Category Archives: This Charming Man

09

Jan. ’12

More Meth, Please

One week into Juiceless January and I’ve turned into a meth addict by proxy. I have been catching up on the first 3 seasons of “Breaking Bad” on Netflix. I started watching it on Friday, just to shut everyone up and say it’s no big deal, stop harping about it, it’s just a tv show. I hate hour-long shows, too much commitment, and I hate crime dramas, I can never follow the plot lines. But everyone around the campfire on New Years Eve was talking all “yo, bitch, Breaking Bad, yo…blahblahblah..”and I just hate being out of the loop, no matter what the loop is, which is why I pretended to watch “Glee” for so long. I would turn on the tv at 8:00 on Tuesday, put the dog on the couch, film the dog on the iPhone sitting with “Glee” in the background, upload the video on with the caption: “We Are Watching Glee’ and put it on my Facebook wall. I never actually let it pass through my retinas or permeate my consciousness. I can admit it now because the show has jumped the proverbial shark, which I am only assuming because I have not seen that fug fish-faced Lea Michele on the cover of any tabloids recently.

Anyway, I started watching Breaking Bad on Friday afternoon, and powered through all 3 seasons in 48 hours. I could not tear myself away. I didn’t shower. I barely slept. I didn’t even want to make toast because the toaster popping would make too much noise and make me jump out of my skin. Gunshot! In real life, my mom was in the hospital and I drove my sister up to visit her, all the while blathering on about “Walt” and his meth making ways.

“What are you talking about?” She is out of the loop because she PVR’s Young and the Restless which means there is no time for superfluous tv watching.

“Walter White in Breaking Bad. He’s the dad from Malcolm in the Middle. He’s a chemistry teacher and he finds out he has lung cancer so he starts making meth to support his family.”

And on and on I went, to and from the hospital, on both days. Sister’s eyes glazed over.

“Jessie is in rehab after getting hooked on heroin. That Jane was a ho, I’m glad she choked on her vomit. Ladies should not be junkies.”

“Walt’s wife is a bitch. If I had a husband that I supposedly loved, I would totally support him making meth. What the hell, he’s doing it for the sake of the family. See what happens in America when you have to rely on HMO’s. I wish a man would make meth for me.”

“If I was part of this meth operation, I think I’d be a good cook. I did really well in chemistry, I got a 92 on the final exam.”

And so of course out of curiosity, I have looked up meth recipes on the internet and came up with one boneheaded site written with more typos than I put out: METH IS IN THE BIBLE WHICH IS THE MAIN REASON IT IS ALL OVER AMERICA. I’d put up the link but I’m too paranoid I’d get on the DEA’s radar. That’s the Drug Enforcement Administration, for those of you who are out of the loop…but I knew that from watching “Weeds.”

As I wait for Season 4, which is coming in the mail thanks to the benevolence of a Facebook benefactor, I will leave you with a taste of the chard, a montage of Saul Goodman…just in case you are out of the loop:

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09

Dec. ’11

10 Hot Ginger Men

Tonight is the cookie exchange party!  Last night I made 7 dozen chocolate ginger cookies from the Martha Stewart Cookie Book (the ones on the cover).  They are sublime.  They were also labour intensive.  I had to chop chunks of chocolate and grate fresh ginger. As I grated the ginger, I wondered, why are redheaded people called “ginger” when ginger is actually off-white?  Ginger cookies are reddish because of the molasses!  And then I mused about ginger men and how they are coming back in style.  My daughter wants to marry a ginger, or specifically, Rupert Grint or Robert Pattinson, who is technically a brunette but can be filed under “tinge of ginge.”  When I was a nubile 19 year old, I fell hopelessly in love with an older Jewish guy who looked like Starsky from the tv show (not Ben Stiller from the movie…please). He had brown hair but when he forgot to shave, his beard would come in red. He was a moody fucker and would spend days in his apartment, growing this ginger beard that would collect food and toilet paper lint.  For some reason I thought it was hot. I loved him so much, I would have carved his initials on my ass (this was before tattoos were mainstream). He ended up dumping me for someone his own age although he told me I was the best sex he ever had. My youth embarassed him! Bet he regrets that now. Lol.

Since then, I haven’t really given red headed men, or tinge of ginges, much credit.  I like a tall, dark, handsome man like every other ho in T.O. but as y’all know, I have sub-categories:  Indian men, men that look like Jesus, men with dark moustaches that resemble outlaws from the 1930s, men who herd sheep, and the list goes on.  But since I’ve unleashed my mojo, why not expand my horizons?  Re-think the gingers! They are not all like Danny Bona-douche or Carrot Top.  So as I baked, I comprised a Top Ten list, saving my fave for last.  here we go:

1.  JESUS!

Not Willem Dafoe as Jesus in the Last Tempation of Christ, but Jesus in general.  Yes, Jesus was likely a ginger, or a ginge tinge, based upon the tribe of his maternal lineage according to my research on Google and central casting according to Martin Scorsese.  Jesus was a carpenter and I do like men who work with their hands.  Lose the entourage though, don’t have time to do you all.

