guys should make passes at girls who wear glasses.

the valentine project, part three.

2012-02-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

February 14, 2011, New York City.

Last February, I packed up my house in Kingston and drove back home to Hamilton, where, in what I viewed as a colossal step backwards, I moved in with my parents while I house-hunted and got adjusted to a new job. I had spent most of January wondering what in sweet holy hell I was doing leaving a town that I loved so hard, and by the time I finally rolled into the driveway at Mom and Dad's, I was more than a little frazzled. Luckily, I had two weeks of freedom before my new job started, so I did what any self-respecting closet Sex and the City fan would do: packed up my costume jewelry and knee-high boots and hopped on a plane to New York City.

One of my best friends, Kat, had been living in New York for the past year or so, but last February was my first visit. We spent three blissful, boozy days in the Big Apple, which was snow-covered and somehow quieter than I remembered. During a recent snow storm, Kat had begun taking photos of the mind-blowing inefficiency of New York snow removal, and we continued this surprisingly entertaining project all weekend. We got our nails done on my first day in town, an activity that set the tone for my visit. We have never exactly been the kind of girls you would describe as classy, but that weekend we put on a pretty good show.

On Valentine's Day, I made her ditch her boyfriend. There's a certain kind of friend who will do sketchy relationship stuff like bail on one's boyfriend on a day reserved for demonstrative love and opt instead to get drunk on the street with a girlfriend. Kat is that kind of friend (come to think of it, all my best girls are), and I love her for it. We pulled a self-aware Carrie Bradshaw impression and went on a date with the city. Our stops included the Guggenheim Museum, the Carlyle Hotel bar (where we drank twenty dollar Sours and eavesdropped on high-needs socialites), a restaurant called Cafeteria (where we drank twenty dollar Caesars and flirted with waiters too beautiful for this earth), and finally, the Chelsea Hotel, where regrettably, there is no bar (although the front desk clerk offered us some vodka from a stash under the counter). We stood in line for last-minute opera tickets, but didn't get in (like most things in New York, even queueing up for something is somehow exciting and cosmopolitan). We stumbled home to the Upper West Side, full of soul food and gin, in love with that wonderful town and the incredible possibilities lurking around every corner.

I flew back home the next day and had a hard time readjusting to my non-New York reality. I've thought many times since about how much I really do love New York, just like the t-shirt says. It's the kind of city you never visit twice, because everytime you get there, you see completely different things. It's a place where you feel two-hundred percent cooler when you walk down the street for no reason at all. And there's no better way to see it than with an old friend who understands the importance of framing cultural outings with proximity to cocktails, who understands the dance between low-rent and highbrow, and who can also spot a Brooklyn hipster from five miles away.

the valentine project, part two.

2012-02-13T05:15:00.000-08:00

February 14, 2003, Toronto, Ontario.

That year, Valentine's Day fell on a Friday. I remember this because neither my then-boyfriend nor I had classes that day. We were in our final year at Trinity College at U of T, living off-campus in two different houses, each hilarious and sketchy and entertaining in their own ways. It was a constant push and pull that year about whose house we'd crash at--we'd basically spent the two previous years living together, first in his tiny residence room (I only went home to shower, watch the Young and the Restless in the common room, and get sloppy-drunk with my best girls before stumbling back across the street to go to sleep), and then in an ill-fated attempt at cohabitation with two other friends in what we lovingly dubbed the Portuguese Key-Cutting District of Toronto, a West end neighbourhood that is now way cooler than it was when it was the only area in our price range. After that year of sharing a bedroom nose-dived us into near-breakup territory, we made the mature decision to live under separate roofs for our last year of school, although we still spent nearly every night together.

So on that particular Friday in Toronto, we woke up in my poorly-heated house on Walmer Road. I'd spent half of the night having an overblown anxiety attack about the university's exam schedule, which was set to be posted first thing on the 14th. I only had one exam that year (Chaucer. Oh, Chaucer. What a fine way to spend every Thursday evening) and so dreaded the possibility that it might not be scheduled till the last day of the exam period, which, at U of T, went on for approximately seventeen months. I'd been kicked in the tail by this sort of late exam curse every year of my academic career, and it was horrible. I was a fairly neurotic student, and I was so damned ready to bid goodbye to my undergrad career. The first thing I did after jumping out of bed was get online, only to discover that HOT DAMN, my exam was set for the very earliest possible day. Naturally, I interpreted this as a sign from the universe (a decision likely propelled by our tendency to wake and bake whenever possible). Feeling high on freedom, among other things, we set out to spend the day together.

Our relationship was a sweet one, most of the time, characterized by the things that draw two people together when they're young and broke and too smart for their own good: long days and nights spent in bed discussing our desert island records, second-hand CDs, cheap nights at the museum, afternoons trolling bookstores with our arms around one another. Though we both pretended to deplore romance and goofy sentimentality, we also not-so-secretly loved going on Dates, getting dressed up (which in our case usually meant a slightly less faded pair of Value VIllage corduroys and maybe a borrowed peacoat), walking around town, just being two crazy kids in love. Toronto was a good city in which to be head over heels. It was a place where you could delude yourself into feeling like an extra in a low-rent Woody Allen movie about silly heartbreak.

That Valentine's Day, we took advantage of the city at our feet and our empty schedules. We had breakfast at our favourite breakfast joint. We smoked pot on Philosopher's Walk, that funny little pathway between Trinity and the Royal Ontario Museum, the scene of so many of our best and worst nights. We made our way to the movie theatre to see a matinee of Chicago (to this day he is still, I think, the only boy I've ever known who would sit happily through musicals), and eventually walked all the way home to his place in Little Italy. There, his housemates were watching a documentary about Michael Jackson that had captured the attention of the Western world that winter. We watched it in amazement, and tried to parse it in some kind of anthropological, academic way (never underestimate the insufferability of a gaggle of humanities students). Eventually we climbed up to bed, and fell asleep together, spooning, perfectly connected.

It's nothing special, I know. I don't know why I remember it so specifically, but I do. I know every couple goes on dates like this. Maybe that's part of why I love the memory so much: because it feels so uniquely mine, and yet it's not all that different from anyone else's. We're all walking around starring in the movies of our lives, playing supporting roles in others' stories while assuming the lead in our own. There's a whole lot of loving narrative going on on these streets of ours, and regardless of how tragic the inevitable ending might have been, there's something nice about knowing you've contributed your own little piece of the story to the pot.

the valentine project, part one.

2012-02-12T08:49:00.001-08:00

I have the usual modern gal antipathy toward Valentine's Day, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pass up the opportunity to reminisce about old friends and lovers. This will be the first in a (hopefully very short) series of Valentines I have known.

February 14, 1998, Hamilton, Ontario.

I was a fairly cynical, boring teenager. I had a group of friends I loved and occasionally we did dorky-badass teenager stuff like get drunk on Dial-A-Bottle-procured vodka and listen to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack super loud and take off our tops when boys were around. Mostly, though, I kept my head down in highschool. I was silently jealous of the popular types, because sometimes it really did seem like they were having a better time than I was. But really, I was pretty certain that something far better than this dysfunctional universe was waiting for me on the far side of my eighteenth birthday. So I put in my time.

Probably the most typical aspect of my teenage life was my turbulent highschool sweetheart relationship with a boy I started dating when I was seventeen. We were together for two years. We fought as much as we laughed. We passionately disagreed with each other's taste in music (although we also conceded that nevertheless, we each still had better taste than most of the people around us). We were symbiotic and parasitic at intervals. We drove our friends crazy (although other couples drove us just as nuts--all's fair in love and highschool). And we lost our virginity to one another on Valentine's Day. The fact that this came to pass is now hilarious to me, as we were probably the two least romantic people in the world at the time. It just seemed like such a good idea.

The whole thing was so elaborate and complicated. We made the decision a few weeks before February 14th, upon realizing that my parents were going to be out that night, and spent the next little while planning the hell out of it. I even talked my mom into buying me a new bed for the occasion, although she didn't know the reason behind that particular Ikea trip. I remember putting that frame together with the most incredible sense of gravitas. I was giving up my single mattress on the floor, and BECOMING A WOMAN.

It was a Saturday. I'm pretty sure I cooked him dinner beforehand. He gave me a pair of earrings that later made my earlobes turn black. The years have misted over my memory of the done deed itself, and I don't remember any details other than a sense of utter awkwardness, and also complete relief to have gone through something so totally weird with someone I knew so well. The next day I watched Roman Holiday on TV and felt quietly mature, like I was in on the secret of adulthood.

On Monday, of course, we told our friends. After all, the only proof you ever had was in the telling of the story.

My best girlfriend gave me a knowing hug during a cigarette break between periods.

My best guy friend said, "Well, that was pretty dumb."

"Excuse me?" I replied.

"You'll never live up to that feeling again," he explained. "Nothing can top that. You've pretty much ruined Valentine's Day forever."

In some ways, I think he was absolutely right. Still, I wouldn't change a thing.

the valentine project, part 4.

2012-02-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

February 14, 2010, Kingston, Ontario (and points north).

This Valentine's Day actually began on February 13th. It was a Saturday, and my brother's band played a show at the Grad Club that night. Tom drove down from the woods for the occasion--it was no small feat getting him out of the wilderness, especially once the snow had started falling, and I was pretty damned happy that he trekked out. We'd gotten back from Mexico about a month earlier, and ever since our return we'd been closer than ever--more comfortable, quietly and easily moving in and out of one another's lives, finding our patterns. I'd been in love with him for two years already, but that winter, I fell for him all over again--this time openly instead of secretly, this time in a way that was reciprocated, reflected back, absorbed. It was the most normal we'd ever been.

So that Saturday night we slid down snowy streets to the Grad Club. My best friends Harold and Danielle came with us. We drank a lot of Guinness. After my brother's set, I was talking with him at the back of the bar. He was going through a rough time, and told me as much. All I could really do was hug him hard and fierce, and it hurt so much not to be able to do anything else.

Tom and I stumbled home, and on the way he told me that his cat, Puff, hadn't come home yet. The thing about Puff is that he was, categorically, the greatest cat you will ever have: funny and stand-offish and cuddly and the best hunter imaginable. Puff had somehow survived four winters in the wilderness, killing mice and frogs and snakes, taking off for days at a time and coming back like a conquering hero. The thing you need to know about Tom is that he was, in many ways, closer to his animals than to his people. He loved that cat so much--not as much as he loved his dog, but a close second. He always talked about how Puff was going to meet an untimely end in the woods at some point, but it was always an abstract, half-joking hypothesis. He never fully believed it would come to pass. So when it did, when a week had gone by without so much as a paw print in the snow, we knew that it was probably the end of Puff the Magic Kitten's reign over the Canoe Lake homestead. And as Tom finally admitted this to me in the early hours of February 14th, as he cried so hard his shoulders shook and his legs gave way, I put my arms around him. For the second time that night I felt like I couldn't really solve a damned thing, so I did the only thing I knew how to do, which was hold on. The only way out is through, as they say.

The next morning we slept late and woke up feeling fuzzy-headed.

"I'm taking you out," Tom announced. "We're going out for breakfast."

"Do you know what day this is?" I asked him, fairly certain he did not. "Do you know how many other idiots are taking their girlfriends out for breakfast as we speak?"

His face clouded over momentarily, and then cleared. "I don't give a shit," he declared. "We're going."

It was the closest to romance he got.

It took two tours around town, one unsuccessful attempt to find a parking spot at Denny's, and finally a trip out to the Township before we finally settled on a restaurant that seemed to be somewhat empty. It was an All You Can Eat Sushi place, and it was fantastic. We gorged ourselves on MSG-laden tuna rolls and then made our way back out to the country for the rest of the weekend; thirty-six hours of urban living was about Tom's threshold.

That winter, Tom still had the place on Canoe Lake. It was one of the best winters for skating I'd ever seen: the lake froze in December and stayed that way till March. Canoe Lake was originally part of a longer river, until a causeway constructed around 1910 dammed it up, but it still had a long, estuarial shape. It was also a deep lake, so deep that even when the ice was thick and firm, it was blue-black and ominous instead of white. That afternoon, we laced up our skates and shot up and down the lake over and over, to the tiny island we'd swim to every summer and back, throwing balls for the dog and letting the wind numb our cheeks. There was not a soul around for miles. That waterway was our wide world.

That night, we warmed our bones by the woodstove, drank red wine, and watched Tootsie on the television, passing out partway through. I remember waking up to him dragging me off the couch, up the stairs, into bed, where I fell asleep again to the sound of the wind whipping at the windows.

The next day was a holiday Monday. Tom drove me into town just in time for the arrival of an army of librarians on my doorstep--we were celebrating Pancake Tuesday a day early, since we all had the day off. We spent the afternoon drinking champagne and gorging ourselves on white flour and syrup, and when everyone left, I had a nap.

This is the Valentine's Day that breaks my heart the most. It was a weekend in which the world handed me all the things I love: music, family, food, friends, boys who need me, towns that feel like home, and long, clear paths to skate away on. In some ways I do not think I will ever know this perfect confluence again. In other ways, I know it was not perfect at all, not by a long shot. But at the time, I just couldn't stop fall in love, with everything, with everyone, over and over.

wholes and parts.

2012-02-05T14:39:00.000-08:00

When you get to be thirty-one years old and have yet to find that one person to share your life with (or rather, when you find the person to share your life with only to realize that the lives you're trying to intertwine are so wildly and insanely opposing in nature that you risk collapsing the universe in the attempt, prompting you to each skulk tearfully back into your respective corners), you start to justify things. I should probably take a moment here to reassure you that I am by no means unhappy on my own--far from it. It's just not where I saw myself when I was younger. Coincidentally, it's not where most other people saw me either, whether they knew me well or not. The lone wolf lifestyle is anathema to a lot of people's perception of what's worth dreaming about, which means I often find myself explaining to other people that really, I'm okay, and I don't sit at home by myself eating can after can of Campbell's Healthy Request Soup, praying for a suitor. (This sort of justification is probably largely the symptom of my work environment, which is populated on both sides of the reference desk with well-intentioned and wonderful women of a certain age.) Anyway, a funny thing happens when you're defending your life choices on a regular basis: You actually start to believe that you're in the right place, and that you may have actually done things for the right reasons.

One of the epiphanies that's been coming to me over and over these days is that while I might not have found my soul mate, I found something much better: a whole string of them. Serial monogamists are a lucky breed: we get to fall in love over and over again, collecting keepsakes and sweet cargo along the way. (Also crippling emotional baggage and additional copies of books and albums that you never really liked in the first place, but that's not what this post is about.) Here are a few of my more fortunate treasures.

1. A personalized NASA Space Camp souvenir pin. Seriously, it has my name on it, and it is incredible. Gifted by the first boy I ever fell in love with, who snagged it while on a highschool orchestra trip. And yes, I recognize that placing a Space Camp pin in the same category of some of the other things on this list might seem ridiculous, but when you have a hard-to-spell name, this sort of thing really MATTERS.

2. A solid year spent traipsing across Devonshire Place, away from my own room at St. Hilda's and toward my then-boyfriend's never-dull all-boys dorm, where we'd brush our teeth side by side under the wise beacon of a Hooters calendar and huddle and cuddle ourselves to sleep in one very tiny single bed, every blessed night. I've never been a good sleeper, but those nights, I always nodded off fast, in a tangle of limbs, to the sound of his nightly promise that we'd see each other again in a couple of hours. He was nearly always right; back then we populated each other's dream lives as much as our waking ones.

3. Late nights spent noodling around on not one but two adjacent Steinway pianos in a fire-warmed living room in the middle of nowhere. Helping to house-sit for some criminally irritating neighbours had its perks. If there is a better feeling than playing After the Gold Rush on a grand piano as a man you think you just might care about puts his arms around your shoulders, I have not found it.

4. Sitting up with a start in the half-light of an early winter morning and struggling to get your bearings in an unfamiliar room, steeling yourself for the day ahead. Turning at the touch of a warm hand on your back, and looking down at a smiling face on the pillow next to yours.

"You have a beautiful back," he tells you. "If I could paint a picture of it, I would."

"Stoner," you reply affectionately, nervously, noticing your heart jump up into your throat, hoping your blush doesn't betray that deep-down, terrifying feeling that this is Something.

Sometimes the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but sometimes the parts do a pretty grand job of covering the spread.

Inventories.

2012-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

Back in highschool, I was one of those insufferable literary nerd types who took Writer's Craft classes very, very seriously. I was highly in touch with my creative side in those years, scribbling down free verse poetry about people I'd kissed at an alarmingly prodigious rate. I really miss that state of misplaced and occasionally wavering self-assurance, the absolute certainty that what I wrote was GOOD--so good, in fact, that within five years I would be offered my first contract with a small but reputable independent publisher (I had designs on Anansi, but I wasn't picky.). I spent so much on postage in those days, mailing two-thirds of what I wrote into publications like Seventeen (which used to publish some really great short fiction, no lie. Sylvia Plath once won the short story contest, as did Meg Wolitzer and also Curtis Sittenfeld, one of my favourite American novelists) and Sassy (where I got my first taste of the staggering genius of Blake Nelson). I actually did have a handful of publications back then in decent-ish magazines and journals for younger writers, successes that only fuelled my delusional flames.

But I digress. Anyway.

In a couple of those classes, I remember starting the year with a writing exercise our teacher called An Inventory of Being. The premise was simple, and, I still think, pretty cool. You basically wrote a long, free-form, rambling poem about yourself that began with your name and ended with the year you were writing it. In between you did your best to capture exactly how you fit into the world, exactly as it existed at the time of your writing. During a recent move, I stumbled upon my 1997 version, which contained such gem-lines as "I know I am in love. He told me as he lit his cigarette outside between classes" and "I wish I could be Anglican, and sing hymns, or Buddhist, and do yoga on a mountaintop." (Sidebar: I have since sung in an Anglican chapel choir and done yoga in close proximity to nature. CLEARLY I POSSESS AN AWESOME POWER.) I also talked about bands I liked (Pavement, Sloan, Tori Amos) and books that were important to me (Atwood, Munro, Salinger). I talked about dyeing my hair a lot (I was obsessed with distinguishing myself, a tendency that often manifested in semi-permanent, poorly-executed aesthetic decisions). Reading my Inventory again, I cringed and cried and laughed so hard. There is something so wonderful and heartbreaking about reading a letter from a version of yourself, an exhaustive description of what it felt like to be you at a particular time and place.

A couple of weeks ago, I was filling out yet another online dating profile, and I realized that one of the reasons I continue to subject myself to such a ridiculous exercise is that, frankly, I really love writing about myself. Not in a showy or self-congratulatory way, not at all. It's comforting, is all, creating a document that sums up exactly what you like and what you're like, here and now. In 2012, as in 1997, I talk about bands I like (Joel Plaskett, Wilco, Aimee Mann) and books that are important to me (Coupland, Woolf, Salinger--still). I talk about doing yoga and baking cookies and generally trying to make the world a better place. I actually use the words "non-lame feminist" and "new-agey" to describe myself (still obsessed with distinguishing myself, I guess, although hopefully in a manner less damaging to my appearance). I hope silently for a boy who might someday say he loves me, although hopefully not during a smoke break. Some things stay the same; others, not so much.

So I guess my point here is that you never know what lessons you might learn from the exercises set out in front of you. I may not find true love on the internet (there is a whooooole other blog in my head detailing the many tragicomic encounters that support this possibility), but I am grateful for the chance to check in. I really urge you to start writing your own inventories every couple of years. You will feel so much embarrassed love for yourself, for the worlds you've inhabited, and for the people you've known. And if nothing else, you can pat yourself on the back for always having had such stellar taste in music.

We are sick, we are sick, we are sick, sick, sick.

2012-01-28T18:00:00.001-08:00

If you are among the handful of people who've read this little serial of mine since its humble beginnings, you'll know this already, but here it is. When I get sick, this blog becomes devoted to sketchy recipes and obsessive documentation of classic (and not so classic) television. I've been holed up for the last 2 days and find it vaguely comforting that I still resort to the same old tricks to make myself feel well again. I'm also incredibly thankful to have a real couch now, because taking sickroom naps on my dilapidated old love seat was really angst-provoking. Adulthood ain't so bad.

Anyway, here's what I made tonight.

Quinoa Pudding

(Inspired in part by the Joy of Cooking's rice pudding recipe--Volume II, page 458--and in part by this)

3/4 cup quinoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup milk (skim or soy or almond, whatever. I used skim dairy milk because it was all I had.)
2-3 eggs
another 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup agave nectar (or brown sugar, if you are feeling less self righteous than I am)
1-2 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. grated orange rind
1 tbsp. vanilla (if we're gonna get honest here, I actually used brandy. Brandy's my oregano--it works in everything.)
1 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup mixed berries (I used frozen raspberries and mango, which turned the pudding a delightful pink)
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots

Bring water and 1/2 cup of milk to a boil. Add quinoa and simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes or so.

In the meantime, combine eggs, second half cup of milk, agave, honey, orange peel, and vanilla in a bowl. Whisk it up.

Once the quinoa is cooked stir in butter. Lower the heat to medium low. Slowly stir in the egg mixture and fruit. Cook, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes. It should thicken up at this point. WHen it's the consistency of warm pudding, remove from the stove, and pour into a shallow baking dish. Bake for half an hour at 325.

Let it cool for a bit, or eat it piping hot from the oven with a little cream and/or maple syrup drizzled on top. Thank your lucky stars your appetite is back.

Best enjoyed while trying to wrap one's head around Lost. I'm only on the first season guys, but I'm already feeling a little overwhelmed.

january inventory.

2012-01-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, I drove out to the Ikea in Nepean to meet my best friend for a shameful post-holiday shopping trip. It was something we did fairly often, usually under some kind of influence. This time, though, we were stone-cold sober, the dim twinkle of parenthood in Freya's eye growing brighter by the day.. "I don't want to chance it," she told me. "Fair enough!" I replied gamely, having no idea, not really. Later that night after an embarrassing spree of Billy shelving and cheap bed linens we went back to her house for dinner. Dinner involved a lot of wine, at least for me and Greg and Greg's friend Tom. It was one of those nights when one things leads to another, one of those nights you try to dismiss the next morning, with limited success. A few days later, Freya called me to tell me she was pregnant, that her weekend of sobriety had not been in vain. I screamed into the phone and then asked her for Tom's number. It was January in Ottawa, and I was spending a lot of my time skating up and down the canal, trying to embrace the cold, embrace the wind, embrace the silence.

Three years ago, my favourite thing about my job was that I could usually sneak out early on Friday afternoons to drive out to Tom's place, two long and lonely hours from my Glebe hideaway. I'd just come back to Ottawa after two weeks in Hamilton at my parents' place for Christmas, and Ottawa felt less like the right place for me than ever. On New Year's Day when I'd told my brother I needed to change something, he said "So, then, make your move." He might be younger, but he's often wiser.

