Hearts in the Margins

Brevity is occasionally the enemy of wit.

2011-07-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

Warning: the tenor of this article is different from the rest of this blog. That's right: SERIOUS POST. Travel on at your discretion.

On July 28, Shinder Purewal (@shinderpurewal on Twitter) tweeted the following item:

ShinderPurewal
Vancouver's so-called "Pride Parade" should be banned. It is vulgar...to say the least! #cdnpoli

This tweet raises many niggling questions, the most pressing being "who the fuck is Shinder Purewal?" Mr. Purewal wears many hats, but perhaps most relevantly, he was the recent Liberal candidate in the riding of Surrey North (a hop, skip and a jump away from my former ridings of Newton-North Delta and South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale). He's also a professor of political science at Kwantlen University, and his Twitter bio goes on to describe him as a "life-long learner, ex-citizenship judge, writer, soccer dad, foodie, husband/son," and "community activist," though he's evidently very specific about which community that entails.

Since the tweet and subsequent ensuing shitstorm of bad PR went live, Mr. Purewal has further clarified his position, saying that he is opposed to "vulgar displays of open sexuality" and that he feels that he cannot take his family to the event. It's likely Purewal isn't self-aware enough to recognise the heterosexism inherent in holding up the approval of a heterosexual family as the arbiter of queer sexuality, or indeed to recognise the sticky ambiguity of a phrase like "open sexuality" in general.

It's sad that this attitude is seen as emblematic of Surrey, a place where the worst discrimination I suffered growing up was a dodgy case of indigestion after swallowing too much water at the Newton Wave Pool, but I'm less here to dwell on the nature of bigotry, accidental or otherwise -- because people have said and will continue to say far worse.

What I'd like to talk about is words.

I firmly believe, for better or worse, that Twitter is a medium that encourages people to speak before thinking. It's odd that way because the effect really should be the opposite: one would imagine that with fewer words at a person's disposal, that person would be more inclined to choose them selectively to convey intent as clearly as possible. However, it seems instead to be that people take brevity for informality, and whip off tweets as one might make casual asides to a friend. And God knows I'm as guilty as this of anyone else; as someone who routinely sticks his foot in his mouth more than maybe anyone I've ever met, I'm sure combing my Twitter or this blog or my life would produce at least three hundred comments which would mortify and appall me.

I'm all for candour, in my life and in my online celebrities. It's the reason Amanda Bynes's Twitter is more entertaining than President Obama's. But when people take brevity and candour as synonyms, the potential for misinterpretation and hurtful remarks rises dramatically, because we fail to take into account that the sentiment we want to express, with all of its necessary qualifiers and caveats, is occasionally too complicated to discuss in 140 characters. That's why it's easy to Tweet that you're pissed at the rude hipster who coughed on your shoulder at Urban Outfitters but immensely more difficult to tweet intelligently about Darfur.

It's also easy to forget when tweeting recklessly that what might be a 140-character-or-less problem for you is not necessarily one for the hundreds/thousands of people who will hear you publicly say it. For thousands of marginalized LGBTQ, the Parade can symbolize identity, reclamation, exhibition, community, acceptance-- or marginalization, greed, body shame -- or fun, excitement, thrill. For Mr. Purewal, it means he needs to find an alternate activity for his kids for a day, like Netflixing Bride Wars or something (for which I am truly sorry because that is an awful movie that no one should have to watch).

Having tweeted about such a loaded issue also means that Mr. Purewal is now in the unenviable position of having to clarify the nuances of a position which he grossly oversimplified. It's possible that he's not very articulate even given a 140,000 character limit -- his public comments on his public comments seem to amount to "I like them as long as they don't flaunt it" -- and one would expect a professor and a politician to dodge loaded words like "vulgar" and "so-called" and "open sexuality" when speaking about a marginalised group toward which he claims to have no animosity. The point stands however that if Mr. Purewal had taken the time to compose and articulate his thoughts -- as politicians and professors should but often don't -- there would still be many people who disagreed with his views, but at least he wouldn't be dithering around now trying to clear the whole thing up as the new pariah of the Twittersphere.

I guess my point is, speak thoughtfully, and if you can't speak thoughtfully, at least tweet thoughtfully. This is something I will try to adhere to, but I shoot off at the mouth and I expect to fuck up and get my knuckles rapped. However, for your convenience, here are some things that are difficult to speak about intelligently in 140 characters or less:

abortion
genocide
the state of Israel
organized religion
public breastfeeding
the Holocaust
rights of sex workers
Canada's treatment of its First Nations people
transmisogyny
(_____________) this is by no means a comprehensive list.

If you feel compelled to tweet about these things, by all means; I'm no one's mother. But it's possible you should take the time to compose your thoughts intelligently, type them out, and then just link to them with one of those adorable tiny links people are so stoked on. And always remember, in Twitter and in life, that while it's possible your voice is valued and integral, it's just as likely that your uninformed contribution to the discussion is nowhere near as important as you believe it is. Because after all, who the fuck is Shinder Purewal?

Shiloh is an asshole (but I'm not telling you anything you don't already know).

