Category Archives: Uncategorized

16

Jun. ’12

Convex Versus Concave

Last week my daughter and I went to see “Cosmopolis,” un film de David Croneneberg.  RPattz was the big draw for her (she’s cool about it!  Don’t judge!) and I would go see Disney On Ice if Cronenberg directed it.  I’m dying to meet him.  I think he would tickle my intellect, the primordial part that thinks that everything convex represents a plundering penis, and a vagina is a portal to the mystery of the universe. At least that’s the gist I got from Videodrome.

As for Cosmopolis, don’t ask me.  It was a bit like watching Shakespeare or an Almodovar movie without the subtitles, where you catch maybe every third word and you have to pay hyper-attention to follow the plot.  I know you don’t visit this blog for comprehensive film reviews so I won’t go on but just to say that it is visually exciting, there are a couple of hot sex scenes, two really funny parts, and a really bad haircut. It was an allegory, intertwined with satire, wrapped tightly in an enigma and stuffed into an asymmetrical prostate like a jolly little butt plug.  Cronenberg:  Call me!

How I feel about Cosmopolis is how I feel about watching team sports on tv.  I can look at the screen, stare at it, not know at all what’s going on, but be perfectly happy.  This goes for basketball, hockey, football, and baseball.  However, the other day I went to Meat Dept on Danforth and they have installed a tv on the wall so they can watch Euro Cup all the live long day. Cruelly and deliberately, I made the butcher tear himself away from the screen to cut up a chicken “just so.”   While he happily obliged, he is sweet, I looked up at the match that was going on.  There is something about soccer (or European football, whatevs) that sets me off into a rage.  Dudes running willy nilly back and forth on a giant field, the dull roar of the crowd, and the commentators that make everything sound exciting when it’s not.  This is what being in my head is like at 2 o’clock in the morning when I can’t sleep.  Metaphorically, the dudes are all my inane thoughts, the roar of the crowd is the giant knot of nerves forming in my stomach, and the commentators are my own twisted judgements that turn the most mundane day time activity into an endless loop of strife:  PAY HYDRO BILL, MAKE FREDDY A SANDWICH, WRITE A BOOK, RENOVATE THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM, EMPTY THE DISHWASHER, CHECK MOUSETRAPS, TRY A ZUMBA CLASS, BLAH BLAH BLAH!

Anyway this week soccer is everywhere and you just can’t escape it.  The other day my Remainder Man (the one who got away), came over to work on his car.  I let him park his junk in my driveway…not a euphemism!  He has a trailer full of crap and a 1990 BMW he is resuscitating back to health.  I like to stand around and watch him get underneath the car and tinker with the pipes.  Then as he gets all covered in grease and sweat, I get this overwhelming desire to want to marry him.  That day, after about an hour of writhing and twisting, he finally succeeded to get the car running around the parkette without drips and then he wiped WD-40  all over his muscly forearms, he said:  “Let’s go to Gaby’s for lunch, Ireland versus Italy.”

“I’m in!  Just let me run upstairs and change my panties!”  Pro-tip to all men:  Forget the $90 bottle of Hugo Boss, just spray some WD-40 on and you will save $80 and be able to take a lady out to lunch.

So we get to Gabby’s on Queen Street and there are four screens showing the match so there is no escape from the visual nightmare but at least the sound is muted.  We sit down in our usual spot near the window.

This is me watching soccer:  “That guy is cute!”  “He’s got high water booty!” “I like that shade of green on their uniforms!”

This is my Remainder Man watching soccer while texting his girlfriend the entire time and giving me the play-by-play:  “She wants to buy a tarp at Canadian Tire.” Tap, tap, tap, “She’s on-line now, there’s 4 in-stock at Lakeshore.” Tap, tap, tap,  “It’s 100 bucks, she wants to know if I’ll pay half,” Tap, tap, tap, “Sure, why not?  It’ll keep the mosquitoes out,”  Tap, tap, tap.

Believe me, if I had a lady boner in my backyard, it went back to its concave ways  by the time the wings showed up.  That afternoon, while my Remainder Man was getting poned from his phone, I watched an entire soccer match.  And I slept pretty well that night.

Here’s the Cosmpolis trailer, go see it and let me know your thoughts:

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06

Jun. ’12

Dat Venus

I’m not into the whole astrology thing, I think horoscopes are for chicks who read vampire novels.  As though your “star sign” can govern your life or the day you were born can be the cause of your personality disorder.  The other day a friend of mine was describing a young girl who her son is dating and she said:  “She was born the day before my ex-husband hence she is a mini-malignant narcissist in training.”  According to her, if you are having a baby and are due on the Aries timeline, you either schedule a C-section on the cusp of Pisces or cross your legs until you make it to Taurus.  Aries are diabolical and if you ever meet one, do not even make eye contact.  They will suck your soul out like vampires and then get medieval on your heart.