2.  Sterling Hayden

In university, I took a film course on Stanley Kubrick.  Sterling Hayden was in The Killing which was one of those heist-gone-wrong films that I looooove.  And he was hooooootttt!!!!  And then he was in Dr. Strangelove and he was craaaaazzzy.  I love a nut job.

3. Vincent Van Gogh

Speaking of crazy, I love that he cut off his ear.  That is so awesome.  Men don’t do that anymore, they don’t even cut their own toenails.  They get pedicures and have their balls waxed at a salon!  Pussies.

4. Eric Stoltz

Remember him?  He was hot during the Brat Pack era but didn’t get the fame.  Because he was a redhead! Look how cute he is, he is like a male Jodie Foster. I like Jodie Foster a lot, I remember when she was a child star, I wanted her to be my friend.  She was in the original Freaky Friday!

5. Boris Becker

I know, what’s up with this?  I’m picking this tennis playah because he is a perfect example of a blonde with a ginge tinge.  This works well if you style yourself like a Scandanavian hipster or a fisherman.

6. David Caruso

Ugly-sexy!  And the voice!  All he has to do is talk and you forget worrying about what level SPF he has to use in Miami.

7. Kevin McKidd

Another actor from that show Grey’s Anatomy which jumped the shark after season 3 when the plots turned into something from General Hospital.  What McHorseshit.  But this guy is worth a channel surf.

8. I don’t know who this is

When I googled ‘hot ginger” so many fetish websites came up, who knew?  Check out this site, it’s perfectly wholesome, so many more to fuel your fetish.  I think this dude would make a perfectly good son-in-law.

9. Prince Harry

I’m putting him on my list because you like him and I need a higher google rating.  Sweet!

10.  Louis CK!  

I know I’m late to the party but I am madly in love with Louis CK.  I want to marry him.  I don’t even think I need to tell you why, just watch:

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18

Nov. ’11

Bradley Vs. Ryan And The Winner is…. Fat Vince Vaughn

According to People Magazine, the world’s sexiest man in 2011 is Bradley Cooper.  This has some crazy hos with their panties in a knot making a petition saying that it should be Ryan Gosling.  They have point in that it is Ryan Gosling’s year since he had a bunch of films out AND he has a rescue dog.  I have a rescue dog.  We all should have rescue dogs by the way.  Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, may or may not have a dog but he can speak French. Apparently he impressed the judges with his interview on French radio nattering away, using far too many syllables as French are wont to do, just tell the people of France to go and see his new movie.  Here it is, lock your bedroom door and set your laptop on vibrate:

And here he is without a shirt:

As my friend from Newfoundland used to say when she encountered a man she liked:  “I’d do you for a dollar!”  I’m not really sure if it meant she would give him a dollar or she would charge him a dollar?  But whichever, there’s no flies on Bradley Cooper  so I don’t really see the problem.  I would do him for a dollar any which way.  Maybe Ryan Gosling is just so hot he is going to make the Sexiest Man of the Universe.  Or maybe People magazine didn’t want to use another Canadian, wasn’t it that other Ryan with abs just recently the title holder?  Americans have slight contempt for our country because we pay high taxes for health care and it makes them crazy with jealousy and confusion.  But we send them our hunks and throw in Justin Bieber as goodwill measures and yet they still mock us with that  “Oot and Aboot” accent that nobody really has.  But for whatever reason, I say let People magazine have their sexy Bradley for 2011.

As for moi, I have a hard time getting excited over any movie star really.  I just can’t get past the idea is that what they do for a living is make-believe ridiculousness.  And they think it’s so important, like when they call what they do “work” and it’s a “craft.”  Dear George Clooney and Brad Pitt,  I tell you what work is:  getting up milking cows, and a craft is carving a pig out of a mound of butter.  Please, get a grip, even your vernacular says you “play” a role.  Plus you wear make up, that is so not hot.  Although if I did have to pick a movie star to have around my house, it would have to be Vince Vaughn.  Not the coked up Vince Vaughn from the 90s like he was in Swingers, but the fat Vince Vaughn from The Break Up.  Have you ever had a conversation with a man who has a six-pack of abs?  It’s so tedious to hear about carb and protein ratio and there is nothing so sad as someone who separates the egg whites and throws the yolk away.  You have to wonder then:  What else won’t he eat?