2010-11-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

Shiloh hates your BMI.

Canada's number one export is canola. Our number two export is HATRED OF PREPZ. Every five years or so, there's a Canadian teen pop sensation whose persona is based around their particular brand of Hot Topic high school edginess. The most egregious is obviously Avril Lavigne, but there's others (I worship at the altar of the forgotten Skye Sweetnam). The biggest asshole of the group is Shiloh. I know it seems hard to be a bigger asshole than someone who is literally dating Brody Jenner, but hear me out.

The hallmark of the prep-hating pop star is the notion that anyone who is either socially adept or conventionally attractive is a horrific person in the vein of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials and needs to chemically castrated to keep their brand of hate from spreading around the word and infecting the purest, most altruistic members of our youth -- those who wear a lot of black nail varnish and sit around in their converted basement-bedrooms listening to Dahvie Vanity mp3s, smoking weed and cruising the web for sales on bondage pants. Words commonly heard in anti-prep anthems include "clones," "plastic," "magazines," and "whatever." Especially magazines. Prep-haters hate magazines because they tell us how to act.

They also hate wallpaper paste.

Number one on the list is Shiloh, who is from Abbotsford and it fucking shows. Let's look at two of Shiloh's videos and let her explain to us why not having bangs makes you a bad person, starting with Operator (A Girl Like Me):

In this video, Shiloh gallivants around town with her Manic Panic army while a blonde prepz gets her cell phone stolen (by a skateboarder, which is Shiloh-code for a "good person"), has her latte thrown in her face, loses her dog, and gets drenched in water. The video ends with her standing and crying about all of the assaults she has endured in a three-minute period of time. Sample lyrics include, "the TV says that I'm not the girl that I should be," "the magazines are messing with identity," and "I don't wanna be no drastic, spastic, superficial plastic clone." (Anyone playing prep-hating bingo now has a blackout, which is good because black is the only good colour.)

In my head, this video originally had a Lady Gaga-esque nine-minute long pre-video cinematic where the blonde prepz girl is revealed as some sort of serial cannibal-rapist in the vein of Jeffrey Dahmer, or else she holds the kids she's babysitting at gunpoint and makes them molest each other. Just something really graphic and disturbing that justifies the treatment she receives in this video. And then at the last minute the label called and warned Shiloh that she's alienating her audience and to just go ahead with the 'dancing on the street' version of the video. Because otherwise, the blonde girl in the video gets my intense sympathy and Shiloh just comes off like a dick. I mean... someone steals her cell phone! That's not okay! She loses her dog. She clearly loves her dog and seems to be an attentive pet owner. Her only crime is that terrible wig, and in a bad hair contest, Shiloh is the odds-on favourite everytime. Having a bad wig doesn't make you a bad person; it just makes you an America's Next Top Model contestant.

I can't be-weave it's fake!

The other really awful Shiloh video is Alright, which reveals what happens when you leave high school and grow up into an actor who looks absolutely nothing like you:

Here, we see how Alex, the jock who... maybe checks Shiloh out? is relegated to a life as a gym teacher (accompanied by a sad shake of the head, because it is truly horrible to be an educator), and Becky the cheerleader who gives Shiloh some side-eye and wouldn't fucking you? is assigned the worst fate of all: motherhood. Meanwhile, Shiloh's horrible stoner friends are given glamorous fulfilling jobs like video game tester, fighting global warming (not a job) and happy (also not a job). It should be mentioned that while only-person-of-colour gets to become a cancer researcher, she cannot be truly happy because it requires her to wear a white lab coat all day instead of some fly goffik accessories.

Shiloh fucking loves NCIS, you guys.

Tellingly, we don't get to see Shiloh's future career, which I'm willing to bet is not pop star.

I've been procrastinating on my paper in order to write about Shiloh, so unless I wanted future-me to hold up a photo of me crying over a sink while the Juno font announces me as a barista, I should probably get back to it. If you see Shiloh, though, do me a favour and throw some coffee in her face, and then steal her dog. Or her snake. I bet she has a snake. Shiloh's the worst.

Plenty of Fail: 28 Gays Later

2010-09-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Plenty of Fail, the series that chronicles the absolute dregs of online dating. Gay because I am, but we're looking to branch out (though all of the horror stories of American Apparel's financial portfolio have made us shy about large-scale expansion - this reference ensures that this blog entry, not unlike AA itself, is now topical but will quickly become furiously dated in mere months). In the last update, ages and ages ago, I swore that I'd finally leave Metro Vancouver dating profiles because I'm afraid of getting punched in the face. I'm a man of my word - today's jaunt takes us to beautiful Hamilton, ON, which isn't Toronto proper but close enough that I'm sure you could round up a Civic full of fake-tanned gays and make a trip out to The Barn on a Saturday night, as long as you go early and make a day of it because gas is expensive.

