Today is March 14, otherwise known as Steak and BJ Day. There is a Facebook page. I thought I might have dreamed this so I asked my neighbour if she had heard of it and her gag reflex came up: “IT’S THE WORST DAY EVER!” She is a vegetarian.
Legend has it that this day has come about to reciprocate all the men because Valentine’s Day is such a big brouhaha of diamonds and cunnilingus. As though it’s that hard to throw money at a day and perform the alphabet with your tongue. Waaaay easier than a blow job, sir. What a weird concept. From a man’s perspective, I can’t help thinking that it must be one of those things that looks better than it actually is, like marzipan: It’s icing! *takes bite* Oops, no, it’s shit. Aren’t getting blow jobs a big lunch bag let down? All that effort, slurping, gasping, dying, and don’t teeth get in the way? These are not rhetorical questions, I really want to know. Some women I know claim to be champions and yet get all tight-lipped when it comes to sharing techniques. I guess it makes sense in this dog-eat-dog world of survival of the fittest. If I was the Mighty Queen of Cabeza, I would probably keep it to myself and whoever holds the scepter.
As for making a special day of it, I have to say, I think it’s kind of sweet idea. I picture all these Mad Men-type ladies planning this day down to the details, writing a shopping list in the morning and then heading out to the market where they buy canned creamed corn, string beans, and stuff to make a pineapple upside down cake. Then off to the liquor mart for Canadian Rye (Don Draper’s drink…okay, let’s be clear, I’m having a “Me and Don Draper-specific” fantasy here), and wine for me to loosen up my super tight jaw muscles that I have gotten from grinding my teeth at night. In real life, seriously, I grind so hard my jaw cracks when I pronounce a vowel.
Then I go to the butcher shop for the steak. Now as you know, I like my real-life Danforth butcher shop but since I’m in fantasy mode and I’m channeling Donna Reed in a girdle and a puffy dress, I cannot be caught dead in there dressed like that, so it’s off to the Bronx I go. The butcher is Marty, played by Ernest Borgnine.
Marty: Why, hello, Mrs. Draper, what can I get for you this fine day?
Me: Good morning, Marty! It is a beautiful day, isn’t it? I’m looking for your finest cut of steak for Mr. Draper this evening.
Marty: Oh, sure thing, Mrs. Draper. Is there a special occasion?
Me: Of course, Marty, it’s Steak and BJ Day! Didn’t you hear on the radio?
Marty: Ooooh, right, I don’t pay much attention to these things, Mrs. Draper. I’m not very popular with the ladies.
Me: Oh, that can’t be true, Marty, you’re a sweet man. Surely any single girl would love to go out with you.
Marty: I’ve never had a girlfriend in my entire life, Mrs. Draper, even the homely ones won’t give me the time of day.
Me: Don’t be silly, Marty, if I was a single gal, you’d be in big trouble, and call me Betty.
Marty: Really…Betty? Gee, that Mr. Draper sure is a lucky fella!
Betty: Well, he does work hard, Marty, and sometimes he doesn’t get home until very late at night.
Marty: You must get pretty lonely, Betty…
Betty: Oh, Marty, I sure do! I’m so lonely! What about you, Marty, you must be lonely too?
Marty: I told you, Betty, the dames all look at me like I’m a big, ugly bug!
And that’s where the fantasy goes awry. I feel sorry for Marty and I give him a mercy hummer in the back of my Cadillac, and Don calls later saying he’s staying in the city and of course I know he’s with that beatnik ho, Midge. So much for March 14. But stay tuned for March 25 for Madmen Season 5. THAT is something I will sink my teeth into, here are some snips.
FYI, in real life I’m having chicken tonight.
And here’s the trailer for Marty, so cute! I guess I would hit it, I do love a butcher after all:
It seems like Mayor Ford has hit the dreaded plateau in his weight loss regime. Last Monday when he had his weigh-in, he didn’t lose anything for two weeks in a row. Anybody who has watched “The Biggest Loser” knows that the fattest man will lose the most weight initially and then when the plateau comes, and it always does, he is the one laying awake, fighting sleep apnea, while his team-mates are snoring mightily to the tune of Rocky’s Theme Song. He sneaks into the kitchen, not knowing there is a hidden camera on top of the fridge aimed point blank at his fat face inhaling Reddi-Whip straight from the can. He only feels guilty the next day when he has to step on the scale. Then his team-mates vote him off.
Torontonians wish they could vote Rob off, his perceived douchebaggery is well on the rise, while his weight remains stagnant. Since January, Rob and his brother Etobicoke councillor, Doug Ford, have been on a weight loss challenge, Cut The Waist, with the mayor’s goal of losing 50 pounds by June. As a point of reference, this is what 50 pounds looks like on a fish:
So far he’s lost 20 of those pounds, who can tell? When it comes to weight loss, it’s the last one hired that is the first one fired. It seems like a lot of his fat cells are employed in his belly and based upon the look of this fish, he probably only lost a fin’s worth of moob.