My son Freddy is an Aries! He is the sweetest boy I know! Although this I cannot ignore:  He shares his birthday with Quentin Tarantino, Mariah Carey, and Fergie. He is an aspiring filmmaker, can sing like an angel, and pee like a racehorse. So maybe there is something to it all.

As far as astrology is concerned, I do believe in the power of planetary configurations.  Full moons make people crazy and I’m one of the worst offenders.  Normally when I go about my day, I’m pretty easy going, placid, lazy, gluttonous…in other words your TYPICAL TAURUS.  Blow a full moon across the sky and I am wide awake, snorting and scraping my hooves on the ground. Raging bull, it’s no joke.   If you and I have some unfinished business, expect the phone to ring.  If you are screening your calls and hiding in your basement, I will hunt you down.  I don’t kick or punch or throw things, that is more a drunk Capricorn’s move, or a Gemini with a hormonal imbalance.  I will verbally rip you a new one.  You will need a dictionary. You will cower and wince.  I will show no mercy until you cry.  Then we will go out and get a drink or whatever.  LOL.  The next day when the moon wanes, I will have forgotten all about it and feel like as light as though I had the most epic bowel movement.  But if you are a garden variety Scorpio, Leo, or  an Aquarius with a backbone, you will take the next 29 days to stock your stinger, sharpen your claws. fill your water jug, or whatever your horoscope avatar does to be more menacing. Revenge is your lot in life as the kingpins of your elements:  Water, Fire, and Air…the Mighty Taurus rules the The Earth and needs to be reckoned with.  The rest of y’all, you virgins, fishies, crabs, and centaurs, will just have to wait quietly in your living rooms while the moon waxes and pray to the stars for clemency.

And how about that Venus action the other day?  On June 5 and 6, Venus traveled across the sun. It’s known as Venus Transit, the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occurs in pairs eight years apart which are themselves separated by more than a century.

Fuck yeah, Venus!  The onset of Venus kicked full little moon’s ass over the last few days.  The craziest things happened:  Cannibalooza!  Subway floodings! Mall shootings! A huge heaping serving of madness and mayhem courtesy of the universe and its random agenda.

Some of us made our way on Venus Transit unscathed and others got a little roughed up. Me personally?  My toilet got blocked for two days, I finally snaked it clear, but then hit my head on the sink and broke the pipe. Hardly dramatic or even random, just stupid.

One of my best friends went to a Pet Smart Fair and adopted a chihuahua orphan from Louisiana.  Super random and super cute!  And really, what was she thinking? She already has a dog.  When I wanted to adopt a second dog way back in November when Venus was just boring star thing, she was all like, “Don’t be an idiot, you need to adopt a penis, not become some crazy chihuahua lady. Get off Petfinder and go make yourself a Match.com profile.”  There you go.  I did neither, lazy old Taurus that I am.

Others very near and dear got hit by some Venus shrapnel.  Not good.  I had to work hard to  harness the bull because there is really nothing I could do.  Some shit storms are just random milky ways jizzed out from the blackness and others come from us, cruel and calculated.  Things don’t happen for a reason, but you have to make sense of it when it does .  When the shit rains down, it’s best to pack it all nice and tight, make a pan of brownies, and serve it up with whipped cream, just like a Taurus boss when the moon is full.

 

 

 

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31

May. ’12

Operation Fornicazione

“May I unclog your pipe, Princess Peach?”

“Why, yes, my Super Mario, but be gentle, my pipes are tender and there is not enough toilet paper in the world to clean the mess if you break it.  My pipe has been broken by one of your kind (Italian) before and it took years of therapy (ie, boring my friends to tears and crying in my dog’s back)  and drinking a vineyard of wine for me to open the door for your services  (plumbing).  But you know what, Mario?  I am okay with it all. Sometimes you just have to throw caution in the wind.  Make a decision. TAKE A VACAY!  Slap it on a credit card.  Sell all your crap on eBay to pay for it. Because life is long and if you don’t fill it with a story, then all you’ve got is a toilet that is clogged because you tried to flush the TV guides.  So yes, my Super Mario, take your plunger and pump away as I, Princess Peach, am ready to be ravished!”

Let me explain this one.  Out of the blue, a friend asked me to go to Italy for a week this summer, a cheap and cheerful little holiday, with air mile points and to survive off of white carbs and local plonk. This is our prime and this is our time, she said, let’s do it.  Eat, pray, LOL, I thought.  I want to go!  But there were pros and cons to weigh.

“You are broke,” my mother, nay-sayer said, “If you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t go.”

“You will get Italian bone,” A friend, yay-sayer, said.

Decision made.  Italian bone trumps poverty.