Our victim today, whom I'll simply call Hamilton because I'm creative like that, is a 26-year-old gay man who lists his ethnicity as 'European,' is interested in new age religion, and says he smokes often. He self-identifies as a 'zombie twink' which is handy vernacular for the gay zombie porn version of Mansfield Park I'm casting this coming October. I'm in talks with Jim Verraros to star as Fanny Price; look for it in a discount DVD bin near you. Hamilton's longest relationship was two years, presumably before the infection that set in and made him join the ranks of the living dead. I'm assuming he's a 28 Days Later kind of fast-moving zombie twink rather than a George Romero slow-moving reanimated corpse zombie twink, but if any scholars on the subject want to give me pointers on the matter, I'd be very appreciative.

Hamilton lists his occupation as 'Free-Lance Model.' I figured I'd set that aside as its own paragraph because in this struggling economy, is there anything more alluring than an out-of-work 26-year-old model? Yum. (I should add that in this instance, and based on the pictures in this profile, I have reason to believe that 'freelance model' means 'I set my webcam to high brightness and go on Stickam to flirt with teenagers.' I have no real evidence to back this up but I do remember being sixteen.)

In the past, I've posted profiles in large one-off pieces, but I think this time I will break it down into digestible chunks for you, my little guppies, not unlike the zombie twink slowly breaks apart its prey using specially secreted acids. Hamilton's text will be in bold blood red.

Hamilton says: I am looking for descent people to connect with on here as either friends(no sex) or to find a boyfriend (lots of sex)LOL.

I say: Really? Because I saw that movie and those monsters were horrifying, and I don't know about you, but taking a pickaxe through the leg and then getting eaten by weird cave-dwelling mole people isn't the kind of thing I would LOL about. I don't care how sad you are about the car accident that killed your husband and infant daughter. It's just not worth it.

Why, yes I did just tell an extended joke about a horror movie from 2005 that no one but me saw. What are you gonna do about it, accidentally stab me through the neck and leave to me to be eaten by cave people?

Hamilton says: When it comes to meeting new friends i am pretty easy going...but for romantic relationships, i have way more standards. I'm picky, lets just say that...better than being easy and clingy id say.

I say: Though strictly carnivorous, the zombie twink is a discerning consumer and partakes of only the choicest morsels. Let's find out what those standards are.

Hamilton says: Turn Ons: Twinks, Emos, Jocks, Sk8ers, socialites, intelligence, romance, deep conversations, long hair, and having a great butt always helps. LOL.

I say: Wait, socialites? He gets turned on by socialites? So like... "oh, yeah, give it to me, Barbara Hutton! You were a figure of considerable controversy during the '30s though popular opinion of you has since reversed! Cum on my face!"? What are we talking about here? Also, I love that more than anything else, he seems to be turned on by people who fit into neatly defined archetypes like emo, jock, and sk8er (with the 8 and everything! Avril would be reading proudly if she weren't already busy knocking a milkshake into some PREPZ's lap and laughing about it with her best buddy Shiloh). I also love that things like intelligence, romance and deep conversations are sort of thrown in as an afterthought. Yeah, yeah, deep conversation. But seriously, sk8ing is important for our relationship. LOL.

Hamilton says: Turn Offs: Stupidity, overweight, overly hairy, being naive, confusion, narrow minded, closet cases, weird fetishes.

I say: Yeah, narrow-minded people are awful. (Also, not to belabour the point, but the zombie twink has some crust calling out other people's weird fetishes, no?)

Hamilton says: I know a look a bit younger, these pictures are me. I am not a fake. I know i may look like your stereotypical Emo Twink but i am far more complex than that.

I say: Man, I don't know about you, but when my potential date calls themselves 'far more complex,' I pretty much punch out and call it a night. Like, that is the precise moment I start telling amusing lies about myself to make the date go by faster. Also, to address an online dating phenomenon I don't think we've gotten around to yet: the Photographic Time Machine. Photos of you from six years ago are still technically photos of you, which gives you all kind of wiggle room if you're one of those "technically, BUT..." people. Be wary: this guy is of the variety who is 26 posting pictures of himself when he was 22. In your head, add a few pock marks and divots and decide if you're still interested.

He's also apparently of the school who thinks that being accused of 'fakeness' is a terrible insult, which means he would fit in perfect on a reality show, asserting his realness. He would do particularly well on Big Brother UK where haters just can't deal with the fact that Corin is buzzin' and lovin' it all the time because that is how God made her.

OMGcanubelieveit10: do you luv it layk

Turn-ons: Boxers, unibrows, fake tan, lip gloss, eviction wig

Turn-offs: Australian accents, jumped up dickheads, angry fuckin' flyin' fish, the Pope

Hamilton says: My career choices are psychology/tattooing/piercings/modeling. I enjoy art a lot. Psychology was always my major and i am VERY good with understanding and empathizing with people. I have a good heart.

I say: I'm pretty sure you can't declare psychology your career if you're not, you know, a psychologist in some capacity. He is also very good at empathizing, unless you are fat, stupid, hairy or a closet case. He has a good heart which he stole, still beating, from a mother of three when the zombie twinks took over the Bang-On in the strip mall.

Hamilton says: Piercings: Navel, Lip Tattoos: tramp stamp, and back shoulders have small blue bat wings.