Maybe Mayor Ford should worry less about losing weight and concentrate on some other damage control. “Cut the Waist” might have been a good way to seek public approval if he wasn’t so obviously cheating on his diet. So why not just embrace the fat, Rob? Overweight politicians are perceived as more reliable to the public according to an American study in 2010. Maybe we’re conditioned from youth to believe this because Santa Claus was a jolly fat man who gave us what we asked for once a year.
Morbid obesity might be unhealthy but there have been plenty of fat men who rocked the chunk and died despite their heft: Burl Ives of mouth cancer, Luciano Pavarotti of pancreatic cancer, and Notorious B.I.G. of a drive-by shooting!
Historically, there have been fat men where their size has enhanced their power. Here are my top 3 favourite fat men of history, Mayor Ford could take a page out of their books:
1. The Corpulent Orson Welles
Welles is still considered one of the greatest film-makers of all time. He wasn’t always so fat and was an accomplished leading man type of actor, known for his voice and his personality. He became famous for his broadcast of H.G. Wells’ (no relation!) War of the Worlds which scared the bejeezus out of the country, as some people actually misunderstood and thought space aliens had landed. He starred and directed “Citizen Kane,” which some say is the greatest film of all time, at least according to Mike and Gloria Stivic in my favourite episode as a child of “All in the Family,” You know the one where Gloria puts on a black wig and Mike gets all excited and pretends he’s having an affair with another woman? When I finally saw “Citizen Kane” in my twenties, I was like “Seriously?” But then I saw “A Touch of Evil” and all was redeemed.
As a 400 pound fat man, he married Rita Hayworth, who later dumped him because she “couldn’t take his genius.” If “genius” is a euphemism for overhanging gut, who cares? He married Rita Freaking Hayworth.
2. The Portly Sir Winston Churchill
He led the British troops through WW2, he was one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century. He was also an artist, a historian, a writer, and won a Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the first person to be named an honorary American citizen.
He also said the darnedest things. While he was drunk:
Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”
Rivera was a prominent Mexican painter known for his wall works in fresco and the Mexican Mural Movement. He was a communist, an atheist, and an outright womanizing pig . He had an affair with one of his students, Frida Kahlo, who became more famous than him. They had an turbulent relationship, they got married, cheated on each other, divorced, then married again. So, so, sooooooo romantic! If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t have made a film about it.
If he could have bottled his pheremones, he would have made a fortune.
As Einstein said: “The devil has put a penalty in all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health, or we suffer in soul or we get fat.” Best not to worry about it, history has a way of making a joke out of everything. I’m looking at you, Rob Ford.
Last week my daughter and I went to go see Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method.” Normally I am a walking Flixster /Zagat guide but for some reason this movie escaped my radar. The title is generic and I must have instantly dismissed it, thinking it was some lame Nicholas Cage vehicle where he “does his own stunts!” and saves the planet. But as soon as I found out it was about Freud and Jung, I plotzed! I love psychoanalysis! Dreams, hidden symbolism, and genitalia! And when I found out Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen were in it, I vajazzled and high-tailed it over to a matinee at the Scotiabank Theatre.
I still haven’t gotten over Michael Fassbender’s penis In “Shame,” just saying. I owe you interloping Googlers a link and here it is all NSFW. You’re welcome. Here’s Viggo, too, full monty....not the same, but jaunty nonetheless. I’d smoke it for a dollar.
Anyway, a brief historical synopsis: Freud developed the “talking cure” to help mentally disturbed patients in hospitals. In case you didn’t take Psychology 101, Freud is the one who coined the term “penis envy.” Everything is penis-based, whether you like it or not. I can get behind this. In his early career, he studied, observed, and dissected eels for 8 years to figure out their reproductive system. Can you imagine looking at eels all day? There’s a dim sum restaurant at Gerrard and Broadview that has an aquarium of eels in the window that gives me ants my pants just glancing at it. They intertwine and slither and slide in and out of the castle, no wonder he was so phallic obsessed. As a lady, am I jelly I don’t have a penis? Damn right. I’m bored with my box, it has no personality and all it does is cry.
One of Freud’s followers was Carl Jung who later challenged his theories in his text books. Jung was all about mysticism and believed in psychic phenomenon. He didn’t believe in coincidences. I can get behind that, too. I think we suppress a whole other layer of consciousness because we can’t see it and if we allowed our instincts to govern us, we would be a more harmonious world. Penises wouldn’t hold so much power and those havenots wouldn’t be so jealous and spiteful. We would all love each other and fill each other up with our symbiotic energy. Craigslist personals would have no reason to exist and nobody would be forever alone. Yes, it would be a giant non-stop orgy, nobody would get any work done.
