was a private school that had a uniform that was so short, you could see the edge of the underpants. This was so the nuns knew you were wearing clean ones. It was not uncommon for traffic accidents to occur when the girls walked in packs down the street. The uniform also required knee socks so the legs were bare and hence, winters were unbearable. The girls would defy the “no slacks” policy and wear jeans underneath the skirt. This angered the nuns which made the girls even more defiant which caused the opposite brouhaha of the Durham school board and so a smart trouser became optional. Fogeys, did we learn nothing from Footloose?
And on that note, I will leave you with my son, Freddy’s, latest YouTube short which was filmed in the regular school board, Rosedale School of the Arts, where pants are optional, as is everything else. Enjoy:
Next week my daughter turns 18 which is only a half-assed milestone in this neck of the woods. Sure, she can vote and become a pole dancer but she can’t legally go to bars and order a Corona like a proper young lady. She has a whole other year left of pretending to be from Detroit, according to her assumed identity on her faux I.D. All the cool bands come from Detroit, among them: The White Stripes, The Von Bondies, and Mr. 18 himself, Alice Cooper.
“Nobody actually lives in Detroit! They come from Dearborn or Grosse Point. No doorman is going to believe you’re Little Miss 8-Mile,” I warned her. Of course this has made her more paranoid but as a mother I am trying to teach her that when you lie, you need to back it up with a story. So we concocted an elaborate history where she was born in Toronto, but is going to school in East Lansing and the reason she has a Detroit proper address is because she is interning for a record company and she and her roommates are here in Toronto to check out some bands. Doormen love stories about young girls and roommates. It works every time and she’s going to have to milk it out for another year.
What’s funny is that when she was first born, I drew a picture of her of what I thought she’s look like as a teenager and put it in her baby book. It’s pretty accurate except her hair is longer. I had guessed she would be in an all-girl band with another baby girl on our street who had a made for rock and roll name of Courtney Manson. But sadly, she moved away so my Nostradamus prediction didn’t come true entirely.
But last year, I took my daughter to see The Runaways, the movie about Joan Jett, she and her two friends decided to form a band. They called themselves Nikki Fierce and a year and a half later, they are now booking gigs all around town. Check them on on their MySpace page, and Like their Facebook page so you can keep up to date on their shows. And they also have Twitter so make sure you follow them. Funny, they sort of have a Detroit sound but with an accent of Toronto.
Y’all remember that rash I had on my back last winter that spread from the base of my tailbone all the way up to neck? Maybe I didn’t blog about it but I sure walked around complaining and using everything I could get my hands on as a back scratcher. Yardsticks, convex corners, forks, barbecue utensils, and finally, an actual “backscratcher” from the dollar store! Also, by the way, this is how I became addicted to T&T Supermarkets daily dim sum, just so I can hoard chopsticks to stick in my back in the privacy of my car. It was my “stress” rash, I had no idea why else it was there but to divert my attention from the rest of the shit that was going on at the time.
My stress rash became part of my identity for a while. I talked about it to people I thought could help. My family doctor, the Botox nurse, and an aesthetician. They all had stupid solutions that involved some form of expensive cream. Here’s the deal: If something is causing a rash on your skin, it’s coming from within, a topical treatment might help the symptom but not cure the ill. Whatever the problem is, will come out somewhere else. I might be a crazy, overly sensitive LOCA, but I know slapping some pancake on a zit will never clear a pore. And no amount of cortisone cream or emu oil is going to calm my fucking nerves. My skin might clear up but instead I might end up growing a horn in the middle of my forehead. Or a tail.
So months went by, stuff got resolved; Divorce papers signed, quit the real estate biz, decided to grow hair long but maintain a face framing fringe, and lo and behold, I noticed my rash was completely gone! Was I right or what? Removed all the stress and the skin cleared! I rock! Or so I thought…
Coinciding with all my personal drama, was the demise of the whirlpool at my gym. I’m not going to name the place *per se* but! it’s on the Lakeshore and the building is actually on landfill that used to be a garbage dump. Every two seconds, the foundation cracks and things go awry. The floor is so wonky that the entire fitness area is like an Escher sketch where the stationary bikes turn into treadmills and the stairmaster actually sinks into the ground so you don’t really need to plug it in. The tennis courts have hills. The upside is that stray balls roll back to you. People at that gym don’t get tennis elbow nearly as much as they end up with vertigo. And then, with some of the ladies, the vertigo turns into a severe case of cuntitis but that’s for another day.