I say: Bad taste in body art isn't a crime, I guess. I do enjoy people who refer to their own tattoos as 'tramp stamps,' though, so bonus points for that. I wonder if the bat wings turn into actual wings when he's cornered or threatened.

That more or less wraps up Hamilton. What have we learned, then, about the elusive zombie twink? While it may seem like a simple creature, it is Far More Complex than it appears. It naturally selects smooth, hairless prey, presumably for ease of digestion. Its seemingly ornamental wings give it the capability of flight. At the top of the page, Hamilton lists a plethora of interests. Most disturbing among them:

'socializing,' which suggests the zombie twink hunts in packs;
'rock climbing,' which means it can traverse all manner of terrain; and
'swimming,' which seems to say that the zombie twink is capable of crossing water boundaries.

In conclusion, in the event of a zombie twink apocalypse, we're all fucked. May the most hairless socialite survive.

¡No puede ser! ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

2010-04-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

It's very rare that I do a blog post that's just dedicated to the work of others and not my own elaborations upon it. However, once in every blue moon there is a piece of art so profound in its impact upon me that I must simply present it, without elaboration, and step aside to its majesty.

Allow me to set it up for you:

Delfín hasta el fin is an Ecuadorian singer of what he calls "Andean techno-folklore." He's most notable as a YouTube sensation for his song, Torres gemelas. The song was supposed to be a serious meditation on the tragedy of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, but due to its hammy overacting, copious use of green screen, the cartoonish persona of Delfín himself, and the high camp of the video in general, it became an ironic cult hit.

Wendy Sulca, aka La pequeña Wendy, is a Peruvian singer who became a YouTube smash on the strength of her song, La tetita, an ode to breastfeeding at any age, and her follow-up, Cerveza, cerveza, a meditation on beer. Now, Wendy's all grown up, but she's still working the same angle and the same dresses as she did when she was eight.

La Tigresa del Oriente is a buxom fifty-something with giant hair and skintight latex outfits whose persona is that of a tiger woman who was born in the jungle. All of her videos tend to feature her prancing around a nature reserve of some kind with her troupe of scantily-clad back-up dancers, or sitting in a rowboat to intimately serenade the camera. Her song, Nuevo Amanacer, was a smash hit online, earning her the nickname of "La reina del YouTube" (the queen of YouTube) within her own country.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "This is all well and good, Taylor, but what would really be amazing is if these three South American YouTube sensations somehow got together and collaborated on a self-consciously campy music video, ideally an inexplicable love ode to the country of Israel."

Your wish is my command. I present to you: En tus tierras bailaré, South America's answer to Telephone:

You don't need to understand Spanish to adore this, though it certainly helps. All I will say is that I aggressively love every single part of this video and have watched it at least a dozen times since discovering it last night.

Amazing .GIFs courtesy of ONTD, after the break.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains: The Villains

2010-01-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

In the last blog entry, I dissected the Heroes of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains. In this entry, I'll be dismantling the villains, who really are so much more fun, don't you think? Once again, this article is spoiler-free, though I as a rule am not, and totally know who wins this shit. Ba ha ha.

(l-r: "Coach" Wade and Courtney Yates)

"Coach" Wade

Survivor: Tocantins

"Coach" dominated the airtime for much of Tocantins with his over-the-top antics, which might have been endearing were they not so plentiful and incessant. "Coach" is a fun one because more than anyone else on the Villains tribe and maybe even on any other season, his status as a villain is deeply at odds with the way he sees himself. "Coach" thinks "Coach" is the shit, and noble, and has a lot of very long words to misuse while he's telling you just how noble he is. He is most notable for taking up roughly half of any given episode with his asinine ramblings about dragons and the slaying thereof, and enjoys demonizing random tribemates with little to no evidence to back up his assertions. He also enjoys bandying about his tenuously defined concept of honour and integrity without ever stopping to explain what he really means. "Coach" was fortunate enough to somehow end up on a tribe that tolerated his lunacy for quite some time, which is no small feat because "Coach" is on the short list of castaways I'd be most likely to cuss out if I actually had to live with them, a list which includes about half the cast of Fiji, Lex, and Scout (whose delightful nickname "Scunt" tickles me no end). Top moments include wild stories about escaping from a tribe in the Amazon that tried to physically eat his ass, and one-upping anything anyone said. To this day, "Coach" is the Survivor castaway most like Kristen Wiig's Penelope.