The film depicts Jung and Freud striking up a friendship through their letters. When they finally meet, they yap for hours while stuffing their faces with food and cigars. At first they respect each other and Freud sends one of his followers for Jung to help, a Dr. Drew triple episode, a bipolar, coked up sex addict who treated his own patients with his healing penis. He’s played by Vincent Cassel who has artfully mastered the combo of sexy and sinister, he tries to convince Jung that boning patients is the way to go and is actually a valid method of therapy. Jung is adverse initially but starts to think: Why deny one’s basic impulse? Blahblahblah, the rationale of every man on the planet. The simple answer is: BECAUSE IT TURNS TO SHIT REAL QUICK.
This is not a buddy film, Jung and Freud never resolve their proverbial sword fight that inevitably happens because their theories clash. It is a cautionary love story and with some insight as to why married men are unfaithful. It’s more or less the result of impulse and opportunity giving each other a nod and a wink. Okay, nothing new there. But it’s just confirmation that men will eagerly cheat and there’s not much you can do about it. The antithesis of their wives is their porn. Men rarely marry their whores, they like their wives to be an extension of who they wish to be perceived as by society. Just look at any politician, his wife dresses in Talbots and his mistress is a pole dancer. Luckily, one man’s whore is another man’s wife, case in point: Ice T and Coco. The porn theory is the same: I bet if you checked his google history, you would find a lot of Martha Stewart YouTube clips of her baking bread from scratch.
Why Keira Knightley didn’t get nominated for an Academy Award, I have no idea. She plays Jung’s beastly Gollum-like crazy bitch mistress, Sabina, in stark contrast to his refined, impossibly beautiful (and rich!) wife who actually apologizes for being constantly pregnant and even more apologetic when she births out girls. Not that Carl cares, he’s busy mentoring Sabina. With a paddle, smacked in the ass. Again and again, Daddy. Not sure how historically accurate that part of the film was but it worked for me. Frankly, I’m getting bored with the usual cinematic sex scenes where the lady is on top licking her lips and whipping her hair around like a shampoo ad.
People and their fetishes never cease to amaze me. Until I meet the freak that unleashes mine, here is the trailer, I hope you groove to it as much as I did:
Faak! The other day one of my Facebook cronies had a status: “Bikini season is coming!” You know the type, the one that always posts that they are at the gym and what they did: “Burpees, squats, and lunges, OH MY!” And then tell you what they eat: “Quinoa is yummy!” Quinoa is one of those “superfoods” that all the gym rats seem to have in their diet. It’s magical only because it’s so labour intensive. By the time you figure out what it is, where it is on the grocery shelf, haul it home, figure out how to cook it, boil it, put it in a bowl and make a face, chew it, digest it, explode it out, you have lost 5 pounds.
Dr. Oz is all about “superfoods.” Everyday he has something you are supposed to eat to boost your metabolism: “DRINK APPLE CIDER VINEGAR EVERY MORNING AND LOSE 6 POUNDS!” I tried it and lasted 3 days. I think it works because your colon puckers up and gets all uptight and won’t let anything make its way through casually anymore, you know, let’s wait until after the morning coffee to drop the kids off at the pool. Cidered-up colon becomes a GTFO super efficient drill sergeant pushing every half-chewed nugget out the back door almost as soon as it goes in. There is nothing worse than a wild army of poop going headlong in the middle of the afternoon and having to find a public washroom. Do not like.
Anyway, bikini season is no joke. Must take it seriously. The good people at Sports Illustrated have generously given us some swimsuit suggestions. Those bikini designers are so innovative. It’s all about geometry and knowing how to work a couple of isosceles triangles with some string. Two Toblerone-sized pieces of fabric can restrain an avalanche of tit flesh…sheer wizardry! I’m not going to say anything about those bikini bottoms because I have been to Google Beach and I have seen much worse.
I’m a Lady of a Certain Age…I could have given birth to this Kate Upton character, put her in a bacon bikini for all I care, she is no threat to me. I need a suit that holds it all in with more than prayer. Oh, how I laughed when I googled “swimsuits for cougars” and this came up. I have been waiting to work this into a post for weeks, it’s my screensaver. In fact, it’s been my inspiration for bikini season all along:
This cannot be unseen.
So for me, maybe it’s the Land’s End catalogue. It’s not as Amish as it used to be, some of the suits have a retro-Hollywood glamour, if you squint and conjure up an image of Ava Gardner in your head. In fact, there’s a scene in one of my favourite movies of all time, “Little Children” where Kate Winslet orders a red one-piece suit from a Lands’s End-style catalogue before she embarks on her steamy, hot affair with the stay-at-home dad, aka The Prom King. I’m going to peruse the interwebs for more swimwear and leave you the trailer which will get you in the mood for some summer extra-marital affairs at your local public pool:
Do you ever think about the 1980s? Me neither. What horrible decade. It was the birth of vulgarity. A lot of the worst trends we have today you can trace back to the 80s. If we could erase that era entirely, people would be speaking proper English and they certainly wouldn’t be tattooing Louis Vuitton logos on their biceps.