Vince Vaughn looks like someone who would eat my pie.  And everything else.  And look, he would it standing up, tell me this isn’t hot:

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16

Nov. ’11

Occupy Yo Mama

Last Saturday, my 15-year-old son Freddy and I were driving along King Street after he had just finished raking up some leaves at a friend’s home in Parkdale.  A good honest afternoon of manual labour had put the apples on his cheeks, and strangely a Movember ‘stache on his upper lip appeared that turned out to be smeared dirt caught on his peach fuzz.  I didn’t say anything because for a couple of hours because I honestly thought he miraculously grew an actual moustache.  My friend and I had a lovely visit in her kitchen, watching him rake through window, and even her dog was impressed by the boy in our midst.  Freddy with his plaid jacket and dirt moustache was the kind of boy we would have crushed on in high school.  Fine young men are our precious commodities, as we were just reminded by Remembrance Day, when we honoured our fallen soldiers.  Crazy hormones and hyped up adrenaline makes them want to fight in a war.  It’s so very admirable to me because all my hormones ever want to make me do is shop and eat.  And fantasize about a certain mancrush who shall remain nameless but has a dark Movember moustache that makes him look like an outlaw during the Prohibition era. And I have bathtub full of gin, baby, if you have the beef jerky. God help me and make December come quick.

When we drove by the Occupy Toronto camp headquarters at St.James Park, I was struck by two things:  THERE’S A BRIDAL PARTY HAVING THEIR PICTURES TAKEN WITH THE HOBOS IN THE BACKGROUND!  THAT IS SO AWESOME!   And secondly, what is the point of this again?  All these unwashed people in tents are protesting Corporate Greed?  Do they actually think camping out in a public space for two months will make Gordon Gekko have an Aha! moment?  Now don’t get me wrong, nobody hates a suit more than me.  Nothing worse than a man faking it in those shoulder pads and pretending to have friends by wearing a blue tooth in his ear.  But you cannot stop the nature of the beast.  In fact by staging these “Occupy” events, you are only giving the one percent a big old corporate boner.  They don’t feel the guilt.  They are the honey badgers of the jungle.  Y’all might want to go home and take a shower, come back later in a clean ironed shirt and some trouser pants and then get Medieval because really, hippies became extinct for a reason.  Stinky B.O.

And here is a lesson from the honey badger:

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29

Oct. ’11

Zombie Boy Loves Life

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Halloween is nigh and in a timely manner, this dude, Rick Genest aka. Rico The Zombie, has been rocking the interwebs with his new Dermablend commercial.  Here it is if you haven’t seen it yet:

“Good luck being 60” is a typical response on the YouTube post.  I think that could apply to most us.  Being a 60 year old super cool zombie dude is a better fate than being 60 year old woman with a face frozen from the Botox and shiny from the vampire fillers.  Yes, they’re calling it a “vampire” lift nowadays, blame the popularity of Twilight and True Blood for making us want one.  Love the blood.

I love the Zombie Boy.  I think he needs a realty show.  Most of the pictures you can find of him are glamour shots. He’s got modelling career and was in Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” video.  Beyond the ink, he is a 26 year guy from Chateauguay, Quebec.  He mostly poses all stoney faced but he’s very cute when he smiles. I’d like to see him brush his teeth and maybe do a Spinning class and go to Loblaws, the kind of stuff I do.

People will always respond to him no matter what.  I’d like to see him in Chinatown, I wonder if they would give him a wide berth.  When I walk through the T&T supermarket I get plowed over by tiny Asian ladies half my size, like I don’t exist.  I bet Zombie Boy could get them to move over for his pick of the dim sum.  Or maybe not.

I bet Zombie Boy will always have a date on Saturday night.  I’m oddly picky.  If I would hit it then who wouldn’t? Even those repelled by Zombie Boy would want to touch him.  You know how your heart pounds when you run into your crush?  Then your blood gets all pumped and your genitals swell?  It’s a fight or flight response.  I think if Zombie Boy walks into the waiting room of his dentist’s office, the people casually reading Newsweek would look up and have one of those coronaries:  WTF????  And then confuse fear with lust.  It happens to me all the time.

Zombie Boy would never have to go on a dating site.  Women fall over freaks, weirdos, and criminals.  It doesn’t work the other way round though.  Men hate anything wacky.  “She’d be hot if she grew her hair, lost weight, gained weight, got her teeth fixed, got contacts, wore makeup, didn’t have so many tattoos,etc…” is their endless stream of criticisms.  You never know what a man will like so it’s almost impossible to be yourself.  You might as well be a zombie….because good luck being a chicken lady!!

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28

Oct. ’11

What Happens in Montreal Becomes Blog Fodder

Last Friday, my friend, Lorraine, and I took a quickie weekend trip to my hometown of Montreal because she scored free train tickets, so she brought me, her teenage daughter and her friend.  Train rides are not bad!  In fact, Via Rail is almost too much fun.  The ADHD people are tuned into their laptops and those who aren’t have booze stashed under their seats.  And those that have the booze, sway in the corridor and speak loudly.  It turns out most men are uncircumcised and the ladies who love them don’t appreciate it.  This is what we learned on Coach Number 3, according to the foursome by the loo, somewhere around Kingston.