Apparently Italians in actual Italy are different from Italians here in North America.  I’ve been to Italy once as a young lady in the ’80s, menstruating her way through Europe.  That is my curse, literally, every time I go on vacation, without fail,  Aunt Flo packs her bag and hitches a ride. Back then, I had noticed European men were freaky about lady flow.  “You will curse our village, and its citizens, with your sangria clotting, cover your astro turf and be away with you!”  Was the rough translation, via a pocket dictionary and through my understanding of latin based languages based on one Spanish course I took in third year university.

North American men don’t care about such things.  They will pull a ‘pon with their teeth and throw down a towel to get to their destination.  Which is far more civilized as far as I’m concerned. Maybe things have changed in Rome and Aunt Flo and I will be in luck.  In any case, I have compiled a list of my favourite Italian-ish men…let’s groove:

First of all, I do believe that this is Andy Garcia, who is not Italian but Cuban descent. But when I googled “Italian men” his picture came up on a blog with the caption “Close Enough” and if its good enough for this awesome blogger, its good enough for me.

Fabrizio Moretti, the drummer from the Strokes, who is only half Italian and actually born in Brazil.  I like him because he dated Drew Barrymore for a while.  I always thought Drew Barrymore would play me in the film version of my life.   He is super cute. I also thought he was full Italian.  Joke’s on me.

This is Dario Franchitti, IndyCar champion, winner of Indy500.  He is married to Ashley Judd who I love because she is the bi-polar Voice of Reason of that crazy Judd family.  They were the best guests that Oprah ever had and when Wynonna Judd sang “I Want to Know What Love Is,”  I actually cried.  You think I’m joking but I’m not.  I have a super mushy side.  Anyway I love a man who puts up with all that whacked out estrogen.  But again, he is only half-Italian…the other half, Scottish.

I make no apologies for my love of Leonardo Dicaprio.  His modelizing ways makes me feel like he is floundering his way through love.  He and Kate Winslet need to get it on.  Kate Winslet is in the running to play me in the movie of my life so maybe Leo could play my future husband since they’re so good together.  Oh, and he is about as Italian as my secret ingredient in pesto (Corn Flakes!) but the name counts.

Seriously, even Super Mario is a watered down Italian.  He is created by a Japanese designer and although originally from Brooklyn, lives in Mushroom Kingdom.  But his M.O. is to save the damsels in distress.  Or just unclog their pipes, which is all I’m asking at this point.

And here’s Wynonna on Oprah, wanting to know what love is, which might be the next step AFTER ITALY:

 

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24

May. ’12

The Sequinned Side of the Moon

In my high school in Quebec, the students were segregated: Disco and Disco Sucks.  Disco Sucks were the majority rule and those who were Disco walked silently down the halls, heads down, not looking at anyone in the eye.  Discos ate lunch in the bathroom, where the mirrors were, and they could pick their perm ‘fros and practise their hustle moves without getting kicked in the head.

The first time I saw a Disco person up close was this girl who was new in the school,  and who had unknowingly claimed a locker smack dab in the midst of Pink Floyd disciples.  She was wearing a bunny fur bomber jacket, high-waisted skintight jeans tucked into platform boots.  Her dyed blond hair had perfectly executed side flips, like wave breakers, and no curling iron marks!  Do you know how hard it is to make it smooth? Hers looked like a helmet. And her face was perfectly maquillaged, swoops of blue eyeshadow under razor-thin arched eyebrows, streaks of pink blush, and layer of shiny fuchsia gloss so thick that if you stared at it, you would go blind.  Like an eclipse.  She was awesome.

Some plaid boy hissed:  “Disco bitch!  Kill her with fire!”

She barely batted an eye: “Go fuck yourself, farmer.”  As she swung her silver sequinned purse over her shoulder, she clomped away with her pack DuMauriers, a whiff of Shalimar trailed her. We all stared, the girls and the boys, dressed stupidly and all the same in our flannel shirts from the men’s department at Horizon.  Nobody bothered her again.  She was a French girl named Louise and she turned out to be A-OK.  Once we skipped gym class and went to Gaby’s for french fries and she told me that she missed a couple of years of school because she had a baby at 12!  She gave it up for adoption and her parents made her live with her crazy grandma. She was very funny and could blow smoke rings without moving her jaw.  She only stayed a year and never ended up graduating with us but when I think of Disco, I think of her.

I also thought of Disco last week when Donna Summer and Robin Gibb passed away.  Like I said, it was just not cool to like Disco in my neck of the woods.  We listened to “Progressive Rock” like Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Yes.  But when someone would put on the “Dark Side of the Moon,” I would get anxious.  Please stop the howling.  I couldn’t take the tedious moaning from a cave sounds.  I didn’t own any of these albums because there was no point.  You couldn’t escape them from the radio station we listened to called CHOM.  It was a downward spiral of screaming and endless guitar riffs that could set your watch by, day after day, night after night.