Instead of making a wise move myself, I made the same move girls in love always make, and spent that January running away from our nation's capital every blessed weekend, over and over again. I came back from the lake every Sunday (or sometimes Monday, as I perfected the delicate art of calling in sick) with my tail between my legs. No, that's not quite it, I kept thinking to myself. That's not quite what I meant to do.

Two years ago, Tom picked me up from work at the library in Kingston on a snowy Tuesday night. We drove to the Montreal airport (he adamantly refused to fly out of Pearson, even though all of our flights stopped over in Toronto anyway, adding an hour to our travel time; stubbornness can be endearing in a certain light) and took off for the Oaxaca Coast in Mexico the next morning. Our flight itinerary was an incomprehensible milk-run that involved a three-hour stopover at the Mexico City Airport, where we sat in the Mexican equivalent of a TGIFridays and drank bottle after bottle of Corona. When we finally got to Huatulco and wrestled our way into a sketchy taxi into town, I rolled down the window of the car and breathed in the warm, ocean-dampened air.

"I love the air here," Tom said. "It smells like bonfires and garbage and trouble." He was right, in the best possible way. We spent the next two weeks on deserted beaches and half-empty bars, eating avocadoes by the fistful, feeling like extras in a low-budget surf movie. It was the coziest January I've ever experienced.

One year ago, I was rattling around my Kingston apartment. Tom and I had broken up before Christmas in an epic split worthy of a teen novel, and I was homesick for my family, newly truly on my own. Sometime around the first of the year, I did 108 rounds of Sun Salutations. My teacher talked about creating new energy for a new year, and I thought long and hard about just what I was going to do with all the crazy heat zinging around my body. The next day, I got an email from the library in Hamilton inviting me back for a second interview and I broke down in tears. It didn't seem right to go back yet, even though it didn't seem right to stay put either. "I don't know what I'm doing," I told my mother on the phone. "Sure you do," she replied. I drove back to Hamilton a few days later, called in sick to make it to my interview (again, a fine and careful art). After four hours of questions, answers, and Powerpoint insanity, my dad and brother picked me up, and we went skating at the Dundas Driving Park. That night as I drove back up to Kingston, I watched the thermometer on my dashboard as the temperature dropped, slowly and surely, the further I got from Hamilton. Well, I thought, that can't be a good sign.

I moved home a few weeks later.

So, here we are, then.

resolution revolution.

2012-01-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

2012's not even a day old yet, but I've got some ideas for what I'm going to do differently this year.

1. Continue my plans for the world's first breathalyzer-deactivated phone. I am confident that I am not the only person who feels like they could really, really use this, particularly after about 2:00 AM.

2. Re-evaluate Jack Daniels' role in my life.

3. Revisit my old friends on The O.C.., thanks to the fantastic DVD holdings of the Hamilton Public Library. I wondered recently whether this little show would stand the test of time. Three hours into a marathon I am pleased to announce that it so, so does. Okay fine, so there are some minor annoyances, such as the fact that the soundtrack is 10% pop punk and 90% various covers of Hallelujah, but whatever. Seth Cohen, I still heart you. I still heart you so hard.

4. Reread The Stand. I'm currently plowing through Stephen King's newest book, 11/22/63, and it is genius. Now I'm dying to revisit some of the other classics that blew my mind over the years. Incidentally, there's also a really excellent comic book adaptation of The Stand, which I emphatically recommend to all fans of post-apocalyptic narratives, zombie comics, and being mildly repulsed in the best possible way.

5. Dance like no one is watching. I really mean it.

Happy New Year, everyone.

"i've been wearing december like a crown of thorns."

2011-12-30T13:24:00.000-08:00

2011 saw me revisiting a lot of my usual tropes: not finishing books I'd started, barreling back and forth forever behind the wheel of my trusty Honda Civic, listening to a lot of Dylan, packing up another beloved apartment, trying to feel hopeful and brave, moving up and moving out. If someone had told me when I took stock of 2010 a year ago today that, one year later, I'd be staring out the window of my very own Hamilton cottage, roots reluctantly yet firmly planted back home, I'd have told you that you were batshit crazy. And yet, here I am, and here we are. Life's a funny, funny thing. Whether that's Funny Ha Ha or Funny Try To Keep From Weeping Openly, well, the jury's still out. While we deliberate, let's look back on the year that was.

Best magazines for the person who's lost the will to read anything longer than three thousand words, give or take: The New Yorker. Free access to this sacred tome basically justifies my library career.

Best job ever: The one at the library where your staff put the new copies of The New Yorker and Yoga Journal in your mail tray when they come in, "for your perusal."

Best perpetual road trip: The dreaded 401, Eastbound and Westbound in turns. The road that used to drive me bananas became one of my favourites this year as I barreled back and forth between Hamilton and Kingston and points north for job interviews, yoga teacher training weekends, visits with brand new babies, and more. I made some of the best of those jaunts with my Yoga Friend Cheryl. Anyone who does yoga regularly knows that Yoga Friends are somehow different than Other Friends because they TOTALLY GET your weird obsessions with breathing deeply and chakra-balancing incense and oh my lord, who have I become. Cheryl and I became yoga teachers together this year, and I don't think I would have survived the many drives back to Kingston if it weren't for her. We laughed, we cried, we spent millions of dollars at Whole Foods and Harveys, we listened to insane music on her iPod. For some reason, the only song I can think of from those many, many hours on the road is this one.

Best comic book about a noirish cat detective: Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales. Seriously guys, this series is fucking incredible.

Best show: A tie between Plaskett at the Studio Theatre in March and the Harvest Picnic at Christie Conservation Area in August. Harvest Picnic gets a bit of an edge for its fully functional farmer's market--hearing Ray Lamontagne and buying kohlrabi in the same place makes me a happy panda.

Best Makeout Song: Only In Dreams, Weezer.

Strangest moment of sudden adulthood: Coming to the realization that you've been making out to Weezer for nearly twenty years.

Best Musical Rediscovery: David Bowie.

Best CBC Radio program, Pulling Me Out Of Sunday Night Doldrums to Learn Something category: Inside the Music.

Best book that took three false starts beore I finally got further than twenty pages: A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. A strange, sad, lovely, multi-narrated gem about music and mortality in the twentieth century. Bonus points for the chapter told entirely in Powerpoint slides.

Murakami quote that most accurately describes exactly where I am, in this very moment: "Oh, well. No place has everything you need."

Like the old boys say, tomorrow, it's a brand new fucking year. Let's hope this one's a doozy.

a year in review: oldies but goodies edition.

2011-12-30T00:22:00.000-08:00

Like I said yesterday, my Best Albums of the Year lists are usually an inaccurate representation of what I actually listened to all year. I'm so behind the curve that I generally don't listen to anything from the current year till December, when I start thinking about what I'm going to put on my Best Albums list. (Because I know how much everyone looks forward to this annual drop-in-the-bucket exercise in artistic navel-gazery. I do it for you, faithful readers.) So I thought this year I'd also do a Best Albums of the Year: Non New Releases list.

The National--High Violet

Bob Dylan--all of him (unusual, I know.)

Billy Joel--Greatest Hits

Rufus Wainwright--Want One

Elton John--Greatest Hits

The Magnetic Fields--Get Lost

The Strokes--Room on Fire

David Bowie--Ziggy Stardust

Aimee Mann--entire blessed discography

A.C. Newman--Get Guilty

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least where my iPod is concerned.

a year in review.

2011-12-29T11:56:00.000-08:00

As always, this is a pretty false representation of what I actually listened to this year, because while I do love me some new music, I love Billy Joel's Greatest Hits more. Nevertheless, here are my favourite records of 2011, actually released in 2011.

The Whole Love--Wilco

Mirror Traffic--Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

We're All Dying To Live--Rich Aucoin

Strange Mercy--St Vincent

The Creature I Don't Know--Laura Marling

Let England Shake--PJ Harvey

Helplessness Blues--Fleet Foxes

Bon Iver--Bon Iver

Seeds--Hey Rosetta

The King Is Dead--The Decemberists

Bloom where you're planted.

2011-12-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to Vancouver in 2004, I lived in a college for grad students on the very edge of the UBC campus, so close to the ocean that there were spots on the grounds where you could pretty much fall down a cliff and into the cold waters of the Pacific (a possibility I tested on more than a few tipsy, stumbling nights around the property). To get home from class every day, I would cut through the Rose Garden on my walk, a shortcut that actually took longer than the straight route and involved a descent down steep stone stairs. In my memory, Vancouver is all incredible hills and valleys, not just in the distance, but also right in front of me on every sidewalk I ever travelled, each block a strange and somewhat treacherous incline, unknown territory. Anyway, I didn't mind the extra steps through the roses. The UBC campus is teeming with horticultural secrets, experimental gardens filled with hybrid apples, Japanese tea houses and waterfalls, nude beaches. I felt lucky to have one of those wonderful treasures on my daily path. As the fall wore on I watched in amazement as the roses continued to bloom. I came from a place where roses only really bloomed once--in June, always around my birthday. My daily walks through that garden made me feel like it was my birthday all autumn long, a feeling that came as a brief daily relief from the overwhelming homesickness that took up so much of my energy in those first few months on the other side of the country.

One day in mid-December, I was taking my usual path through the garden under a dark grey sky. There was a cold wind blustering, and that particularly Vancouvery, sleety, slushy, stinging freezing rain was pounding my face. I was on my way back to my room to work on my last assignment of the semester and then to pack up my room and get ready to move out of Green College; on a tipsy, stumbling night a few weeks earlier, I'd made the decision to move off campus and into an apartment on Arbutus Street with a view of the mountains. All fall, I'd been struggling to find a place to put down my roots out there, and I was nervously hoping that this move would be the right one. (As it turned out, it was, and the friend I moved in with would turn out to be one of my best friends in all of the explored universe, but I didn't know that yet.) As I schlepped my way through the roses that morning, cold and lonely and longing for home, I was feeling a little desperate.

The roses were pretty well finished, I noticed, and felt even more bummed out than before. It was the winter of my discontent. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's send myself into a spiral of unfounded despair, and I was on my way down the existential rabbit hole when I ran into a friend of mine from Green, reaching out to touch a gorgeous, newly formed, yellow rose. She'd found the last few blooms in the garden, and it was blowing her mind.

"Isn't this incredible?" she said. "December and they're finally blossoming." Like me, she came from a province where the rose season is short but sweet. We weren't used to this long, meandering season. We weren't late bloomers, or at least, we'd never admitted it to ourselves if we were. It was one of those moments that made me take a step back and realize that after all these months, all this slow growth, I was suddenly, miraculously, home. It wasn't the home I expected, nor would it be my home forever, but there it was, familiar and strange and unexpected.

Bloom where you're planted, someone once told me. I've bloomed in a lot of weird and wonderful places, put down roots only to rip them back up a few years later. I've come home a million times, in so many different ways. I think we all do. I read a short story by Carol Nelson awhile ago that said something like, "Christmas is a time when you're homesick, even when you're home." That makes sense to me. We're all just trying to get back to the place that means the most to us, even though that place changes a little bit every day. Sometimes we don't even notice it changing. We don't even know we need something different, and then suddenly, there it is, right before our eyes, on our very own doorsteps.

Merry Christmas, all.

Christmas memories.

2011-12-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

I found this really, really random playlist on my iPod a couple of weeks ago while scrolling around looking for my Christmas music. It is called "Kridmit" for reasons that some may understand. I must have compiled it somewhere around 2008, because it is comprised of a fine balance of songs that very accurately convey the uncertainty, sadness, and puppy love that characterized the last few months of that year of my life (not to mention my affinity for do-wop Christmas covers). Here's a cross-section.

1. White Christmas--The Drifters

2. End of Empire--Sam Roberts

3. River--Joni Mitchell

4. Don't Do It--The Band

5. The Friendly Beasts--Sufjan Stevens

6. Tomorrow is a Long Time--Bob Dylan

7. Hard Candy Christmas--Dolly Parton

I'm fairly sure I put this playlist together for a drive home from Ottawa to the Hammer, or maybe one of my many existential jaunts from South Frontenac back to the Glebe. In hindsight, it's a Christmas miracle I didn't decide to run my car off the road once and for all. Hallelujah, the times they are a-changin'.

Still, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't easy.

2011-12-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

A few Decembers ago, I went to hear Wilco and Neil Young play in Ottawa with my best friend's husband (although he wasn't her husband yet). It was a strange sort of outing for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that my best friend Freya wasn't there with us. She was at home with a three-month-old baby. I still remember that conversation a few months previous when we realized that Neil and Wilco were TOURING TOGETHER and that they were COMING TO OUR TOWN, only to realize in the next moment that the floor of Scotiabank Place probably wouldn't be super conducive to babies. There was a moment where it seemed like Freya might still get herself a ticket; the impending uncertainty of exactly what motherhood might mean fought an epic battle with her commitment to two of our favourite musical artists, not to mention the chance to see them together on one stage. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, the nesting instinct won out.

One of the other things that made that night an odd one was the fact that my boyfriend was there too, but he wasn't there with us. Being the socially anxious weirdo that he is, Tom had resisted getting tickets till the very last minute, and then managed to talk his neighbour, a blowhard concert promoter, into getting him an incredible VIP seat and a backstage pass. That whole chain of events made me so simmering mad and sad, although I didn't actually tell him that. Something you need to know about our relationship is that for the first year or so that we were together, we used about 90% of our energy denying the fact that we were actually IN a relationship. Call it self-protection, call it willful ignorance, call it utter foolishness. We'd spent the whole weekend before the concert together at his cabin in the woods, huddled and cuddled up close, and the whole time I just wanted to ask him, what would have been wrong with coming with us? But of course, I never did. I bottled it up and shoved it down and left his house on Sunday night feeling the way I always did when I said goodye to him: like I was leaving a huge piece of myself with him, a piece of myself that I'd given him reluctantly, silently. He knew he held it in his hands and heart, but never said so. It was like we were keeping a secret from each other, a secret we each already knew.

I am the first to admit that this was not a healthy set-up. My years in Ottawa were not ones in which I was kind to myself or others.

More often than not, after a weekend together, I'd spend my Monday in my broom closet of an office trying in vain to focus on anything but my ridiculous personal life and failing miserably. That Monday of Neil and Wilco was no exception. I remember I called Freya from my office and told her to tell Greg I wasn't going to the show, that I was sorry but I just couldn't face it. I was probably crying; I often cried in my office back then, much to the fascination of the pages wandering by my door with a full truck of books. I can't remember what Freya said to me, but it was probably something to the effect of "Pull your head out of your ass, muffin." She has a way of setting me straight. I hauled myself home, suddenly aware of the fact that I was going to this show, not just for myself, but for her. Sweet baby Finn was her priority that night; my priority was rocking out for two.

So Greg and I went to the show, and drank many, many tall cans of Creemore. Wilco put on the kind of Opening Act Set that only they can--playing all their greatest hits from across their catalogue, so tightly and perfectly timed. When they played I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, I cried, like I always do when I hear them play that song live. I called my Best West Coast Friend Tara and held my cell phone up to leave a chunk of sonic love on her answering machine. It was the first and only time I've ever done that. Between their set and Neil's, Greg and I saw Tom on his VIP throne, and tried to get his attention. We were, by all accounts, unsuccessful. When the lights went back down and Neil hit the stage, I felt this strange catharsis, knowing Tom was there too, knowing we were both loving the shit out of this show, separate but equal. Maybe it was the cookies Greg and I ate in the car before heading in but I suddenly felt like the whole night was a metaphor for our relationship.

It was probably the cookies.

Neil closed down with an incredible, earth-shaking cover of A Day In The Life that hurt my feelings something fierce. I felt like my heart had been ripped open and sewn back together. I walked out into the freezing night feeling humbled and rocked out and vindicated. A good rock show will do that to a girl. As I drove back into the city, I called Tom, who told me slurringly how he'd made it backstage and shaken Neil's hand. He asked me if I wanted to come back to his hotel room--too little, too late. It took everything in me to decline the invitation. After all, I was already halfway home.

winter.

2011-11-25T08:12:00.000-08:00

As the days get shorter and the nights darker and longer, I find myself pining for a place I spent three years trying to escape from. Ottawa is a lot of things; My Kind Of Place it is not. Most people who knew me when I called that town home remember what a misery I was during that time; I spent most of my National Capital tenure strategizing ways to get the hell out. When I finally barreled South down highway 416 one last Friday night in May, it was one of the finest road trips I've ever taken.

But that's not my point. My point is that when you spend three years somewhere, you get a feel for it. And regardless of how much you may hate it there, you usually manage to find a few things worth loving, too. Perversely, in light of my utter hatred of cold weather, the thing I miss about Ottawa today is winter. Not that February dump of forty centimetres of pain kind of winter, not the kind of winter where you can't even get your car into your driveway on account of the snow and you end up blocking the whole street and the driver of the OC Transpo bus you're obstructing has to help you push your way out. That kind of winter I can do without.

No, the best part of an Ottawa winter was always the beginning. The temperature would just drop one day in late November, the snow would start, the canal would ice over. My neighbourhood would get suddenly quiet as everyone went back inside, cozying up in those grand old brick houses. I'd walk past their bright windows on my way home to my own little attic haven and I'd feel so lucky, to be so cold and on my way to somewhere so warm and safe. It was a sort of honeymoon period at the beginning of December, a time of sudden burrowing, holing up. For a hermit like me, it was a dream come true.

My first December in Ottawa, I wasn't actually all that miserable. I was plugging away at my job and feeling pretty good about it, I had my handful of friends. I was seeing a boy who was so kind and cute and in possession of an excellent record collection. We spent our weekends doing the things you do when you're young and falling into something--eating dinner at restaurants, fooling around like teenagers (ie. while listening to Thrush Hermit), strolling around holding hands, feeling significant and needed.

One Friday night in December we went to look at the Christmas lights on the Parliament buildings. We ate burgers at my favourite bar in town and then went back to his place, where made out while watching Labyrinth and then stayed up too late. I had to work the next day, and he insisted on walking me home in the morning. He lived in Centretown, and I was in the Glebe, just a few blocks further south. It had snowed in the night and we trudged up Bank Street together, not a car in sight. The sky was that wicked, foreboding shade of gunmetal gray that held the promise of more snow to come, and the air was so still. When we got to my front porch, he kissed me goodbye, and I walked up three flights of stairs to my place. I turned on my own newly-acquired Christmas lights and laid on my living room floor, bathed in twinkling light, safe and sound.

Goodnight, moon.

2011-11-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

Folks, I'm going to let you all in on a little secret: I actually love the month of November. I think there are a few reasons for this:

1. The fact that a lot of people hate this time of year coupled with the fact that on occasion I have an overwhelming need to be contrary.

2. I spend a significant chunk of the year wishing it was dark enough and quiet enough to justify my desire to bury myself in church lady-knitted afghans and re-read the books that made me cry when I was younger, and suddenly, oh so suddenly, it is.

2a. In case you were wondering, this year's list of weepies includes Looking at the Moon by Kit Pearson and Girl by Blake Nelson.

2b. SHIT MAN, Blake Nelson has a SEQUEL to Girl out this month! I feel as though my heart may burst.

3. That chill in the air, that wind that threatens to pick you up off your feet and drop you back down. It's the perfect environment in which to wrap yourself up in a pashmina and walk purposefully down the street, feeling hopeful and solitary and brave.

4. There's something so comforting and quiet about the bare trees and the cold ground. It's like the whole earth is breathing a sigh of relief.

5. The incredibly important annual tradition of watching When Harry Met Sally, a movie that only feels right to me in November. I have a not so secret love of this film. I recently read an article where Melissa McCarthy declared it her favourite romantic comedy because it gives the characters so much time and space to get to know each other, and I liked that. I'd even argue that it's not so much a romantic comedy as it is a slice of life comedy about two completely inept goofballs who finally decide to make out with each other and can hardly bear the awkwardness of it all. Which is my favourite kind of love story, really.

6. November strikes me as a time of year when things often fall apart. And when it comes, and the days pass, and lo and behold you find yourself still intact, it's like a nice little karmic pat on the head.

Here's my November Top Five. It's a Lullabye List, I think.

1. The Walkmen, Four Provinces.

2. David Bowie, Soul Love.

3. Sufjan Stevens, Jacksonville.

4. The Band, When I Paint My Masterpiece.

5. The Rolling Stones, Moonlight Mile.

Goodnight, children, everywhere.

It's Friday, I'm in love (with my stereo).

2011-11-18T08:09:00.001-08:00

A soundtrack for driving to work and trying not to cry at the first sub-zero morning of the near-winter.

1. Paul Simon: Obvious Child. You'll dance, you'll cry, you'll drum on your steering wheel till you accidentally honk your horn.

1a. Guys, I'm starting to get pretty frigging pumped about the Graceland 20th Anniversary Tour next year. PRETTY FRIGGING PUMPED.

2. M. Ward: Epistemology. I like songs that reference screwing up the words to the hymns.

3. Titus Andronicus: No Future Part III. Because it's comforting to remember that you really will always be a loser.

4. Billy Joel: Don't Ask Me Why. Three minutes of SMOOTH GOLD.

5. Elton John: Rocket Man. I don't know, I honestly can't think of a moment for which this song is NOT the best choice.

5a. Here's something I love: When a song takes six minutes to get to its incredible climax, and those last thirty seconds are so, so worth it. Example: Someone Saved My Life Tonight.

6. Beach House: Walk in the Park. This is more of a night driving song, in my humble opinion, all blissed out nostalgia and soothing keyboards. Mmmmm.

7. Belle And Sebastian: Lazy Line Painter Jane. Included as a tribute to all the music I would never have known about if it weren't for my various ex-boyfriends (or possibly just one in particular). Monica Queen's voice gets me every time. Basically an essential track for any mix tape produced in Oshawa between 1999 and 2002.

And, scene.

the pieces that stick around.

2011-10-28T03:47:00.000-07:00

I've never read Proust, and I doubt I ever will. I'm reaching the point in my real life and my reading life where I'm less concerned with what I want to do and more concerned with what I don't want to do. Examples: I don't want to go out this Friday. I don't want to talk to you on the phone if I can help it. I don't want to read Proust. The older I get the more I realize how precious my own time is, and how hard I'll work to protect it and do with it the things that really make me feel whole and happy (such as, apparently, doing shitloads of yoga and watching several hundred episodes of classic 90210 in rapid succession).

Anyway, where I was going with this was, I've never read Proust, but I know enough about him to reference him (never underestimate the value of a liberal arts education). I can definitely sympathize with the whole dipping of the madeleine cookie into the tea and the evocation of intense sense memory. As a perpetual victim of my own past, engaging with my memories is less an occasional event and more a daily contact sport.

Here's today's madeleine cookie: a scratched-up, case-less copy of The Last DJ by Tom Petty, scrounged out of the armrest console of my car during an uncharacteristic cleanout. It was buried under an empty bottle of Moosehead (in itself a madeleine in its own right). When I found the Petty CD, I spent a protracted moment trying to figure out how it had gotten there. When I turned it over and saw how dinged up it was, it all came flooding back to me.