Neither here nor there, we arrived at midnight and my brother picked us all up and the three of them went to a hotel and I got to go bed in my favourite place to actually sleep in the world.  Y’all know I suffer from the insomnia.  I can fall asleep just fine, in the middle of a conversation even, but I wake up with those middle of the night ruminations that make mountains out of mole hills and cause me to toss and turn and scratch like a meth addict.  Brother has a tv room off the kitchen that has a couch that turns into a flat bed with no head-board.  There is also no door and the room is facing the hallway to the rest of the house.  The whole thing is awkward and quite public in the morning but it’s my special spot. There are actual bedrooms I could sleep in but for some reason when I am in there,  I feel safe.  Of course because it was so late and I was wired from train partying and I feel the itchiness of other people’s train dander, I am not so sleepy.  I was also overjoyed because I scored a reservation at the hottest restaurant in town, Joe Beef, for Saturday at 6:30.  So my first night was  restless.  I wake up early, watch morning tv which is the Lohan version of Parent Trap. I break for Lindsay Lohan, I feel so sorry for her, but that’s for another time.  I watch the entire movie until noon and want to Brunch! Lunch! Eat!  Drink!  But my peeps in their hotel down the street don’t answer the phone. 

I have learned to live with all kinds of frustration, let me tell you.  But hunger is not one of them.  I go to lunch by myself somewhere in Old Montreal at 3 Brasseurs which turns out to be a big old chain brew pub, otherwise known as 3 Brewers in Toronto.  My peeps in the hotel wake up and call me mid-chew.  They are ready to rock and roll.  It turns out that because the kids slept on the train ride the whole way, they were also bouncing all night and walked around and ordered pizza until 4.  The darkness of the hotel drapes and the beauty of urban white noise made them sleep like bears.

Lorraine and I meet up, the youngsters go shopping at Simons.  They pronounce it all kinds of ways, “Simmons”  “Simoh-z” so I don’t really know what they are talking about at first.  “Oh!  Simons!  Like Simon Says!”  I say.  I can tell they don’t believe me but off they go.  Lorraine and I go to Sir Winston Churchill Pub on Crescent.  Pronounced:  Win-STONE Church-HHHHILL, that’s just for taxi drivers.

Here is how our afternoon played:  We get a seat on a covered patio, with heat lamps, as you know the end of October gets quite nipular.  It’s mid-afternoon and the patio is really busy because there is a Habs vs. Leafs game on later that day.  Everyone is in a good mood.  There is a group of about a dozen men in their thirties at the other end of the patio.  There are a gregarious, mostly standing around, talking to two young women seated in a nearby table.  Lorraine and I order our beers and check out the guys in the group.  I like the big dumb looking one with the hat and she points out one with an ass that could carve butter.  “Oh my God!  He looks like Jon Bon Jovi with a proper haircut!”  He is something else.  And he’s chatting with the blond woman in the next table.

We sip our beers, continue watching and it doesn’t take long for Blondie and Jonnie Bon Jovi to be standing around together, poking each other the way kids do in the playground.  By the time we order our second beer,  the couple in question have their arms around each other and the  are making out like teenagers.  Blondie has somehow rolled the waistband down on her skin-tight jeans to expose a pink thong and two acres of ass flesh.  “Check out my tattoo!”  she shrieks.  It is one of those ubiquitous tramp stamps just above her thong tag but in order for all the guys to see it, it is imperative that her entire top comes off.  She bends over.  Her bra forgets its function, because it is too small, and her girls spill out.  Now these “girls” are mere toddlers so she doesn’t really get the reaction she hopes for, so she swings her hair around.  It becomes clear what she does for a living. 

Our waitress confirms this by giving us a play by-play.  “They are saying that they have to go to work at 5 and the only shifts that start at that time are in strip clubs.”  It’s almost 4:30.  Blondie and Jonnie are groping each other like the Titanic is about to sink.  I say to Lorraine:  “If those two go to the washroom to finish this off, I am going in!”  I felt they owed to us for over an hour of public foreplay.

It turns out they didn’t need any privacy.  As the other guys milled around, Blondie pulled her jeans down even lower.  Jonnie grabbed her from behind.  With his back to us, we watched his butt curl under, then thrust, and then again.  It’s actually happening.  The whole thing was watching like a Rottweiler on top of a blow up doll that looked like it was about to explode.  Blondie’s friend shut it all down, she was the sensible one, and fetched her purse so they wouldn’t be late for work.  They said their good-byes, no numbers exchanged.  It was awesome.  This could only happen in Montreal.  I think I might move back.

If not for random public fornication, then definitely for Joe Beef.  After the pub incident, we got to Little Burgundy by cab and in time for our 6:30 reservation.  It’s a small restaurant, apparently getting a reservation is like getting a golden ticket, but we all got  to sit at the bar (best place in any eating establishment) right in front of the oyster shucker.  We got the stories, and I bought the book, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, and you should too.  Christmas is coming!   There are recipes and pictures of the city and the history of the real Joe Beef from the 1800s.  He was an ex-soldier and opened up a tavern to feed the poor.  “Red flag!”  said Lorraine, ” Never trust a man who wants to hang out with indigents!”  And she is right.    He had a plethora of  eccentricity that disguised his douchebaggery, ie. pickling his dead wife’s body parts and keeping a drunk bear as a mascot.  All in all, an interesting tale, worth a screenplay methinks!  Or not, maybe some bears should just stay sleeping.  And I am happy to say I slept really well that second night.  I bet Jonnie Bon Jovi did also.