Having said that, the 80s was a major growth period for me. Lots happened. High school, CEGEP, university, moving to Toronto, getting married. I lived in 6 different places. I had more than 10 jobs. I dated lots and put out every time. I made friends and influenced people. Nowdays, the past 10 years at least, have been like moving through quick sand in slow motion….Nothing happens and everything takes so long. It took 2 and a half years to get divorced. Last year, it took me the better of 4 months to finish eating a Toblerone bar and 6 months to change a light bulb.
Last weekend, when Whitney Houston passed away, I was shocked, sad, and stricken with a bad case of the nostalgies. Back in 1986, I had met her at a boutique I worked at in Yorkville. I do find a celebrity sighting super exciting but when I actually get closed to one, it becomes a big deal and I become emotionally attached. Famous people radiate a different energy like they have super powers. Even mildly well-known ones like local newscasters. Once I saw Gord Martineau at the Summerhill liquor store and I was like all “Wow, it’s Gord Martineau…he’s so short!” They are all so much shorter in real life. It makes them them that much more precious.
Back in 1986, when I was new to Toronto, I was obsessed with fashion. It was all about shoulder pads. Looking back with embarrassment, I’d like to pretend I never wore them but I layered them like a cake boss. I’d wear a set under a shirt, then on a jacket, and then a padded coat over top. In the height of the madness, I got a position as assistant manager at Parachute, where the fashion elite shopped. It was a job that I literally stumbled upon when I was walking on Bellair at Christmas time and saw a sign in the window. Had I have not tripped on the sidewalk, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it because it was a grey, blank looking space in the basement below an antique store. I had just moved to Toronto two months earlier and I had already gone through a handful of jobs that I was a disaster at: Cappuccino maker at Le Select Bistro, I fired steamed milk all over a customer and burned my hands. Receptionist, I kept forgetting the name of the company I worked at and still can’t remember: “Good morning….um…Something Something Designs…” Mannequin dresser at Joy Cherry, I snapped the limbs off one of the “brides” trying to put her gown on. Right away I noticed there were no mannequins in the Parachute store, the display outfits were layed out flat on a step. The clothes were austere and unisex in a monochromatic colour tone of greys and blacks. And heavily shoulder padded. Just like me!
There were two guys my age (early twenties) working there when I walked in. Both were dressed in what looked like a uniform, black jacket and black leggings(LOL! Leggings on boys!) They looked like the imaginary fashion police. And they were scary. One looked like a vampire from the 1800s, he had grey skin and shoulder length black hair slicked back, sharp pointy eyebrows and squinty eyes. The other one was equally sinister but more human looking. He was tall and lanky with zits and a goofy bowl cut. They were both named John. The Vampire John, clearly the alpha of the duo, hired me on the spot; “We like you, you are perfect for us.” I didn’t know whether to be flattered or freaked out but I figured I’d go with it. They looked intimating but it turned out they were the nicest, funniest guys. They were from Newfoundland and when they let their guard down, the accents would come out, and oh, how we laughed.
Aside from the two Johns, there were some part-timers who worked there, one was an aspiring model named Michelle. Michelle was nicknamed Zwiggy because she walked with a hip wiggle like the Carol Burnett character Mrs. Wiggins. She was 19 but you couldn’t tell because wore so much makeup and put on a squeaky, breathy voice like Marilyn Monroe. She was Siouxsie and the Banshees all the way, dyed black hair and with heavy white base, blacked up painted cat eyes, red lipstick in a heart shaped bow, she looked like a punk geisha girl. She and I bonded quite quickly and after work, we would go to Bemelmans, that pickup bar on Bloor and Bay. Arab men would fall over themselves wanting to buy us Long Island Iced Teas. One night in February, after a particularly uneventful Bemelman evening, she came to my place (I rented a room in a shared house at Broadview and Gerrard). She wanted to smoke a doobie and crash at my house. She brought out an unfamiliar mothering instinct in me even though I was only a couple of years older.
“Zwiggy, you have to wash off your makeup or it will clog your pores. And brush your teeth, all the plaque forms at night,” I said. To this day, I have never once gone to bed without washing my face and brushing my teeth. Zwiggy didn’t seem to have the same regimented beauty habits. She layered makeup like she was plastering drywall. Her artistry actually distorted her features. When I first met her, I thought she was Asian and then I found out her whole life story: She ran away from her drunken parents (they were Irish) in Nanaimo, B.C. when she was 13, came to Toronto with her 25-year-old pedo-bear boyfriend and was still living with him after 6 years. She was a chubby teenager and then became a skinny vegetarian after she saw a dead pig carcass dangling from a butcher’s window on the Danforth. She lost 20 pounds and Elmer Olsen, modelling scout extraordinaire, saw her on the street and signed her to his agency on the spot. She wet on go-sees and ended up floundering, probably intimidated by all the competition and that was when she started piling on the makeup. The whole facade was a mask she wore to hide her true self.
