September 2014 – Rant and Roll

A certain place and time

It’s so crazy to sit down and think about all of the “I was there when…” moments of your life.

In the twenty-nine years that I’ve inhabited this planet, I’ve lived through a couple of these.

For instance, I (obviously) will never forget where I was on 9/11. I woke up to my regular morning DJs talking about the fact that a “small, commuter jet” had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.

I had just entered the kitchen when the second plane hit the second building.

I won’t ever forget the morning of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, the Thai tsunami of 2004, or the Boston bombing attacks of 2013.

I remember Donovan Bailey winning the 100 meter track finals of 1996 like it was yesterday.

I can close my eyes and re-live the relief, shock, and unbearable happiness that surged throughout my tension-wracked body when Sidney Crosby scored the Olympic game-winning goal in 2010.

I (oh so strangely) remember when Kim Campbell beat Jean Charest for the Progressive Conservative Leadership in 1993. I was eight years old, and had stayed up the entire night watching the conclusion of the convention (because obviously I didn’t have parents and Canadian CSPAN was the next best thing.)

I will always recall the intense flood of incredulity and glee when I found out I had been accepted into the UBC creative writing program, or when I was shortlisted for a Rhodes scholarship.

I treasure the heart-bursting joy from every job proposition I’ve ever accepted over the phone.

I remember my first kisses like they were yesterday.

For some very strange reason I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Heath Ledger had passed away. I was in the basement of the UBC student union building, checking my email on one of their truly awful PCs.

These contraptions were held together by nothing more than food crumbs, pizza grease, coffee stains, and sheer will power.

I was using a Yahoo email address back then, and when I signed out I was re-directed back to the site’s landing page. There was his face, a snap of his pre-Batman life, framed by the years of his birth and death.

I recall feeling awkward by just how saddened I was to read this news.

I vividly remember the morning that the United States invaded Iraq. It was the spring of grade twelve and I struggled to make sense of the massive print, splayed across the cover of the Globe and Mail. I can recall thinking to myself that this decision seemed so completely arbitrary and out of the blue. Where in the heck had Iraq – IRAQ? – come from? Weren’t we just talking about Afghanistan?

There are of course moments I wish I didn’t remember: emails sent; words said; secrets betrayed.

These are few, but they cut. Sometimes I’ll be out for a run, and the memory of these moments will hit with such strength that I feel as though all of the breath has been knocked from my body.

Oddly enough, one of my most vivid “world changing” moments is the night that Princess Diana died.

The detail in which I remember this evening is staggering.

August 31. 1997. Sunday night.

Patricia Beckerman was sleeping over. Jessi’s friend Emily was also staying the night.

We’d spent the entire afternoon swimming in our neighbour’s pool. Lois didn’t ever use her backyard, so she loved having us and our friends over for the day. My hands felt like two giant prunes, and I couldn’t stop brushing my fingers tips across my cheeks and nose.

Everything smelled of sunshine and sunscreen.

We’d eaten pizza for super, and my mum even allowed us to drink pop with our ice cream.

We were just about to put on a movie (Anastasia!), but we had to change the TV to channel three in order to press play.

Channel three was CBC, and the news was on.

This was strange as it was not yet ten o’clock. The woman at the news desk was looking so grim. Peter Mansbridge then entered the shot, and he looked like he’d just burst into the studio and clamoured into the nearest suit.

But really, he seemed sad more than anything else.

And then we heard the words.

“Princess Diana has died tonight in Paris.”

And for some reason this news absolutely destroyed me. I didn’t think twice about Diana prior to her passing, but holy crap did the ensuing weeks (and omnipresent media coverage – how apt!) ever throw my pre-pubescent self for a loop.

I bought every Newsweek magazine, cried fat salty tears, and stayed up the entire night through watching her funeral procession.

I was sure I would marry William and help mend his broken, broken heart (while mending mine too in the process.)

To this day it still baffles me why I had the reaction that I did.

But there are some things you just can’t explain.

There are some things you just have to say, “I was there when.”

She’s just so mouthy

Part 1.

I like lipstick.

A lot.

Every time I see a lipstick I get a little bit excited.

Every time I see a lipstick I want to buy it.

I want to open it up and smear it all over my stupid face.

I’ve got great lips, and lipstick looks AMAZING smeared over my stupid face.

I prefer a good matte finish (just get out of here with your useless, disgusting gloss-soaked wands) and I’ll never pay more than $9.99 for a tube of the stuff, but that is because I am both a cheap bastard, and because I am apt to conclude that there cannot be THAT big of a difference between my Joe Fresh collection and what’s being shipped out of the Chanel Institute.