And here they are, Fred and David AGAIN, two blog post in a row!  I am just way too in love:

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08

Oct. ’11

RIP Steve Jobs, Patron Saint of LOL Cats

“Don’t kid yourselves. Steve Jobs is in Lol Cat purgatory,” @Bitchwalla via Twitter
People, get a grip. Steve Jobs’ death was not like John Lennon’s or Princess Diana’s. It’s like comparing an apple to a couple of oranges. Steve had pancreatic cancer, and because he was a such a Big Mac Kahuna, he had the luxury of prolonging his life for a couple of more years thanks to a liver transplant. You and I would probably rot before we could get an organ donor, that’s a fact. Still death for him was imminent, pancreatic cancer is one of the tough ones. John and Diana, on the other hand, were minding their own businesses in the prime of their lives and on their way to do something, when suddenly they got the Big Crash. Way different stories, way more shock factor. And way different legacies lost.
Yes, Steve Jobs touched lives and was a great visionary. Again, let’s not get carried away. He was a weird cat with a sketchy past. I’m not going into the details, you can go on his Wiki page and check it out for yourselves. I will just make mention that he claimed to be a Buddhist. Apart from his austere uniform of a black turtleneck with Levi’s (which he copied from Andy Warhol), he didn’t really apply any of the principles to his own life. He was a man who re-invented the wheel. He stole from and quoted everyone else from Wayne Gretzky to Picasso, and in the process made stuff that everyone wants. I have some of his opiates (an iPhone and an iPod) and let me tell you something, I wish they had never been invented. No joke.
Do I enjoy music more now than I did when I was a kid with an 8 track tape player? I think not. Yes, it was annoying when the songs actually cut out when the tape changed. What half-wit invented that? It was the late 70s so probably somebody brain damaged from too much acid. But you know what? I listened to the whole tape, every song that was on the album. Same thing when cassettes and CD’s came out. It’s how I know every lyric on Hatful of Hollow. Now I have an iPod, I don’t even know what the albums are called and I get impatient and skip ahead to other songs, other artists, then I end up watching the first episode of Madmen for the millionth time. No question that it is convenient to have everything on one thing that is smaller than a deck of cards. More shelf room for your books! But even those are being read on the iPad. More shelf room for your liquor then.
My iPhone is a whole other horror. I’m addicted to it. When I’m not near it, I get anxious. I used to chew my nails. Now I swirl, sweep, tap, plunk, and probe my screen like it was my labia, in public no less. I had the first generation iPhone and it didn’t take long for it to get all glitchy. In fact, the speaker stopped working and I couldn’t hear out of it. It took me two months to take it to the Apple store because I had long forgotten it was a phone. I was using it as a toy basically. You have to be careful with it because water gets into it and then it becomes toast. Do not stuff it in your bra when you are working out, for example. I could do that with my Nokia and it lasted for years. So far, I have had 5 iPhones including an upgrade. I have clocked in countless of hours in the Apple store when things have gone wrong. The pomme- tekkies go through a zillion fancy motions trying to revive your iBaby when it is sick but in the end, they just open up a drawer behind the counter and hand you a brand new one. Part of the hype is that when the latest product comes out, people line up and the iThing in question sells out even before the store opens, they are that precious. The truth is, there is enough iCrap for every living being on the planet to drop in the toilet and replace 5 times over. All this from a Buddhist.
According to the media, Steve Jobs touched everyone’s lives. Not so much. My parents don’t even have a computer but they do talk on the thing that Alexander Graham Bell invented. Through the Facebook, I have childhood friends and school mates available to me on my phone which is never more than 6 inches away from one of my appendages, and yet when news happens, guess who gets it first? Not my newsfeed, that’s for sure. My mother! And why? Because people love to talk to her. She has never had a text message or email exchange that led to misinterpreted innuendo that inevitably turned into a falling out. Her tone is always friendly. When you talk to her, she is cute and funny and interested in what you have to say. People go out of their way to visit my parents and I can say that Steve Jobs and his vision had nothing to do with it.
Steve Jobs did, however, turn me to an insomniac, social media freak, LOL Cat fanatic, blogging monster, with an adult acne problem. You know have to clean the screen once in awhile. You don’t want to know where my fingers have been, or do you?
And I leave you with some of the best of LOL Cats:
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11

Sep. ’11

Pro Tennis Strike!