It was a clear blue Saturday morning last November, the kind of bright, fresh day you always hope for at the end of fall, walking that fine line between the briskness of autumn and the bone-chills lying in wait. It had rained non-stop for the past week, not that I'd been outside much. I'd spent the last two days in the emergency ward at the Kingston General Hospital and then the makeshift sickroom of my own apartment with my then-boyfriend, who had broken his shoulder falling off a roof and was waiting for surgery. After a long day on Thursday, I'd taken him home when it became clear that his surgery wasn't going to happen. The nurses told us to wait by the phone for the call, which would surely come early Friday, telling us to come back to the hospital. That call never came. Instead Friday was a day spent on tenterhooks, feeding Tom painkillers and trying to track down a washing machine in which to clean his blood-soaked laundry. It is not an experience I would recommend to anyone.

When the O.R. nurse finally did call on Saturday morning, I wanted to reach through the telephone and kiss her. Tom got dressed in his now-clean clothes (never underestimate the kindness of good neighbours) and we shuffled down to my car, which was now covered in frost. The first breath I took outside that morning felt so good and pure. The air was so clean and still. I had a rush of relief and unlimited potential. Everything was going to be fine.

This feeling dissipated pretty fast when I realized I had no idea where my car scraper was. When you're walking that line between holding it together for the sake of someone else and losing it completely for your own damned self, it's pretty easy to teeter over to the dark side. I was so freaked out and panicky about the possibility of Tom missing his surgery if we were late that I just started scraping the frost off my windshield with my fingernails, all the while yelling at Tom to get the hell into the car. It would've been funny if it hadn't been so horrifying, or maybe vice versa.

"Calm down," Tom told me. He was gritting his teeth, he was in so much pain, and yet. "You must have a CD in your car."

I reached into my trunk, which was in fact comically full of CDs--when your boyfriend lives half an hour outside of town and you spend most of your weekends driving to and from his place and also rocking out pretty hard when you're together, you have to be prepared. I grabbed the first one I made contact with, The Last DJ, stolen from a pile of discards at a library I worked at a long time ago. I handed it to him, and he opened the case with his one good arm, his one steady hand. He used the edge of the disk to scrape the ice off my windows and quietly told me to start the car.

"Don't worry," he said, and he winced. "Just drive."

He was like that: stoic, protective, sensible. He was also a lot of other things, but I think it's the way he'd quietly jump in and do what needed doing that I miss the most.

We got to the hospital. He had his surgery. I spent a month playing nursemaid before we both realized that all the tender care in the world couldn't heal the real cracks, the fractures that had come on slowly, months before he fell. We broke up. It was the right thing. It was the right thing. It had to be the right thing.

I should throw out that album. It's time for a new soundtrack.

back on the horse, jump off the horse.

2011-10-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

Definite, universally acknowledged signs you're on a date that's headed south:

1. His opener is an anecdote about how he cooks meat for his dog in a slow-cooker and leaves the pot for his cleaning lady to worry about.

1a. Other than that, he doesn't cook much.

2. He describes, at length, his ex-wife's very expensive tastes.

3. He tells an actually pretty funny story about discovering that the house he bought (and then tore to the ground to build his dream home; people actually do this, apparently) had a grow op in the basement, and does not seem in the least excited about finding free pot in there.

4. He gleefully admits to having football-shaped lights in the W.C. adjacent to his "sports room" (people actually have these, apparently).

5. Bizarre occasions of supposed political correctness, ie. getting really quiet and whispering the word "asian" while in a Vietnamese restaurant.

6. He does not like Christmas, and once bought a Christmas tree for his wife to spite her (the details of this one are not even worth going into; please fill in using your own fertile imagination).

7. After you spend the longest hour of your life eating Thai Tom Yum soup as fast as you possibly can in an attempt to get out of there, he completely misreads your body language and swoops in for a kiss, and then says "I hope that was the right thing to do." No, sir, no, it was not.

I'm pretty sure there's a lesson here. Let's start with this: Guys, I now know of a really great Vietnamese restaurant nearby!

Antidote: Drive home super duper fast, listening to Titus Andronicus playing super duper loud, and feel incredibly grateful for your own glorious independence.

Say thanks.

2011-10-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, my mom flew up to Ottawa a couple of days before Thanksgiving so I wouldn't have to drive home alone. We went out for dinner at a restaurant in the Glebe, just a stone's throw from my attic apartment, and ate some of the best carrot soup in all creation. On the road back to Hamilton, we stopped at my best friend's house to pick up the bridesmaid dress her mom had altered for me (the top was way too big, and the skirt was way too small; I was going pear-shaped on so many levels that fall). The dress pickup was mostly a great excuse for my mom to meet Freya's brand-new baby boy, Finlay Peter, only a few weeks old. I remember holding him while Freya ran downstairs to change the laundry, and as she yelled back up the stairs to us, Finn turned his head toward the sound of her voice.

I spent that weekend in wedding mode as two more of my best friends got married on one of those warm, gorgeous October afternoons that you always wish for but never get when you need. I sat at the head table and cried at the speeches and thought of my own other half, hidden in a cabin in the woods, hours away, agoraphobic, denying everything.

Two years ago, I had to work on Thanksgiving weekend. My mom took the train to Kingston, my new forever home, and we ate dinner at Chez Piggy, tucked away cozy and warm at a corner table on a rainy night. On Sunday, my brother drove up from Hamilton and my other half drove in from the hideout, and we all trekked down to the waterfront for a long afternoon walk. The leaves were falling and the wind howled and the old psychiatric hospital buildings seemed even more ominous than usual. Mom and my brother left early on Monday morning, and the other half and I went back to bed and stayed there all day, keeping each other warm.

One year ago, he made a promise to come along on the long drive back home to Hamilton for Thanksgiving dinner. He was a man who was hard to pin down, and I was so incredibly happy to know that he would be in the driver's seat, at the dinner table next to me, tossing and turning on the creeky pullout in my parents' basement. The day before we left, he called and told me he couldn't go. He was building a house, and stewarding his land, and I tried to believe what he was saying, that he was doing this for both of us, that this was the hard part, that it would get easier. I cried into the phone like a character in a Judy Blume book. Then I picked myself up and drove myself home. That weekend in Hamilton, I went to a yoga workshop and felt my heart open up wider than ever before. I felt so incredibly grateful for the long hard road that led me to that sunny studio, that dingy rented mat.

This year, I'm potting chrysanthemums on my own front porch and ripping up rudbeckia in my own backyard, getting ready for next year's epic vegetable patch. I'm on my own. I've made my way home and my long drive to dinner is only about twelve minutes, door to door. I'm teaching my own yoga classes and telling my students to think about gratitude, to think of the things worth being thankful for, to keep an eye out for them. They always pop up in the most unexpected places.

down memory lane, the Beverly Hills 90210 edition.

2011-07-22T12:53:00.001-07:00

Things I miss about the 90s, inspired by my catching of a summer cold on the hottest day on record (seriously) and being forced inside to watch a 90210 marathon.

But first, for context:

1. Sports montages. Montages of any kind, really. Most often accompanied by a synth-rock song you've never heard before that is usually vaguely reminiscent of Eye of the Tiger.

2. Babydoll dresses. I know these are back in vogue, but to my mind, no one pulls it off like Kelly Taylor. Incidentally, Kelly had some pretty killer style in Season 3, when she was all depressed and unsure of herself and Going Through Some Changes. Her look got sort of grungey and was so much more interesting to look at than Brenda's never-ending parade of bodysuits and men's trousers.

3. Pre-reality television Tori Spelling. Such innocence, such foolishness.

4. Plots that hinge on such life or death melodramas as "Will the deaf kid have a good time at the beach club?" and "Whose earring is this on your futon?" and "What do you MEAN, Dylan doesn't know how to use a barbecue?" HEADY TIMES!

5. Legacy keys. True story: there actually was a legacy key at my undergraduate college, back when guys and gals still lived in separate dorms the way the great Bishop John Strachan intended it and the boys passed around a years-old key to our building to let themselves in and sneak themselves past the Commissionaires. Now the whole place is co-ed, and probably guarded by retinal scans and robots. Progress.

6. Dylan McKay. I still have a crush on Luke Perry. There, I said it. I defy you to disagree. Those sideburns, that furrowed brow, the modest reserve with which he tells Brandon he's already read all the books on the senior reading list. (footage unavailable.)

7. This isn't really a thing, but for the record, I feel really sorry for Steve Sanders. I used to tell people Ian Ziering was my favourite 90210 man because it just seemed like the poor guy couldn't catch a break.

8. Pre-internet culture. These dudes spend time at the LIBRARY, man! WITHOUT LAPTOPS! They go there to SOLVE MYSTERIES and even reference visiting the periodicals department. My heart, it's so full.

9. Television writing that doesn't assume even a basic intelligence in its viewers. Plot holes so big you could drive Steve's Beemer through them.

10. Line dancing. In earnest. I'm so stoked that YouTube actually had a clip of this scene. Cut to about the 12 second mark.

Summer reading club.

2011-07-15T06:33:00.001-07:00

Here's what summer is made for.

1. Reading children's books. I just cracked the spine on The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, and can't believe it never found its way to me when I was younger. It's got that nerdy, puzzly, E.L. Konigsburg vibe that has rocked my world since I was about seven, and I'm pretty grateful that Mac on Veronica Mars made a reference to it to bring it into my life.

1a. Pausing to think wistfully about Veronica Mars, and how great it is.

2. Diving head first into teen books you should have read when they came out but forgot to check out because you're no longer lucky enough to work with some bitchin' teen librarians who tell you what to read all the time. First on my list: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.

2a. I've had a real thing for John Green for a really long time, and that passion has not waned. If I'd discovered him as a teenager I think I'd have been so much more comfortable with my own geekiness, and also, so very much in love.

3. Folk rock road trips. I'm off to Perth to the Stewart Park Music Festival, arguably this country's best free fest. I'll be the one throwing myself at Dan Mangan and drinking pinot grigio out of a Nalgene bottle.

Resist, resist.

2011-07-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

Some of the best moments in life spring out of resisting your first reaction to something. There's a theory in Ayurvedic medicine, the sister science of yoga, that whatever you're feeling, you should act in a way that makes you feel the opposite. I'm not doing it much justice with that bald language description, but basically, if you feel exhausted, don't take a nap--instead, go out for a walk, get your energy moving. If you feel wiggy and buzzy and over-excited, don't run it off--sit down and take some deep breaths and relax already. When I can, I try fairly earnestly to follow this directive. It works, I tell you. It works.

Case in point, last night. I got home from work and felt like I was ready to go into a cocoon. I have to admit, one of the things I hate about summer is that it seriously cramps my hermit style--how the hell can I justify burrowing under the covers and watching seventeen episodes of Arrested Development while drinking a mug of wine when the beautiful blazing sun is still high in the sky all evening? All I wanted to do was lie down, but I just couldn't justify it. Instead, I wandered over to visit a dear old friend with four dear, hilarious kids. In so doing, I was offered one of the best protracted moments I've had in weeks: After they'd all been herded like drunk kittens into their pajamas, I got to read out loud to them from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Here's what's delightful about reading out loud to kids.

1. They LISTEN. They see you holding a book and they just know something good is happening.

2. They interrupt you to observe the best things, like "How did Augustus Gloop get so fat? Even his NAME is fat."

3. If they've been raised in a certain way, they just know books as books--we were reading Charlie in a glorious vacuum devoid of movie tie-ins and product placements. A story is just a story.

4. If you're really lucky, they'll curl up right next to you and absent-mindedly play with your necklace and twist the buttons on your sundress and by the end of it all you'll emerge looking just as disheveled as they do.

5. They'll remind you of just how magical a book can be, and of how joyful you can feel just by sitting and reading and nothing more.

I tell you, it was pretty special, even for this cynical old broad. I wandered back home and pulled James and the Giant Peach off my shelf and continued my Roald Dahl love-fest. I tried to read the way I read when I was a kid, without the filters and lenses of everything I've been exposed to since. It was hard, but it was worth it. Resist, resist. Redirection is hard, but oh, the payoff is sweet.

Then I treated myself to a little floor-lyin' and Royal Wood-listenin'. I think I deserved it.

How I spent my summer vacation.

2011-07-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

I was off work last week. Following three days of birthday-related bacchanalia, I poured myself off the couch and read the following.

1. Daughters-In-Law by Joanna Trollope. If there is one thing I love, it's a good British society melodrama. Trollope's books exist in this totally unrealistic, upper class version of the UK that I absolutely adore, where the biggest problem in a woman's life is that her new mother in law didn't react appropriately when she announced her pregnancy and where people make their living drawing pictures of birds. This is my idea of a perfect beach read.

2. Bossypants by Tina Fey. Oh god, I love her. I love her so much. I can't even go down the road of quoting my favourite bits of this book, because my favourite part, to borrow a phrase from the kids in the summer reading club, was ALL OF IT.

3. The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin. This was one of those "journalistic non-fiction"-y books where the author reimagines conversations between Timothy Leary and Huston Smith and Aldous Huxley, awkwardly. The best part of this book was the thread about how Andrew Weil basically sold Leary and his fellow Harvard researchers up the river because he was jealous of all the LSD they were doing. As a reward, the university and the government helped him procure a bunch of pot and he later got away with publishing a buttload of research about how marijuana wasn't that bad for you. This is a great book if you have a couple of hours to kill and would like to pretend to "learn about social history," or if you would like a reminder of why you should never do acid again.

I also listened to the Decemberists, a lot. They're the masters of the nursery-rhymey, folk-pop-hook-y music that I love so much.

the birthday project: still alive at twenty five.

2011-06-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

In June 2005, I turned 25. I was living in Vancouver at the time, in the middle of two years of grad school, feeling very mature and uncertain. I'd decided not to come home for the summer and it was a source of constant tension and horrible near-daily phone-fights with my then-boyfriend, who was still back home in Onterrible, as we expats on the fairer coast called it. As my birthday drew closer I felt sadder and sadder about not being at home with my friends, who were all going to see Modest Mouse play a show on Toronto Island on my big day. I felt as if the universe were doing me a pretty grave injustice (this was pretty much my resting state for most of grad school).

My parents sensed my angst over the phone many times over, and made the incredibly generous decision to fly my baby brother out to Vancouver as a birthday present. He arrived the day before, and I dragged him to the Naam, the world's best vegetarian restaurant, home of the cashew-avocado enchilada that I basically ate by the pound while I lived out west. I was always lucky to have visitors when I lived far away, visitors with whom I could share the incredible miracle of the ocean, the mountains, the clean air and steep streets that humbled me each time I left my apartment on Arbutus. Noah and I hiked in Stanley Park and he was appropriately amazed.

On my very birthday, Noah announced that Mom and Dad had sent him with enough cash for a good dinner for the two of us, along with my roommate and soul twin Tara. I got it in my head that I wanted Indian food, so we found the fanciest Indian restaurant we could find, a place whose name now escapes me on West Broadway, and schlepped on up there in our nicest jeans. We ordered so much food that the waiter raised his eyebrows and said, "Are you sure?" We replied that, oh yes, indeed we were. At one point the owner came over to ensure that we were satisfied with our meal, convinced that we were Somebody.

Afterwards we took a guitar and some cans of Granville Island Honey Lager down to Kits Beach. We had a bonfire singalong that included a stirring rendition of Big League by Red Rider, and listened to the waves hit the shore. On our walk home, we broke into the salt water pool and swam surreptitious circles as sirens wailed in the distance--they weren't for us, but it sure felt like they might be. We stumbled home and fell asleep. I woke up early the next morning, smelling of saline and smoke, and called in sick for work.

Tara took to referring to Noah as the People's Little Brother after that, for his willingness to do ridiculous things like break into pools and order extra drinks and keep the bonfire going. I felt pretty lucky to have a little brother who was worthy of mass appreciation. I spent a lot of my time in Vancouver feeling homesick in the best possible way, and that night I felt so glad to have a piece of home riding shotgun.

the birthday project: dirty thirty.

2011-06-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

In June 2010 I turned thirty. I spent the week before my birthday at home with my parents, making jam and going to see Christopher Plummer in The Tempest and doing a lot of yoga. After breakfast on my birthday, I barreled up the 401 back to Kingston, a town I'd fallen in love with, a town I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life in.

My best friend Freya drove down from Almonte and we drank afternoon champagne cocktails. My boyfriend brought me flowers. My oldest friend Danielle lived a few blocks away, and we strolled on over to her house and into a backyard filled with friends. My gift from them was a water bottle filled with wine spritzers, and we drank in the streets all the way downtown, where we went on the Haunted Walk of Kingston. I cannot recommend this tour highly enough, although you should probably be intoxicated when you go, because most of the ghosts are actually invisible and/or puddles of water on the ground.

Afterwards, we ate pizza and drank a lot of drinks, and then Freya, Tom and I stumbled home along the side streets North of Princess. Tom and I stayed awake nearly till the sun came up, listening to old records and talking each other's ears off. The next day we went camping on the pine-covered point of the property Tom had just bought. Danielle and I paddled the canoe there while the menfolk made their way on foot. Our little boat was filled with precious cargo, including a violin and a guitar for a late-night singalong. Tom had bought me a tent for my birthday, and we set it up on the shoreline. I jumped into Eel Lake, our lake, THE lake, and thought to myself, Well, this is it. This is all you'll ever need.

the birthday project: feeling fine, twenty nine.

2011-06-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

On June 24th, 2009, I turned 29. My friend Freya had informed me that your 29th birthday was actually one of the most important birthdays of your life, because it represented the Return of Saturn, the end of your first 30 year cycle. She told me that whatever was going on around your 29th birthday would dictate what your life would be like for the next thirty years. I love that kind of gravitas--makes me feel more alive.

A few weeks earlier, I'd made the move I should've made years before, from my sweet little apartment on First Avenue in Ottawa to my sweet little apartment on Charles Street in Kingston. Leaving Ottawa made me feel like the lights had been turned back on in a room that had been dark for too long. I was falling in love with Kingston, and falling further in love with someone else in the process.

The weekend of my birthday, I drove back home to Hamilton to have dinner with my parents. Our usual quiet cocktail-hour celebration evolved into a wicked party with a generous handful of my best people. There is no greater feeling than watching a car filled with your closest friends drive up to your house, then helping them move a sleeping bag from the back seat only to discover your furthest-away friend hidden underneath it. We ate spring rolls and drank champagne and smoked covertly and rocked the hell out till my mother came back outside to tell me to stop singing Midnight Train To Georgia for Christ's sake, the neighbours were trying to sleep. The next morning I drove back up to Kingston feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.

On the morning of my actual birthday, my friend Jacoba and I went for a run. Kingston is a great running town, sloping streets and old houses and a waterfront trail that passes by Martello towers and street people and helicopter landing pads. We ended our jaunt at Pan Chancho and ate pastries instead of a proper breakfast, because their power had been out all night and their ovens weren't working yet. I went off to work, where I hadn't told anyone it was my birthday, because I didn't know any of them very well yet and I really hate being the centre of attention. I felt like I was keeping a really, really good secret.

the birthday project: lucky thirteen.

2011-06-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

My thirteenth birthday fell on a Thursday in June of 1993. In celebration of what was, at the time, a colossally monumental day (OH MY GOD I AM A TEENAGER), my parents had a really embarrassing picture of me as a kid published in the Announcements section of the Hamilton Spectator. Some of my friends found it before school and had it blown up and taped to my locker when I got in. I had never felt so embarrassed and loved at the same time; it was an emotional combination platter that would become more familiar to me in the years ahead.

In some ways I was one of those kids who was always very mature for her age. In other ways, it was basically a miracle I didn't still drag my security blanket to school. Case in point: my thirteenth birthday was the first year I didn't ask my friends to come to my party in some sort of costume (dress for your dream vacation!) or under the pretense of some hyper-involved craft (plaster mask making! DESIGN YOUR OWN PIZZA!). Instead, we ordered pizza from Pizza Pizza, and then my parents dropped us off at the movies to watch Jurassic Park UNACCOMPANIED BY ADULTS.

I'm pretty sure Jurassic Park was rated PG-13, because I was concerned that one of my friends, who was still only twelve, might not be able to get in. The hype leading up to the release of that movie was unlike anything I'd ever experienced--for reasons that now seem silly, the whole damned universe was so incredibly excited to see realistic dinosaurs on the big screen. While I remember practically nothing about the movie itself (in spite of the fact that our family later bought it on VHS and my brother and I probably watched it twenty times), I do remember that feeling of being caught up in some kind of zeitgeist. Perhaps this was the beginning of my life as a pop culture vulture.

I think we lied to my parents about what time we needed to get picked up so we could just stand outside the movie theatre yelling at passers by for awhile. I felt alive then, suddenly careening toward independence, dizzily wondering if now that I was a teenager, a boy would pull his car over and ask if I wanted to go for a drive. Of course, no boys pulled up (no boy in his right mind would try and interrupt seven thirteen year old idiots on a sugar high in the Centre Mall parking lot), and my parents came to collect us just as it was getting dark outside.

A lot of things changed for me that summer. I stopped listening obsessively to Broadway musicals and started listening obsessively to Pearl Jam, Sloan, and AM 640, with its unique combination of Top-40 hits and late-night phone-in shows. I inherited my first pair of Doc Marten boots. I craved a maturity I hadn't earned yet. And sometimes late at night, alone in my bedroom, I began to feel the creepy, tiny stirrings of the sadness that would wash over me in the months to come, the sense of helplessness in my own body and my own brain that would colour the next few years of my life. But the night of my thirteenth birthday, I was still just straddling that precarious line between childhood and adolescence, screaming at the top of my lungs.

the birthday project: hocus pocus, caitlin's five.

2011-06-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

In today's installment of the birthday project, we travel back to the days of Cabbage Patch Kids, and machine-knit kitten sweaters.

I turned five on June 24th, 1985. We had just sold our house on Holton and were gearing up for a move even further east, to Huxley Avenue, to the house where most of my important moments over the next twenty-odd years would take place. I didn't know that yet, though. I just knew that we were moving, and that I wouldn't have to take the bus to school anymore. (During the previous year, my mom, who didn't drive yet, bused and taxied me and my baby brother across town every day to the nearest French Immersion school, so that I'd be able to get into the French senior kindergarten class the following year. She is fucking hardcore.)

Most of our stuff was already packed, so I remember my party taking place in a room with sheets covering the remaining furniture and floors. The way it looks in my memory is a lot like how the house looked at the end of the series Growing Pains, nearly empty but for a few inexplicably-as-yet-unpacked family photos and trinkets.

My parents hired a magician for this party. As was my custom for most of my childhood and adolescence (and, who are we kidding, adulthood too), I had a complete and utter meltdown as soon as the attention was on me. I listened to most of the magic show from the confines of my upstairs bedroom. Before every trick, the magician had everyone shout out the magic words, "Hocus Pocus, Caitlin's Five!" to which I would scream "SHUT UUUUUUP!" from behind closed doors.