Courtney Yates

Survivor: China

Courtney started Survivor: China by getting into a slapfight with a Buddhist nun and that might have been the most pleasant thing she actually did on the show. The fact that Courtney was somehow the runner-up of this show is nothing short of a miracle, and the fact that she beat Amanda in votes shows how absolutely wretched Amanda is in the endgame. Courtney entered China weighing 93 pounds and left weighing 87. She was incompetent at every team challenge, abrasive to everyone, and seemed to actively hate every person in the game and everything she was forced to do. She is the kind of person so ill-suited to the game of Survivor that she should have somehow been voted off before the first episode. That hate also happens to manifest itself in some of the best confessionals and one-liners in Survivor history, as Courtney's confrontational nature and loathing of everything are married with an incredibly quick wit and a sharp tongue. She also brought together Survivor and pop culture, comparing hated enemy Jean-Robert to Luke Perry and Susan Lucci among others, and had no trouble candidly expressing sentiments most tactful people might have withheld, such as that she thought Todd's teenaged sister was faking her miscarriage and that resident lunchlady/ogress/lummox/beast Denise "sucks at life." Shortly thereafter, Denise got busted on the reunion show for basically stealing $50,000 from production by pretending to have been fired from her job and playing it up for sympathy. I'm not saying Courtney is always right, but Courtney is always right. Having "Coach" and Courtney on the same tribe is the best thing I can imagine, because he is tedious and she has an incredibly low tolerance for tedium. In conclusion, Courtney is amazing and we are blessed by her cantankerous ass once more. Also, she is dating Stephen from Tocantins in an adorable runner-upmance, and that is precious.

(l-r: Danielle DiLorenzo and Jerri Manthey)

Danielle DiLorenzo

Survivor: Panama

Yeah, you and everyone else. There is no one in the world who knows how Danielle ended up on this season of Survivor (besides Lynne Spillman, and I'm not saying there was scissoring, just that there might have been scissoring). Listen, I know that every all-star seasons needs a couple of WTF choices, and that said WTF choices usually end up winning (Amber, Mike Boogie, Eric and Danielle, Parvati). But when the entire conceit of your all-star season is heroes and villains, how does it behoove you to pick one of the most technically competent but totally forgettable runners-up in the history of your show? I'm not anti-Danielle; I could never be against someone who was part of one of the most comically dysfunctional yet somehow successful alliances in Survivor history, the Casaya Six. It's just that in a season with Terry hogging all of the viewer sympathy (and don't get me started on how glad I am that hypocrite's not here), huge characters like Shane and Courtney chewing up the scenery, and Cirie maneuvering strategic circles around everyone, it's hard to remember anything Danielle actually did outside of the final episode of the show, where she... controversially?... took Aras to the final two instead of Terry and lost quietly. Certainly not enough to make her a villain, but hey. I like an unknown property, so I'll give Danielle the benefit of the doubt and see what she's got in her bag of tricks this time around. Plus she adds to our accent count, which with her, Rob, Tom, Russell, Stephenie, J.T., James, Colby, and Sandra, is almost impenetrable. This season is going to put Mark Burnett's subtitlers' kids through college.

Jerri Manthey

Survivor: The Australian Outback and Survivor: All-Stars

The complete opposite of Danielle is Jerri, in that it should be evident while casting villains to go for the original. Jerri is possibly the villain with the most experience in the field because when she was on Survivor, it was a cultural phenomenon, and there was an entire country that absolutely hated her guts. She was the most loathed woman in America, mostly for being what was in retrospect mildly irritating and a little abrasive but against the bland Outback cast she shone like a ~beautiful bongo-playing diamond.~ Softer, gentler Jerri returned for All-Stars, desperate to be beloved by the masses, only to be booed off the stage at the reunion during her big "have you no decency?!" speech to the audience. So tragic. So real. She seems to have recovered from the wounds of that incident (though, curiously, she lists Shii Ann as her least respected Survivor, which is a hilarious grudge for her to hold given their mild antipathy toward each other on the show. Like, really? Not Tina? Colby? You don't have bigger fish to fry?), and has thankfully come back to bless us all again with her presence. And it has to be said, unlike Colby, she looks amazing. Bitch is almost 40 now. RESPECT.

(l-r: Parvati Shallow and Randy Bailey)

Parvati Shallow
Survivor: Cook Islands and Survivor: Micronesia
Parvati is interesting because she's not really a villain in the traditional sense of the word; she's never really been edited negatively, only as excessively flirtatious/femme fatalesque. Take a moment to reflect on the traits we vilify in women societally. Now come back and let's talk about the time Parvati said the warm water felt like "pee water." Ah. Aren't you glad to be back here in the gutter? Parvati is frequently called the hottest woman in Survivor history, and it has very little to do with her actual attractiveness and more to do with her apparent capacity to ooze sex, and to subsequently make it the cornerstone of her strategy (to some considerable success in Micronesia, a season she won convincingly). This bore occasionally hilarious results, such as when Natalie "Catalie" Bolton basically used her final jury question to ask Parvati to fuck her, and Parvati probably would because she seems like she's usually up for a good time. Beyond some nasty moralizing toward Jonathan near the end of Cook Islands, Parvati's a fun pick because she's generally pretty chill and seems to enjoy herself no matter what she's doing, which I maintain is generally more fun than watching people suffer -- except for Courtney, whose wit, like a diamond, is best formed under heavy pressure.

