4 months ago

confession time: I am vain and indecisive

If you know me, you know this. Chances are, you’ve also been texted or later shown in person about umpteen million cell phone pictures of me trying on clothes in changing rooms and been grilled about how my butt looks or if I’m ‘too shoulder-y’. I know this is annoying, but my friends are sweet and they indulge me. I have also mastered the convenient ‘cellphone picture taking throat clear’ to mask the sound of my camera clicks in quieter dressing rooms. I am sure that I have creeped out many a retail worker, despite my best efforts…it also means I am usually making a weird face in the photos.

With my closest fashion advisers (I felt lame typing that, but letting it stand) 6000+ kms away on the East coast this presents a problem while I am in Vancouver. Sure, they still get inundated with pictures from me but the time difference means that I am left hanging sometimes for feedback. That also felt lame to type, but there you have it.

So that being said, I will pose this question to the internet: Is the neck on this sweater dress as lame as this post? Feedback required.

Not a question of life-or-death importance, I fully realize. But still. Sometimes a girl’s gotta know these things.

1 year ago

a question I was asked suddenly this afternoon out of the blue.

I have to admit I have been asking myself that question lately. I had the opportunity to leave Vancouver today but I didn’t take it. Guess I’m here for at least a little while longer. It looks like my immediate future involves steel toed boots.

Do they make steel toed wellies?

On Saturday I was at the bar. A girl I met told me I reminded her of the ‘good girl on the new 90210’, which totally amused me, especially because she also mentioned the first thing she noticed was my slash of bright red lipstick. Go figure.

I had to google Shenae Grimes to see what she looked like. Maybe we look alike. At any rate, on that night I had the last bedraggles of blonde hair with some serious trailer park roots*. By the next morning, I had dragged my beer-hangovery arse to the salon chair and now I look like this:

*apologies to all our mobile home living friends who might have been offended by that.

1 year ago

Check out Bowie’s Dylan impression at 5:20 Correction, its 2:14

1 year ago

vanity fair: covering all the angle

SO much has been said about the situation in Libya, leave it to Vanity Fair to highlight the forgotten stories. Like this one about what an atrocious dresser Gaddaffi is.

(To be fair, I love Vanity Fair and its the only magazine I read.)

1 year ago
”

Was the quiche crispy enough for you?

New Amsterdam Cafe employee to a patron, Sunday.
1 year ago
”

I have been doing a lot of fake laughing tonight.

Chick in the bathroom at The Morrissey to her friend, Saturday night. She sounded exhausted.
1 year ago
”

Have you googled Chris Browns peen yet??? Hilarious

Text I just received from my friend Ellen Reg. Easily the best text I’ve received in awhile.
1 year ago
This is the only look at Bowie that is completely unawed by and maybe even a little contemptuous of him.

I eased myself into an afternoon nap today with the Cracked Actor Bowie doc. I wish I had more interesting dreamscapes to report, but I remember nothing. I did wake up extremely disoriented and have been playing ‘Sweet Thing’ on repeat.

I loved this. From the performance footage (he was so spot on for being so supremely fucked up) to the odd moments like Bowie drinking milk and listening to American music in a car in a desert and Bowie playing an early version of magnetic poetry with his lyrics with a wineglass of milk and an army of coke rails nearby. Milk seemed to figure heavily into Bowie’s life in those days, not that you could tell as he was alarmingly gaunt. Likely due to the other white stuff, which was apparent without being blatantly shown on screen; he was all jitters and nose wipes and doomy, paranoid statements.

Cracked Actor is not only one of my favourite Bowie songs, but one of the few songs I could solidly and consistantly place in the ‘good chance I would drunkenly perform at karaoke’ category, a small one that probably only includes one other song*, because ‘drunk enough for karaoke’ for me is damn near comatose. Which makes singing hard, I reckon.

I cringed for the Bowie fanclub that was interviewed, all earnestness and bad hair. I would steal every single one of their shirts though. Would love to see where they are today. I smell a follow up doc.

Actually, thats not a bad idea. The vignettes of interviews with Bowie concert attendees (oh you pretty things) was interesting. I saw Bowie in 2003 at a big stadium while at school and I had trouble feeling passionate about music on the same all encompassing level of my adolescence after that night. I remember marvelling at the crowd as Bowie sang “your mother’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl” during the opening song. Looking around at the people at the show I saw the original pretty things had come out from the suburbs, they were my parents age, time hadn’t been kind and some of them had even brought their span. Don’t get me wrong, Bowie put on an amazing show and I loved it, but I never looked at music the same after that night. I somehow stared mortality hugely in the face that night and realized the role youth plays in things like passion and rebellion. The Bowie kids were the original freaks, making parents nervous with their glammy ambiguity. Is this what happens to all freaks eventually? Is everyone just destined to end up in the burbs in the end, or what? I realized everyone has to grow up eventually, that night. For me, Bowie killed Peter Pan at that show. Where is the kid who explained to an interviewer that he was drawn to the Bowie universe because, well, “hes from Phoenix” and he just….came? Whats he doing these days? 