I mean, how could you possible justify charging (least of all PAYING!) fifty dollars for a shade of red that exists in perpetuity in every drug store the wide world over?

I SEE YOU SEPHORA.

When I left my last position I was gifted with a very generous gift certificate to a downtown shopping mall and with these funds I purchased a forty dollar Tarte lip pencil. And while this product is darn fantastic and makes me lips tingle and taste of minty freshness, I would never again purchase this piece of maquillage because forty dollars is basically two to three days’ worth of groceries and I’m only ever eating that pencil if and when things get really dire.

Anyway, no matter how much or little I pay, lipstick makes me feel like an absolute super hero.

I put it on five minutes before leaving work and I am immediately transformed from Grouchy Eye Bag McGrimmeister into Kick-Ass She-Warrior McHyphenate.

Sure, maybe I was born with it, but holy hell if this shade of pink doesn’t crank it up a notch:

That’s right.

Those are your nuts in my vice grip.

ENJOY IT.

I never understanding people who say to me, “I wish I could wear lipstick like you!”

And then when I inform them that there isn’t a single thing prohibiting them from taking part in the universal fun that is lipstick, they respond with, “Oh no, I could never do that!”

And to this, I always just want to yell into their faces – WHY!?

Why in the heck would you think that, you weirdo!?

Unless born lipless (and what a tragedy to befall anyone!), everyone is 100% capable of wearing lipstick.

And I urge you, and everyone to try it.

I’ll hold your hand and everything.

But it’ll cost you fifty dollars in Chanel product.

And your nuts.

Part 2.

I don’t like Mark Messier.

In fact, Mark Messier is like the anti-lipstick.

I don’t get excited when I see him.

I don’t want to smear him all over my face.

I wouldn’t spend ANY money on him, and he doesn’t make me feel unstoppable.

And much to my chagrin, he’s EVERYWHERE.

The dude is all over Youtube like some terrifying, leather-clad social media STI.

Every time he pops up, Marc (my husband) asks, “Is this a Cialis ad?”

AND IT TOTALLY IS.

I don’t know why Mr. Messier grinds my gears to the extent that he does.

Perhaps it’s the ghost of my hard core emotional hangover from the summer of 1994 (combined with the broken heart I suffered in 2011.)

Perhaps it’s the memory of his crappy Lays potato chip ads.

Perhaps it’s because the NHL is such a ridiculous bush league, run by bums, dullards, and hacks, that any reminder of this organization and the garbage it stands for makes me want to ralph.

Basically folks, it could be a whole myriad of things.

But all I really want to say is that NO ONE IS ASKING YOU ANYTHING MARK MESSIER.

You and lip gloss can just get the heck out of here.

Part 3.

Yesterday I bought a homeless person a hot chocolate.

I try to do these things as often as I can, although it can be hard. Living my own busy, silly little life can leave me so caught up in getting from A to B (or achieving A to Z) that I don’t often see the different humanities co-existing right in front of my eyes.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t spend enough of my life with my eyes wide open. That I should be feeling more, doing more – affecting more positive change within my day to day activities.

But then I know I am being too hard on myself. That I work very hard to ensure that I am engaged and making a difference every day, both personally and professionally.

I cannot do everything for everyone, every day and all of the time.

No one could do this even if they try.

Which is why I do.

Which is why I really, really try.

You want fries with that?

Sometimes when I am riding skytrain into work, and I am feeling particularly Dostoevskian, I am apt to conclude that life is just one ceaseless and ever-growing French fry craving.

This is grim.

(And McDostoevskian.)

But it is also completely symptomatic of what it’s like to be navigating the throes of my personal, and very inconsistent existential life crisis.

One day I’m just fine.

And the next, I’m expecting Inspector Porfiry Petrovich to board the train at Joyce-Collingwood and arrest me in front of all the other semi-dazed travellers, proclaiming me to be a student and murderer in equal succession.

(I think some people just call this melodramatic malaise “being in their late twenties.”)

Plus my arrest would probably be for fare evasion.

Or maybe, anti-social behaviour.

I’m no ax-murderer.

To combat this insanity (inanity?) I have been listening to a lot of ridiculously fantastic music.

I know I just wrote a post about movies that highlighted a few of the different films that have impacted my life, but I’ve really been thinking quite a bit of late about all the things that up until this point, have made me, well, “me.”

During the summer between first and second year of my undergrad, I lived in Halifax and hung out quite a bit with a fabulous lass named Kathleen.

Kathleen had a touch of the nihilism in her (as are wont all twenty year-old self-styled academics), but she was also greatly distressed by the thought of all of the books she would never read, all of the movies she would never watch, and all of the songs that she would forget about and never hear again.