She didn’t want to wash her face but I forced her and when she came out of the bathroom, she looked so much better, and I told her so. For some reason, she got all sulky, and stomped out. After that, she kind of stopped showing up to work after a while, claiming to have “diarrhea” and soon fell off the radar entirely. A strange little lost soul of the 80’s that I almost completely forgot about and now I wonder what happened to her.
In the meantime that winter, the two Johns, who both claimed to be bisexual began to fully come out as exclusively gay. By default and pure loneliness, I became their fag hag. We would go to 101, a gay bar on Jarvis, and all the gay raves, and gay events.
It was the springtime of my discontent, and I was not cut out for fag hagdom. I became disgruntled and non-supportive any time “Church Street” came out of one of their mouths. One of the Johns took pity on me and set me up with the only straight hairdresser in town. His name was Gideon. He was British, which naturally made him seem gay, and he was fashion obsessed. I was suspicious. He was either a gay straight man or a straight gay man. We went out for 3 weeks but it seemed like 300 years. It was before people had cell phones and he would call me from pay phones constantly. It was weird since I spent most of my other relationships waiting by the phone for the douche to call. I did that thing that men do to women, I treated him like crap until he dumped me. Although I happily kept him as a hairdresser until he ran off and married some rich woman and moved to Vancouver. Another past soul who I actually found on Facebook and trolled but didn’t add as a friend, he probably forgot all about me! I will no doubt troll him some more and then add him in a moment of weakness.
In the summer of 1986, the owners of the store told us they were closing the Toronto location for good because it was too expensive to run. They had locations in Montreal, New York, and Tokyo, so they sent us boxes of samples and rejected merchandise to push to the fashion victims for the next month. There were some really strange outfits that we conjured up. Neon green tshirts and plaid jodphurs that we wore ironically. We had a massive midnight sale one night where we partayed until 3 am. The entire store was pretty much trashed. There was still merchandise, but just the weirdest of the weird and maybe some odd sizes of the good stuff. While we were half-heartedly cleaning up, the phone rang and Vampire John picked up. It was Whitney Houston’s manager calling to request that we close the store down in the afternoon so that she could shop privately with her back up singers before her concert that night.
Whitney was a pretty big star back then and it was rumoured that she was a lesbian. That whole closet gay thing excited the two Johns so they worked furiously to clean the place up. Although Whitney was no Grace Jones, she was diva enough to give them fancy pride and big gay boners.
When she arrived late in the afternoon, the place was spotless but sparse. She was wearing giant sunglasses and stayed close to her butch manager while her back up singers gleefully rifled through the racks and tried stuff on. The two Johns were in Heaven.
They all bought matching mermaid dresses that Whitney paid for with a platinum American Express card. I was the one at the cash register. In our primitive store you had to call in each transaction over the phone for authorization from an actual person at a call centre that I would sometimes have conversations with. Awkward…do I go through proper procedure and call in the card or do I just swish it through like a boss and seamlessly fold the merchandise in the tissue and bag it up?
Flustered, I held her card in my hands and called American Express. She took off her sunglasses and gave me a stink eye so potent, my hand started to shake. When the operator answered all I could say was “Fuck.” And I hung up. But Whitney laughed, “Do what you need to do, Sugar.”
And that was that. A celebrity encounter with Diva Whitney. A week later, the store closed and I was out of a job and she went on her way to even bigger stardom, no doubt charging up her Platinum card with bigger and better stuff. The two Johns went their separate ways and we all lost touch but of course, I kept track of Whitney, my celebrity touchstone. She stayed in my consciousness as we led parallel lives, we both had baby daughters the same year, in 1993. I didn’t get into the rock cocaine though. Couldn’t afford it. But I did have some messy, bloated moments and a divorce. When I went to my family doctor and begged for something like Xanax to help me sleep, she told me to try herbal tea. Lucky me. Poor her.
And with that, I leave you with my favourite version of “I Will Always Love You” which is Lauren Graham as Lorelai Gilmore channeling Dolly Parton. It doesn’t get better, I don’t care what y’all say:
Last week, Pam Grier was in Toronto for Black History Month to talk about her experiences in film and the current state of African American actors’ movie roles. She’s 62 now and she knows how to age, gracefully and fiercely. She’s still a goddess. This is retro 1970s Pam Grier, probably the baddest ass action lady in all of cinematic history. When you look at a picture like that, you just want to take your bra off and hang yourself with it knowing that no amount of makeup, Photoshop, Spanx, sweet talk, or self-delusion will make you look half as hot. Even her armpit crack is suggestive, check it out. In the 1970s women didn’t have to apologize for nip-slips, they were part and parcel of the bra-burning era. Pam Grier was a reigning star in those “blaxploitation” and campy Roger Corman women-in-prison films from the 70s. To paraphrase Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard: They had faces back then…and tits, and they were not afraid to show them.