Relax, just jokes, there is no “pro tennis strike.”  But that is my name, Kristin Peterson,  in an anagram.  Cool, huh?  I figured that out using some loose Scrabble tiles when I had no one to play with.  My family and I were once big on Scrabble, we played all the time.  I don’t play any “board” Scrabble anymore, just the mutated on-line version called “Lexulous”  featured on Facebook.  Talk about upping one’s game.   If you make up a word, it won`t let you put it down.  There is an on-line dictionary of all the finest words known to humanity, including the English Sowpods version of the word `jiz`with one zed or zee.  When I (and my Scrabblemaster Goddess sister, Sue) started playing this a few years ago, the rest of the family began to look like nitwits.  One Christmas, our normally brilliant graduate student nephew challenged us on words like “qi,”  “xu,” and “za.”  “These are not words!”  He protested, more than once.  “Yes, they are words, we have learnt them on the internet and we are better than you at this game,”  I said, trying to be patient.  When at one point he put down “Iran” and everyone let it go because we are easy-going Petersons, I had to put my foot down.  “IRAN IS NOT A WORD, IT’S  PROPER NAME OF A COUNTRY!   I CANNOT POSSIBLY PLAY WITH YOU PEOPLE ANYMORE!”  It was too painful, I would rather play X’s and O’s with a small child.  I think that was the end of that family nonsense.   I look at a Scrabble board with no sense of nostalgia whatsoever.  I am in a much better place, I can play Lex on my i-Phone!  Anytime!  With strangers even!

I write this while the US Open is on.  Watching tennis is my porn.  I can spend a nice sunny day sitting inside, happily watching a match during any given Grand Slam.  The US Open is the show pony of the tennis season, for sure.  Certain smug players have worn sequins and tuxedo shorts during their matches.  I have seen real life tennis and I have watched it on tv and I will pick the latter every time.  The camera picks up everything that you can’t see and then some.   I’m talking about the stands.  They love to shoot the players’ girlfriends if they are super hot, which they always are, all blond with their Versace sunglasses and stoney expressions on their vapid, chiseled faces.  The US Open always has a celebrity or two in the midst.  Famous people sitting in an audience of anything is just such a weird juxtaposition, like seeing your teacher in the grocery store and you look in her basket to see what she is buying  and suddenly she is the most fascinating person ever with her haul of  celery, Triscuits, and Laughing Cow cheese.  Today, the enigmatic Stanley Tucci put his bald head on the blimp’s radar and the who-the-hell-does-he-know-to-get-such-great-seats on everyone’s minds.  Such an elitist sport.

What I love about tennis is that while I might plunk my English Sowpods arse on the couch and start cheering for a certain player, I will inevitably end up all adrenal red in the face, yelling at the tv, because I am now on the other player’s side.  I realize it is the excellence of the sport that  I am cheering.  And even a lesser player can show a unique style and elegance that can be celebrated.    These odd players make the greater ones up their game.  When the top seeds are shining it seems like it will last forever.  And in a way, it does. They become legends.   Bjorn Borg?  I’d still hit it.  Call me!

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31

Aug. ’11

The Good Cougar

The other day I pulled out of my DVD collection the  movie “Alfie,” the 2004 version with Jude Law and Susan Sarandon.  This is one of my new classic Christmas-time movies but I had just seen, on natural television, the other Susan Sarandon cougar movie, “White Palace” with a young, fresh James Spader as her cub.  I know a lot of women take offense to the term “cougar” but I do not.  A cougar, by my specific definition is a Lady of a Certain Age who seeks the company of a man who she could have given birth to even if  she was in Grade 7.  The basic math is her age minus his age should be equal to or greater than the age of her first visit from Aunt Flo.  Both these movies are kind of tragic but I am inspired by my elder cougar mentors.  They blaze through the mountains, with their high heels and Chanel lipstick, and I follow along, eagerly, in my Birkenstocks, smacking my lips with Cherry Chapstick (STILL!).

Without a doubt, Susan Sarandon is the reigning Cougar Queen of Hollywood.   She is a predator though, and while I admire her, I don’t emulate her.  She is a cougar by design but I am a cougar by default.  I would like to date in my age range, but available men in my demographic don’t want to play in my sand box.  Don’t feel sorry for me because I don’t really care.  If a man is single in his forties, he is usually some other woman’s spent piece and he comes with not just baggage but a garage load of odds and sods resembling broken down farm equipment.  The stuff in his “baggage” is moth-eaten, is mismatched and has skid marks.  This is proverbial talk of course.  Like I care about a skid mark.  With the right man, I would find a skid mark down right charming, a little accent of humanity in an otherwise overbleached, Lysoled world.  People are always trying to cover up their smells.  Anyway, those lost dudes end up cleaning themselves real fine and they buy a fancy car and “move on” seeking the company of a younger ho or being a part of the modern and rapidly more ubiquitous coupling:  White guy, Asian gal. This is not something that needs to be fought.  It’s like math sequencing that you learned in elementary school:  40, 20, 50, 25, 60, 30, 70,35, 80…..can you guess the next number?  It’s 40!  Which means, by the force of nature,  I need to date an octagarian!  Or find a niche market and go with it.  Do you know what turns my head?  A Sikh man in some kind of uniform.  My neighbourhood UPS man is a vision of smoldering brown hotness from turban to toe.  And the cop directing traffic this morning on Woodbine had an OPP turban on that matched his uniform nearly made me crash my car.  That stupid movie, The English Patient, started me on this.  It’s all the mystery of the forbidden fruit of conflicting cultures.  But in realty, they have the same skid marks as your balding husband in his Jockeys underneath his Dockers.  And again, just like my dolty douchebag demographic, I wave at them, but they never wave back.