So in an effort to ensure she would remember as many of these things as possible, she would carry about a small notebook and write the names of anything and everything artistic that she would encounter throughout her daily meanderings.

Her scribblings were to her, a sort of literary, musical, and cinematic catch-all.

Of late, I too have begun to employ this system.

For the past few months, I haven’t been able to leave the house without the small pink notebook that is now chock-a-block of semi-flushed out blog post ideas, daily to-do lists, and half-cocked philosophical musings.

I just hope that nobody murders me and this is the first thing that CTV finds on my rapidly cooling body.

Nobody wants to be remembered by their inability to remember to purchase both dish detergent AND QTips.

(Why can’t I remember QTips!?)

But it’s also been super helpful.

Because sometimes inspiration strikes, or you hear a tune so brilliant that it’s everything you can do not to bust a move right then and there in front of Save-on-Food’s overpriced and under-stocked egg selection, or you see a character so desperate and strange that you can only assume that they fell out of a wormhole connecting our universe with whatever bizarro world exists out past the recesses of our equally wacky solar system.

You know.

The usual.

But to get back to the music of which I earlier wrote – there is so much stuff that I wish to share with you all.

The first being my latest obsession: Jungle.

A modern soul collective based out of London, UK, they are so absolutely groovetastic it boggles the mind.

I’ve been listening to their songs on continuous repeat for the past two days.

Check them out:

They are coming to Vancouver on October 14^th and I cannot wait to get my epic dance on. For this night (and never this night only) I will be the dancing queen.

Young and sweet.

Next, another British band of whom I am completely enamoured: Bastille.

Every so often I like a band so much that I will break my “no music EVER whilst training” oath, and stick in ye olde earbuds as I tie up my running shoes.

I have broken this pledge many times over the past month because of this band.

Every song of their feels as though they are speaking directly to me, and by speak, I mean mailing an emotionally resonant and personally impactful treatise express-post straight into my soul.

They are SO GOOD.

Finally, new Spoon.

(For those neophytes out there, the band is just called “Spoon” not “new Spoon.” They just have released their latest EP.)

And for lack of a more poetic descriptor, it is bloody fantastic.

I don’t think this band is even capable of releasing a crap album, because everything they release is delicious.

And inspired.

So there you are.

For all of you who are also currently conquering your own existential demons (or at least riding out the “what does it all mean!?” wave), I suggest you put on your dancing shoes and break it down.

One French fry craving at a time.

Roll the clip

Alright folks, let’s get a few things straight.

Today is September 20, 2014.

We are approximately three days away from the beginning of the Autumnal season.

I am twenty-nine years of age.

You are whatever age you currently are.

This is where I am sitting:

Everything is both beautiful and terrible. Everything is both unadulterated brilliance and unmitigated bonkerness.

Everything just is.

Sometimes, whenever I start to get really down by all of the fuckery that seems to dominate our world’s discourse (not to mention actions!), I just really try and focus on all the amazing, beautiful, and breathtaking things and events of which I am privileged enough to both behold and partake.

And sometimes, I just think about the quiet world of my early morning, pre-work runs.

When the sky is a mottled blend of purples, pinks, greens, and blues.

When the sky is the most beautiful bruise.

I run down along the boardwalk with my heart in my throat, and my tears in my eyes. My legs feel as though they are six miles long, and my arms pump, just like my blood pumps, and everything feels right and strong.

And I know that I am flying.

Sometimes I feel silly and trite writing again and again what it feels like to run. How propelling myself forward as hard and as fast as I possibly can brings on such infinite joy.

But I can’t.

Just like running itself, I cannot stop.

I cannot swallow these words.

They are a compulsion.

They are a joy

…

Work has been a little batty of late (50+ hour weeks), spent zipping about like zipping things (zippers!!).

However, seeing as though my fellow colleagues are gentlewomen and squires of the highest order, I cannot bring myself to complain.

The fact that I am passionate beyond a thought about my job and the work that I do is, of course, another boon.

However, this is not to say that we can’t have a great laugh at our own expense, especially in the lead-up to a very large event, of which we have been working on since March.

March!

Case in point:

I, like we all, have the capacity to be a grumpy cat.

Hence, I am actually grumpy cat.

…

Remember movies?

I do, but barely.

And this leaves me feeling a little melancholy.

Because movies used to mean so much. They used to mean so much to me.

I recall the first movie that I ever saw in a theatre.