Pam Grier, who was influenced by Gloria Steinem, was all about woman-power without compromising her femininity. As Foxy Brown, she was considered a trail blazer, not just for black women but women in general. Nobody was as sexy and strong as her, Jane Fonda looked like Gidget in comparison. Since the 1970s, thanks to the women’s liberation movement, women have come a long way in some aspects like having choices and job opportunities. But not in film, something seems to have gotten lost in the translation. Aesthetically, women have to look like a man with boobs. It’s all about sucking it out and strategically placing parts of it back in: carve out a P90X body, create Pilates abs, stretch out a yoga ass, and insert two Tupperware shaped bowls for breasts. If anything is out of place, the sloppiness will get you fired. No wonder as she pushes 50, Demi Moore is having a nervous breakdown like Norma Desmond. Instead of becoming a hermit, poor thing is chasing the dragon posting bikini self-portraits on Twitter. At the same age, Pam Grier, on the other hand, was rockin’ it like a lady in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.
There are very few Pam Griers in film today. Women over 40 are usually just in supporting roles as the long-suffering wives of dynamic heroes, hysterical mothers of boxers/ballet dancers, bat shit crazy neighbours/co-workers, or stern lady judges. Meryl Streep doing an impression of a historical female character does not count. There’s really no one for the sex pot LOCA (lady of a certain age) to identify with. Maybe every two or three years, to placate us, they will dust off the cast members of Sex and the City and slap some on lipstick and make a movie that is actually a 90 minute commercial for Heritage Halston.
Speaking of LOCAs, I watched the Superbowl on Sunday, this is basically how it went:
Of course I watched it for the half-time show and ended watching the entire thing, as I have a secret crush on Tom Brady. I’m only admitting that to you for limited time only. He’s not really my type, he is too pretty. Anyway, the half-time show was good, in my opinion, you cannot fault Madonna for showmanship. A lot of you think she is the ultimate lady bad ass and I respect that. She is not my kind of LOCA though, her sense of style is contrived by imitating other stye icons and she looks like a veiny penis. Her records, at best, are commercial jingles with lyrics that a prepubescent girl would write in her diary and then burn in Grade 8 out of embarrassment. Her new song is tuneless and the lyrics are just stupid, talk about chasing the dragon…you are not a “girl,” Madge, and methinks the boy toys are just a beards to validate your mojo. Sorry, sister, he doesn’t count as a boyfriend if he has to sign a confidentiality clause.
Gisele Bundchen, on the other hand, is a lady bad ass. Oh horrors, Gisele has a potty mouth…grow up, people. If I was Tom Brady’s wife, I’d be yelling out expletives at the press, too. Because she is a supermodel, she should just look pretty and keep quiet. Here’s the link to the clip here, it’s not so shocking.
I’d rather leave you with some Pam Grier in action, watch it and learn:
First of all, let me preface this potential mess of a post by saying how much I love my dentist. I’ve been going to him for 20 years and he may very well be the love of my life. He is so gentle that I have had fillings done without freezing. If I do need numbing, he does this vibrating massage thing to my cheeks so when he sticks the needle in my mouth, I am so distracted, I don’t feel the jabbing prick. As he digs away, he always tells me how awesome I am in his cute South African accent. I never dread going there and in fact, I sometimes go early because he has the best magazines in town. He subscribes to In-Style, People, and Men’s Health. I have learned some things from Men’s Health I may have never known from my own field work. And when I say “field work,” these days it’s restricted to watching “Californication” which I know is worse than a fairy tale and Hank Moody is the fictitious Holy Grail of sexual prowess who would never exist in the real world. A girl can dream.
Anyway, although I love my dentist, I hate his receptionist. She is an uptight Leaside mom-type who obsesses over her preschool-age son, named Adam. She wears a headset and always on the phone talking to her nanny about Adam who is a hellion. When the kid gets on the phone, she threatens to “punish” him when she gets home for being “a naughty boy.” I’ve been privy to this conversation more than once, and I only go there twice a year. You just know where this kid is going in 20 years, I can picture his ad on Craigslist under “M4W” with a cryptic picture of a wooden spoon, captioned; “Spank me.” She is a control freak. Last year, when I was waiting, the tv was on and Dr. Oz was talking about how to enhance the female orgasm. She grabbed the remote and changed the channel to the monotonous reel of petty crimes and weather reports that is CP24 and muttered about how the topic on Dr. Oz was “inappropriate.” And I was like, “Bitch, please, I don’t have that nailed yet, I’d like to hear what he has to say!”