Secretly, and I’m only confessing this now because I am a LOCA and I don’t give a fuck, I LIKED DISCO!

I loved to go shopping in downtown Montreal in the 70s and go to Jean Junction where they would blast the music and I would sing along, joyfully, trying on Road Runners:  BURN, BABY, BURN!  DISCO INFERNO!

And I never told any of my friends from school this but on Friday nights, my French friend and I would go to a roller rink in Brossard and skate with boys who had blow dried feathered hair and wore gold necklaces with little mini Jesus crosses over their furry chests:  JIVE TALKIN’!

And the very best times were had in the summer, going to LaRonde, the amusement park at Man and His World.  You would take a little trolley train from the Metro to the gates of the parks and see couples in full-on coital, humping on the grassy hills underneath the trees.  I think people in general had more mojo back then, and I think Disco helped. Something about the beat and all the moaning.   The rides at the park were operated by toothless Carnies who gave you extra spins if you weren’t wearing a bra.  My favourite ride was the Bobsleigh, where you would go around and up and up and down super fast while the lights flashed and the music blasted:  I FEEL LO-OOOOOVE! I FEEL LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!

Why on Earth would you want to go to The Dark Side of the Moon when you could feel such unbridled joy?

I kept my secret, all through high school and up until now.  I was grateful that Disco didn’t actually die like they said on the cover of Newsweek when they closed Studio 54…it seeped into other genres, sometimes furtively and other times with a wink and a nod.  For example, it was perfectly acceptable to like David Bowie, but let’s face it, he had Disco Fever along with Mick Jagger and all the other androgynous types wiggling  their crotch lizards around in tight satin pants.  Blondie was considered “Punk” when she came on the scene.  Bitch, please…Disco with rap, hardly anarchy.  Even Patti Smith, who is the coolest chick ever, had a Disco bone…just listen synthesized to the riffs on ‘Dancing Barefoot” and if you don’t want to put on a pair of roller skates and whirl around shakin’ your groove thing, I don’t want to know you.

Dubstep:  You have some homage to pay.

And here is Cake, playing a classic Disco song “I Will Survive” and not without hipster irony either:

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08

May. ’12

The Resurrection of Linda Evangelista

This week in first world problems, 1% edition, Linda Evangelista and French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault have reached a child support settlement after a couple of days of hilarious court testimony. Oh, the accusations! It was said that she wanted $46,000 a month for round-the-clock nannies and body guards, he said she was a gold digger, they had only dated briefly when she got pregnant in 2006.  It was getting really ugly so they had to back-pedal.  Supposedly it was all wild gossip, she didn’t ask for that much and he didn’t say she should have had an abortion.  One thing for sure, nothing attracts rampant sperm better than a set of achey-breaky ovaries.  Mammas, tell your sons when they grow up to be cowboys, DON’T RIDE BAREBACK!  And if an “accident” happens, man up, pay, and shut your pie hole.  Nobody wants an asshole for a father.  You go, girl.  You can tell whose side I’m on.

My level of excitement over the press coverage of this brouhaha went through the roof.  I’ve been a Linda fan since the “Haircut” back in the 80s.  When my friends and I started reading fashion magazines, we picked our favourite models, the ones that looked most like us, and copied them.  We didn’t make a fuss over how it was presented to us like they do now, whining:  “All that photoshopping makes that level of  beauty unattainable!  Magazines should be showing real women, blah blah!”  Fuck that! I don’t want to see “real” anything, I want to look in a magazine and be blown away.  You don’t expect to open up House and Home and see pictures of  kitchens with mismatched Rubbermaid containers half-eaten bags Dempster bread on the counter ( welcome to my crib).   I feel the same about fashion models.  Let them be better than us, even if it’s fake.  I need something to aspire to that is totally superficial otherwise I am bored.  Iron out those wrinkles, stamp out that cellulite…challenge accepted!

When I was a youngster in Montreal, my friends and I looked at fashion magazines for inspiration to hone our own personal style.  We didn’t complain about the airbrushing as it was back then, instead we took the cues and applied them to our own lives.  Magazines were our guides to successful modern living. Attaining the look was an adventure. Seventeen magazine had Phoebe Cates in Butterick sewing patterns that we messed up in high school Home-Ec class.  We diligently followed the “bikini blast diets” that Glamour provided for us every spring.  We copied Isabella Rossellini’s cat eyes from Mademoiselle with some vintage liquid eyeliner we got at Ben E. Noodleman’s pharmacy in Westmount.  We rolled up our Levis jeans like the photo spread called “Mean Jeans” and I got my hair cut like the model that looked like Elvis….so began my perpetual ever-changing hair metamorphosis.