Beauty and the Beast was everything a movie should be (in my very discerning six year old mind). It was funny and scary. There was a beautiful, brilliant, strong female lead who loved to read and who wouldn’t take crap from all the ridiculous idiots who populated her “provincial town.” She, rightly, loathed Gaston, and held her own when it came to The Beast’s infantile temper tantrums.

In truth, it’s probably the only Disney princess flick I’ll ever be okay showing my future kidlets (but that’s another post for another time.)

I am fairly certain it was my nanny Suzanne who took me to the movie, and it was her gift to me on my sixth birthday. We went to the old (and now sadly demolished) Capital Six, back when Granville Street was in its full grunge-tastic glory.

Memories!

The first “grown-up” movie I ever watched in theatres was when Shona Langmuir, Patricia Beckerman (aka “The Girls”), and I went and saw The First Wives Club when we were in grade five.

Note: please let me emphasize the term “theatres” in the above sentence. My family were rather lax when it came to flicks seen by us kids, and we were viewing adult movies at a very, very early age. I remember watching the Fugitive on Easter Monday in grade two.

Nothing like collecting a bunch of chocolate eggs and then sitting down as a family to watch Harrison Ford clear his name!

Good grief.

But I digress. Holy damn did I ever dig The First Wives Club. Sure I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, and the scene where Brenda eats dinner by herself absolutely destroyed me. But it didn’t matter. It was three women who loved each other, out in the world, kicking ass and taking names.

Too this day I re-watch it at least once a year.

You don’t own me!

Looking at both this film and Beauty and the Beast would you say that there seems to be a pattern emerging as to the type of movie that really resonated with my younger self?

Oh to be that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, newly emerging feminist!

There are so many more movies that, collectively, with the thousands of books, songs, and other miscellaneous artistic detritus that I’ve encountered and loved along the way, have helped inform who I am as a young woman today.

For instance: I LOVE Forrest Gump.

Next time you see me, ask me to quote the entire movie. I will do this for you.

I also love Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and A Fish Called Wanda, and I will always adore Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I saw Amelie in grade eleven with my first boyfriend and spent the entire summer pretending to be her.

I adore Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy. My favourite of the three films being the darkest and most brilliant black comedy of all time, “Blanc.”

I will go to my death extolling the cinematic virtues of The Big Lebowski. For me, nothing will ever be funnier than this brilliant pieces of the Coen Brothers subconscious. I quote it all of the time and there are total parts of my and Marc’s vernacular made up solely by movie lines. I can also never look at a bowling alley the same way again.

It’s weird.

I love dramatic films as much as I do comedy, however I just am never one to really revisit these masterpieces, and as such they don’t influence my life to the degree as my favourite comedies.

And it’s not as though these two genres cannot exist simultaneously. In no uncertain terms are they are not mutually exclusive concepts.

It just takes one hell of a filmmaker to pull this off.

(Like the Coen Brothers.)

But isn’t movie watching also so much about the experience? The memory of that time spent in the theater? Where you were? Who you were with? Where you were in your life?

Probably one of my most cherished movie related memories is from the first few months of Marc’s and my courtship. Only four months into what is now an eleven year love affair, the two of us went to see Love Actually on a dark, went and very cold Vancouver November afternoon.

I had spent the night at his place and, because I was in my weird “only skirts, no pants” phase, I was wearing a pair of his cords because I didn’t have a clean pair of tights. They were absolutely huge, and I looked a bit of a sight. We had spent the morning at a community theatre on the Westside where I auditioned for a part in an upcoming play (spoiler: I didn’t get the part!), and then had bussed downtown. Arriving at the theatre (also the Capital Six!), we ran up the escalator so we wouldn’t be late for the previews.

I so wish I could properly communicate how much I felt watching that movie, sitting next to the man (the boy!) for whom I felt so, so, so strongly.

My body completely electric as I held his hand, I laughed at Bill Nighy’s amazing portrayal of Billy Mac and felt my heart break and break and break for Emma Thompson.

I just loved it.

I hate that I am even typing this, but for me, at that moment in my life, love truly was all around.

(I’m sorry!)

But it’s true.

And that’s why movies matter.

And why, despite the fact that I never go to the theatre anymore, and I only use my Netflix to watch old episodes of QI and MI5, I’ll never let them go.

I couldn’t even if I tried.

Dear diary, today was a good day.

Friends!

It’s been almost a month since I’ve last put fingers to laptop in an earnest attempt to pen the CRAP out of a blog post.

But things be happening.

At the beginning of August I traveled to the lush and magical land of Hawaii and spent eight days hiking, running, swimming, snorkeling, attending weddings, and waking up at the crack of dawn in order to witness the most spectacular sunrises of life (again, and again, and again!)