Randy Bailey
Survivor: Gabon
Randy's an interesting one, because I feel like his real personality is far more interesting than the one he projects instead. On the one hand, he does seem to be full of a lot of legitimate hostility and resentment: I don't doubt that his profound dislike of "Sugar" is very real, and he seems genuine in his misanthropy. He's also shady, and probably a racist, and definitely a bigot. On the other hand, he's a little too tragic for me to be a hundred percent on board. He's clearly very bright, if not strategically then intellectually, and he just seems intensely lonely. Come on. He had no family members to visit him for the reward challenge? He gave away his finale tickets to random Survivor fans because he had no friends to bring? He sits around the house talking to his dead dog? That shit is a little too tragic for me. I like a villain whose villainousness comes from being over the top and hilarious, not from being emotionally broken. I basically find it hard to enjoy Randy because he bums me out. (Gabon was apparently a good season for armchair psychoanalysis.)

(l-r: Rob Mariano and Russell Hantz)

Rob Mariano
Survivor: Marquesas and Survivor: All-Stars
Boston Rob is one of the rare lucky reality show participants whose reputation is improved by their second season -- the only other Survivor contestants I can think of are Amber and probably Shii Ann on All-Stars and Parvati on Micronesia. (There are a handful of others, like Rupert and Cirie, whose reputations largely remained unblemished. Mostly, though, it's a time to crash and burn.) And, I'll say it: I generally like Rob and Amber. I like that they're both competitive and generally excel at whatever they're doing. It's like God bred two people specifically to perform exceptionally well on reality television, or possibly Satan did it. Either way, Rob is good for the kind of aggressive, flashy, showy strategic game that gets you to the end but rarely lets you win (see Russell below). Either one of two things happens: you get noticed by someone playing the same game as you and picked off (as happened to Rob in Marquesas) or you get to the end and your alliance partner, who has very carefully been promoting herself as your more palatable alternative, wins the game (as happened to Rob in All-Stars and, for that matter, Russell in Samoa). It's a dicy game to play and frankly, I'm not sure Rob knows any other game.

Russell Hantz
Survivor: Samoa
I feel like there has been enough written and said about Russell in the past little bit that I have nothing new to contribute, so instead I will say this: the actual story of Samoa is quite good, but I consider it the worst Survivor season ever, and that is because of the absolute botch job editing that gave Russell 60% of the airtime and let the nineteen other competitors fight for the remaining 40%. If the Survivor editors, under some mistaken conviction that I find Russell funny or charming or villainous or evil or anything other than incredibly tedious, allow the same thing to happen again and ruin a season with a ridiculous amount of potential, I will track down Mark Burnett and stab him in the mouth. Also, anyone calling him the best player ever needs to learn the difference between an aggressive game and a good one. Also also, the weird patchy beard with chunks of hair missing: what the fuck is that?

(l-r: Sandra Diaz-Twine and Tyson Apostol)

Sandra-Diaz Twine

Survivor: Pearl Islands

Of the entire cast, the person I am most excited to witness the return of is ~Sassy Sandra~ and though she will not be in her traditional hideous orange jumpsuit, I am happy to say that her attitude does not seem to have escaped her. It is very tempting to fill this entire space with amazing Sandra quotes like "where's that snake motherfucker Jon? Can't nobody trust that bitch right there" and "I can get loud too! What the fuck?" and "I swear on my kids that I'm gonna screw you aaaaand Burton" and "I think the lady, you know, liked her... in a sexual way." But we must also stop to remember that the hilarity in Sandra is not only in her words but in her actions: tearing apart the other tribe's shelter in order to steal their tarp, sneaking behind people in the bushes to eavesdrop on their strategies, trying to sabotage her tribe by hiding their supplies and ruining their food, trying to eliminate Jon from a reward challenge immediately after finding out that his grandmother "died," and making fun of the genitalia of the male members of the other team. Sandra is the most hilarious and entertaining winner in Survivor history, and the fact that they somehow waited six years and twelve seasons to bring her back is a travesty. I don't accept that she is a villain because she is my own personal goddess, but since she was placed on the tribe with whom she will create the most hilarious conflict, I fully endorse the choice. When asked who she'd most like to get rid of in a pre-show interview, Sandra replied, "Fuck. There's a lot of 'em. Shiiit." Shine on, Sassy Sandra. Shine on.

Tyson Apostol
Survivor: Tocantins
Not to end on a down note, but really? Tyson? Tyson's a villain in the vein of Courtney, in that he's nasty and quotable rather than outright duplicitous, but I feel like his game never really got off the ground due to his being blindsided in the early merge and that his quotes weren't clever enough to sustain his spot on this season. He's probably present to make up for the Villains' comparative lack of physical firepower. He's most noted for his beautiful touching showmance with cougar MILF Debbie "Merhag" Beebe, who oozed desperation and strategic incompetence and was always trying to jump Tyson's bones. I guess I don't really have to say about Tyson, except that he's kind of a try-hard and joins the long, long line of reality TV Mormons with chips on their shoulders about being Mormons. I guess that's how Mormons rebel. Other kids get piercings or smoke pot; Mormons go on reality TV.