And then came Linda Evangelista in the late 80s with her shorn locks and for the next 20 years, my hair plan was mapped out for me.  She was the most super of all the supermodels, in my humble opinion.  She got a bum rap from that comment she made in Vogue:  “We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.”  Whatever, let them eat brioche. I get what you’re saying, sister.  Besides, she’s a model, not an oracle.  I long for the days where models were actually in magazines, not out in the streets with their tragic lives exposed to the world.  And! I personally don’t want to live in a world where D-List actresses like stumpy troll Hayden Panitierre are pushing products for cosmetics companies…that is a job for a supermodel!  Bring them back and I might actually buy a magazine again.

Enough ranting, here’s the gallery:

This is the short hair that put her on the map.  Pro tip: Short hair requires accessorizing and a lot of manipulation.  For me, it was a pain in the ass.  I am lazy and I hate the feeling of product, whatever kind crunchy or greasy.   But without it, I looked like a  hedgehog.  The “sideburns” would inevitably grow out unevenly and I’d end up trimming one side and then the other, then making a mess…not good.

This one was “the bob” which is super easy for me, my hairdresser at that time said I had Asian hair and should just be worn straight.  I think Linda has some wave in hers and this was probably a bitch to style.  The uber-short bangs only last that way for about a week but it’s just as well.  One of my friends once dubbed this hairstyle “the retarded Dutch girl” and once you see that, it cannot be unseen.

The red hair was my favourite look, makes green eyes pop. I dyed my own hair back then and ended up using clown red Manic Panic in a desperate attempt to keep it fresh.  Problems include the red hair dye fades super fast and stains your towels and pillows and your hair eventually goes brassy.  And again, when the word “clown” can be used in a description of your hair, you are fucked.

This blond business was four years ago.  My current hairdresser copied this perfectly for me and made it look “money,” not like a dumb,fun, blond but like a lady with a rich husband and a mean backhand. Blonds do not have more fun.  I couldn’t handle the fraudulent representation of my lifestyle. The floor boards screamed out “Liar!”  So my friend and I dumped a box of generic brown hair dye on it and brought it back to reality.  That was when I fired Linda as my hair guru, in my mind of course, she has no idea I exist.  Later, I ended up getting my hair lopped off like a hairstyle that I had copied from her 10 years earlier but I considered it self-emulation because she doesn’t not have the patent on the pixie cut.

4 years later, I haven’t really thought about her and of course, I have been growing my hair out.  I don’t really have a fashion mentor these days, everything I do is inspired by the Buddhist philosophy of detachment.  I don’t want anything.  I shop in my own closet.  You’d be amazed what it is stuffed in the back.

Then Linda appears on the news! How interesting is it that we currently have the same hair style!  It is serendipity! She is back in my consciousness and I love her!  I WANT THOSE SUNGLASSES SHE IS WEARING TO THE COURTHOUSE!!!

(Update:  A smart style hound from my Facebook identified those sunglasses in the top photo as Derek Cardigan for Clearly Contacts in Birch and they are on sale for $59…my pair has just been delivered and are sitting on top of my head like a crown,  I am basking post-hunt glory!)

And lest we forget:

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03

May. ’12

There’s a Ghost In My In-Box

A few days ago, I had one of those “lucid dreams” that I’ve had regularly since I was four years old.  You know those ones you have where you are not quite awake and you are dreaming but you are aware you are dreaming, and you want to move but you can’t move a muscle and you swear that there is a someone in the room and he is going to come and sit on your chest and suck all the oxygen out of your lungs and you want to scream but you can’t because you are in a state of sleep paralysis?  I can’t be the only one who has these because Wikipedia tells me it’s normal (ish).  They call it “Old Hag Syndrome” because in some cultures, it is an old hag (always a woman!)  that is sitting on your chest blowing evil spirits into your soul.  Yes, that seems legit, some ghost bitch wants to go to all the bother of riding my grill.  Lil ol’ me, I have no power anywhere in which to wield any kind of malevolence, my credit cards don’t even work.  What a waste of nefarious ectoplasm.  You would think if an evil spirit wanted to spread around its diabolical agenda, he or she would do it more efficiently, like squatting in the water filtration plants of majors cities.  They could form an Occupy Movement for disgruntled ghosts and spread the word through the pipes so that in the morning, we all get an extra jolt of bitchiness in our cup of joe.  Maybe that explains morning rush hour road rage.

Most of the time, I think my “old hag” is a raccoon that casually waddled into my bedroom from that ridiculous window that swings open on its own even when there is a tiniest breeze.  So far its all been my imagination but I have duct taped the window shut just in case.  The other night, the thing was bigger than a raccoon.  It was man-sized and super clingy.  I couldn’t tell if I was scared or excited.

“Maybe you were visited by Jesus,” my Facebook friend suggested.  He the one that lives in Australia and was instant messaging when I finally fully woke up at 3:40 and was able to turn on the lights to find solace on the interwebs.

“No, it wasn’t Jesus, I would have felt a prickly beard and smelled B.O.   This thing was smooth and hairless…maybe it was AN ALIEN!”