Just other day, while Freddy was getting some fillings, I was in the waiting room alone blithely pouring over “The Best Sex Tips of 2011” in Men’s Health, when a woman and her 3 children plunked themselves down. Now I don’t care about children, I can easily tune them out. Their inane blathering is often repetitive and rhythmic so I can translate it into white noise. It’s parents I hate. Sure enough, this woman was one of those cows who talk loudly and refer to themselves in the third person: “Mummy wants you to do your homework while you wait, Mummy is tired, blah blah..” I pegged her for one of those older mothers who miraculously spawned these 3 snotgobblers from her rotting egg farm so she needed to advertise how fabulous her parenting skills were. At one point her son, age 11, picked up one of those pop-up picture books meant for pre-schoolers. This one was about “The Creation” as depicted by Adam and Eve. I know, right? Why is this in a dentist’s office? The receptionist is a religious freak and she probably brought it in from her Bible Study group. The kid opens the book and up pops a cartoon drawing of Adam and Eve and an apple tree. Eve has her back to us and Adam is facing her. Her cartoon bum and his cartoon peen are obscured by a cartoon bush. The boy holds it up, “Look mummy!” The mother shrieks: “Ryan! Put that away! That is so inappropriate! You’re embarrassing me!”
Now I am the only one within earshot and I am sitting with a magazine spread on my lap of a woman with her real legs up in the air with a man’s real head popping through, obscuring her real bush, and I am thinking that between this lady and the receptionist, exactly what goes on in North Toronto behind closed doors? How do they raise their sons? Do they make them shower with their clothes on? Shame is their weapon, the wooden spoon that keeps their behaviour “appropriate.”
Speaking of which, last week, my daughter and I went to see the film, “Shame” with Michael Fassbender and his penis. And yes, this was our main purpose AND we liked him in Jane Eyre. We consider ourselves to be “British Celebrity Penis Connoisseurs.” 6 years ago, when she was not much older than that Mummy-whipped boy in the dentist’s office, we took a trip to London to see Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, go full monty in “Equus.” Neither of us particularly enjoy live theatre but we got to see Harry Potter’s Arab-strapped penis boner and that is worth the price of admission. And no, it did not scar my 12 year old daughter, it empowered her. My first viewing of a non-relative’s penis was not so spectacular, it was semi-traumatizing. When I was 10, my friend and I would crash sugaring off parties at the sugar shack on the bottom of my street. We’d steal syrup taffy from the trough and if we got caught, we’d run into the woods. Once we saw a drunken French Canadian man with his pants completely down, wang out, taking a slash in a bucket attached to one of the maple trees. You know, the ones that collect the sap that makes the syrup. Yes, he was urinating. No, I never eat pancakes.
In “Shame,” Michael Fassbender’s penis is the protagonist of the film. His character, Brandon, doesn’t say much, but his peen keeps the plot going. It’s not like it gets closeups or anything but it has more screen time than most Actra members. Usually in a non-porn cinematic experience, you might see a flash of pube and a blur of tubular flesh from afar and the actor is in a fast action mode like diving into a pool in the dark. In “Shame”, there is a decent sequence of frames that pans it as it sways from the shower to the kitchen, in the brightness of the morning, like an elephant trunk sniffing for peanuts. The film made me sad for the penis, “penis empathy’ if you will, Freud. It’s a bleak and realistic depiction of sexual addiction, and childhood shame is the cornerstone. This is why you can’t be an asshole as a parent. Respect the penis, it’s got a fragile ego.
On that note, here is the trailer for “Shame,” go see it, take your mom:
When my friends and I were kids, before the interwebs fed us knowledge, we had to fork over our hard-earned allowance for magazines. We were obsessed with the goings on in Hollywood and we would walk a mile in the snow to the depanneur to get the latest Tiger Beat or Rona Barrett’s Gossip just to find out who Leif Garrett was boning. I will never forget the utter disgust and disappointment when he was “romantically tied” to Kristy McNichol. On what planet would that ever happen? She wore overalls and looked like a boy! How could such a magnificent male specimen date Kristy McNichol when I was available? Then when she hooked up with Matt Dillon, I began to suspect that Hollywood was trying to scam us. But when Leif and Nicolette Sheridan became an item, I gave up hope for myself but started to believe again if just for this one photo. This made more sense, when this first appeared in Tiger Beat, I think I cried. Now, I’m convinced there is actual penetration going on here:
In any given couple from the perspective of an outsider, there is usually someone who seems like the one who got lucky. In Hollywood, any discrepancy seems monumental. There is one who is better looking, richer, smarter, more charismatic, or more famous. This is why Hollywood types stick together, not because they “understand each other”, it’s because when a big movie star marries a mere mortal, his or her stock goes down significantly. They need each other to keep up the illusion. Inevitably, a marriage of egos will implode because it’s exhausting putting on a show. I’ve watched the glitteratti crash and burn for decades and one thing I know for sure, nothing lasts forever. And it’s better that way. Keep it moving, spread the love, and the bodily fluids.