Thanks to Julian for the photos used in this article.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains: The Heroes

2010-01-09T23:38:00.000-08:00

As you know by now, and if you don't look at the ~epic~ cast shot above, the 20th iteration of Survivor is Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains. As someone who has passionate and passionately nerdy opinions on the subject and has never missed an episode even though it's ten years later and not cool anymore (*cough*), I thought I'd spill my thoughts on the cast for you, starting with the Heroes tribe (and just to acknowledge it: yes, there are spoilers, and yes, I have seen them, and no, they won't be reflected here):

(l-r: Amanda Kimmel and Candice Woodcock)

Amanda Kimmel

Survivor: China and Survivor: Micronesia

What better place to start than Survivor's resident unphotogenic drag queen? Amanda is best known for being a quiet but skilled player with absolutely no followthrough. Amanda regularly makes it to the final Tribal Council of her season and then goes down like a moth in a candle when asked to defend her game to a jury, at which point she backpedals, apologizes, and maybe cries a little if it's a really good season. She's subjected us in equal parts to things brilliant (her blindsides of James in China and Alexis in Micronesia), disastrous (her ill-fated showmance with Ozzy in Micronesia), and confusing yet titillating (her blurred ass throughout the entirety of China). Amanda is the perfect example of someone who plays a technically good game but is not super entertaining and is maybe a touch overrated. Still, as far as looking good in a bikini, she's golden. Plus she's like 40 feet tall. It's crazy. Her legs weigh more than I do.

Candice Woodcock

Survivor: Cook Islands

I, like everyone else who watched Survivor's ~highly controversial~ racially-divided season, immediately call bullshit on this one. Sure, you can go to the EW website and watch Probst flail around to justify why she's on the Heroes tribe, and sure, she seems like an absolutely lovely person in real life, and sure, everyone from her original cast has nothing but glowing things to say about her. But Candice's storyline was basically that she turned on her ~beautiful racial cornucopia~ tribe (Aitu) because she wanted to rejoin her original alliance of young, pretty white people, consequently outnumbering Aitu 8-4. Aitu -- through subsequent domination of challenges, crafty play of the then vastly-overpowered hidden immunity idol by eventual winner Yul, and a couple of dubious twists -- then went on to dominate the game and America's hearts. More specifically, they relished in sending Candice to Exile Island every single week, and let me tell you: it was hilarious every time. She had to eat a sea cucumber raw. That's comedy gold. Through it all, Candice was equal parts whiny, entitled, and predisposed to racially homogeneous alliances of white people. In conclusion, Candice is on the Heroes tribe because casting director Lynne Spillman likes her. That having been said, when she wasn't crippled by her own very public disloyalty, Candice proved that she was at least a somewhat shrewd game player. She's not a hero by any stretch of the imagination, but it'll be fun to see what she brings to the table.

(l-r: Cirie Fields and Colby Donaldson)

Cirie Fields

Survivor: Panama and Survivor: Micronesia

This is where shit gets real. A holdover from the vastly underrated Panama season (which I am currently rewatching and enjoying the fuck out of, TYVM), Cirie took the idea of a "social game" -- a game whereby you rely not on outright deception, but rather on charm and likeability to manipulate others -- and finessed it to its absolute apex. Cirie is both incredibly pleasant and charming, and one of the most ruthless and cutthroat players to ever play the game, and she does it all while seeming to genuinely enjoy the game in all of its aspects. Both a delight to watch and a terror to play against, and with the single best overall record of any of the two-time players (4th in her original season and 3rd in Micronesia), Cirie is in my opinion the single best player to ever play the game of Survivor. She is notable for ambitious, incredibly complicated game moves that she somehow pulls off, including single-handedly organizing a three-way vote split in Panama (3 votes for Courtney, 2 for Aras, 1 for Danielle) and conning Erik into giving up his immunity necklace and then immediately voting him off in Micronesia. The only problem with Cirie's game is that it relies heavily on people underestimating her, and after two seasons, players have begun to catch onto what a threat she is, as evidenced by the pre-show cast interviews. Cirie will need to work her charm as hard as possible to avoid detection in her third outing.

Colby Donaldson

Survivor: The Australian Outback and Survivor: All-Stars

The first of the tragically sparse pre-All-Stars crew is Colby, and let's just put it out there: time has not been good to the Colbster. He'll be lucky if Probst even calls him back after they have sex this time around. I've never really been on the Colby love train, if only because he strikes me as a little sanctimonious, but I can't deny his contribution to Survivor lore. He dominated Outback as the first real challenge monster the show's ever seen (a position since filled by the likes of Palau's Tom Westman and Cook Islands's Ozzy Lusth, and never filled, despite what Probst seems to want you to think, by China's James Clement), and his pseudo-incestuous visit from his mother was an inspiration to us all. Plus, the return of Colby signals the return of the bizarre Colby-Jerri dynamic, which is always fun to watch. Those two kids will never live each other down, and are one of two pairs of threepeat players (along with Amanda and James) to play every single one of their seasons together. Unlike Amanda and James, however, these two still seem to actively loathe one another ten years later. And yet they can't escape each other. That... has gotta suck. Look forward to Probst calling Colby by his last name, and then sneaking behind a set piece to masturbate furiously.

(l-r: J.T. Thomas, Jr. and James Clement)

J.T. Thomas, Jr.