I'm sure there was also a cake, somewhere. Maybe hidden under a sheet.

the birthday project: hey, nineteen.

2011-06-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

I've had some pretty killer birthdays in my time. With my Big Three One coming up next week, I thought I'd take a little trip down memory lane, starting with the year I became a liquor-buying adult.

I turned 19 in June of 1999. I'd finished highschool the previous January, and instead of doing what most kids do with six months of free time (Go To Europe! Start University Early!), I'd whiled away the days working part-time at the library, going to a lot of really sketchy raves, and smoking a tremendous amount of hash. My birthday fell just a few days before my highschool graduation; it was also the day of my last-ever piano recital. Preoccupied with my impending ascent to the age of majority and all the freedom and fear that this transition held (also, very stoned), I had really shit the bed on practicing my piece. I performed a series of postmodern variations on Land of the Silver Birch, poorly.

After the recital my boyfriend and I went over to a friend's house, the kind of friend whose mother was never home. We smoked pot out of a bong made of an old Slurpee cup--a special edition Slurpee cup, shaped like an alien. My parents had given me a bottle of Blue Nun wine as a present which remained unopened that night. I remember finding it really funny that on the first day I was actually allowed to buy booze, I didn't drink a single drop. Years later, I found out that Blue Nun was Judy Garland's favourite wine.

A few days later, we all graduated from highschool. There was a huge party at my friend Kathryn's house. Kathryn and I would go on to become insanely good friends when we went away to the same university, but at the time we'd only had a couple of classes together. My boyfriend showed some other kids from our class how to do bottle tokes out of a peach schnapps container--we had quite the makeshift pipe repertoire in those days. All in all the whole night felt like an out of body experience. I had the sudden, bracing feeling that I was ready for this particular chapter of my life to be over. A few months later, when I moved to Toronto, it was.

Library life.

2011-05-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I've been a little distracted lately, hence the lack of scintillating updates. Mostly I've been learning how to do my job and also learning how to live after yoga teacher training, both of which I think I'm getting pretty good at. I pretty much love my job, because I'm working in the kind of library that makes me remember why I love libraries so much: it's small, but not too small, and super busy, but not too super busy, and so far I've only had to have stern words with two kids. Anyway, you learn a lot of things about a community by working in its library, and here is what I've learned about mine so far.

1. A staggering number of people watch the show JAG. Were you aware that this show existed? I sure wasn't.

2. Runescape is still so, so popular, guys. I cut my professional librarian teeth on kicking kids off computers for swearing at each other while playing this game, and I am amazed that it's stood the test of time in this era of short attention spans.

3. Young stoners still get awesome ideas in their heads, like that they want to learn to play the spoons. Then they come into the library to get a card and ask us if we have any books on that (answer: HELL YES).

4. It's one of those neighbourhoods where well-intentioned seniors call the library for reference help because they feel like they need to keep us in business. Result: I get to answer questions about things like which tv network is showing the French language leaders' debate and whether I think Absolutely Fabulous is to racy for a bunch of ladies in their seventies (I am not exaggerating, not even a little).

5. I've never gotten to serve so many university students interested in books on how to go vegan on the cheap. (see above re. HELL YES.)

In conclusion, you know who I never listen to anymore? The Dandy Warhols.

escarpment blues.

2011-04-11T09:23:00.001-07:00

What a difference a few years make. The last time I was home in Hamilton for more than a couple of days, it was summertime, and I was working on the Bookmobile (best job anywhere, ever, hands down). At least twice a week on our route, we'd drive past the Red Hill Creek and the site of the proposed expressway. The Creek was this awesome refuge in the middle of the city, the kind of hidden secret that makes Hamilton such a great town to live in, a spot that at least three generations of people remembered playing at as kids. They'd been loudly threatening and then promising to destroy the place to expand the highway, but the voices of the people involved in the protests against the destruction were even louder (at least among the people I was talking to). It was a cause people believed in, a crusade to save the land, to protect the fragile ecosystems of this little golden horseshoe of ours. It was a fight that seemed close to being won.

Eight years later, I'm here again, and last week I had to drive on the Red Hill Valley Parkway to get to a meeting. I can't believe they have the gall to name it after the natural landmark they decimated to create it. It didn't help me shave any time off my commute, but it sure did make me feel a little weepy. I threw on Escarpment Blues by Sarah Harmer and had a bit of a moment. Sometimes you can't even win the good fights, even when it seems like everyone's on your side. At least there's some hope in the fact that people still keep fighting.

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.

2011-03-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

Most people move back in with their parents when they're in their twenties. Still young, still fresh and idealistic, still physically and emotionally prepared to escape the confines of the basement and paint the town till all hours. But if, hypothetically, you move back in with your parents when you're in your thirties, the situation is, hypothetically, different. World-weary and bone-creaky, the thirtysomething basement-dweller would rather just hunker down and hide out, resist all attempts at socializing and catch up on her hypothetical reading. Not that I know what that's like, or anything.

Hypothetical Basement-Dweller Reading List

1. Back issues of The New Yorker. Because suddenly, you find yourself with enough free time to read an entire twenty-odd page article about Paul Haggis and Scientology. Warning: your parents will get sick of you telling them how bat-shit crazy Scientology is at about page seven. Keep it to yourself.

2. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Because you've spent months scoffing at its popularity, as you do with all popular books, but now, humbled by your current circumstances, you decide to give it a chance. And then you discover that it is wonderful--a sweet, difficult, emotionally-wrenching portrait of women's lives and racial tensions in the 1960s South that will leave you weeping on your pullout couch.

3. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. Because you've never been much of a mystery reader, but books set in England are inherently enjoyable, and Kate Atkinson is just such a damned good writer, and because you just can't resist a plot line about a dithery elderly stage actress teetering on the brink of disaster. Also, maybe because someone gave you a free copy.

None of these tickling your fancy? Still stuck in an existential quandary? Then I recommend just closing all the drapes and doors and listening to Peter Elkas till the pain goes away.

position paper: Hot Tub Time Machine

2011-03-08T04:40:00.000-08:00

Hot-Tub Time Machine actually has some pretty great moments.

1. One character is a lapsed musician who gave up on his rock and roll dream. When he goes back in time and is reunited with his band, he realizes he can totally steal songs from the future and claim them as his own. Given the chance to claim any song ever written after 1986 as his own, what does he choose? Jesse's Girl by Rick Springfield. Hell to the yes.

1a. Rob Corddry's character eventually does the same thing with Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue.

2. Crispin Glover, best known in my family as the guy who played the dad in the Back to the Future franchise, has a cameo as a one-armed bellhop. It's so meta!

2a. How pumped were YOU when the opening sequence on the Oscars referenced Back to the Future? Answer: SO pumped.

3. The last scene of the movie features an "OMG THIS IS THE FUTURE" montage accompanied by Same As It Ever Was by the Talking Heads. I have a soft spot for filmmakers who aren't afraid to score the obvious songs, because oftentimes those songs are obvious for a reason, you know?

Man, I love working for an institution that lets me borrow and watch movies like this for free. I can almost convince myself it's an act of cultural edification.

Libraries: where shit gets real.

2011-03-02T16:54:00.001-08:00

I have worked in a lot of libraries in my day. Libraries are weird, weird places. No one ever believes me when I say that, but they really are. They are not quiet or serene. They are holding tanks of human energy teetering on the brink of glorious collapse. One of the reasons I love this racket is the sheer anarchy of them, the precarious balance of so many different people with so many different agendas crammed into one poorly-ventilated, fluorescent-lit space. It's kind of like working inside an episode of Candid Camera, where I have the limited authority to kick someone out if they pee on something. The people who work in libraries are fascinating, too. I TOTALLY GET those posters that say "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it sure helps," because I TOTALLY LIVE THAT. Something happens to those of us who spend most of our days interacting with a wide and varied cross-section of humanity and helping them locate books about Canadian birds written at a fourth grade level and/or instructions on how to build a log cabin. You start to get a little squirrelly. Shit gets real in the library, on both sides of the desk. Last week I started a new job at an old library, and I was thinking about the things that do stay constant from one space to the next and how delightfully random they are. Here's a by-no-means-exhaustive list of things you are bound to find at your local library, if you look hard enough.

1. Someone who sells Avon.

2. A sink full of egg-shaped maracas covered in baby spit.

3. A cupboard containing an empty cookie tin that no one ever retrieves, which you occasionally open up just to see if maybe, oh please god maybe, someone actually took it home and brought it back full.

4. A very common-place item with very complicated usage instructions (in this case, a ladder that no one can use until they have had Ladder Training).

5. Scratched copies of every Disney movie you loved as a child but had forgotten about till just now (in this case, The Great Mouse Detective).

6. A kid who will come in asking for books like The Odyssey or To Kill A Mockingbird and spend the whole reference transaction starting at your boobs.

7. The collected works of Kathy Smith. There's something unsettling about the fact that I can still borrow the very same aerobics video I used to do in my parents' basement as a teenager and relive those fuzzy memories of adolescent body dysmorphia all over again (coincidentally, still in my parents' basement. Although they have moved, so it's a different basement. But still.).

8. Someone who sincerely believes that the table she sits at every day belongs to her. And if you want to get philosophical, it really does belong to her, and to everyone else in the space who helped fund the place with their generous tax donations. Although usually she's not feeling very philosophical when you try to reason with her.

Libraries are so ridiculous, and I am so glad that I don't really know how to work anywhere else.

Home is where the TV is.

2011-02-23T14:47:00.000-08:00

Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you can't go home again. Clearly he never had to move back in with his parents in a pinch, like I did last week. I know there's this whole pop culture thing about skulking home, this notion that it's supposed to be funny-sad, like when a clown has to move back in with HIS parents. Iain Reid captured that sense of feeling like the butt of your parents' jokes in his hilarious, wonderful, heartbreaking memoir, One Bird's Choice, which I read in preparation for my own move back to the nest. Everyone should read his book, because it is fantastic, and he is a solid dude, as I learned when I interviewed him for last fall's Kingston Writersfest. He writes about how his father spends an afternoon shredding all his elementary school valentine cards and then drags him to the gym, and about the post-it notes his mother leaves on the cheese drawer so he'll know which cheese not to feed to the cats. Seeing as how I am sitting at my parents' living room table surreptitiously drinking their wine and eating a mango because my mom left a note next to it instructing me to chow down, these stories make me feel like I am less alone.

All self-deprecation aside, though, I worry that I might actually fall on the other end of the spectrum. I don't really mind being back home. In fact, I kind of love it, to an alarming degree. After years of living alone, I love coming home to some company, and some dinner on the table. I love basic cable, although my addiction to Come Dine With Me is reaching fever pitch. I love walking down the street with my dad to go skating at the park. I love hanging around on Sunday mornings drinking seventeen cups of coffee I didn't have to brew myself. I love that nobody knows my phone number. Friends, this is getting dangerous.

In conclusion, hey there, Hamiltonians. We should really hang out. My parents are away till Friday--want to come over tomorrow night? I can offer you free Grand Marnier and a television that will not migrate too far from the Slice network.

Last things.

2011-02-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

Everything's boxed up and ready for the movers tomorrow. I am currently conducting business from my Mobile Command Unit, which is essentially a stack of milk crates and a couple of yoga blocks. My fridge is home to one clementine and half a jar of salsa, and I am on my fourth coffee of the day. It's Zero Hour, friends: that delightful point in the relocation process where you've taken the curtains off the windows so the neighbours can watch you weep openly as you stuff another loose screwdriver into the box marked "miscellaneous fragile" and wonder what the hell you are doing.

I hate moving. It makes me antsy and weird. I'm a Cancer, which means I am an antisocial homebody. Living out of boxes is bad for my spiritual complexion. Every time I move, I wonder why I don't just run back home to my parents' house and hide away forever. Happily, this is exactly what I'm doing this round, so maybe, just maybe, this will be the last time I ship out of anywhere. I sure hope so.

On the other hand, I love moving. Leaving someplace behind gives you free license to nostalgise the hell out of it, and given that I've fallen harder for this little town than for any other place I've ever lived, I have a lot to think back on with fond wistfulness. Here's a rundown.

Best freelance gig: Kingstonist, the Limestone City's finest blog. Rarely does an editor give you complete support and editorial control, not to mention free wine. Come to think of it, I really should've taken more advantage of the opportunity to promote my Marxist-Leninist pro-labour agenda.

Best poutine: Pita Grill on Princess. Discovered lamentably in the twilight of my tenure.

Best place for an all-encompassing epiphany: Yoga Samatva.

Best place to see a show: The Grad Club. Thanks, Virginia,
for making sure I got to see all my favourite bands here.

Best road out of town: A few months ago, Highway 38 toward Holleford Road would've had my vote. I still urge you all to drive it sometime, because it's really pretty gorgeous. But times change and now I'm solidly in the Highway 10 camp, because it leads to Westport, sausage rolls, and eventually, my best buddy in the world. I'll always love driving north out of Kingston, regardless of which route I take. I love going from city to country so damned fast, disappearing into those rolling hills.

Best Plot To Take Over the Library Universe Breakfast Meeting Place: Star Diner. If you like your revolutions with a side of the world's best hash browns, this is the place for you.

Best friends: Aw, you know who you are. Thanks for the memories, my dear pals. You haven't seen the last of this lone wolf.

Vices.

2011-01-26T19:58:00.001-08:00

In times of transition, I find I need a lot of crutches to prop myself up. A few of my old standbys have reared their ugly heads in the last week or so. I rely on the sublime and the ridiculous to get through the sheer mayhem of packing, drinking, overthinking, and general solitary contemplation. Hello, old friends. I've missed you.

1. Coffee. Sweet nectar of the gods. I think the thing I'm going to miss most about Kingston (besides all of y'all, of course) is Coffeeco, and their epically amazing cappuccinos.

2. Dolly Parton. I love her. I just. love. her. She makes me feel tender and kickass at the same time.

3. Calvin and Hobbes comics. Nothing beats the sweet pondering and sincere existentialism of the world's most endearing smart aleck six year old. I recommend the Tenth Anniversary Collection for fellow fanboys and girls, but if you love Bill Watterson like I do then you probably already own the first edition.

4. Wallace Stevens. So help me god, I'll be a self-righteous English major till the day I die. The Course of a Particular slays me dead.

5. Cyndi Lauper. Presented without comment.

idiot wind.

2011-01-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

The top 5 songs that are distracting me from packing right now, Ray Lamontagne doing covers / Dylan covers / Dylan free association edition:

1. Ray Lamontagne and David Gray--Dig A Pony

2. Ray Lamontagne--The Man In Me

3. Bob Dylan--If you see her, say hello

If you see her say hello Bob Dylan
Uploaded by darkwell91. - Explore more music videos.

4. Ramblin' Jack Elliot--Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

5. Wilco--Company In My Back

...I always need to throw a little Tweedy in there. He's like a fine sorbet, cleansing the palate.

Literary tag sale.

2011-01-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

Over the years I have acquired a truly prodigious collection of ragged library discards, and tonight, in anticipation for my latest move, I tried to cull the shelves. THIS IS A HARD TASK. Here's what made the cut, and what didn't, and what I still can't make up my mind about.

Keep:

Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews. (A classic. And also the first book I can remember borrowing from the library, and then reading surreptitiously, and then thinking to myself, I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY LET ME CHECK THIS BOOK OUT. Come to think of it, this book may be responsible for my library career.)

Baby-Sitters Club Super Special # 6: New York, New York! (I am re-reading this critically acclaimed tome in anticipation of my trip to the Big Apple next week; if I can be even half as sophisticated as Stacey McGill, my life will have been a worthy one.)

The entire Anastasia Krupnik series by Lois Lowry. (I always wanted to be a character from the Baby-Sitters Club, but really, I knew I was a huge nerd like Anastasia. Also, in the first book, when her parents ask her what she might like to name her baby brother, one of her suggestions is "One-Ball Reilly.")

Forever by Judy Blume. (I can't let go of the book that was responsible for my romantic and slightly creepy impression of what sex would be like.)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Because someday, just maybe, I will actually read it.)

Teen Star Yearbook by Grace Catalano. (How else will I remember that Scott Grimes' favourite food is hamburgers? Or that George Michael's favourite sport is badminton? Or that Ricky Martin, of Menudo, is looking for a girl who is "serious and responsible"?)

Lose:

Deenie by Judy Blume. (Scoliosis is so 1974.)

Bunnicula by James Howe. (Oh I loved this book but it smells like mothballs.)

Undecided:

Sweet Valley High # 66: Who's to Blame? by Francine Pascal. (Elizabeth is running away! I need to know what will happen!)

Liberace: An Autobiography. (I have problems. Serious problems.)

I hate packing.

Start as you mean to continue.

2011-01-21T15:10:00.001-08:00

On New Year's Day, my mother called me to read me my horoscope over the phone (this is a fairly regular occurrence, but the January First version was much weightier than usual, on account of it was a horoscope for the WHOLE YEAR). She told me with interest that the astrologer for the bible said that Cancer gals like me should "start as you mean to continue." At the time, I was hung over and doing my best impression of Baby Huey following an epic New Year's Eve dinner here, and my mother's call was interrupting my Veronica Mars marathon (Logan Echolls, I would like to buy you dinner.), so I didn't think much of it.

Three weeks into 2011, though, I can say with certainty that if I have indeed started as I mean to continue, this year's going to be legendary. So far, I have interviewed for and accepted my dream job, decided to move back to my hometown, learned how to teach people to twist their spines like pretzels without fear of injury, lost my credit card, and sat through ninety minutes of gong meditation (a literal gong show, if you will). While I am concerned that if I keep up this frantic pace I may not sleep till 2012, I am also amazed and a little freaked out at the sheer power of the human mind. For the past few months, I'd been willing my life to change, but wasn't really sure how to make it so. And then, suddenly, it all just kind of happened. Thanks, universe!

The best part is that writing that last bit reminded me of the bit in The Big Lebowski where Walter quotes Theodore Herzl: "If you will it, it is no dream."

I think I'll leave it there for now. I promise many more weird, existential updates about packing up my apartmentas my move date gets closer.

2010: Never again.

2010-12-30T07:37:00.001-08:00

2010's been a banner year, if we define "banner" as "Sisyphean Emotional Rollercoaster," which, of course, we do. Here is my traditional (if we define "traditional" as something done twice) list of the best of everything for 2010.

Best radio show always on while I'm driving home from yoga: Deep Roots.

Best radio show always on while I'm trying to fall asleep: Inside the Music.

Best existential CanCon TV programming: Being Erica.

Best slightly disappointing final book in a dystopian teen trilogy: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.

Best show (non-Kingston category): Wilco at the NAC in March. So good I'll forgive the fact that Jeff Tweedy bantered about the Olympic hockey tournament to get people to clap. Oh Jeff, honey, don't you know I don't need you to pander? I just need you to love me.

Best show I left early after thinking it was actually over only to find out later that he came back on for another set (Kingston category): Jason Collett at the Grad Club in April.

Best show with parents in attendance: Young Rival and PELT at the Mansion in March.

Best in-store appearance by a singer songwriter: Jim Bryson, at Contact Music in November.

Best musical discovery: My secret husband, Dan Mangan.

Best musical rediscovery: Does The Band count? I thought I lost my copy of The Basement Tapes in the divorce and was pretty excited when I later found it behind a bookshelf.

...actually, I'm going to give this one to the Strokes. I've always thought of them as the background music to my twenties, but lately I've started really listening to them, and shit man, they really are as good as everyone always said.

Best essayist I wish were my friend in real life: Sloane Crosley.

Best nightmare-inducing weirdscape involving time travel and car accidents: Rant by Chuck Pahlaniuk.

Best re-read (dusty paperback found in Mexico category): The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving.

Best re-read (greatest book of all time category): The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank.

Best literary discovery (Carol Shields void-filler category): Elizabeth Berg.

Best ballsy ladywriter: Celia Rivenbark.

Best way to spend a dirtieth thirtieth birthday: Haunted Walk of Kingston. Water bottle filled with wine strongly recommended.

Best thing: This year is over, friends. See you in hell, 2010. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't miss your particular brand of whimsical batshittery just a little bit.

Putting the graphic back in graphic novels.

2010-12-19T17:04:00.001-08:00

Here is a list of the best comics I read this year. They didn't all come out this year, but I am okay with that. I hope you are too.

1. Sword of my mouth by Jim Munroe and Shannon Gerard. It's a freaky, post-rapture, pro-urban agriculture fable, and the illustrations are so gorgeous and detailed and vaguely 1970s. It also features a mutant baby!

2. Moving Pictures by Kathryn and Stuart Immonen. This one has the feel of a film noir masterpiece and is about the Nazis trying to steal paintings, and the plucky museum staff who try to stop them. An angel dropped it into my lap one very long day and it kept me busy sitting in the emergency room.

3. Undeleted Scenes by Jeffrey Brown. I just love him. He captures the mundane details of his own life in this sweet cartoony way. He draws like a very mature ten year old. And kitties feature prominently in many of his comics. Look! Christmas Kitties!

4. Mercury by Hope Larson. This one jumps back and forth between the present, where a teenage girl is struggling to live her life while her mother is far away, and the past, where one of her ancestors is visited by a mysterious stranger during the Gold Rush. The two stories eventually intersect and the results are strange and unexpected and creepy and lovely.

5. Wilson by Daniel Clowes. It's about a real asshole, basically. Clowes' greatest gift is, in my opinion, his ability to create these truly horrible people and then inhabit them so completely that your sympathy for them runs parallel to your disgust. And his drawings are just so perfect--the different versions of Wilson from chapter to chapter, the silent pages, the pauses between words. It's gorgeous.

Now tell me yours.

Taking stock.

2010-12-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

Writing Best Of lists is one of my favourite things about the end of the year.

Top ten albums of 2010, in no particular order.

1. New Pornographers--Together

2. She & Him--Volume 2

3. Young Rival--Young Rival

(Of note: My Farfisa electric organ makes a cameo in this video.)

4. Caribou--Swim

5. Ray LaMontagne--God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise

6. Jim Bryson and the Weakerthans Band--Falcon Lake Incident

7. The Walkmen--Lisbon

8. Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles--The Grand Bounce

9. Beach House--Teen Dream

10. Spoon--Transference

...This list could probably also be titled The Only New Music I Listened To This Year. If I were to make a list of Albums That Weren't Released This Year but That Were So Frigging Crucial To My Life it would probably be comprised of the whole Dylan catalogue (surprising!), M. Ward, and Dan Mangan. What can I say? I'm a sucker for boys with guitars.

Keep Christmas With You.

2010-12-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

It's amazing the power that Christmas specials can have on a person (or perhaps just on this person). This morning I watched Christmas Eve On Sesame Street for the millionth time and thought once again of how ingrained it's become in my psyche. My mom says she can remember the very first time we watched it together, when I was probably two or three, when Sesame Street (we mostly called it just "Ses" in our house, because we were cool like that) was pretty much the only television show that warranted turning on the set. Every few years we watch it as a family on Christmas Eve, even though my baby brother and I are now well beyond the age where this sort of thing is appropriate. It's timeless, and sweet, and both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious.