So I have learned a lady has to go where the bone is.  There is no point in fighting City Hall.  Go with the flow.  As it turns out, the only men that ever paid me any mind in the last 6 years, I could have definitely given birth to and had their little brothers, too.  It borders on creepy, for sure.  Like that dude on a skateboard I met on the street a couple of months ago who liked my Velvet Underground tshirt, he turned out to be in high school.  Don’t judge me, I didn’t start it.   6 years ago, when I separated from my same-age ex-husband and moved into this house, I needed a handyman to assemble some Ikea furniture.  Of course I could have done it myself, but there are two types of people:  those who read instructions and those who won’t.  I am the latter.  So I went outside and I flagged the first person I saw walking on the street.  Serendipity.  He was a university student, age 19, and because it was during a July heatwave, he wasn’t wearing a shirt and he all ripped and ready.  He accepted my offer of fifty bucks to assemble 2 dressers for my bedroom.  I know you’re probably thinking I am making this up and have watched one too many Vivid feature films on Friday night Showcase.  But no, it wasn’t intended like that, he assembled the drawers, I gave him money and a beer, and he gave me his number in case I needed him again, for anything, any time.  I put him in my phone as “Handy Luke” so I would remember what he did.  “Handy” being the operative word.  That summer he came by my house a few times, on his own, and always without a shirt.  We sat on my porch and had beers and who would tell me about his girlfriend, who was also 19.  She was really nice and pretty but she wouldn’t do things that he wanted.  According to him, she was worried about how she looked, so she kept her bra on and wrapped up in a sheet.  The paradox of youth, when you have it, you hide it and then you wish you had it back when you are old but by then it’s too late.  Lucky for me, I was never like that.  I will go naked any where, any time.  It’s my claim to fame.

After the summer of  Handy Luke, he went back to school, out of town, and soon out of mind.  Strangely enough, I thought about him last week when I caught of whiff of someone’s soap in a crowded elevator.  He had a definite odour and when I smelled it from a random stranger, I got a wave nostalgia.  Where is he now?  Has he shagged his way to proper manhood?  He’d be 25 now.  He was really handsome.  Sigh.  Cougar purr.  And then yesterday, when I was waiting in line at the butcher, my phone made that nerve jangling glass-ping sound, alerting me to a text message.  Now you’d think I would be a texting-type person but I am not.  That sound fills me with dread.  I’d sooner communicate by Morse code than a text message, it’s just so passsive aggresive.  Anyway, much to my complete surprise, it was a message from Handy Luke.  Isn’t that weird how that always seems to happen?  You think of someone randomly and then they show up out of the blue.  Anyway, as I’m waiting for my chicken to be chopped up in a million pieces, this is how the exchange went:

HANDY LUKE:  How are you?

ME:  I’m good!  This is so weird, I was just thinking of you the other day, how are you?

HANDY LUKE:  I forget what your boobs look like. 

(and then seconds later):  I hope you’re not mad.  lol.

ME:  As if.  They’re still hanging in there.

HANDY LUKE:  Can you shoot me a pic?

And so I hightailed out of the shop with my bag of dismembered chicken parts, a spicy salami, and a new lease on life.  When I got home, I went to my bedroom and and whipped the bra off and assumed position on the bed.  Now I am no stranger to this sort of photography and pretty much by trial and error, I know the right angles and propping to make the boobs seem appetizing.  I snapped a shot from my phone then checked the image.  Oh dear.  The flash had gone off so my rack looked like an all-terrain surreal landscape.  The left boob slipped mostly out of frame except for the squiggly blue vein on the top, it looked like a raging river plunging into a valley of patchy dirt.  THIS IS WHY WE MUST USE SPF99 ON OUR DECOLLETE!  On the base of the second mountain, aka. the right boob, is a giant spider bite that looks like a volcano ready to erupt.  Further on up, another messy waterway of veins and to the top, a jaggedy pink rock that looks could fall over any minute.  That is the nipple with the scar, the one that got bit by a certain 3 year old who shall remain nameless but wanted to try again because her baby brother seemed to like it so much.  I deleted this photo, so don’t you be asking me for it.  Instead I texted him back:

ME:  Where are you now?

HANDY LUKE:  I’m in the hospital

ME:  What happened???

HANDY LUKE:  My girlfriend just got a boob job!  I’m in the waiting room while they take the bandages off. I wanted to see what real ones looked like 😉

ME:  Just close your eyes and think of two Dairy Queen soft serve cones, melting in the sun. 

HANDY LUKE:  LOL!  I’m glad you’re still a funny lady. 

And there you go.  A cougar tale.  And another happy cub with a fond memory.  I just may sit on the porch and wait for another one to come by.  Yawn.