My favourite part of the gym is the bath. The whirlpool in the women’s pleeb class locker room had the best pressure wash in the city. Trust me, I know from your shitty backyard hot tub the difference between pulsating power and ca-ca stew. If you didn’t hold on to the edges, you would be blown from one end of the pool to the other. That south-east jet was my boyfriend. I named him Jet. And when I say “boyfriend” that’s basically what I mean. He never let me down. He fixed the crick in my neck and my right hip flexer. When he shot his force on my glutes and hamstrings, it felt like beating. I know that sounds bad but sometimes a lady needs a pounding.
Most of the time there are other women in the tub. Don’t get excited because it is not like Hefner’s Grotto. It is more like a bunch of grandmas after an aquafit class trying to get warm. They sit in the circle, back to the jets, and talk about absolute crap. You just have to hold your horses and break a bunch of blood vessels and wait for them to prune even more than they already are so you can have your alone time. Some of the young moms with their kids in the daycare have no time for this, so they pretend they are targeting their “quadriceps.” Oh those brutal lunges from Group Power! I have a high embarrassment threshold so I can sit with the old bitches face-to-face in the tit soup and arc my back, tilt my pelvic floor facing the jet so that my boyfriend is giving it to me doggy-style. And that is all that I’m going to say about that EXCEPT that in June, the whirlpool closed down for repairs.
The whole summer went by, no Jet for mama. You can do all the yoga you want, but lady will get stiff bones for a lack of stiff bone, if you know what I mean. The whirlpool promised to be open in September, and because of the severity of the repair, it got pushed back to November. I got used to it being boarded up and the sign with the apologies on the glass door, just above the table with the bowl of “free” apples. No joke, that’s how they tried to placate us. The only apple that was ever worth its salt was the one that Eve gave Adam. It should have been a bowl full of batteries and maybe then we would think they actually cared.
A couple of days ago, the whirlpool was open after 6 months! My boyfriend’s back! I screamed inside my head. I have learned to shut my pie hole in the locker room. Ladies overhear things, misconstrue, and before you know it, you are no longer part of a cookie exchange, book club, round robin, Tupperware party, and whatever else group requires a vagina. I had a short workout, and by “short” I mean I got undressed and high-tailed it over to the tub to see my long-lost boyfriend. I didn’t care for the new iridescent blue tiles. Don’t try to dazzle me, I just want my jet. I swoomed (a cross between swim and zoom) over to my spot and plunked down to get reacquainted. Well, you can just guess what. Jet was not the same. Jet had less water pressure than icicle melting on a sunny day in February. I tried the other ones, and same thing. They all needed Cialis. No power, no mojo, just a bunch pretty tiles in a tub of water full of stray pubes.
Sadly, I got out and dried myself off. Almost immediately I was itchy. And sure enough, when I turned around to look in the mirror, my back was a red and not from a beating. So much for my rash theory, it turns out the water in the tub that causes the problem. So that settles that, no more whirlpool. And so much for my rash theory. Still I’m sad because I really did love Jet.
And speaking of water damage, I have a special request to ask of all of you. My friend, Trish, who owns a Toronto local roofing company called Fixer on the Roof, is a finalist in the American Express Small Business Contest. Amex is giving away $10,000 to help a small company, check her out here and please vote for her, click on the link below, go to “Vote” and her profile comes up, it’s easy! Thanks for your help, she really deserves it! You know my gym on the Lakeshore actually uses duct tape to repair the leaks in the roof, she would NEVER stand for that. Contest runs until November 28, so vote daily, and when it’s done, as a reward, I’m going to publish a tour of Hugh Hefner’s Grotto on this post, so keep coming back!