Proof of Value:

1. I knew the Bert and Ernie version of the Gift of the Magi long before I read the real thing, and the actual, realistic, ambivalent ending of the original has always bummed me out intensely. I much prefer Mr. Hooper Ex Machina, returning their prized possessions to them on Christmas Eve.

(Cut to about the 6 minute mark.)

1a. Does anyone else have vivid memories of watching Sesame Street after Mr. Hooper died, in real life as well as on the show? Talk about a crash-lesson in emotional reaction for kids. I don't think I've fully recovered yet.

2. At one point, while Big Bird is on the roof waiting for Santa to arrive, he worries that he might be lost in a blizzard somewhere, or "stacked over Kennedy." I had no idea what this meant till I was about twenty.

3. THESE KIDS! It's enough to make even the most career-oriented feminist uterus start hurtin'.

4. And while were on the subject of the kids, there's a girl in this scene who totally picks her nose and I always wonder where she is now, thirty years on.

4a. It is also thanks to this scene that I know how to sign Keep Christmas With You. I used to include that skill on my resume.

5. While everyone down on the street is looking around for Big Bird, Susan tells someone that she is on her way to Grover's place to look for him. I love the idea that Grover is able to maintain an apartment in New York City.

6. Oh man, Cookie Monster trying to write to Santa? CLASSIC! JUST CLASSIC.

There's just something so generally innocent and kind about it all. Last weekend, my brother and I were bemoaning the complete lack of sincerity in the world these days; everything has to be soaked in irony and self-referential post-pomo ridiculousness. Fuck that, I say. This Christmas, I'm all about True Blue Miracles.

Say it with music.

2010-12-05T16:45:00.001-08:00

These days, words are either too much or not enough. Thanks for the music, universe.

I'm so tired--The Beatles

Come thou fount of every blessing--Sufjan Stevens

Divorce song--Liz Phair

I and love and you--The Avett Brothers

We end up together--The New Pornographers

A balm for what ails us.

2010-11-27T05:20:00.000-08:00

Ten songs for a bad week, presented without comment.

1. Gord Downie--Vancouver Divorce

2. Calexico--Going to Acapulco (Bob Dylan cover)

3. Feist--Intuition

4. Neil Young--Out on the Weekend

5. Wilco--I am Trying to Break Your Heart

6. Sufjan Stevens--Vito's Ordination Song

7. Young Rival--The Ocean

8. Sarah Harmer--Don't Get Your Back Up

9. Joel Plaskett--Face of the Earth

10. Great Lake Swimmers--I Am Part Of A Large Family

I always wanted a doll named Chevrolet.

2010-11-24T05:44:00.000-08:00

In times of trial and trouble, I tend to retreat from productive adult reading and go back to the stack of Ramona Quimby books tucked on a special shelf in my home library. I firmly believe that Beverly Cleary is a genius who has pinpointed so perfectly what it feels like to be a kid, the injustices and fears and joys that help us grow up, the development of the empathic and emotional mind. As a child I read Ramona and remember that amazing feeling of YES! This is so right! And as an adult I read Ramona and think Wow, this is STILL so right, and I am STILL learning.

Last night I was reading Ramona the Brave, which was never my favourite Ramona book as a kid (I was partial to Ramona and her Father and Ramona Quimby Age 8, mostly because I looooooved the last chapters in each of them and on repeat readings would get SO EXCITED as I got closer to the end. "Ramona and the Three Wise Persons" is a seriously wonderful Christmas story in its own right.). Now that I am old and wise, I think I like Ramona the Brave because it's all about Ramona having a really shitty time, and admitting she's not happy, and trying to do something about it. This is some deep emotional activity for a six year old, but Cleary never sugarcoats it, and I love that. To me, there's nothing more important than owning your feelings. I think I owe my ability to do so, in part, to the fact that I read Ramona so closely and carefully, over and over again. This book makes you feel like everything can be not okay and still okay at the same time, which is a pretty great zen lesson for children of all ages.

Also, this, from a passage on Ramona learning to read.

"The reader was more interesting now that her group was attacking bigger words. Fire engine. Ramona read to herself and thought, Pow! I got you, fire engine. Monkey. Pow! I got you, monkey."

Hell yes. As someone who reads pretty much constantly, I have all but forgotten how exciting it was to learn to read, to actually make sense of the words on the page. What a crazy awesome gift it is to open a book. Table of contents? I own you!

Also also, Ramona names her doll Chevrolet, and says that it is the most beautiful name in the world. Yes.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

2010-11-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

Here's what I like to do in November.

1. Listen to Sufjan Stevens. I am pulling the hipster, I Liked Him Before He Was Really Big And Am Not Too Keen On His New Album card on this one and wholeheartedly recommend you go all the way back to Michigan, my personal favourite soundtrack for mooning around the house because it's too cold to go outside.

Fun fact 1a: This song was on the episode of the OC where Johnny, the surfer from the wrong side of the tracks, fell off a really high rock and died. Fun fact 1b: I was really into the OC. "COHEN!"

2. Read Jeffrey Brown. A fan of all things autobiographical and graphical, I discovered Clumsy, possibly my favourite comic memoir, on the shelf of the first library I worked at in Ottawa. Clumsy tells the story of Jeffrey Brown's long-distance romance with a girl from Florida named Theresa. His drawing style reminds me of the tiny, scribbly, incredibly detailed doodles that this gifted guy in my elementary school class used to draw in the margins of his notebooks--stick figures doing intense things. Every page is comprised of six panels of heartbreak. It is a really beautiful book.

Fun Fact 2a: The library just bought his newest book, a collection called Undeleted Scenes which includes some of his best strips and also some random new stories. I am very sad to report that he has written a story about his wife and baby, which I guess means I need to cross him off the Secret Husband list.

3. Watch Brideshead Revisited. The cold gloomy weather at this time of year gets me jonesing for England, and there's no better way to indulge this feeling than to unplug the telephone (just kidding! I don't even answer it when it's plugged in!), turn on the television (ie. laptop) and cozy up for ten solid hours of the decline and fall of the archetypal upper class on the other side of the pond. Like most Brit Lit-loving nerds who went to Gothic Revival style university colleges, I have held Brideshead close to my heart for a very long time. It represents a very particular, dysfunctional dream of academia and intellectualism and the good life that I always thought I might enjoy but never really believed in, the kind of life where you wear tuxes to dinner and a divorce in the family could ruin everything. It is a tragicomedy of manners in which I would like to be a fly on the cocktail tray. It has a very evocative soundtrack which always makes me cry a little.

Fun fact 3a: I've also been watching the Up! Series, which I cannot recommend highly enough, and which I will write more about later, and one of the men profiled blames the failure of his life on putting too much stock in books like Brideshead Revisited. I think I know exactly what he is talking about.

Let's take it out on a little more gentle folk rock. Sufjan covering Dylan? I think my heart just stopped.

Bibliotherapy.

2010-11-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

So, I had kind of a rough week, and spent a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms. It's pretty hard to focus on anything in that sort of situation, but like the diligent bookworm I am, I tried like hell to plow through several books. This effort was completely unsuccessful. Here's what I failed to read.

1. Great House by Nicole Krauss. I have this thing with Nicole Krauss where I really want to like her work because the New Yorker and the New York Times tell me I should, but every time I try to get into one of her books I just get sidetracked thinking about the fact that she is so intense and her husband Jonathan Saffran Foer is ALSO so intense and what the hell do you think they talk about at the dinner table? Kittens?

2. Half Empty by David Rakoff. The only reason I didn't finish this one was that I passed it on to my boyfriend-slash-patient so he'd have something to read in the OR waiting room.

Me: Don't you think you should take something lighter with you? Didn't your mom just loan you some Frederick Forsyth paperbacks?

Patient, hepped up on percocet and distracted by a television in the waiting area: I can't believe these people who won't wear their Remembrance Day poppies. It's disrespectful, is what it is. Hey, can I borrow that book?

3. Macleans Magazine from sometime in October. Here is a strategy you might think will help you feel better about your current situation: read an article about the Chilean miners and think about how much luckier you are than them. I am dismayed to report that this strategy was completely useless.

...At least I was trying.

There's a line from To Kill A Mockingbird that's been running through my head through all this:

"Neighbours bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad."

I've been overwhelmed by the generosity of my neighbours near and far this week. I hope I can give back what they've given me.

We hope you don't work too hard.

2010-10-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

I know I've let you down, friends. I know I've basically given up this little navel-gazer in favour of more productive forms of self-reflection, like yoga, obsessive baking, and reading real estate listings. If I could, I'd write a review of Homes and Land of Kingston and the Thousand Islands, because that's pretty much the only thing I've read cover to cover in the last month. Alright, that's a lie. I also read How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley, and fell in love with her all over again. Her latest collection of essays covers everything from a surreal trip to Alaska for a friend's wedding to her descent into the stolen furniture underground economy in New York City to the joys of roommate relationships. I feel like she is the writer I would be if I had time to really be a writer, which makes me both ecstatically happy and incredibly sad, you know?

Oh, I also got this thing published. Read it here. In summation, I've concurrently expressed my passion and my complete dismissal of my metier, and now if you don't mind, I'm going to lie on the floor and listen to the Weakerthans for a little while.

See you in September.

2010-09-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

September means back to school for some, and back to complete insanity for others. I fell into a bit of a void this month and took a little sabbatical from blogging. Here's what I was doing instead.

1. Wrangling writers at Kingston WritersFest.

Highlights: Deborah Ellis, who is so down to earth and passionate and generally awesome. Also, Iain Reid, a local boy made good, whose new memoir One Bird's Choice is so, so funny. I interviewed him for Kingstonist and he did not hate my questions--success! Oh, and I shared an elevator with Charlotte Gray, which was nearly as exciting as the time I washed my hands next to Margaret Atwood while she combed her crazy hair.

Lowlights: Nearly breaking Dave Bidini's finger as I tried to shake his hand while he simultaneously did a zombie impression. Also, getting booted out of Chez Piggy due to a fire code violation. At least they let me stay for a bowl of soup.

2. Reading memoirs.

Highlights: As you may recall, I am a huge fan of the genre. Literary agent Bill Clegg's amazing and horrifying Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man bears the ambivalent honour of being a book that really, really made me want to try smoking crack--he makes it sound THAT GOOD. I nearly didn't read it after a close and careful analysis of Clegg's author photo, which put me off for some reason. Something about the three-quarter profile and his teutonic features just reminded me of seventy-five percent of the boys I met in my twenties. I'm so glad I pressed onward. Clegg delves a little too deeply into his own subconscious at times, recalling his childhood compulsion to urinate and trying to tie it vaguely to his adult demons, but you can skip those passages and get right to the good old fashioned crazy stuff. Smoking crack with cabbies after a meeting with your newest author, being refused entry to the W Hotel, stuff like that.

Midlights: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman. This book is basically the jailhouse version of Eat Pray Love, and there is no sensible reason why I should enjoy it. Usually tales of haute bourgeoisie forced into some humbling life experience tend to piss me off. But Kerman's story of the year she spent in jail for a ten year old drug offense was so compulsively readable and beautifully realized. I've read reviews that call the book reductive, and at times it sure is. She boils down issues of women and criminal justice to pretty simplistic terms and ends the book on a bit of an "isn't it great that I've grown so much and discovered yoga thanks to a Rodney Yee video someone left behind in the prison gym" note. But her portraits of her fellow prisoners and the description of her daily life in the clink are very humanizing and fascinating and darkly entertaining, so I'll allow the lack of a real conclusion for the sake of a pretty decent story overall.

3. Reconnecting with some of my favourite hometown heroes. Welcome home, boys.

Oh no, Oprah.

2010-09-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

See? I knew this would happen. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is the latest Oprah book club pick. Sorry, ma'am, our brief honeymoon is over.

Click here to listen to the most tooth-grindingly, navel-gazingly boring podcast of all time if you need a Franzen refresher.

And don't you feel worse for having heard that interview? Because I do.

Alright alright maybe Freedom is really going to be amazing, but I am a creature of habit, and my habit around Jonathan Franzen is comprised of a strong and abiding dislike of his work. These days, this opinion seems to put me in the minority. There was a frigging piece about him on the Saturday evening news, for lord's sake. A piece involving his visit to a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. A piece that I actually enjoyed listening to, if only because it felt so painfully humbling to think of a public library that hosts Jonathan Fucking Franzen, having only worked for places that bring in, um, this woman who is a patron who also happens to have self-published a chapbook, you know? PERSPECTIVE!

Anyway, this piece drew a really absurd link between Jonathan Franzen and Lady Gaga, and it irked me, as most references to overexposed literary heroes do. I guess I just feel like I'm one of the only book nerds in the world who doesn't get the in-joke, who can't stand Jonathan Franzen. I read The Corrections a looooong time ago, and I read it because he had jive-talked Oprah, because that's the kind of hifalutin' twentysomething I was. I pretty much hated the whole thing, but I told everyone how much I loved it. At the time I was working on a Bookmobile, and my job consisted of sitting in a lawn chair outside the bus and waiting for kids to come and tell me about the books they'd read and then giving them stickers--pretty well the best job I'll ever have and arguably among the top five jobs of all time, anywhere. Between tiny visitors I schlepped that giant Franzen tome onto my lap and got angry about how cold and unemotional it was and what nerve this guy has to write creepy CS Lewis metaphors about antidpressants and I'd work myself into this rage and then pause to talk to some child about how they'd just finished the fourth Harry Potter. It was all a bit jarring. Perhaps this was not the ideal environment in which to read Jonathan Franzen, but the die was cast. I think what I've realized since is that I hate a lack of sympathy in my reading. I crave emotional fullness and vulnerability and I hate dispassionate, post-pomo reflection. There, I said it.

Which isn't to say I won't read Freedom. I probably will, because I still possess the same mix of masochism and high-mindedness I've always possessed. And I might email his publicist and see if he might like to speak at my library, on the condition that he has to help me kick everyone off the public internet stations at the end of the night. I'm a woman with standards, you know.

Now let's all cleanse our palates with a little rainy day ditty from Julie London.

I feel better already.

Monday, Monday.

2010-09-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

A few crumbs from the start of the work week.

1. Oh please, people, send me your best and least disgusting cabbage recipes. My CSA is overloading me with the stuff and I never want to eat coleslaw again. I just made the most insane soup involving lentils and cabbage and lemon and pain. This is what cabbage does to me! It makes me hate soup, which is horrifying.

2. I spent a lot of the weekend reading Anna Quindlen's new book, Every Last One. I concluded that it is the beautiful, rich, character-driven equivalent of being punched in the gut several times in succession. She breaks my heart in the most wonderful, captivating way.

3. I spent the rest of the weekend hiding from the rain and driving all over hell's half acre, listening to Judith Light reading the audiobook version of Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner. I love Jennifer Weiner, I really do, and it was an audio CD of her short story collection, The Guy Not Taken, that really sold me on her. I like her subtle quirkiness and self-deprecation and soft but still sarcastic humour. And Angela Bower just sucks the fun right out of her, reading the story like a Southern melodrama. This might be one where you need the hard copy, but I'm giving it my thinking woman's chick lit stamp of approval nevertheless.

4. Now that Oprah's show is in its twilight season, I finally feel comfortable with admitting that I think she is absolutely awesome. I may hardly ever watch her show, and I will probably renege on this with her next book club pick, but today, I wholeheartedly endorse her. Whatever, all you haters! She is getting John Travolta to fly 300 people to Australia! She gets 'er done!

If you are not entertained and touched by that, you have no heart! NO HEART AT ALL!

Yep.

It's Friday. I'm in love.

2010-09-10T04:54:00.000-07:00

It is a telling, telling time when you draw more inspiration from the Letters page of the August 30th issue of People than anything else. I should maybe just turn this blog into a People fanzine. I would have reams of material to draw from.

Proof 1.

I suffered a severe case of emotional whiplash after reading about the Marines coming home from Afghanistan and then turning the page to see the ridiculousness that is the Jersey Shore cast. Could there be two groups of people so completely the opposite in relevance and importance?

...I just love picturing Debi, of Garland, Texas furrowing her brow and typing this letter with rage and believing in the journalistic integrity of this publication.

Proof 2.

They print retractions about misspelling someone's name in the Puzzler. I would really love to be a clue in the People crossword. I think that's the sign of true, common-denominator cultural ubiquity. Although I have to admit I have no idea who Gordon MacRae is, beyond the fact that his name was misspelled in last week's Puzzler.

I know it's probably becoming excessive and maybe even a little creepy, but I really do love People Magazine. I don't know where else I would learn that Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence have a SITCOM on TELEVISION where he plays her MANNY. YES, REALLY! Is it so wrong that I'd like to download the first season? Is it so bad that I am earnestly glad that Sabrina the Teenage Witch is doing alright? Is it unforgivable that I am now going to make you all watch Joey Lawrence's music video?

The answer to all these questions is yes, yes, oh my gosh yes.

I am never having children

2010-09-08T17:07:00.000-07:00

Are they getting ruder, or am I getting crankier? Or perhaps, the horrible third option, are they getting more astute? Observe, if you will, an exchange at the desk tonight:

Mother: I'd like to check this out.
Daughter throws jacket over Mother's shoulder, disrupting library transaction.
Daugher: Here, YOU take it!
Mother: That's not funny!
Daugter: I KNOW it's not funny! It's not SUPPOSED to be funny! It's SUPPOSED to make a POINT!

She's got moxy, I'll give her that. In the meantime, I'm heading off to renew my birth control prescription.

Fall into it.

2010-09-08T06:58:00.001-07:00

So, I took a bit of a hiatus. I'd love to say that I spent labour day the way it ought to be spent, marching in solidarity with my brothers and sisters and all that. Instead I chose to drink poorly-chilled Caesars out of a plastic cup and stack logs. Anyway, last night there was a crazy thunderstorm and this morning I awoke to find that the rain washed away the last thick vestiges of summer heat, along with my sad, dying tomato plants. Fall might not quite be here, but we're definitely on our way. My yoga teacher told me last night that this season is one of upheaval and transition, of windy upsets and uncertain possibilities. I feel that. All I want to do is burrow under blankets and eat muffins and re-read the whole Ramona series. I'm feeling quiet these days, and a little out of it, and a little uninspired. I'm back to writing, but not really. I'll let you know when I'm really ready to return, I promise. In the meantime, here's a song to get us through the long, slow, ultimately pretty satisfying crawl toward darkness.

Sisters are doing it for themselves.

2010-08-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

I'm one of those people who is smug and self-righteous about not owning a TV, but I still get starved for pop culture from time to time. So in the last couple of days I read two books written by women who got their start on the talking picture box so many people are chatting about. I actually ordered Suck It, Wonder Woman by Olivia Munn for my library, partly because there was some internet drama about her awhile ago, and apparently I go in for that sort of thing. Also, she's on the Daily Show, which I haven't actually watched in a few years, but if my favourite silver fox Jon Stewart is going to give his stamp of approval, I'm down. I am sad to say this book kind of blows, but I'm also sad to admit I probably should have known. Olivia Munn became famous doing stuff like this:

I know it's "in context" (on a show about videogames watched mostly by pimply boys--and yes, since you've asked, making sweeping generalizations IS part of my yoga practice), and I know she's made a name for herself being the hot nerdy girl, and I know that I am by no means her target demographic, but even in a vacuum her writing just feels so false and trite. She's a bit of a name dropper and tells unfunny anecdotes about taking muscle relaxers and making out with a woman by accident and zzzzzzzz ohhh sorry, I fell asleep just thinking about it. It's not that I don't support the right of a supposedly geeky hot chick to write her book, or her right to include ten pages of fan-produced portraits and ten pages of her dressed up as great women in history, pinup-style, including Sexy Eleanor Roosevelt and Sailor Moon (yes, really). I just don't need to watch or read it. And I don't think the rest of the Sisterhood does either. She's said some pretty wretched shit about women who criticize her, and I can't stand behind the Mean Girl. Especially when in addition to the hate, you also have to read about her boring childhood.

On the other hand, you know whose formative years I'd read about forever and ever? Chelsea Handler's. I'm about halfway through Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang and it is amazing. She chronicles her obsessive childhood masturbation habit, her long hard fight for a Cabbage Patch Kid and her dubious sexual encounters and I just can't stop spitting up on myself from laughing so hard. Chelsea Handler is inappropriate as hell, and also incredibly self-aware, and I think I want to go camp out on her lawn till she agrees to hang with me. Granted, I don't think she's as funny on TV, but whatevs.

It's interesting--I always feel like her books are marketed wrong. I know they're about sex and drinking and other supposedly racy stuff, but she also writes about her family and her relationships in this very real way that just rings really true for anyone with a complicatedly endearing past. I hope the scantily-clad lady on the cover won't keep people from reading.

Hey, look! An old man is talking!

2010-08-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

I've been watching The Simpsons again. It's been awhile, and I feel like I've been reunited with an old flame with whom I spent, like, ten years before things really went south, and now even though he's still farting around and talking big about "finding himself" and making really specific jokes, I'm okay with reminiscing about the good old days.

It's also really weird to be watching it on DVD. I think it's the first time I've watched a whole run of episodes in a non-home-taped format. I'm so used to the first five seconds of a Parlour Ice Cream commercial before whoever was recording hit Pause, you know? The clean digital editing is really jarring.

Back when I lived in Toronto, I had this one epic tape of Simpsons episodes, recorded over a series of summer Saturday afternoons back at home, in preparation for the year ahead, on my own, sans cable. It was an amazing, serendipitous compilation which included two Treehouses of Horror (and one was the Nightmare on Elm Street tribute!), the Christmas episode where Bart steals the video game and nearly ruins Christmas, aaaaaaand the best episode of all time, Lemon of Troy.

God, I wish there were better clips on YouTube, but still, this is pretty good.

Now, let's all watch a few more Simpsons videos.

Reunited, and it feels so good.

That's all I had to report, I think.

From the random files.

2010-08-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most eagerly awaited audio book of all time in the SERIOUSLY?? department: Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton, read for you by Bronson Pinchot. Yes,
THAT Bronson Pinchot.

Don't you miss the old ABC TGIF lineup? Growing up we were only allowed one hour of TV a day (which would be forfeited if we didn't do our housework, or if we had some kind of public temper tantrum--the latter was embarrassingly common for yours truly) which was usually taken up by reruns of Get Smart after school. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to tune in to the adventures of Agent 99 (Such style. Such grace.) and that idiot Max on Fridays so I could save up my time and cash in for that week's Very Special Episode of Full House. It was a noble sacrifice.

Anyway, I'll look forward to the pairing of Angelina Jolie's absurd life with Balki Bartokamous' absurd narration. I'm not ashamed to admit I teared up a little while listening to the Perfect Strangers theme song. They say you become more emotional in the autumn years.