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11

Aug. ’11

The Remainder Man

Last night I slept on my daughter’s windowsill on the third floor of our house which looks on to the street.  I had houseguest from the U.K. and I gave them my bedroom because I figured I could sleep with Evangeline up in her room.  We had spent the evening on the back deck drinking beers and reminiscing over our teenage years.  They are one of those couples that I would aspire to be if I had the coupling gene.  They also told me their secret to a successful marriage but I’m not going to tell you what is because my M.O. is to make everyone single again, like in our twenties, so I can level the playing field.  Suffice to say, as a duo , they are actually fun to be around and you never think when is he/she going to dump his/her ass?  Anyway when I went up to my daughter’s room, drunk-ish, there was no way she would have me in her bed.  I was wearing my bathrobe and I left my pyjamas somewhere downstairs.  She made me sleep on the window seat behind the curtains so she couldn’t see me and my snoring would be muffled.  When I woke up at sunrise, my robe had swung upon and my bare buttocks were pressed against the window.  Delicatessen hams for sale!  She didn’t even give me a blanket!

In my hangover-ish state this morning I had pangs of anxiety which is really my Spidey senses on high alert.  Whilst I made us all wild boar bacon in the George Foreman grill, scrambled eggs from the free-range  chicken farm, my guests and I gossiped about a gay couple that we know.  He said: “I can’t even tell them apart, they are morphing into each other!”  I think they have always looked alike, two slightly different versions of Cary Grant, which is why they coupled up, as some kind of extension of their Narcissism.  I read about this coupling strategy in Marie Claire, opposites might attract but they don`t stay together.  My ex-husband`s more simplified theory is that you should marry someone with the same colour hair as your own.  Mine is chestnut-brown and his blond is the colour of wet concrete which was by his estimation, the basis of our demise.  He is happy as a clamdigger with his fiancée who`s blondeness is maintained by a professional.  There`s a punchline there somewhere that you can come up with yourself because I am still slightly hung over.

When my guests were packing up to leave around noon, we sat on my front porch to gather our wits, when a man on a motorcycle pulled up in my driveway.  And from what I could see, he was cute!  And then he took off his helmet and it was Bob!  Who is Bob?  You might wonder.  Bob is my soul mate.  No, I am not some delusional single gal, projecting fantasies on to some poor sap and why, if he is my soul mate, do I sleep alone with my ass in the window?  Because Bob is my Remainder Man.  I know it’s not quite as panty-creaming as The Notebook but the concept of a Remainder Man is actually quite romantic.  Let me explain.  But hold on, I need to get a beer first.

I met Bob 11 years ago, when my kids were little but not hanging off my teat.  I was hot stuff, in my prime.  It was a hormonal thing beyond my control.  My previously dormant mojo had taken its nursing bra off and was acting like a 16-year-old boy on Chatroullette.  We went to the same gym and he would take care of his girlfriend’s two little kids so we be became acquainted in the daycare.  The very first time I saw him, I felt like I had known him for a hundred years.  And because he is the most gregarious man on the planet and I, the horniest  lady, we hit it off immediately.  We would have beers together at the gym restaurant.  His girlfriend eventually dumped him for a ginger man!  At the time, that was unheard of.  Gingers, in the pre-Prince Harry era, were perceived kind of wimpy and Bob is the opposite.   He is burly, muscle-y, walks with a jaunty gate, and when he smiles he has dimples and his eyebrows move back.   In case you were wondering, his hair is the same colour as mine, chestnut-brown, but he buzz cuts it and has the best widow’s peak ever.   His hands are good too (clean fingernails) and he can fix stuff.  She was stupid to dump him, I remember thinking back then, and she actually married that ginger dude and moved to country.  And Bob became my Remainder Man. 

The most important thing about the R-Man is that it is kept strictly platonic.  His role in your life and your role in his is to be there when you are both too tired or disgusting to bother to get in the game.  You must have a certain amount of sexual tension with your Remainder Man but do not act upon it, otherwise it will complicate everything!  You need to be kind of proud your R-Man because sometimes you need to prance him around the village like a show pony so that people will see you together and wonder if you are an item.  The humiliating image of you sleeping on a window sill with your bare ass pressed against the glass will be erased when they see you riding on the back of a motorcycle with your R-Man.  Sometimes the reason the R-Man is not your actual boyfriend is because his flaws are deal breakers. Bob likes country music (shudder).  In theory, when the timing is right,  those things won’t matter.  And by the way, when we get old, pretty much everyone ends up with white hair.  The nursing home becomes the most level playing field of them all!

When Bob got another girlfriend two and a half years ago, he kind of disappeared out of my life.  She is an introvert and disapproves of his party-animal lifestyle.  As it turned out, Bob bought a motorcycle last week.  And he and his girlfriend broke up last night.  She doesn’t get his nature and is tired of his camel-toe staring ways.  Her loss, my gain.  For now, at least, my Remainder Man is back but there is no way I`m going for a ride on that motorcycle!  Too scary!  And with that, I leave you with our song:

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