“Well that’s enough internet for me, gotta go now, bye,” and he logged off.

I was fully awake so I checked my email.  Every once in a while one of you kind readers of this blog will send me a private message because writing a comment is such hassle.  You have to decipher wobbly writing of some gibberish and then say something that’s not embarrassing or make up a clever user name because it is out in the internet and somehow your mother might read it.  One of my favourite e-mail pen pals is George who lives somewhere near Bay City, Michigan, at “the base of the thumb” whatever that means.  He first wrote me a couple of months ago saying that he found my blog serendipitously by googling “hand bra” and he ended up laughing instead of fapping (no such thing as “too much information” in my world)  and he has been reading all the posts ever since.  I love him so.

The night of my lucid dream, he wrote:

I  can’t sleep!  Sometimes I wish you lived under my bed and I could take you out and play with you whenever I wanted.  I don’t mean to sound creepy.  I just mean we could have a few beers and play Scrabble while we watch tv.

Not creepy at all, George, just mind blowing.  Maybe we are all living under each others’ beds waiting to come out and play. In the night, our sleeping spirits become interlopers moving fluidly through U.S./Canada border.  The internet is like public transit for ghosts.  George is my “old hag” but he doesn’t want ill-will, he just wants to hang!  That is so cute!  I’m not afraid to go back to sleep now…sweet dreams, George, let’s spoon!

And this has nothing to do with anything except when I think about ghosts, I think about Jack White and here he is in my video of the week, beating up Gary Oldman:

 

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18

Apr. ’12

My Badass Heart Will Go On

I saw the Titanic in 3-D over the weekend.  I know we’ve all moved on to other topics and I don’t care what the haters say, it was totally exciting and I have been ruminating about it ever since.  The next night I pretended my couch was a life raft and I was safe watching the ABC Titanic Downton Abbey-like mini-series and then Saturday Night Live waiting for the rescue ship to show up.  And then during Aquafit on Tuesday, I pretended all the bobbling silver lady heads in the water were drowning victims and our pool noodles were life vests and we were flailing for our lives when really we were doing  rocking horse kicks.  Such fun!

My daughter and I went to the local Beach Alliance theatre where I wore my Neil Degrasse Tyson tshirt in honour of his contribution to the newly revised version of the film.  Hipster geek girl ticket taker “got” my tshirt as she must be a Redditor. No secret codes of when the narwhal bacons (google it) were exchanged because she was probably weirded out that an old lady, who could never see a narwhal bacon because midnight is past her bedtime and she was probably alive when the real Titanic sank , was wearing a meme shirt:

Memes may well be the newest lowest form of humour but I’m still laughing.  LOL.

Anyway, apparently the star configuration in the sky the night the Titanic sank was all wrong in the film. After seeing the film for the first time, Astrophysicist extraordinaire, Neil Degrasse Tyson contacted James Cameron in a letter to let him know of this anachronism. James Cameron ignored it. Years later they bumped into each other at a planetarium of all places and Neil asked him why the sky was whack and James said:  “Dunno” then puffed up his chest and said:  “Well, last I looked Titanic grossed 1.3 billion dollars, imagine how much more I would have made if I got the sky right?”  As he is all about the details (change the devil or God to “James Cameron is in the details!”), he fixed it for the new version, so just for that, it’s worth seeing again.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same as it was the first time.  Kate Winslet casually walks around in flimsy short sleeve dresses on the deck of the ship like she was in Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s April on the North Atlantic, brrrr.  Dear James Cameron: Did they not have goose bumps back in 1912?  Those would have looked amazing in 3-D.  The rest of the effects were sort of meh and those 3-D glasses tickle the third eye chakra, it’s almost distracting.

Also the second time around (actually the bazillionth time I’ve seen it, but second in the theatre where I am not distracted by the spiders and clutter in my own personal tv watching ashram), I got the gay subtext between Creepy Cal  (Billy Zane) and his man servant Bruuuuuce Ismay  (Jonathan Hyde).  Why else would dude run around a sinking ship chasing Jack because he was on the payroll?  Only a man with a boner would bother.  Did dapper society men in 1912 get their eyebrows groomed? I bet the latent homosexual ones did. And whatever happened to Billy Zane in real life?  Is he crazy?  I have a feeling he is a heap of trouble.

Also just so you know, according to the laws of physics, Jack and Rose could not have shared the raft.  Force of gravity is larger than that of buoyancy, so they both would have sunk, so let’s not joke about it anymore.  And I like a fat Kate Winslet better than this new sinewy version:

I love how she went around, promoting the re-release of Titanic 3-D talking trash about how she hated that Celine Dion song and about the reversal of fatness between her and Leo.  Don’t get me started about Fat Leo.  I. Love. Him.