End of week free association.

2010-08-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

1. Stephen King's still got it, man. Under the Dome is MESSED UP, like apocalyptic, could-maybe-happen, The Stand messed up. Granted, I'm a Stephen King fangirl from way back, and while there was a time that I loved his true horror stuff, when you live alone you can't really read Carrie before bed without being forced to keep every light in the house on all night and checking behind every motherloving door multiple times when you arrive home. And there's something to be said for the complicated, multi-plot insanity of King's crazy sweeping epics. From now on I am only reading books that require a glossary of characters at the beginning. I like a long yet mindless book every once in awhile. Makes me feel like I'm really accomplishing something.

2. Remember the TV version of The Stand, starring Molly Ringwald and about a thousand other people? Remember when network miniseries were event viewing? Oh for the glory days of the early 90s. Apparently they are making a miniseries of Under The Dome. I kind of wish I had cable so I could, like, participate in the zeitgeist.

3. I think The Stand was considered by some to be Molly Ringwald's emergence into adult acting (or maybe that was just me). I remember being a really mean teenage girl and thinking that she looked like she'd been sleeping on her face since she wrapped on Betsy's Wedding and they just woke her up and threw her on screen again. I'm not nearly so catty anymore, partly because I now look like that most of the time too. Thirty: it's no laughing matter.

4. True love is a willingness to put the Beatles vs. Stones debate to rest while quietly holding onto the knowledge that your partner is wrong. I'll see your Let it Bleed.

And raise you Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey.

More cowbell? Hell yes.

Full colour glossies.

2010-08-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

I drank too many overpriced Starbucks lemonade drinks and lost my will to process information, and you know what that means: It's time for another edition of Magazine Time.

InStyle, August 2010 issue. I used to read this magazine a LOT. Back when I was a student it was always a splurge, because it cost more than five dollars, and back then five dollars would still buy you a pack of Benson and Hedges 100s (and if you walked all the way down to Yonge Street you could probably use your fiver to buy a pack AND a naked lady lighter to boot. Economics!). Mike Harris's Ontario had its perks. Anyway, now I'm not sure what I was thinking. Now InStyle makes me incredibly depressed. Exhibit A: Sienna Miller in Haiti. Not that I am a poster child for international involvement and volunteerism, but I have a bit of a problem with celebrities taking photos with sad-eyed kids and then using it as a PR move. Exhibit B: a full page on how jean jackets are the in-jacket of this summer. JUST LIKE EVERY SUMMER. Exhibit C: Cringe-inducing punny titles, including "Up in the Hair" for a photo montage of dino poufs (again, how DO they predict these incredibly radical departures from traditional style?). I would've called it "Snook-alikes," but whatevs.

Weight Watchers Magazine, Summer 2010 issue. I read this magazine for the recipes the way pervy dudes used to read Playboy for the articles. I'm also a sucker for its wealth of sensible life and health advice. One thing that creeps me out a little, though, is their heavy use of stock photos of thin-armed waify types. I may need to write a letter.

Good Housekeeping, August 2010 issue. Perhaps I am in denial about my place in the grand scheme of demographics (not to mention my withering, aging state--when I realized the other day that I could now consider myself to be Thirtysomething, I had to lie down for awhile), but it creeps me out that Maggie Gyllenhaal is on the cover of a magazine that usually features people like Jon and Kate Plus Eight, and that other set of multiples that used to always be in the news till the Gosselins took over. What is happening to the women of my generation?? Is it really time for us to start worrying about BMI calculators and playing online Mah-Jongg? (no, really.)

Yoga Journal, September 2010 issue. Not even Sarah McLachlan's presence on the front cover and the Lululemon ad on the back can diminish my abiding love for this publication. It includes recipes for eggplant caviar and rosemary olive oil cake, and a breakdown of poses to help make your Wheel practice stronger. Wheel is one pose that terrifies the hell out of me, so I guess I'll give 'er a go.

...I guess it's pretty self-righteous that I now love Yoga Journal the way I used to love InStyle (and smoking). I can own that though. I can also own my inability to listen to any song other than this one right now.

Drunk and disorderly.

2010-08-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Last night I read most of Nice Recovery, by Susan Juby. Full disclosure: I am a total addiction/crisis memoir nut, no matter how true or how completely bullshit that memoir might be. I totally bought into the James Frey hype (partly because I loved watching Oprah scold him like a lying child on world television) and I read Mackenzie Phillips' unbelievably twisted memoir in one sitting. I love other people's messes; they make mine seem so much less consequential. So, you know, I went into Juby's memoir of alcoholism and sobriety pretty sure I was going to like it, especially because I absolutely and completely adore all of her previous novels.

I wasn't disappointed. Juby is fucking hilarious. She is ballsy and bitchy and nerdy all at once, and her descriptions of herself as a nervously wild teen girl trying to get in with the bad chicks at school hits so close to home it almost hurts. Example:

"I wasn't completely sure what would constitute a great thing. A lot of beer was a great thing and so was weed. The possibility of getting a boyfriend was perhaps the greatest thing of all. The minute I picked up my first drink I jettisoned childish dreams of becoming a doctor or an astronaut or even a Zamboni driver. Instead I aspired to be like some of the tough older girls I saw who dated men who drove trucks or to be like the lead character in Flashdance."

Leg-warmer purchases and blackout drinking binges soon follow. I especially loved when Juby recounted her move from Smithers, BC, to Toronto, where her drinkin' and druggin' spiral further out of control. She returns home for Christmas determined to show everyone what a sophisticated city lady she's become. You can guess how well that goes. From a scene at the local bar on New Year's:

"We were confronted by the girlfriend of one of the boys one of my friends was sleeping with. Names were called. Threats were uttered. As a fashion design student I felt it was my duty to intervene. ... Next thing I knew I was being carried, none too gently, off the sticky dance floor by a bouncer. He was not swayed by my beauty or the urbanity of my clothing. As I was being dragged past the stage, I saw the musicians glance at each other as they kept playing. Something told me they weren't thinking, "Wow, she must be from Toronto!" "

Rarely do addiction and hilarity go hand in hand, but here they absolutely do. Juby's final descriptions of her recovery from addiction strike the perfect balance between zen acknowledgement and endearing self-awareness, making this book not only entertaining but also pretty feel-good in a non-feel-goody way. I'm a fan. You should be too.

Know what I'm sayyyiiiiiiin'?

2010-08-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

Remember when Jonathan Torrens played a possibly gay guy on a fake reality show on Spike TV in the early part of this century? Wikipedia sure does. At the time I remember thinking, oh man, there goes another semi-talented Canadian selling his soul south of the border, and I pitied the dude. I know Jono's not exactly someone who inspires strong feelings in most people, but I have to admit, I've watched his career with interest for a long time.

It couldn't be helped--he hosted my favourite television show when I was a kid. Street Cents owned the airwaves around my house (and was also the first place I ever heard Thrush Hermit, who provided one of the early theme songs, and Len, who I still think were cool for a long time before Steal My Sunshine wormed its wormy way into our collective ears). A very dear friend and neighbour met him at Cows ice cream in Charlottetown in maybe 1993 and dear GOD was I ever jealous. (The same friend also met Mike Myers in an airport back when Wayne's World was the height of sophisticated comedy and got him to sign a get-well card for me, because I'd just been hit by a car. She is an excellent human being.) In the years that followed, Jonovision became an embarrassingly present show in my daily life, mostly because even as a smarmy teen I'd watch anything CBC cranked out--we start young in our house. Say what you will about this truly absurd teen talk show, but you can't deny that the famous Degrassi reunion episode didn't completely make your life.

After highschool I didn't think much about ol' Jono until he popped up again on the Trailer Park Boys and stole my heart all over again.

And then, of course, there was the Canadian pop culture orgasm that was his appearance on Degrassi TNG as Shane. I swear, watching that episode, you could hear the collective "WHAT? REALLY?" echoing out of a thousand student houses across the country.

This week, he's back in the host's seat at Q. And he's ruling it. His interview yesterday with Andy Kim, the Canadian songwriter behind Sugar Sugar, was fascinating. This morning he's talking about war photography and violence porn, and asking questions that elicit probing, intelligent answers. Dude's a good journalist, and I never really noticed it before. (Not to mention the fact that he interviewed my secret wife Ellen Page the other day and they discussed permaculture, among other things. Radio porn, friends. Radio porn.)

When I started writing this little non-sequitur I'd intended to frame it as a "wow, look how Jono has redeemed himself this week after years of dumbassery," as I thought about his career arc (and yes I realize how totally trivial it is to sit around thinking about Jonathan Torrens' career arc), I realized he's really done pretty well all the way along. Bit part on Joe Schmoe aside, Jono's the local kid made good. You have to respect that.

You also have to respect the fact that I am a lame Cancon fangirl. I know I do.

Now let's all relax and listen to Bubbles for awhile.

Does anyone want a bathtub mint julep?

2010-08-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why, but I've been on a bit of a Southern kick lately. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't watched Steel Magnolias in over a year and I am overdue for some classy, brassy, down home lady charm. Lucky for me, the great serendipitous gong show that is the public library saved the day once again, and I happened to spy You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start In The Morning by Celia Rivenbark sitting on the audiobook shelf. I knew absolutely nothing about the book or the author, though I had a vague recollection of reading a review somewhere. Given the stellar quality of the review journals I read these days (People magazine actually is my favourite source for book reviews, I'm not even kidding) it was probably in a back issue of Good Housekeeping. But I digress. I have a thing for semi-literary essayists, as well as daylight boozing, to say the least.

Anyway, I nearly ejected the first disk within the first sentence because Rivenbark (who reads the book herself, in all its breezy, drawling glory) sets the scene at an elementary school assembly she's attending. Oh lord, I thought, I do not need a lame mommy book right now (POOPY DIAPERS, AM I RIGHT??). Thank goodness I kept listening, because sweet merciful crap, Celia Rivenbark is a motherloving genius. A genius who boos the children at her daughter's school as they receive their perfect attendance awards, claiming their commitment to constant presence only spreads disease and discontent.

I'm only halfway through the book, and so far Rivenbark has made fun of Bible action figures, blamed her generation's inexplicable love of High School Musical on a childhood spent listening to Jethro Tull, gotten herself crowned queen of the local pecan festival and then shit-talked the teenage girls in her royal court, and won two flashlights at "the bingo" at her mother's seniors home. Best of all, she has also made references to both the Lawrence Welk Show (perhaps my deepest, darkest secret shame, though I am not afraid to admit that I saw the live show ten years ago, and it was EPIC.) and Zac Efron. Friends, I think I'm in love.

This is the perfect audiobook. Full-stop. And it's keeping me off the Steel Magnolias for a few more days, which is probably a blessing in disguise--it always sends me into an emotional tailspin and I end up in the fetal position humming Dolly Parton songs under my breath for a few days post-viewing. Celia Rivenbark, you have saved my life.

But that shouldn't stop us from listening to a little Dolly to finish off the week.

Goosebumps. Every time.

Fight the power. Fight the power.

2010-08-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already heard about the dark cloud over Kingston this week, you can catch up here and here. That second link is particularly good. If you're too lazy to click, let me give you the capsule version: our country is being run by a complete nincompoop, and this week said nincompoop's truly reprehensible and totally out of touch government's plan to close the last of the prison farms came to a horrifying close when the last of the cattle at the Frontenac Institution were carted off.

I try not to use this blog as a forum for grandstanding about anything more serious than my undying and somewhat creepy love for Zac Efron, but this is an issue with which many of my friends in town have been involved, and it's one that hurts my heart. I'm not really one for strong arguments or lists of talking points, so I'll keep it brief, and say this: local sustainable agriculture is a project with which I thought it would be really hard for most people to have a problem. What's not to love about milk, vegetables, and meat grown in your own backyard? And what's not to respect about giving incarcerated individuals the opportunity to participate in something that helps the community, that gives them skills they can use on release, that encourages compassion and holistic thinking?

Don't even try to answer those questions, because I guarantee you, you can't.

And with that, here's an amazing recipe I made up this week using the dregs of my CSA share, because, as I said, local agriculture is killer.

Mother Of Invention antipasto-esque salad (serves 1)

2 beets
3 teeny tiny gorgeous eggplants
1 kohlrabi
1 white onion
3 or 4 pepperoncini peppers (aka the best hot peppers in the universe, found in the never-ending salad at East Side Marios! You know what I'm talkin' 'bout!)
a whole ton of fresh basil
2 tbsp or more of pesto

Chop the veggies the way you usually chop veggies for roasting. Coat in olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast till soft and golden, usually 20 minutes on 375 or so. Let cool slightly. Meanwhile, chop up basil and hot peppers. Throw it all in a bowl, and toss with pesto. Eat while reading this letter from one of the prison farm protest arrestees, and think about how horrible this government is. Resolve to vote for anyone but the Conservatives next time.

...hey, remember when Flavor Flav had a political agenda, and not just a whole host of STDs?

A few reasons I might be an eighty year old lady.

2010-08-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

1. I bought a muumuu a couple of weeks ago at Sears. Sears pajamas are an excellent and fashionable bargain.

1a. When the ladies around the library mention a sale at Sears, I listen with interest.

2. An elderly lady signing out books about the history of the Acadians in Canada complimented my (super comfortable and stylish) sandals, claiming they looked very "sensible." I was so flattered.

3. I am reading a LOT of Joanna Trollope, and would love to just stroll right into one of her domestic melodramas. There really is nothing like a British woman novelist, I tell you (see also: Fay Weldon, Barbara Pym, et al).

3a. After googling Barbara Pym, I am both stoked that she also went to St. Hilda's College (okay okay, it was the one at Oxford, whatever. Close enough, says I) and disappointed that the Barbara Pym Society has a Facebook page. I would rather believe that they communicate via tart, typewritten telegrams.

3ai. Nevertheless, I am now thinking of joining the Barbara Pym Society.

4. I find myself feeling a kinship with the people who take the time to write letters to the editors at People Magazine. Example:

Thank you for the interview with Rebecca Budig. I have admired her since her debut as Greenlee Smythe on All My Children in 1999. I met Ms. Budig recently at the Beverly Center shopping complex in Los Angeles, and she chatted and joked with me as if we had been friends for years. I wish this special lady much happiness!

from Magnolia Boddy, Los Angeles, Calif.

Indeed, Magnolia. Don't we ALL wish this special lady much happiness.

4a. If we're truth-telling here, I should probably admit that in 1994 I went to see Heather Tom, aka the original Victoria on the Young and the Restless, at the Eaton Centre in Hamilton. She entered the room via descending glass elevator, and it was awesome.

5. I am seriously offended by reinterpretations of classics from my childhood. Example: Ramona and Beezus on the silver screen. I don't care if it's great and critically acclaimed (which I bet it isn't. I'm not even checking, that's how mad I am)--it will be a cold day in hell before I will accept Ginnifer Goodwin as Aunt Bea.

5a. I think Beverly Cleary would be okay with this anger--she strikes me as a pretty scrappy old lady. JUST LIKE ME.

If you need me, I'll be planning my trip to the UK to go on the Barbara Pym Walking Tour.

bad advice for good people.

2010-08-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

Here's what I love about Daniel Handler: He sneaks up on you.

I've been reading You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice. This is an excellent book for summer days when you are too hung over or otherwise affected to muddle through a novel, when all you really want is something hilarious to read out loud to your companion as you loll around on a beach towel and pour yourself in and out of the water. All your favourite funny folks are here: Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis, Rainn Wilson, Samantha Bee, Janeane Fucking Garofalo, AND MORE. And they each have a whole lot of awful advice to dole out to their unwitting audience. It's like reading Dear Abby if Abby had been drunk and cranky, which is pretty much my idea of journalistic heaven.

Anyway, Daniel Handler's section starts out sort of disappointingly. He spends most of the chapter giving snappy answers to stupid questions. Example:

Dear Daniel,
Now that we have a black president, is it okay to be racist again?
Terry R. Eureka, CA

Dear Terry,
No.
Love,
Daniel Handler

It goes on like this for several pages. And yes, it's funny, but it's one trick pony-ish. And then. Just when you're starting to get a little annoyed, he just whips it out.

Dear Daniel,
How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"?
Lily
Charlotte, NC

Dear Lily,
The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this.

And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now.

...Handler goes on for another page or so, and it's all so heartbreaking and evocative that you just want to crawl inside it and die a little. It's especially poignant because is it ever NOT what you expected in a book this funny and pointless. You'll be so overcome you might tumble right into the campfire, I'm warning you. A Betty Draper-esque fainting couch may be in order. I'm not sure if they make an outdoor fainting couch, but they ought to.

Summer dreams, ripped at the seams.

2010-07-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

Fun games to play while watching reruns of Being Erica:

1. Documenting pop-historical inaccuracies. Examples: use of a Sam Roberts song that wasn't really popular yet in an episode about the Great Blackout of Aught-Three; putting Ethan, the whitest, milquetoastiest place-holder/unrequited boyfriend in all fiction, in a fucking Public Enemy t-shirt during his second year of university.

2. Spot The Former Or Current Degrassi: TNG Star: Jimmy (you will never be Drake to me, sorry dude), Paige's gay hockey-playing brother, the late-addition goth girl who dated Spinner for a bit, Crazy Craig (still number one on my TNG secret husband list)*: They're all here, folks!

*(NOTE: If I had to pick an all-time Degrassi secret husband I don't think any of the new cast would make the list. I'd definitely go with Patrick, the sensitive Irish exchange student who helped Liz get over her childhood trauma. Second only, perhaps, to Snake, before be got boring and old. The shine wore off that apple when I saw him picking up his dry-cleaning one time on Queen West.)

3. Blackberry Commercial Emotional Bingo: When you don't have cable and only watch TV online, you forget how hypnotic and consuming and upsettingly fun to watch commercials can be. It's the media equivalent of going through the haunted house at the fair, with even more jarring results.

4. Think about what a good thing it is that you are leaving town this weekend, because this is getting pretty ridiculous.

Happy Civic Holiday, y'all. Here's the official anthem of a four-day weekend.

from the disappointment files.

2010-07-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

I'm rarely super disappointed by a book. I usually find something to like about everything I read, or else I put the damned thing down. This weekend, all that changed. I read Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz and I would have thrown it across the room several times if it hadn't been a library book. It was a perfect storm of disappointment, and like the perfect storm, I found myself trapped and unable to escape.

I've loved the Peanuts comics since I bought a stack of old paperback collections from my next door neighbour's garage sale a million years ago. I love their melancholy, adultless universe, the philosophical and spiritual truths coming out of the mouths of babes, the bittersweet unfairness of childhood. I've read a handful of biographies of Charles Schulz already, as well as the thoughtful introductions of each volume of Fantagraphics' exhaustive Complete Peanuts. My intense love of the comic strip as well as my existing knowledge base is probably to blame for my hatred of this book. I knew too much going in, so I could poke holes in author Beverly Gherman's superficial research.

I also blame the critics for my hatred of this book. I'd read several really positive reviews that praised everything from its use of Peanuts strips to illustrate periods of Charles Schulz's life to the very construction of the book, which is more like an art book than a traditional biography--glossy pages, large fonts, collages of old sketches and photos. Okay, okay, it was neat to see some of Schulz's early work, and I enjoyed reading a few strips I'd never seen before, but there was no analysis or depth. I wanted more than Gherman's storybooky narration could give me. And her insistence on referring to Schulz as Sparky throughout got so annoying. It was his nickname! We get it! Cease and desist!

So I'm a fangirl. Sue me. Give me what I want.

If you're at all interested in Charles Schulz's life (which is fascinating, by the way), read Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. This book is sensitive and well-researched, and draws on Schulz's comic strips in an expansive, analytical way. Instead of making Schulz into a sort of bumbling folk hero, as Gherman tries to do, Michaelis' biography exposes Schulz's depression, his anxiety, and his fear. As someone who's always appreciated the back-handed sadness of the Peanuts, I found this book so illuminating.

And if you're as obsessed as I am with the Charlie Brown Christmas special, read A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition. It looks like a coffee table book, but it's so much more than that. It's full of the rich history of the first Peanuts TV special, interviews with the kids who voiced the characters, and a full script of the program, as well as stills and flip-book-style images.

In hindsight, maybe it's appropriate to be disappointed by a book about a comic strip that chronicles the inherent unfairness of life, the early realization that the odds of life going your way are pretty slim. Ah, synchronicity.

Summer reading club.

2010-07-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

I mentioned earlier that most of my reading of late has been magazine-based. Working for the library has turned me into a compulsive magazine reader and I am very much okay with this. I love the brevity of a good article (or the satisfying length of a piece if we're talking New Yorker or Vanity Fair; with those publications you can trick yourself into believing you've read ten books over 200 pages) and the possibility of learning a little something, or at least adding to an arsenal of party trivia. I also love pretty pictures of pretty people, and I bet you do too. Here are the best ones I've read lately.

1. Psychology Today, August 2010 issue. This contained a really fascinating article about sibling relationships which confirmed a lot of the things I already suspected about myself and my family. Which is exactly what every pop-psychology article is designed to do, I guess.

2. Vanity Fair, August 2010 issue. Angelina Jolie is a complete nutjob with the most amazing delusions of grandeur. So many of the things that come out of her crazy mouth make no sense at all! If you read some of her quotes out of context you could confuse her with the weirdos who come to the reference desk asking for books on auras; I am not even exaggerating. This issue also contained a really crazy article about an eccentric, high-society French family who got taken in by a scheister who convinced them they were being targeted by a freemason-oriented conspiracy; I love that kind of thing.

3. People magazine, June 28 2010 issue. Jennifer Love Hewitt has some serious body image issues, and spends most of her interview justifying her decision to stay on a restrictive diet just so she can look good in a bikini. Pretty disappointing given that a few years ago she defended her healthy, non-emaciated body. Reading all about it made me hungry. More importantly, Zac Efron is on the cover, and in spite of my better judgment, I just don't know how to quit him.

4. Explore, August 2010 issue. Because sometimes you just want to read ridiculous articles about climbing Everest and pretend you will someday go heli-paragliding.

The Beach Boys make a really excellent magazine reading soundtrack.

Thoughts on Mad Men.

2010-07-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

1. Oh myyyy, this show is so goooood. I do not agree that it's the new Sex and the City; however this is worth a read.

2. I'd love to have an ex-relationship like Joan Holloway and Roger Sterling's--the occasional breezy but meaningful phone conversation, the knowledge that you will always be able to be done a kind favour by someone who thinks fondly of you, the banter. Oh, the banter.

3. Speaking of Sex and the City, I still see the actor who plays Roger Sterling as the congressional candidate who wanted to pee on Carrie Bradshaw.

4. It took me nearly three seasons, but I have a slow-burning crush on Pete Campbell. He is such a dick, but SO NAIVELY MORAL. I'm a sucker for that.

5. I'd like to be Don Draper's first wife, teaching piano lessons near the sea in California. She may be the luckiest supporting character in all of fiction.