Still in Phoenix?

*The other is Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’, which, probably needs to be done at near blackout levels of intoxication, y’know, for authenticity’s sake.

1 year ago

Kate Wilson has my respect

Kate Wilson faced and conquered one of my biggest professional fears, this week.

I’m a radio news anchor by trade. I could also hiccup for Canada in the Olympics should it somehow be declared an amateur sport. I can’t tell you how many times these two areas of my life have come dangerously close to intersecting.

Well, for Kate Wilson it happened. You can listen to the audio here. Ms. Wilson is an overnight anchor at a radio station in Melbourne, Australia. There is probably a school of thought that would say this newscast should never have happened; that when it became clear she would not recover by newstime, the cast should have been scrapped. Normally, I would say that she did a disservice to the people involved in the (very serious!) stories by hiccuping her way through them. However, there are two big factors at play in this particular case: miraculously, she didn’t succumb to any accompanying laughter (I would’ve. So would you. There is just something about being unable to laugh that makes it absolutely impossible not to, we’ve all experienced it.) and it was 3 am. If Kate were a less composed newsreader or this was a drive time slot, she shouldn’t have even attempted the newscast.

But she did, and she made out admirably well. For that she has my respect and kudos.

My first and, so far, worst newscast screw up happened in Charlottetown, at my first full time radio job. I was the afternoon anchor and because my boss was actually on air with me I used to get really nervous around him. Needless to say, we didn’t make a lot of radio gold together, so mostly we just avoided talking. One day I got to the end of the news portion of the cast and the last story before sports was a ‘kicker’ about, randomly enough, Ted Nugent’s mother. If memory serves, the story had something to do with some sort of giant memorial to Mrs. Nuge and required me to say the words “7800 pound red granite rock.”

They came out “7800 pound red granite wok” instead.

You almost definitely had to be there, but for some reason, my mind drifted away for the briefest of moments and conjured up the bizarre image of a bloody massive red stone frying pan making up a whole mess of stir fry. Contrast that image with Ted Nugent and my brain just vapourized on the spot and I was done. I struggled to continue with the sports and weather, but out of the corner of my eye I could see my boss’s shoulders shaking as he tried to contain himself. I would just get my shit together and get a glimpse of him absolutely dying silently across from me and I would be off again. Luckily, it was just sports and weather and I didn’t have to deal with any serious news of any actual gravity.

If my boss hadn’t have been laughing, I probably would’ve been ok. It was just that, we never laughed together, and…he was the boss! If he couldn’t keep it together how could I be expected to?

I had that audio for the longest time, but have just realized it went in the garbage when I left Nova Scotia. Thats a shame. Maybe I’ll just have to make do by travelling to see this giant red boulder of Ma Nugent’s, wherever it is in Illinois.

…And then go for Chinese afterwards.

1 year ago

MY BRAND NEW HULA HOOP HAS ARRIVED! I just wish it didn’t look so much like an embarrassingly large sex toy in it’s packaging. Man, what must the upstairs roommates have thought when they signed for this package?

I ended up going with a Pixie Hoop so that I could get the travel kind that folds up. I obviously had to leave my old hoop behind in Halifax because there was no way it was fitting in my suitcase. Plus it was kinda bent anyway. I’m not crazy keen on the colours or sparklyness of this hoop, but whatever, it folds up and that means I can take it wherever I go. We are going to be partners in crime.

My apartment just got a lot more FUN! …and perhaps my arse will get a lot smaller. HA. Who am I kidding.

1 year ago

Foursquare declares rudest city

Ok, I’m approaching ‘dead horse’ territory and I know this. I will move on, I swear…

Foursquare has decided that Manchester England is the rudest city. Read further in the article, and you’ll discover the basis for this proclamation is the amount of curse words people use in their Foursquare posts (are they called posts? I don’t Foursquare cos I have an Un-Smart Phone) which is slightly misleading. I think if thats the data you’re going with, perhaps a more apt declaration would be “Manchester England is City Most in Need of its Mouth Washed Out with Soap.” There’s a difference between being ‘unwelcoming and unfriendly’ rude, and simply having a potty mouth.

I visited Manchester in May of ‘08 and I found it to be perfectly lovely! I liked it because it seemed like more of a relaxed, casual alternative to London (where people were actually quite rude I found), much more my speed. Plus there was tonnes to do and I saw a great Duffy show down the street from where the Hacienda used to be (condos now, oddly) AND got a peek at the ‘D & S Alahan’ sign on the Coronation Street set. All in a barely 2-day trip. Beat that.