I mean, if there is one thing I can say about crawling out of bed every day at 5:30am – on vacation at that – it’s just that there are some things in life that are hands down worth it EVERY TIME.

I mean, why wouldn’t you want to get up early everyday when you’re viewing things like THIS:

IT’S JUST TOO GOOD.

Some other snaps:

Travelling home I was so incredibly knackered from all of the physical activity, coupled with the early morning beach trips, that it was all I could do to keep my eyes open as the flight attendant prepped myself and the other folks sitting in the emergency exit row. As soon as she left, I put up my hood, wrapped by arms about my body, and settled down to (what I hoped to be) a relatively uneventful five and a half hours of airplane rest.

I was just drifting off to dreamland, when another flight attendant woke me up with a look of grave concern on her face.

“Yes?” I asked.

She looked at me and loudly whispered, “I’m sorry, but I just need to confirm before we take off, as you’re sitting in the emergency exit row, that you are over sixteen years of age?”

…

Oh how I laughed (and thanked her, weirdly?)

However, I did want to clarify that she was asking due to my physical appearance and not, you know, in reaction to my general comportment.

She just looked at me weirdly and then told me that I looked young for my age.

(I probably shouldn’t have used the word “comportment.” I think it REALLY aged me.)

However, I won’t lie and say that I didn’t smile and smile as I drifted off to (my much needed,) thirty thousand foot, recycled air dreamscape.

Strangely, these early morning events never curtailed after arriving home from Oahu.

In fact, for about two months now, I’ve been getting up before work and running like a loon, mostly in preparation for my marathon on November 2^nd, but also because the weather has been so darned hot I cannot fathom leaving the office in the afternoon and belting out a 10k in 25+ celcius temperatures.

Because gross.

Also. Man. November 2^nd.

Let’s not beat around the bush here folks – that date is very soon. And what with how quickly days seem to be slipping between my fingers, I’ll probably take a long nap in a week or two and wake up on race day fretting about the fact that I’ve forgotten to pick up my race package in time.

Good grief.

OKAY. What else has been hammering at the proverbial workbench of life…

I have been doing quite a few speaking engagements and interviews for work, hosting the radio show, Big Sistering it up, and trying to get my head wrapped around the idea of sifting through approximately 400 blog posts in the attempt to MAYBE put together a book proposal based on all of these insane musings.

Because you know – everybody has to have a goal right?

Or else what the heck is the point of chewing through those leathers straps every morning!?

Since being gifted with free HD cable, Marc and I have been watching a crap ton of US Open tennis because everything else on the ol’ boobtube is absolute garbage, and the only thing that will ever get me to turn on the television is electric athletes and their incredible displays of strength and agility.

Anything and everything else? Just GTFO.

On September 16^th my AMAZING friend Alex and I are headed to the Kaiser Chiefs concert and I have all of the excitement.

Equally because Alex is truly one of the greatest people I am lucky to count as a friend in my life, and also because the Kaiser Chiefs are such tip-top groovemeisters and I cannot wait to get my epic dance moves on to their fab tunes.

The last time this band was in town I was forced to go to the concert by myself, which in retrospect wasn’t all that horrid and turned out to be quite a blast. However, in my nervous state, I drank half a bottle of wine and ended up speaking in the absolute worst British accent of all time to the teenager who wouldn’t stop pestering me for my phone number on the skytrain home.

Because I am the worst and desperately needed him to shut up, I just threw in the towel and gave him Marc’s cell phone number.

(Which I am still laughing about to this day.)

(This may also be why I am mistaken for sixteen year-olds on airplanes.)

Finally, I have been reading some absolutely excellent texts of late, including the newest Murakami (melancholy and beautiful, as always), some old Henning Mankell (that I somehow missed? P.S. I am planning a trip to Sweden next April so STAY TUNED), some Jo Nesbo (that stuff is DARK!), some Lev Grossman (TERRIBLE STAY AWAY – dude is an amazing writer but absolutely crap at storytelling and character development), some Carl Sagan (my imaginary boyfriend), much Dostoevsky and Bradbury (my two literary husbands), and will next be venturing into a biography on the late, and utterly devastatingly brilliant Alan Turning.

Like so many things in this bonkers world of ours – I cannot wait.

And I leave you all with this little ditty:

SEPTEMBER

A sept is an English word for a division of a family, especially of a Scottish or Irish. The word may derive from the Latin saeptum, meaning “enclosure” or “fold”

Ember: a small piece of burning or glowing coal or wood in a dying fire.

ERGO – September = fireplace.

And that has been your piece of monthly trivia.

Pun intended (of course.)