6. Did YOU know the only other president buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where John F. Kennedy is buried, was and still is William Taft? I sure didn't! Thanks, Mad Men!

7. You know what's a good television narrative tactic? Closing an episode with a pop song that somehow underscores the plot. Weeds is also really good at this. The end of the JFK episode of Mad Men reminded me how frigging creepily evocative this song is.

...Is it me, or is this an off-putting video?

8. Does anyone in Kingston have cable and want to have me over for dinner the night of every new episode? I'll bring you nachos.

The attention span of a firefly in july.

2010-07-21T06:00:00.001-07:00

Here is what happens during summer: I become intoxicated by wine spritzers, sunshine, and magazines, and I stop reading books. This year I've thrown Mad Men into the mix and honestly, I don't think I've ever been so happy. Mad Men is amazing. I want to be Peggy Olson. Actually, I may indeed be Peggy Olson already.

She embodies so many of my favourite characteristics: high achievement, self-consciousness, intelligence, bookish yet sassy style, and on-the-job drug use.

But anyway, with the exception of Diary of a Chav by Grace Dent, I have not read a single book in its entirety in about a month. Diary of a Chav is an ideal summer read, though. It's been billed by some as a modern day girl version of the Adrian Mole diaries by Sue Townsend (ARGUABLY THE GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME), and I think this is an entirely fair assessment. Shiraz Bailey Wood is a hilarious heroine and any fans of fun and funny lady fiction with a hint of smarts and smarminess will adore this book. What's more, it's pretty real, which I like in a teen book. A friend of mine recently pointed out how sweet and realistic Shiraz's burgeoning relationship with Wesley Barrington Baines II is, and I agree with her. When she first meets him, she thinks he's a little pudgy and boring. And as the book progresses, she starts to see what a decent person he is (anyone who would pick up a girl running screaming from a bhaji factory and listen intently to her woeful tale of finding mouse bits in the prepackaged pakoras is indeed a gentleman, am I right?). At the same time, she starts to see just how intelligent she actually is herself, and comes to the realization that she deserves good things in life beyond hanging out in the Burger King parking lot. Things move slowly and sincerely, and I like that.

I am a little ashamed to admit that this 200-page book took me about two weeks to read, but whatever. I've got a lot of cocktail- and camping-related irons in the fire, you know?

We're having a heat wave.

2010-07-07T07:15:00.001-07:00

It's too hot to write. The residual heat from my laptop makes my legs sweat even more than they were sweating just from the incredible intensity of walking from the kitchen to the computer. This morning at yoga, my instructor suggested we open a water park with all the perspiration on the floor. She also referenced Ferris Bueller, and once again, I was reminded of just how much I love yoga.

Anyway, this heat wave is really frying my brain these days, to the point where I can't really read more than a couple of pages without getting confused and disoriented and cranky. I can't handle any intensity of theme, emotion, or subtext. I'm reading for PLOT, PEOPLE. If you're feeling the same way, I suggest you find yourself a copy of Cum Laude by Cecily von Ziegesar. I've never read a Gossip Girl book, or watched the show, so I can't say whether her latest book, which follows a group of rich-ish college students (and the requisite milk-fed towny boy with a heart of gold and intentions as pure as the winter snow) through their first year at a faux-Ivy school in Maine, is any better or worse than that series. But I will say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the way von Ziegesar takes stereotypes, like the pot-smoking hippie dude who builds his own yurt, or the virginal, beautiful blonde from Connecticut, and makes them relatable and entertaining. And as for the plot, well MAN, I can't put this down. It's like a sexy soap opera for the upper crust. Dynasty-esque, if you will. This is beachy crack-style reading of the highest order.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take another cold bath.

I drew a map of Canada. Oh Canada.

2010-07-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

In light of recent events, not to mention the fact that our country seems to have gone from police-state-style chaos to fawning over an outdated, money-sucking monarch with tenuous connections to our governance structure (NOTE: this statement does not diminish my undying attraction to Prince Harry), I wasn't feeling super Canadian going into this day. To be honest, I'm not the most patriotic person at the best of times. Too many years spent in Ottawa on this, the looniest of public holidays, makes me associate it with street-side insanity, public intoxication, and personal humiliation. And yes yes, I've been in that crowd of drunken revelers myself, and I'll admit, it can be a lot of fun. Not to mention humbling: when those kids got caught peeing on the war memorial a few years ago, I couldn't help but concede that, okay, yeah, that could have been any one of us. You just get THAT CAUGHT UP IN THE SPIRIT.

That spirit is sadly dead inside me this year, though. My plan for Canada Day plan for this year includes an unplugged phone, a whole lot of yoga and the third season of Mad Men. Nevertheless, I had a moment of unbridled patriotism while listening to Jian , who played an old Spirit of the West song, Far too Canadian. I got a little weepy, and I got to thinking about the other songs that make me feel like I'm part of this great country.

Some of them are totally cliche, like A Case of You by Joni Mitchell, or The Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot (aka the song that I can't put on any road mix because I would have to pull the car over to tear up as soon as it came on). Some of them aren't even by Canadians, like I Wish I Was the Moon by Neko Case (although I guess she gets honourary status). It's the national anthem for staring up at the sky, which we seem to do a lot of around here.

Some get stuck in my head for days, in the nicest possible way, like Stompin' Tom's The Hockey Song (although Turkey Rhubarb's version, with Paul Fralick on lead vocals, totally outshines the original). Some are pure summer sunshine, like Plaskett and Sam Roberts, while some bring me back to frigid snowy nights, huddled by a fire, drifting off to sleep.

Some remind me of being far, far away, missing the land that I love.

And some bring me right back home again.

Happy Canada Day, folks.

Where have all the flowers gone.

2010-06-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

1. While I may grouse a whole lot about hating my profession and nearly everyone in it and threatening to leave it all behind to become a reiki practitioner, every once in awhile the universe offers me a little nugget to remind me that you can take the gal out of the library but you definitely can't take the library out of the gal. Like this morning, when the Library of Congress released its annual list of recordings to be preserved for cultural posterity. This year's list is pretty killer: it includes The Band, REM, Loretta Lynn, the original cast recording of Gypsy, battle sounds from Guam, the Staples Singers, and Tupac. Fucking TUPAC, man! How much do I wish I'd been part of that selection committee? Answer: SO much.

2. Hearing Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie alongside someone from Antiflag discussing the state of protest music on the Current this morning reminded me yet again why I love the CBC so damned much.

3. It also reminded me why I love Arlo Gurthrie enough to name my cat after him. I think they share an equally random and whimsical sense of humour. And possibly a snaggletooth.

4. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Christopher Plummer chew the scenery at Stratford.

5. I don't go to the theatre much, but whenever I do, I wish that someone would LITERALLY chew the scenery, and I hope that someday I see that happen.

6. Are these the thoughts that someone on the eve of her 30th birthday should be having? Probably not, but hopefully yes.

I do.

2010-06-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

As usual, now that I am back home with the parents', I have very little to report. Instead of reading, I spent most of my days making jam, falling asleep in lawn chairs, trying to ride a bike, and helping the neighbour children pick the cherries out of their black cherry ice cream. Thanks to the magic of cable, I have also become completely obsessed with wedding-themed reality programming. Have any of you ever watched Rich Bride, Poor Bride? This is a completely horrifying show. I guess the horror level depends mostly upon the couple being profiled in a given episode, but the one I watched the other night gave me heart palpitations. Unable to agree on ANYTHING for their wedding, the bride and groom opted to hold two separate events on two days, necessitating three dresses for the bride and two for each bridesmaid, not to mention a miniature pony dressed in pink feathers and a cape (I am not joking) to greet the guests outside the hall. They were more than thirty thousand dollars over budget. THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. As someone who has a hard time shelling out more than five dollars for a new pair of underpants, this show is several solar systems outside my frame of reference.

I guess I'm just baffled by the whole concept of a huge wedding with, like, choreographed dance numbers for the bridal party (although I still watch this damned video when I need a little pick me up, as much as it embarrasses me to admit it), and I also feel a little bit sorry for the subjects on the show, who are clearly being set up to look like complete nincompoops who fight over things like ice sculptures and fondant figurines. On second thought, I have a sneaking suspicion that anyone who would sign up to appear on television during what is arguably a very vulnerable period for any nascent partnership is probably fairly alright with having their emotional baggage on display, but that doesn't make my jaw drop any less. As a friend once said, weddings represent the coming together of two people and the complete spiritual undoing of about a hundred other involved parties. She hit the nail on the head, and also defined very perfectly what I masochistically love about weddings: love and celebration run right alongside chaos and pain. It's like all my favourite feelings together in one place. There's something appealing about a hot mess, you know?

And in lieu of a coherent conclusion, here's a feel-good love song to start your day.

Oh, and this. Which totally makes me cry. Every hell damn ass time.

Old man, take a look at my life.

2010-06-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

Recently I've developed a bit of a thing for crochety old men. On paper, I mean. It started with a complete obsession with Studs Terkel, compounded by my discovery that Harvey Pekar had edited a really wicked comic book version based on the original transcripts. From there I moved on to listen to a bunch of Terkel's interviews, collected on Voices of our Time and owned by my library (and probably yours). A friend of mine described Studs Terkel as "the man Ira Glass wishes he could be." For any non-NPR-listeners, you can probably replace Ira Glass's name with Peter Gzowski for an apt analogy (although then you would probably argue that Gzowski truly IS Terkel's Canadian counterpart, AND HOW!, and then you could up and die of embarrassment at what a huge radio nerd you are.). He's a man generally interested in the human condition and the human story, and he seems to draw the most amazing truths out of his subjects. I've written before about a couple of my favourite passages from Working, and here is another gem.

“Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.”

Insight! Horrifying, panic-inducing insight!

Anyway, my Terkel-philia waned a little this weekend, when the audio version of his book Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who Lived It got me so drowsy I almost drove into a ditch alongside Highway 38. I hate to undercut the importance of oral history and undercutting everything I've already said, but listening to this book was a little like being trapped on an elevator with Abe Simpson. So I cut my losses and moved on.

My second old man turned out to be Kurt Vonnegut, a man who has wandered in and out of my reading life for nearly as long as I've been holding books. Again, I've written before about my complicated relationship with him, but I'm happy to report that, if only for today, Kurt and I are back on. Maybe it's just the magic of Rip Torn's dulcet voice reading Vonnegut's words to me. I think that's exactly what it is, in fact. Rip Torn is finally giving a pitch-perfect voice to the words in my memory, and he is pulling it off. I'd go so far as to say this recording is the cure for the drive-home-Monday blues. Vonnegut's cranky words in this compilation of miscellaneous non-fiction from his later years should make you cry with abject grief about the state of humanity, but out of Torn's mouth, the words will make you laugh harder than you've laughed in a long time. Get thee to the library, and check out Armageddon in Retrospect, read for you by Don Geiss. You won't regret it.

And now, a tangential video-finale.

A word devoid of meaning.

2010-06-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

It's Friday, which, since I have to work on Saturday this week, is a statement that has lost its relevance. Yesterday morning at the end of my yoga practice, my teacher said, "Back when I was in undergrad, Thursday was the new Friday. So I hope you live your Thursday like it's a Friday today." A lovely notion, but seeing as how I can't even live my FRIDAYS like they're Fridays, it was lost on me. Moreover, when I was in undergrad, Wednesday was the new Friday. Clearly in Toronto we were a little bit ahead of the curve.

Anyway, the one thing we can all agree on is that we're at the week's end. I have a lot to do this fakest of fake weekends. In between a much deserved haircut, a lot of half-assed hours clocked at the reference desk, and taking self-portraits of me and my cat, I also intend to do a little bit of actual, non-magazine reading. Here's my to-do list.

1. The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman. I started this last night (once I'd gotten through my priority-reading, a feature article on Ellen Degeneres in Shape Magazine. I know. In my defense, it was written by Jennifer Weiner, and therefore counts as literary non-fiction.). It is really, really funny and poignant. Colour me surprised. I've only seen a few snippets of Sarah Silverman on TV and on the internet, and her humour isn't exactly my cup of tea, but she makes a really excellent memoirist. From now on I am only reading autobiographies that feature accounts of taking too much acid and forgetting how to drive.

2. The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass. Working in libraries has maybe three perks, and one of these is access to publishers' reading copies. I love Julia Glass, and am constantly thrusting her books at everyone around me (it you haven't read Three Junes or The Whole World Over yet, I don't want to talk to you again until you've finished them), and this new one isn't out until September. You might say I'm travelling INTO THE FUTURE.

3. Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott. I just finished her latest, Imperfect Birds, which was, like all her novels, one of those books where you want to slow down your reading and make it last forever. She's got such a knack for characters, mothers and daughters and the hard love that comes with being a family. Her descriptions of Northern California make me want to jump in my car and drive. Her unassuming and surprisingly unannoying thoughts on faith and love and compassion make me want to devote myself to spirituality. And halfway through, I realized that these were the same characters that populated her earlier works, Crooked Little Heart and Rosie, so now I need to go back and visit some old friends in an older time.

4. Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude by Emily White. Because sometimes you just want a book that you can read and just nod enthusiastically in agreement at everything therein, you know? Also, what an adorable cover!

TGIF, y'all.

People. People who read People.

2010-06-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Is it a bad thing, do you think, if the only things I've read cover to cover in the last month are a stack of People magazines?

People Magazine Free Association, June 14, 2010 issue

1. How totally awesome is it that Ian Ziering (playboy with a heart of gold Steve Sanders of 90210 fame) invited the whole cast of the original series to his wedding? Even awesomer: the caption below a photo of Jennie Garth describes her as the woman "whose character dated Ziering's on the show." Proof positive that these kids peaked early, and peaked gloriously.

2. Nothing sounds more disgusting to me than a premade frozen sandwich. With toast marks on the pre-prepared panini bread. Seriously, what the hell?

2a. Upon visiting the Lean Cuisine website to find that link, I have to say that their site offends me as both a feminist and a foodie.

3. Are they actually making a live action version of The Smurfs, and is Hank Azaria actually playing Gargamel, and are they actually filming live on the streets of New York City, or am I currently having some sort of hallucination?

3a. Oh my, this makes it sound so much weirder.

4. Celine Dion is amazing. Choice quote from a piece about her miracle pregnancy: "It's stressful but I'm relaxing. I look at my little belly. I do almost nothing. If you tell me I have to stay in bed, I will stay in bed. To bring them into the world, there's nothing more important than that. It's incredible." Self-effacing!

4a. Fourfour's Celine supercut videos are as amazing as the woman herself.

2a. Part of my panini-rage stemmed from the fact that at the time of reading, I was eating a truly amazing and not at all frozen sandwich, based upon one of my favourite dishes from Vancouver vegetarian restaurant the Naam, aka my living room during the years I lived out West. They had this killer veggie dog wrapped in a fresh chapati with cheese and guacamole. It only cost 4$. I ate it a lot. Anyway, my version involved a nearly-stale flour tortilla, the end of a chunk of gouda, fried mushrooms, and a metric ton's worth of delicious tender salad greens from my incredible CSA. No one deserves to eat a shitty frozen fake-toasted sandwich.

6. I may or may not envy Shania Twain's chichi European lifestyle. Seriously, from a country singer from Timmins to living in a chateau and hosting charity balls in Switzerland? Well done, lady. Well done.

Sunday night breakdown.

2010-06-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

After a day spent in the woods I came back into town for some serious culture. It began with a visit to Wolfe Island, and reminded me why Kingston really is the best town around. A ten minute walk from home and there you are on the ferry, gliding past Fort Henry and the Thousand Islands in the distance. Twenty minutes later and you're in a teeny tiny town hall on the island, lit by Christmas lights and listening to the Great Lake Swimmers playing for you and a hundred of your new best friends. And the best part is, you're doing it for an amazing cause, the Waterkeepers. Oh, and Sarah Harmer is on your ferry, driving her incredibly shiny hybrid car.

Yep, pretty much an ideal Kingston Saturday night.

My houseguests and I woke up bright and early on Sunday with the intention of running a race, but since one of us had left one of her running shoes back home in Almonte and it was pouring rain, we decided that we'd do ourselves even more good by having breakfast at Pan Chancho.

Stuffed with grilled corn salad and lemon currant rolls I spent my day in a state of happy burrowing, and watched movies in a vain attempt to catch up with the zeitgeist. I am notoriously behind on cinematic viewing, because I am too cheap to go to the theatre, and even too cheap to rent things; I prefer to wait till the library buys them and then wait till my name comes up on the reservation list about ten years after the movie's original theatrical release, which is why it took me till just today to see Julie and Julia. MAN was this movie ever disjointed. I know a lot of critics already noted this when it was released, but this felt like two different movies, one quite charming (Meryl Streep's spot-on performance as Julia Child, the beauty of Paris in the 1950s, the sweet sexy relationship she shared with her husband, played by Stanley Tucci, whom I find incredibly attractive for some reason--I blame Big Night), the other just so annoying and trite (Amy Adams' shrill and unreasonably, unneccessarily worried civil servant-slash-blogger stereotype, complete with a one-dimensional marriage and an apartment that's supposedly really crappy but actually looks amazing and unaffordable). I absolutely loved the Julia plot, her joy and her intelligence and her incredible life. I loved the notion of someone completely defying social expectations and getting by on her own merit and passion. But I just wanted to reach through the screen and punch Julie in the face.

I actually really liked Julie Powell's original book, which was one of the first one-year-project-turned-blog-turned-book dealies; when it was published in 2005 I was just starting out in both the library and blogging worlds, and her story gave me a lot of hope for my own quasi-literary future. But I think the sheer volume of the blog-to-book products since then has sort of worn the shine off the apple. Not to mention the fact that they really cleaned up the Julie character to a degree where she completely lost her edge and her fullness. Julie in print was goofy, witty, and crass, swilling gimlets and dropping loads of F-bombs. But the script seemed to suck all that out of her character, stripping her of the ballsy, shirty attitude and leaving nothing but a sort of neurotic pile of sad garbage crying on the kitchen floor next to a burned boeuf bourgingon.

I also admit that I skipped over the parts in the book describing Julia Child's life; I found them trite and poorly researched, probably because I'd just finished reading Child's own memoir, My Life In France, and it was hard to read an overly simplified version of a life after having heard the story from the memory of the woman who lived it, I guess. I was relieved to see that Norah Ephron based the script on Child's book as well as Powell's, and I think the reason I loved the Julia plot so much was that it reminded me of the memoir, which everyone really must read. On the page, and in her own words, Julia Child just seemed so full of life and buoyancy and wit, and she lived with such conviction. I promise this book will make you feel better about something.

Really though, the most embarrassing thing is that I totally cried at the end when Julie visits the Julia Child kitchen at the Smithsonian and tells a photograph of Julia Child that she loves her and places a cube of butter down on the shelf in front of the photo like some bizarre voodoo housewife ritual. It's probably a sad testament to my flaky emotional state that butter makes me cry. Anyway, that little bit of catharsis might have made the whole viewing worth it. Nothing like a good irrational sob from time to time, especially after two hours of delicious food footage.

And just to come full circle, here's Kingston's favourite son making a mess of Julia Child.

there's no secret handshake. there's an iq prerequisite, but there's no secret handshake.

2010-06-04T06:49:00.001-07:00

Thanks to an article on the only website I really read, I was thinking a lot about Reality Bites last night. Judging from the comments on the article and the article itself, it's one of those movies that polarizes the women of my dumb, self absorbed generation, in more ways than one: You either love it (and in this case, "it" includes Janeane Garofalo's amazing bedroom, Winona Rider's hair and clothes and WHOLE BEING, Ethan Hawke's greasy beard, the dance in the gas station, the whole idea that growing up is pretty fucking awful and you're basically going to sell your soul as soon as you leave the hallowed halls of your overpriced college...you know, that stuff), or you hate it (and in this case "it" means the reductive, oversimplified plot/characters/themes, Ethan Hawke's greasy beard, the incredibly obvious dichotomy set up between Hawke's hipster doofus archetype and Ben Stiller's quasi-capitalist douchebag, et al).

I get that. But I also fall firmly into the former camp.

I've seen this movie so many damned times, in so many different living rooms and basements and bedrooms. I bought the soundtrack through the Columbia Record club back in that brief period when a whole generation of people were still duped by that little money grab (we still have an Anthrax CD that was mailed to us after we neglected to send back the little form with the "for the love of god, don't send us an Anthrax CD and then bill us for it" box ticked off). I was a teenager when Reality Bites came out, and I longed for those awful, confusing years of my early twenties, because they seemed like they'd at least be more independent than the awful, confusing years of my adolescence. I fell in love with Ethan Hawke (I know, I know. I even READ HIS BOOKS, you guys. I had a problem.) and dreamed of the day when I'd have a job to be fired from and my own apartment and philosophical dilemmas with actual, tangible heft. I think that's my favourite element of this movie, the struggle to just live your own life and be your own self while having no idea how to do it, only a general sense of what you DON'T want.

It's also the thing that creeps me out about this movie as an adult who is now older than its heroes and heroines. When you're on the far side of twenty-five, you start to realize that you're likely never going to feel one hundred percent satisfied with your life, that you're rarely going to have all your ducks in a row, although most of the time you'll have enough of them lined up to stave off the urge to curl up in the fetal position and unplug the phone forever. But until that dawns on you, you sort of freak the hell out constantly and convince yourself you're never going to get it right. The stakes are so absurdly high:

Lelaina: I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23.
Troy: Honey, all you have to be by the time you're 23 is yourself.
Lelaina: I don't know who that is anymore.
Troy: I do. And we all love her. I love her. She breaks my heart again and again, but I love her.

Oh MY. As a teenager I loved that part. The emotional subtext, the self-doubt, the intensity of every exchange. As an adult, I still love it, but I also feel so relieved to be past it. It also reminds me of Demi Moore's line in St Elmo's Fire, another post-college classic, where she says, "I never thought I'd be so tired at 23." When I turned 23, I felt pretty much the same way (melodrama!), but now that I'm nearly 30, I feel like I'm on the other side of that constant struggle. And it feels good to look back. It really does.

It's been a long long time.

2010-06-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I had this very sobering moment while listening to Weezer's Blue Album. It must have been around 2004, and the awful truth dawned on me that I'd been enjoying and dissecting that record for ten years. Holy shit, I thought, I am getting old.

Several years on, this same thing is happening more and more. And every time it does, I feel another little crow's foot bore its way into my face. I guess maybe it's a testament to my amazing taste in music that I listen to things that are relevant and poignant and touching even years after their release (notable exceptions: the Vengaboys, Aqua, and several others too embarrassing to list here, although I would posit that Aqua's Turn Back Time is in fact a very moving song). Yes. Let's go with that. But it's also probably a testament to how much I love going back to particular sonic memories. I've written about this before, but I'll say it again: aural nostalgia is the best kind.

So here is a list of the top five songs I've been emoting to for far too long and the embarrassingly ancient eras they evoke.

Happiness--Elliot Smith. The endless GO-Train rides of the summer of 2000.