I know, right? These two AGAIN! Edward and Bella in the franchise that won’t die. The last installment of the Twilight series movies, “Breaking Dawn,” is out this month and it’s going to be a two parter! This one might be worth watching because Bella and Edward finally go all the way so we can all breathe a sigh of relief as we wonder: How do vampires even get boners?
I actually did like the first Twilight movie, it was actually quite atmospheric and beautifully directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Unfortunately, she was not hired for the sequels. Those stunk. I feel like the Twilight series teaches women about male archetypes in the same way that The Wizard of Oz is really about an adolescent girl coming into womanhood and realizing her powers. Here is my completely sober analysis: The tornado that takes Dorothy from Kansas to the “land of Oz” is actually representative of the hormonal storm that occurs in a young female as she transcends into adolescence. The ruby slippers represent the menses. The Good Witch of the North is fertility and the Wicked Witch of the West is menopause. Man, and his inherently flawed nature, is embodied by the Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and The Lion: A dumbass, a heartless prick, and a cowardly dipshit…sound familiar? The actual “wizard” of course is the holy grail of man but he turns out to be a liar just like that guy you met on line over the summer. Women: Learn from Dorothy, you have the power. Clicking of the heels is as simple as turning on a vibrator! Oh, and Toto the dog represents the dozens of cats Dorothy will inevitably have being so self-sufficient.
In Twilight, the character of Bella is confronted with two male archetypes: The cold-blooded, unattainable vampire and the warm-blooded loyal werewolf. In order for her to be with Edward, the vampire, she must “change.” Of course, vampires are the ultimate blood sucking malignant narcissists. Women fall for it every time. Jacob the werewolf, on the other hand, “changes” to protect her. I wish I could talk to these poor, misguided characters and take them under my soft downy wing and shake some sense into them. To Bella: Don’t kid yourself, this eternal living is going to be more tedious than the conversations you have with Edward: “I love you” “I love you more” “No, you don’t even understand how much I love you” “But I said I love you more so I really do understand, you are the one that doesn’t get it ” “Oh, I get it but I love you more””No, you don’t don’t, I love you way more.” Forever and ever, you will be praying for a meteor to strike. And Jacob: Forget about her, keep your options open. Your undying love is not noble, but pathetic. No woman wants a man who is obsessed with somebody else. Grow some hair on your chest. And a moustache, I like them.
The whole story is a female fantasy that only makes us feel bad about the real world. Who actually has ever had two men fight over them? Even if they squabbled, they got over it and probably went out for some beers and watched the hockey game together. I was caught in a love triangle once. My werewolf called my vampire on the telephone. It went something like this:
Werewolf: It’s time to face the music.
Vampire: What are you talking about?
Werewolf: I want you to stay away from my woman!
Vampire: Which one is she?
These real life love triangles always end up so obtuse. Somebody always likes someone more than the other, and then someone doesn’t even care. My werewolf ended up happily with someone else as did the vampire, although it turns out he is secretly gay. And I am clicking my heels.
With that, I leave you with my favourite drunken philosopher who actually may have figured out how a vampire could possibly get a boner:
She was one of those first generation “supermodels” from the 1980s and 90s. Her style wasn’t the kind that inspired your brother to steal your Vogue magazines as convenient fap fodder. She had a Three Stooges haircut and a body that cried: “Nutrients!” She inspired that whole “heroin chic” that is now the Thinspiration movement. I liked her back then because she was super cool and edgy. Now with her long, grey hair, she looks wise, ethereal and slightly damaged like she is one full moon away from the insane asylum. In a good way though. She is the friend you want to have for therapy and diet tips. You can tell her about a weird dream and she would listen to the entire plot with interrupting to tell you about hers. She knows which tea is good for what ailment and she always has cigarettes just in case.
Olivia Tracey was Miss Ireland in 1984 and Top Ten in Miss World and Miss Universe 1985 and is now an actress in her early 50s. She let her hair go white in her forties which made look even more glamorous and launched her career. She’s in an episode of the Gilmore Girls where she is at a cocktail party and everyone around her looks dumpy, frumpy and tired while she glows like Glinda the Good Witch. It’s a Celtic thing, all that rain and Guinness that makes the silvers magical.
art of modern living 