Here are my thoughts on Leonardo DiCaprio, who has eclipsed my lust for Fat Vince Vaughn:

He reminds me of  Orson Welles and Orson Welles was my favourite fat man.  Maybe he will even get that rotundo, in which case he will probably not score with the models so much. Speaking of which, I feel like Leo’s chronic modelizing is just because he is not self-actualized. Dr. Drew would know what I mean.  I know of a fellow who modelized for years and when he did settle down it was with a Filipino nanny of one of his spawn (modelizers often breed randomly, I’m looking at you, Mick Jagger).  I feel like it’s a just a phase for Teflon Leo, he hasn’t met me yet and my environmentally friendly ways.  I recycle bacon grease!  Dear James Cameron:  Hook me up!

And on that note, check out this video about the Titanic artifacts and it  actually did melt my cold, icy heart and make me cry, DON’T LAUGH:

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11

Apr. ’12

Silver Crown of Mojo

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.

It’s going to be awesome.

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28

Mar. ’12

Lactate These

No, I’m not going to analyze last week’s Season 5 premiere of Mad Men, so stay with me, I’m going to talk about boobs and show you some that will blow your mind.  Anyway, I fell asleep by accident and woke up during the dirty white carpet scene that I am assuming is a metaphor for Don Draper’s madonna-whore complex, which is why you should always have 4 or 5 backups because they get dirty fast.  The carpets and the whores. That just might be me and my Freudian thought process.  It was on again on Monday, thank the tv gods,  and I stayed awake but I did go into a self-preservation coma during the party scene.  I’m frightened by Megan’s teeth (get a Twitter account!) and her zou-bisouing miniskirt-wearing ways.  Everyone else was dressed appropriately, what is happening?  You have the power, Matthew Weiner, make time stop! Hippies: Do Not Want!

I’m worried about what will happen to Joan and her girdle/torpedo bra combo when the hippies do inevitably take over.  You would not believe how much I fretted over what would happen to her body when the writers impregnated her at the end of season 4.   It’s just a tv show, Peterson, they’ll handle it tastefully.  Thank the tv gods again that they didn’t show any of it. Yes, pregnancy is a beautiful thing but I don’t even want to see Joan have a run her pantyhose, much less baby drool on her chest shelf.  So far, so good, as you can see from the above photo, she can vacu-pack all her post-pregnancy baby weight in a girdle…almost.   This woman is always milkshake away from archaic overbrim.  Which is a fine art if you ask me.

Even though she’s built like the La Leche Dairy Queen, Joan is not breastfeeding.  Carnation baby formula was all the rage in the 60s so that choice makes sense although extremely disappointing. I could get behind the times a-changin’ if Joan became a unapologetic public lactation advocate.  She would breastfeed at home with a shocking glass of wine (I did that in the 1990s, shut up! Both my kids can tie their shoes with the imperial standard knot).  Maybe she’d go back to work and pump in Roger’s office while she smoked a scandalous cigarette and the men peered over the transom to catch a glimpse of her pimentos (I made that up, it sounds 1960s doesn’t it?).  It just seems like such a waste.  And for you google interlopers, I am aware of your search terms and I still love you, here are Christina Hendricks’ NSFW leaked nude photos from her cellphone.  They may or may not be hers, apparently “they” did some vein configuration analysis that came up positive.  I know they are not mine because they are free from dust mite bites.  Otherwise it’s like looking in a mirror.

And speaking of lactation celebration, last weekend Toronto had a visit from the The Milk Truck.  I wanted to check out but I was without my own wheels so I followed it on Twitter instead.  This is the Milk Truck:

Yes, on the roof is a giant fibreglass breast with a flashing pimento on top.  The Milk Truck is the brainchild of Jill Miller, a Pittsburgh based performance artist whose idea is to bring breastfeeding awareness to the uptight masses using humour and folly.  Have you ever been to a mall and your baby needed a snack pronto, your nits are zinging and you go to the salesclerk at the Burlington Coat Factory and ask:  “Excuse me, is there a room I can go to breastfeed my baby?”  And the salesclerk looks you up and down and at your booger covered hoodie and says; “No. We don’t allow that here.”  The Burlington Coat Factory doesn’t allow that.  True story, it happened to my friend in Buffalo before the days of Twitter.  Nowadays you get on your phone and tweet to  the Milk Truck and they will come to your rescue and do some social media shaming.  How awesome is that!

That would never have happened to me.  First of all, I would never ask if I could breastfeed in public, I would just do it. Nobody ever busted my ass because I was a badass, smooth operator who used Patricia Field purse as a diaper bag.  Ironicially, I think it’s those meek mothers who cover everything up with a blankie that garner all the negative attention from the mall police.  They can’t see any pimento so they ask you to move along so they can watch you pack it up.  Bitch please, I see what did there.