Deathly--Aimee Mann. A bad breakup, a worse makeover, and a long trudge home in the snow from the movie theatre in 1999. Also, several months spent lying on the living room floor in Vancouver.

My Name is Jonas--Weezer. Approximately seven thousand house parties between 1994 and today.

Sloan--She Says What She Means. East Hamilton in the mid 90s was a pretty great place to be, until your parents found your secret stash of Absolut.

(I could probably include most of Sloan's catalog on this list. For a long time I felt like I was the hippest person in the universe because I owned a copy of Smeared on cassette.)

Autumn Sweater--Yo La Tengo. Makin' out, breakin' up, beach-walkin', sleep-walkin', you know, all the good stuff that seems pretty weird and shitty at the time. Ah, the halcyon days.

It should be noted that the main criterion for this list is that I first heard the music on or around the time it was released. I could write a whole other list for the oldies, and of course, Kodachrome would be number one, followed closely by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. (Party Mix 4-eva!)

Miles away, just up ahead.

2010-05-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I drove home after a wedding and after dark, and I lived to tell the tale. I kept myself awake by thinking about really dumb stuff. Here's a short summary.

1. This is the loneliest hour on the 401. Trust me, I've driven this road around the clock far too many times.

2. The sheer number of New Country songs based upon the "I ain't been to college, but I got more learnin's than those city folk" trope is terribly frightening.

3. Nevertheless, I do concede that ladies love country boys.

4. Chris Bohjalian is the literary M. Night Shyamalan. What's more, their names nearly rhyme.

5. Every major life event should include an end-of-night cheese tray/candy bar option.

6. I think I've gotten to the point in my spiritual development where I can appreciate and maybe even relate to a religious celebration that once would have really offended me in its supposed antifeminism, like, in this case, a Greek Orthodox wedding. I guess spirituality is more important than religion. I guess ceremony transcends belief, in a way.

7. That said, until yesterday, my entire frame of reference for Greek Orthodox wedding ceremonies was drawn from an old episode of Full House where DJ accidentally marries one of Uncle Jesse's visiting relatives by walking around the table with him. (Don't worry, guys! They just walked backwards around it and all was forgiven!)

8. If in some bizarro world artistic merit is judged by radio play alone, Kelly Clarkson is our generation's most important creative voice.

9. I really, really like Kelly Clarkson.

Myself, I prefer positive drinking.

2010-05-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

I think I want to soul-marry Barbara Ehrenreich. I've been reading her insightful and biting book Bright-Sided, which systematically tears the positive thinking movement a new A-hole over the course of 200 or so very readable pages. She's got a well-researched argument against everything: the Pink Ribbon Campaign for breast cancer awareness, The Secret, evangelism, the link between positive psychology and the economic crisis. Sure, I know, I said before that I was trying to unburden myself from all the things that piss me off for no reason, but one thing I'll never stop being mad about is when an industry is built up around the unhappiness and dissatisfaction of the individual struggling to find her place in society. So, you know.

Ehrenreich is amazing. You might also have heard of her 2002 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America. In it she describes her time spent undercover, living below the poverty line and working as a Florida waitress. I haven't read it yet, and I'm not always a huge fan of the whole journalist in disguise thing (exception to this rule: Never Been Kissed, starring my secret best friend, Drew Barrymore), but her writing's so sharp and just a little sarcastic that I bet she can pull it off.

Speaking of Never Been Kissed, here's another highschool movie that wormed its way back into my heart this week.

I think this movie is the reason I decided to become a successful career woman.

Let's get cookin'.

2010-05-26T07:39:00.001-07:00

Getting older makes you philosophical. You start to realize that the things that used to really piss you off don't really amount to a hill of beans, or maybe you just move on to being pissed off about more important things, like the fact that you live in a country governed by a bunch of wangs who would rather you shut the fuck up about abortion rights than actually advocate for women's issues. All of which is to say, I used to get really upset about anything that had the word "Family" on it, especially cookbooks. I don't know why. Maybe it's the fact that I have lived alone for a long time, and I am PERSONALLY AFFRONTED by the notion that only families deserve good food. Just because I occasionally/frequently eat my dinner from a bowl propped on my lap while watching reruns of 30 Rock, doesn't mean I don't merit a delicious and healthy meal, jerks.

Anyway, I'm pretty much over that. As I slouch toward my thirtieth birthday in about a month, I'm trying to let the little things go and focus on the big things, and getting angry at the mothers and fathers on the covers of cookbooks is not a productive use of my energy. That's why I even went so far as to check out my library's copy of Rose Reisman's Family Favourites and choked my way past the lame photos of the author and her well-dressed grown children to enjoy some really wicked recipes. Even if the sight of a bunch of rich upper class people cooking in an insanely tricked out kitchen while also enjoying each other's company makes you want to throw up in your mouth a little, you cannot deny that the woman can craft a killer vegetarian main. I recommend this comprehensive and pretty book to anyone looking for some new variations on old standbys like soups, salads, and grain-laden side dishes. Reisman even inspired me to make about a million variations on one of my summer favourites, lentil salad. Here's the best version I've come up with.

Salad:

Throw all this stuff into a bowl.

1 can lentils
1 avocado, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
a couple green onions, chopped
1/4 cup or so feta cheese
1/4 cup basil
1/4 cup parsley
1/4 cup black olives (or sundried tomatoes. it's your world.)

Dressing:

equal parts lemon juice and olive oil, and maybe some garlic (or whatever you have on hand, really. If we're going to get honest, I'll tell you that I actually dressed this with some very elderly Newman's Own oil and vinegar that had been sitting in my fridge for a really really long time.)

Eat it. Just eat it.

2010-05-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

Guys, I really and truly don't read anymore. Or rather, I read about 5 sentences of everything (I'm looking at you, Anne Tyler, Chris Bohjalian, guy who wrote The Lightning Thief, et al) and then I watch another episode of the American Office. And I realize that no one really thinks of that show as the American version anymore since it's about six seasons longer than its inspiration, but my commitment to Tim and Dawn is pretty intense.

Anyway,the other reason I haven't been writing is that I've spent most of the last month in a state of complete and utter malaise, physically and spiritually (but mostly physically). I've been lying on the loveseat a lot, and doing a lot of serious thinking, mostly about the fact that I am nearly thirty years old and don't have an actual couch and everytime I fall asleep on mine I lose feeling in my legs. In the course of these heady existential days, the one book I did actually read in toto was What We Eat When We Eat Alone by Deborah Madison, and it just about made me cry with joy. In case you don't know of her, Deborah Madison is the woman who stole my life. She lives in New Mexico and studied Zen living in San Francisco and she patronizes farmers' markets and writes the best vegetarian cookbooks you will ever read and lives with an artist. She's also a little smug, which I quite enjoy. In this book, she interviews everyone she knows about the weird and disgusting but ultimately probably delicious things they eat when they're on their own, and also delves into the different ways we find ourselves on our own at the end of the day: a man without his wife, a single gal whose roommate is out, a student with a cabinet full of Kraft dinner. And then she makes actual recipes out of the stories her friends tell. They are delightful and full of random things like tinned oysters and polenta and ramen noodles and fresh veggies and loads of cheese. This really is such a sweet, cute little book (and it's illustrated in a New Yorkerish style by her live-in lovah whose name I cannot remember) and if you have any inclination toward foodieism you really must read it.

I, for one, love nothing better than cooking for one. I do it almost every weeknight, and I really really look forward to it. There's something really freeing about making dinner for your own self and not giving a fuck about anyone else's good taste spoiling the experience. I highly recommend you try it sometime.

And in that spirit, here's a recipe for y'all. I am a bit of a gazpacho nut, and yesterday the return of my appetite after a week of nausea coupled with hot house tomatoes from the Kingston Farmers' Market inspired this new twist on my old standby.

Mayday Gazpacho

a few cups worth of tomatoes, chopped
1 cucumber, chopped
1 avocado, chopped
juice of one lemon
1/2 cup of parsley, chopped (or more) (gazpacho is usually made with basil but I didn't have any, and found this to be a delicious and detoxifying substitute)
1 can Herdez green chile sauce (a secret ingredient that will BLOW YOUR MIND)
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped (amount depends on whether you will be spending time with other people or not)
hot sauce, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste

Throw 'er all in a bowl and puree the hell out of it. Eat, then send me a thank you note.

Hang the DJ.

2010-03-31T07:08:00.000-07:00

I think Daniel Handler might be one of the most overlooked writers of our time. You might know him better as Lemony Snicket, and up until a couple of years ago that was how I knew him too. I didn't hate the Lemony Snicket books, but I sure didn't love them like so many people did. And then a colleague told me I should read The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler, who, it turned out, was Lemony's alter ego. (or vice versa?) I loved The Basic Eight. It had all the themes I always look for--private school ridiculousness, intense highschool friendships, murder, psychological damage, sarcastic upscale jokes, croquet, heroines named Flannery. You really should read it. The prologue to his novel Watch Your Mouth is also required reading for all librarians: you will never think about LC Subject Headings the same way again. I think he's one of those too clever for his own good kind of writers, the kind that might stumble a little from time to time, but when they're on, they are ON, you know?

Anyway, I just stumbled on him again in Heavy Rotation, an essay collection of pieces by writers writing about the albums that have meant the most to them. Handler, God love him, writes about Savage by the Eurythmics. I could take or leave the Eurythmics (whenever I hear Here Comes The Rain Again on the radio I'm always certain, for the first eight bars, that it's actually going to be Sunglasses At Night), but the way he talks about what music can mean to you when you're young just got right into my heart:

"When you're seventeen you can drive around at midnight listening to anything and your life will change. You will quit your job or your lover, dance with someone or miss them, see someone for the first time or the last time, realize that you're not alone or you are, that you're connected or dis-, that you aren't the person you thought you were, or it turns out you are, or someone else is or nobody is or everybody, which means the world isn't fair and life isn't worthwhile or it is and it is, and all the while it's a classic or an obscurity, a gem or an embarrassment, cred or poseur, Ocean Beach or Ocean Rain, Giant Steps or Little Creatures, OK Computer, Computer World, The Freewheelin' Suzanne Vega, Achtung Baby it's Cold Outside, and then it begins to seem like a joke after all."

SWOOOON.

Heavy Rotation is totally worth a gander for a handful of lovely essays like Handler's. Also my secret writer husband Joshua Ferris talking about Ten, by Pearl Jam, because he feels exactly the same way I do (and probably the way all my friends do too): angry they sold out even though we knew they would all along, and wildly, passionately nostalgic.

Awwww, 1992 was a banner year.

Lenten rose.

2010-03-31T06:18:00.000-07:00

For a girl raised in a deity-free liberal religious community, I've got a real thing for Christianity. I think it's kind of on par with kids who are denied sugary treats in their youth becoming total candy monsters later in life, but I have some serious Christian wannabe tendencies. Especially at this time of year, the darkest point in the calendar, Holy Week. I wrote about this last year, but I think it bears repeating. Maybe it's the masochist in me, but I love the whole idea of Lent, of giving something up and really missing it. None of this lame "oooh I'm giving up chocolate" bullshit--I think Lent should be about letting go of something that really brings you joy, like smelling the flowers, or giving yourself half an hour of solitude every morning to drink coffee and read the paper, or whatever. Not that I ever actually give these things up, but I sure admire the notion.

I used to think it was because suffering was just important, something that people should learn to do because life's just such a rotten thing and you're bound to be miserable in the end. But lately I've realized this kind of giving up is about more than just suffering--it's about acknowledging that things go away. When you give something up, you recognize that you're not always going to have it. You detach from the things that give you comfort (and the things that don't) and if you really commit to it, in the end, you find that all you have left is yourself, your choices, your life. It's not such a bad way to be.

Enough philosophizing for now. I'm reading Mommie Dearest and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Joan Crawford was a DOG, man!

Clearly I've given up intellectual content for Lent too. With that in mind, I leave you with David Brent.

Instead of reading, I've mostly just been cooking.

2010-03-23T15:59:00.000-07:00

...and watching episodes of Parks and Recreation on the internet.

And identifying very intimately with Amy Poehler.

Here's a Tuesday Night Special.

Nearly-rotten vegetable soup (vegan friendly!)

olive oil (a few tablespoons) or butter (ditto), or both
1 celery heart (by which I mean, like, the whole thing you buy at the market, not just a stock or two), chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 head garlic, separated into cloves and minced to hell
1 container of stock (you may also want to water this whole baby down a bit)
1 head kale, chopped (Kale is very nutrient dense and under-appreciated! You will love it!)
1 tbsp. miso
random spice (I had fennel seeds on-hand, my favourite new go-to spice; I think it would also work well with basil)
2 or 3 avocados, chopped
tamari and/or salt and pepper, to taste
juice of one lemon (Actually I didn't have this, but I so wish I did, because it would've been even better with it)

Heat oil/butter and stir-fry veggies, random spice and garlic till tender. Add stock, miso and kale and bring to a boil. Simmer for ten minutes or so (longer if your dad calls and you forget about the pot on the stove). Add avocados and lemon juice and let cool. Season with tamari and salt and pepper as needed. Puree to your desired consistency (I like it with a few chunks left in). Serve and feel instantly warmed on a cold, Indian Winter kind of night. Tastes embarrassingly good with some cheese string as garnish.

Frankie Say Relax.

2010-03-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

So, it was a pretty gorgeous today, and I ate an insanely delicious dinner at Casa Domenico, and now I am full of rare tuna and I can't sleep. My houseguest has suggested I go through my online photo albums and give him laser eyes, so he can be incognito, as he is someone who is archaically wonderful and not interested in being on The Facebook, but I'm not really much of a photoshopper. So I figured I should just relax, with this great video of Young Rival. I know I'm basically tooting my family's horn, but seriously, Young Rival has the best YouTube channel of anyone life (except maybe the random dude who posts the whole run of Freaks and Geeks in ten minute segments--sorry, I can't find him right now in my tuna addled state). enjoy.

Ghost in the Park

Aw, I can't embed it. Seriously though, click it. It's worth it.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the Frankie Say Relax reference on Friends? I really feel like that show deserves more credit.

Goodnight, children, everywhere.

Notable/Quotable

2010-03-04T17:00:00.001-08:00

I'm easily overcome these days. Here are a few of the lines I've been stuck on.

You can't eat for eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours a day--all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.

--Faulkner (always a ray of sunshine), quoted in the epigraph to Working, by Studs Terkel.

We sit there and we joke, "Wouldn't it be reat if we could just take this handful of plugs and just yank em? ... Like I said, you get so tense...If we could just pull em. Disconnect them and see what happens. You accidentally disconnect somebody, which happens quite often. You don't do it on purpose, although there are times when you feel you'd like to do it.

--Frances Swenson, Hotel Switchboard Operator, in Working, by Studs Terkel.

"He's a very charming drunk. It was somebody's birthday party up here and he had quite a bit of whiskey and he was quoting Yeats poems and he was crying."

"He was? He weeps?"

"But in the sweetest way."

--Mia Farrow and Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives by Woody Allen.

DISCUSS.

...Seriously, though, I've started reading again. Studs Terkel is blowing my work-obsessed mind. And I've nearly run out of Sex And The City reruns to borrow from the library (I think I'm a Miranda, trapped in a Carrie closet), so I think I'll turn back to fiction once I'm through Season Six. Promise.

"I lettered in shot-put." --danny zuko

2010-02-12T06:19:00.001-08:00

Dudes, I hate the Olympics. I hate the nationalism, the capitalism cloaked in sportsmanlike conduct, the feats of strength, the heartwarming tales of overcoming adversity, the drug dogs at the airports (okay I guess that last one doesn't really affect me, but still). The fact that I have to be subjected to this garbage during the darkest of dark winter months makes me want to barf and then die. Hyperbole be damned: I hate them so much. I treat them as a personal affront. Any televised sporting event brings back repressed memories of not being able to do a somersault in gym class and of being asked to manage the field hockey team instead of actually playing (although that one was actually a blessing in disguise--time off school without physical exertion!). I can't handle this kind of emotional pain right now, folks. It's just too much for me.

With that in mind, here are a few things you should watch instead of watching people hit each other with sticks (that's a sport, right?). I've tried to think of the least sporty programming of all time. It wasn't hard.

1. Big Love. I am currently addicted to this show. The weirdness of polygamy and Utah/Mormon society hooked me, but the amazing character development has kept me watching. Also, not a sport in sight, since the FLDS crazies believe women's menses may be interrupted by physical activity. Furthermore, any reason to listen God Only Knows over and over again is fine with me.

2. Me and You and Everyone We Know. While Miranda July, the writer of this zany, hipster orgasm of a film, once penned a short story about secretly offering swimming lessons to the elderly in her living room using a bowl of water to simulate immersion in a pool (you must must MUST read it, and you can find it in her book No One Belongs Here More Than You), this movie is a sports-free zone. This is the story of an artist/cab driver and her alternately boring and ridiculous life, which spokes out like a bicycle wheel into the worlds of the people around her.

3. Casablanca. Much as I despise Valentine's Day, I always get a little bit sentimental around this time of year. I saw this movie for the first time in a highschool English class, but I don't think I really appreciated it till I saw it on the big screen for the first time a few years ago. I'm always surprised at how funny it is. Bogart is fucking dry, man. And who doesn't love a good unrequited love story? If you don't get a little weepy hearing As Time Goes By, you have no soul.

Now let's never speak of the Olympics again.

Give a hoot, read a book.

2010-02-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

Oh hey, are you interested in an audiobook you can listen to in your car without developing a paralyzing fear that a cult member and/or murderer is on your tail all the way home at night?

Then Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk, is probably the worst possible choice for you.

Someone whose tastes I occasionally appreciate, and who begrudgingly uses the library even though he is convinced we are tracking him everytime he checks anything out, returned this book on CD awhile ago and told me he'd listened to the whole thing in one sitting. The other night, as I was searching for something to bring home with me, slim pickin's on the shelf meant it was basically a choice between Norah Roberts and Palahniuk, and when in doubt, I always try the darker, hipper option. I haven't slept much since.

Seriously, this book is terrifying. It opens with the narrator inexplicably telling his life story into the flight recorder of a plane he's hijacked, and if you can believe it, the story plummets downhill (downwind?) from there. He's one of the lone survivors of a Waco-esque cult. He's obsessed with death. He's routinely abused by the people he works for. He advertises his phone number as a crisis help hotline and advises the people who call to kill themselves. He quotes highschool home ec minutiae ad nauseam to the point where you will pick up seventeen different home remedies for blood in your carpet.

Wow, you're probably thinking, what a feel-good story.

And yet, I cannot stop listening. This book on CD is the audio equivalent of rubbernecking at a car crash (which, frankly, is not the best jumping off point for something you're going to be listening to while at the wheel of your car). Like all Palahniuk, there's something strangely hilarious about the morbid, morose, hopelessness of it all. This book isn't for the faint of heart, but if you feel like something wildly different and wildly disturbing, check it out. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll maybe feel queasy. It'll be better than Phantom of the Opera. (Not really, though.)

I don't recommend listening to it all at once, though. You will probably need frequent music breaks between tracks of insane confessional. I recommend this song as your first pause.

Cute as a bug's ear, that one.

Lorrie Moore, you have my heart.

2010-02-03T06:25:00.001-08:00

Can we talk about Lorrie Moore for a second?

I've devoured most of her short story collections (try Like Life to start) and was so incredibly and nerdishly excited when she published a novel late last year, A Gate At The Stairs. It finally came in at the library for me, and I've spent the last couple of days wishing I could just unplug the phone, hunker down, and do nothing but read it. It's the story of the ludicrously named college student Tassie Keltijn (this name alone nearly threw me off but don't let it get to you, seriously), who takes a nanny job for a couple in the process of adopting. This incredibly simple premise spirals out into a really remarkable universe of troubled characters, social tension, and amazingly hilarious turns of phrase. Moore is one of those writers whose command of the structure of a sentence is just so perfect, so poetic and so clear, that you find yourself reading bits over and over again. A Gate At The Stairs is part post-9/11 satire, part bildungsroman (how long have I been waiting to use THAT word?), part strange, dark, psychological study. Okay okay, it drags a little at some points, but the dizzying linguistic highs totally compensate for the occasional forays into over the top socio-cultural commentary.

So just so I can prove it, here's the best passage in the book, between Sarah, Tassie's boss and a new adoptive mother, and Tassie. The first part is Sarah's reminiscence of a favourite food:

'"When I was little Dannon made this delicious prune yogurt that came in a waxy brown eight-ounce container. Well, now they don't make any of those things. Completely gone. Although I was in Paris last year and found some there."

'I nodded, trying to imagine the very particular sadness of a vanished childhood yogurt now found only in France. It was a special sort of sadness, individual, and in its inability to induce sympathy, in its tuneless spark, it bypassed poetry and entered science. I tried not to think of my one excursion to Whole Foods, over a year ago, where I found myself paralyzed by all the special food for special people, whose special murmurings seem to be saying, "Out of my way! I want a Tofurkey!" '

My god, the woman is a genius.

Saturday Night at the Movies.

2010-01-30T20:14:00.000-08:00

Burrowing time is Caitlin time. I love nothing more than coming home after a long day, heating up a can of Chef Lonelyheart's soup (or maybe just some Habitant Split Pea) and taking full advantage of the library's DVD collection. Tonight it was The Apartment, starring my time travel secret husband (ie., I would really only want him in or around 1960), Jack Lemmon. Also featuring Shirley MacLaine in my second favourite role of her career (the first is, of course, Ouiser in Steel Magnolias). I love this movie. I hadn't seen it since I was a doe-eyed undergrad on summer vacation, meticulously watching my way through another library's video offerings, on a personal journey of filmic edification. I was really into Billy Wilder. (That was also the summer I developed a mild obsession with Jon Voigt as a sexy paraplegic in Coming Home, but that's a story for another day.) The Apartment has always stuck with me, for a few reasons.

1. I love stories set in mid-century offices, all those people crammed in close, riding the elevators in shifts, sneaking out to the Automat over lunch, throwing crazy Christmas parties.

(Skip ahead to about 1:20.)

2. I love unrequited love that works out perfectly in the end. Coincidentally, this is the second movie I've watched this week where the lovers never even kiss, and yet it is so endearing and romantic and kind-hearted. Sincerity in the face of flaws and downfalls--that's what this world is missing these days.

3. I love that the apartment is a character in the story, because I always feel like my homes are major players in my life too.

4. Jack Lemmon's character is sort of the 1950s Seth Cohen. Not a day goes by when I don't miss The OC with all my heart.

5. Ray Walston, who later went on to play the judge on Picket Fences, has a minor role. Remember Picket Fences? CLASSIC!

6. I love the closing shot of Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine playing cards. It just makes me feel all cozy inside.

7. Billy Wilder was a man ahead of his time.

Then, to undo any quasi-intellectualizing I might have gotten myself into, I watched 2 hours of old episodes of Friends on the internet. I think I'm a Monica.