Manchester was so warm and friendly, as it happens, an exchange my travelling partner had with a Manc barman became a running joke for a long while afterwards. We were having pints and pies somewhere, absolutely gorging and filling our faces. He managed to finish his, but I, despite being a lifelong dedicated member of the Clean Plate Club, could not. The burly, gruff barman lumbered over to take our plates. He silently removed mine, with the napkin thrown on top in ‘I Tap!’ defeat. My travelling partner, however, had clearly earned his respect. He got a nod and a ‘Good job, mate.’ A warm stamp of approval. I have given out many ‘Good job, mate’s since then. As a nod to the lovely and friendly city of Manchester, which I hope to make a much longer, return visit to some day.

1 year ago

(musings on) lady politics (after a few beer)

*It should be noted this was written during pints Sunday night. It was early on in the evening, but there is just the sliiiiiiightest whiff of booze about it’ss chatty disregard for sentence structure and slight, thankfully brief, deviation into memory lane/the therapist’s couch…

So I find myself in a Province that has just technically elected a female Premier. This is technically exciting. I have province-hopped the last few years and have prided myself on my ability to land during an election. God, I love voting!

This time I wasn’t allowed, but that’s ok, I wasn’t the only one. Still, no matter what your politics, an exciting time to be in BC. Or …if you scoff at ‘exciting’, how about interesting? I’m sure we can at least agree on that.

I know very little about the outgoing Premier except that he is a colourful fellow with a DUI. I am trying not to let my new Premier-Elect’s radio background colour my judgement, for that is just a small and recent part of her CV, as I understand it.

Amidst all this, I can’t help but think back to Grade 8 when I participated in the race for Student Council. It was me up against the most popular girl in school and another girl. The most popular girl in school was fond of saying her ambition was to become Canada’s first female Prime Minister. It was 1998. I would sighed, think of Kim Campbell, & bit my tongue.

I came up with an intelligent campaign, irreverant posters and a long speech that set out my platform. Public speaking was my forte. It was my only shot.

I don’t remember much the speeches, only that when my main rival got up with no notes she seemed to parrot bits of mine directly. Someone later told me that she had fallen asleep while memorizing her speech the night before and improvised hers. Hence the similarities. If only I had gone second….

Of course, she won. Although luckily for me, her family moved away shortly thereafter. I became student council President by proxy. The Principal actually called a pep rally when she and her family left so that the school could say goodbye to them, which seems rather perverse and like something out of a John Hughes movie in retrospect.

I didn’t pursue “student politics” into high school and have always regretted it. But so crushed & disillusioned was I by the popularity contest that I lost in grade 8, I abandoned it. A pity.

I think of that now as I soak in the knowledge in that Christy Clark is our Premier-elect. I am a newcomer to this province, and perhaps a biased radio nerd. But damnit, I’m excited. Let’s see what happens next, BC.

1 year ago
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Keep on doin’ what you’re doin’, dear..

My grandmother. Who called me today from Cape Breton while I was walking down Broadway with this inspirational message. I think really she called to ask what the weather was like because she is an obsessive, amateur meteorologist who must know ‘what its doing’ in all parts of Canada at all times. Now that she knows my Vancouver number, I expect lots of weather check up calls masked as ‘go get ‘em tiger!’ encouragement. ahh, bless
1 year ago

English Bay is one of my new favourite places in the world ever. There are a myriad of reasons, some of them entangled with some time spent there with my favourite person, staring at the water, envisioning a life together. But I would like it otherwise, and none the less.

I know I will go back again and again as long as I am in Vancouver. Every place I have lived, I have needed a place just to go. A go to place.  In my hometown it was the graveyard at the end of my mom’s street. In Charlottetown it was the park across from the nunnery. There were multiple places in Halifax, but most notably a bench in the Hydrostone. I’m blanking on Ottawa, only remembering a park with swings behind the last place I lived, but there were others. At any rate, the point is, in Vancouver, it is English Bay.  The Pacific is new to me and I’m digging it. The shells are so uniformly purple and I am still puzzled by this. The benches along the walkway have all been sponsored in memory of someone and the messages are heartfelt. I like the casual walk down Davie to get TO English Beach. I don’t like Starbucks, but there’s a friendly one right there with a heater outside.

There’s also Sylvia’s hotel and bar. Apparently the first cocktail bar in Vancouver back in the ‘50’s. Its font caught my eye last time and tonight I spent my evening there. Good atmosphere. Great view of the darkening Bay; I watched the tankers switch their lights on. Good food and service, and nice chats outside with an Italian skier. After a week in ‘The Sick Bay’, I needed out. I will find out tomorrow how well beer mixes with my antibiotics, but in terms of my mental health I needed it. I wrote that prescription and Sylvia filled it. I hope that’s ok.

1 year ago