But they seemed so happy! Don’t be fooled again, here are 3 current case studies analyzed by moi:
Seal and Heidi, Hollywood Breakup Case Study #1. There was a major red flag right from the start. Seal proposed to Heidi when she was pregnant with Italian douche-a-bagga Flavio Briatore’s baby. Some men actually fetishize pregnant women which makes sense why she had so many back-to-back Seal pups. More likely Seal, like all modern men, has a Victoria Secret model fetish. Let’s face it, if Heidi Klum was slinging pints of Heineken in a beer garden, dude wouldn’t have looked twice at her. I’ve seen her without makeup and she’s not all that. The fact that she was pregnant made her vulnerable enough to overlook the fact that dude is super scary looking. And what if Seal didn’t sing sexy songs, instead he was Randy Newman? There is no way she would put out for him. The biggest red flag of all was that they renewed their vows every year. How tedious it must be for their friends and family, one wedding to endure is bad enough. And who over the age of 20 can handle a Halloween party? Their elaborate annual costume parties was just another disguise or diversion, what were they really trying to hide?
Conclusion: They say he has a “bad temper” and if that’s the case, who wouldn’t if you had all those children and all those weddings to parade around? LOOK AT US AND HOW HAPPY AND FABULOUS WE ARE! Smoke and mirrors. Truly happy people don’t like to throw parties and wear makeup. They like to stay home and argue in their sweat pants. You know I’m right.
Case Study #2: Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis. I know what everyone is saying: “But they are such a cute couple, and they don’t live in Hollywood, how could they not stay together?” And my answer here is a brutally honest no, there is nothing “cute” about these two. They both look shockingly homeless and without le Photoshop, this woman is just not good. Especially naked and unshowered on a farm in France. That “jolie-laide” thing doesn’t translate in Hollywood. Le smoke et le miroir crackay. There’s the inequality of all the elements of the glitteratti at odds here: Looks, money, charisma, and fame. Duh. Don’t make me say it.
Conclusion: Johnny, call me.
And then there’s these two:
Dear Hollywood: Stop the fawning. Remember if something seems to good to be true, it usually is. “Mirror, mirror on the wall” and a bunch of pot smoke is what we have here. Case Study #3: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. You don’t need me to tell you that The Brangelina is a ticking time bomb. I can envision some time in the near future, she gathers enough strength from eating a breath mint and with her spindly, chicken-scrawl tattooed arms, she picks up a cast iron frying pan and whacks him over his dumb head. His greasy hair makes the pan slide and creates only enough impact for him to come to his senses and have an Aha! moment: Juliette Lewis! She was the one that got away!
Conclusion: Don’t get me started.
On on that note, I leave you with a clip of the ultimate Hollywood rebel, Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer, and a cautionary tale of what can happen if you don’t comply with rules of Hollywood:
Meh…what exactly is it? Urban dictionary: “Don’t care.”
Me. unshowered after a work out, trudges over to the restaurant at the gym to see what’s the soup of the day. “Meh,” I say out loud to no one in particular, not even bothering to read the sandwich board. Mulligatawny, minestrone, what’s the difference? On normal days, that are not in January, mulligatawny makes me shriek with glee as I cream my jeans, and minestrone sets me off into a murderous rage. But January is “meh” month, and nothing seems to matter. But luckily, “meh” is just a gateway emotion. “Meh” should not be confused with the divine detachment that the elite Buddhists have mastered. A truly pure “meh” is the perfect storm of disgruntleness combined with a low-level frustration that creates a palpable, gelatinous, balloon of boredom which lasts an entire month. As you can see by my rage comic calendar prediction, it breaks in February, when despair takes over. Thank God! There is nothing worse than the January “mehs.”
Watching television simmers a meh mood and caramelizes it so thick, you become inert and catatonic on the couch. It’s a vicious cycle. You might want to jostle yourself out of it by taking up an extreme sport. But if that’s too rad, I have 3 suggestions, all involving needles:
1. Give blood. When you are laying there with a needle in your arm, squeezing a wad of paper towel, imagine you are ridding yourself of meh…you can’t pee, poo, splooge, or even blow it out in a lame yoga class, you have to go to drastic measures to bleed it out, like they did in olden times when they leeched out the consumption. It’s just a metaphor for you to wrap your dull mind around, but ultimately your crappy blood will be going to someone who actually needs it. And that should make you feel at least like you did something good. Smug happiness is better than no happiness.
2. Get Botox. We’ve been through this before, Botox is not going to make you look like the Joker, those are fillers. Botox is going to wipe that meh expression off your face, the one that makes your brow furrow and you won’t have to squint when the stupid sun comes out and makes that annoying glare on the salty roads. Fuck the sun. It’s so stupid.
3. Get a tattoo. You know the tattoo you get when you’re in a meh mood will be the one you never regret because the upside of meh is rationality. Last night, I dreamt I got a tattoo of a purple owl on my back and when I woke up and realized it was real, for a second I never felt a twinge of smug happiness. Then I rolled over and went “meh.” But still.
That’s all I got, just ride it out and wait for the up-beat months like June and October. Until then, here’s Johnny with probably a worse case of the mehs than you or me:
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:
art of modern living 