And as promised, here are some awesome boobs I found of a British journalist in Africa bonding with her sisters.  It’s such a cool photo series but prudes will find it NSFW.  Don’t ask me.

And I leave you with this to contend with on your own… here’s that Zou Bisou Bisou video, it’s all rage on iTunes, LOLCats:

 

 

 

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22

Mar. ’12

Of Mice and Locas

Sometimes I am kept up at night by all my first world problems. My tedious nocturnal ruminations are like a merry-go-round of super boring thoughts that spin, then stall and then lurch forward. It starts with what to do about my hair and ends with what to do about my cell phone plan, in the middle I think about things I have forgotten FOR A GOOD REASON. Like what was that man’s name from the gym who had a heart attack 10 years ago and owed me $40 from a bag of weed I delivered to him from my neighbour’s garden? He played Richard the III in Stratford in 2003 or 2004…Or was it King Lear? Off to Googleland. Never go on the computer in the middle of the night is the golden rule, it’s a black hole of virtual crack cocaine. Reddit.com, I’m looking at you. But try telling that to my insomniac, obsessive self. She is a Lady of a Certain Age, over-thinking her way through the wee hours of the night, plotting and fantasizing about a new world order. Obliterate all the stupidity! Write comments on all the blogs!

I’m not alone on the interwebs. I know this because when I log on to the Facebook, some of you are there. Of course you live in the U.K. and have passed through the night like champions and are rationally going about trolling through your newsfeed of LOLmemes and oh-so-clever and informative Huffington Post blog links while the bats over the Atlantic are struggling to make sense of Bejeweled Blitz. I am jealous of your time zone. I would like to live in the morning all the live long day, 24/7. Like Groundhog Day only mercifully shorter.

I’m also not alone in the house. The tube-shaped dog is sprawled at the foot of my bed and the kids are upstairs dead to the world. They are teenagers and sleep is their forte…they should change the expression from “I slept like a baby” (what a joke, because babies “sleep” like hungry zombies) to “I slept like a teenager” because my boy sleeps like a snake in a warm air duct, you never even know he’s in the house for days on end until he needs to eat.

And there are mice in the house. They sleep in the day but get up at night to conduct their business. They came in last summer and loved my kitchen so much they invited their friends. I think they drink. Their chatter is ebullient and borders on hysterical. They sound like the mice version of the Guidos and Guidettes on the Jersey Shore: “Vinny, I’m under the toastah! There are freaking caraway seeds! I’m DTF undah the sink aftah we smush these!” The one I called Snooki impaled herself chasing a chard of spaghetti and getting stuck under the fridge last fall but I think she had babies and they are even more obnoxious than her. They started eating through wrappers of Caramilk bars and Kikkomen ramen noodles. That was the last straw.

I started out thinking that I should get rid of them in a humane way. I fashioned a “mouse trap” out of a cardboard box with a ramp and when they fall in, they would land in a a thick layer of Fluff, that white marshmallow spread, aka Jizz of the Gods. I would take them outside and give them a bath and set them free.

They ignored it. I wrote “Tanning Bed” on the side, they still ignored it. My mouse-free neighbour said even if this boneheaded plan worked, they would come back in because they are smart. They are mice but they can out-fox a human.

I put out poison pellets. They blithely ate them all, an entire box load, but they little didn’t die. Instead, they grew six pack abs and made their way to higher ground. I brought out the big guns and one night in January, I put out 5 poison bricks. The next day, there were only 4 bricks. Yay, they must have eaten one, I thought, they’re going to die for sure!

I took Betty the dog out for a walk. Her poop was bright green. Her life flashed before my eyes: Little baby Betty chewing on flip flops, teenage Betty barfing on the carpet, middle aged Betty watching “Glee” on the couch. I called the vet to arrange cremation but he told me not to worry, bring her in the morning. While she ate a toxic amount for her 15 pound frame, a month’s worth of Vitamin K twice a day will help coagulate the blood. She will live after all! And so would the Jersey Shore (in my house and for a new season!) and the 4 remaining bricks would have to go in the trash.

So I literally called in the army. My friend Bob, back from a tour of duty in Virginia(!), came over on Monday and set up the old-fashioned wooden traps and strategically placed them through out the kitchen. “I will come in the morning and remove all the carcasses,” he said gallantly as he left.

That night I went to bed super-early, excited to wake up like a kid on Christmas morning. At 10:30, I heard a SNAP! I didn’t get up, too freaked to move. I slept right through the night though. When I got up at dawn, there he was, one big mo-fo of a mouse, slapped belly up, head in a smear of peanut butter, legs splayed. Something had prolapsed or he was very well-endowed. I called him The Situation and picked him up with a plastic bag and dumped him in the recycling bin.

It’s been a couple of nights, and the other mice have been unusually quiet, maybe they moved to Italy. At any rate, here are the “human” Jersey Shore boys, they are quite endearing here:

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