Survivor: Tocantins

The first of a whopping three Tocantins players (a heaping helping from such a milquetoast season), J.T. is most notable for ruining the entire game completely through no fault of his own. You see, J.T. is just so likeable and trustable and so gosh-darn Southern that he apparently charmed the entire cast into laying down in order to watch him win a million dollars. Literally -- I can remember four players (Brendan, Sierra, "Coach" and Debbie) who explicitly said that they didn't mind losing as long as J.T. won. I don't know if it was intentional on his part or just his personality, but it's a hell of a trick if you can make it work once, let alone twice. Unfortunately, the long road to J.T.'s inevitable victory doesn't make for a very interesting season, but why the hell should he care if he's got the money to pad out his bank account? None of this is to say that J.T. is incapable of malice, though: he's a fierce challenge competitor, and put on a surprisingly ruthless final Tribal Council performance, throwing trusted ally Stephen to the wolves for moves they both made and waltzing to an easy 7-0 victory.

James Clement

Survivor: China and Survivor: Micronesia

I've always been a little rankled about James's popularity, because more so than any other Survivor castaway, it feels very artificial. Don't get me wrong; I totally buy that people love him and bored hausfraus cream when he takes off his shirt and people were willing to give him the Sprint You-Fucked-Up-But-Here's-$100,000-at-the-Reunion-Show Prize twice (!!!). But he doesn't seem to be a very good player (voted out holding two hidden immunity idols in China, a move acclaimed at the time as the dumbest in Survivor history), he doesn't seem to be a very nice person (repeated sexist/misogynistic slags against Courtney in China), and he's incredibly sanctimonious, frequently talking down to women about their bad strategy (Peih-Gee and Parvati, both of whom outlasted him in their respective games and the latter of whom won the entire season). And as much as Probst wants to make him out to be some sort of challenge god, and on paper he should be, he seems to be actively mediocre at 90% of challenges. Courtney has a better individual challenge record than he does, and she came into her original season weighing 93 pounds. All that said, I can't imagine him contributing much to the show this go-round, nor did he in Micronesia, but if the theme of your season is "people beloved by the masses," I guess he makes as much sense as anyone else. All things considered, I'd put Ozzy in his place, and I'm not even a fan.

(l-r: Rupert Boneham and Stephenie LaGrossa)

Rupert Boneham

Survivor: Pearl Islands and Survivor: All-Stars

While we're on the subject of people much beloved by the masses, they don't get more beloved than original Survivor superstar Rupert, who received a million dollar love letter from his fans at the ludicrous America's Tribal Council event at the end of All-Stars, which disgusted me at the time but after enduring an entire season of Russell's desperate camwhoring I'm practically salivating at the prospect of more Rupert. Hell, let's give him another free million while we're here. Time has softened my perspective on Rupert, and I've come to appreciate him more as a character, if not necessarily a hero. He was larger than life in Pearl Islands, made into an iconic figure by both the cast and the show's editors: incredibly utile in a survival situation and a provider for his tribe in a way that hasn't been matched in recent memory. At the same time, he was also self-absorbed, petulant, and incredibly entitled, and watching his fall at the hands of his former allies was not only delicious but set up the Pearl Islands endgame as the most enjoyable series of episodes in Survivor history. In his return to All-Stars, we saw a more toned down, subdued Rupert, and one whom I enjoyed considerably more, if only for the hilarious two-episode subplot where he went crazy and built the underground shelter that flooded and almost killed his tribe, and drove Jerri nearly to suicide. Vastly, vastly underrated moment in Survivor history. At the end of the day, he's not Russell, and it's been five years, so I'm finally happy to see Rupert again. I reserve the right to take those words back at will.

Stephenie LaGrossa

Survivor: Palau and Survivor: Guatemala

Ah, LaGrossa: where Survivor and Jersey Shore meet and do lunch. Stephenie is another one whom I've come to appreciate more over time. Her underdog story in Palau as the last member of a vanquished tribe was a compelling one and gave a show which traditionally shies away from depicting complex, strong, likeable females one of its first resonant female heroes (the only other example I can remember from before Palau of a strong, prominent, non-traditional woman we were blatantly supposed to like was Kathy Vavrick-O'Brien in Marquesas, who later made her descent into batshit craziness in All-Stars but who could have seen that one coming?). At the time, though, I remember being very over Stephenie, who, God bless her, was mostly trapped in the situation due to her own strategic incompetence and utter ineptitude in challenges. She was brought back the very next season in Guatemala, triggering the debut of a new Stephenie: a take-no-prisoners Stephenie who was the exact opposite of her Palau incarnation -- strategically dominant but utterly unlikeable, routinely chastising people as "gay" and "retarded" and greedily hording so much food she actually gained two pounds by the end of the show (which gave us a hilarious moment when Lydia pointed the fact out, and Stephenie yelled at her how untrue it was with food in her mouth). This Stephenie came in second but was unable to beat likeable Danni for the prize. Ask around, though, and most people remember Palau Steph instead of Guatemala Steph, so it makes sense that everyone's favourite overly-tanned guidette with circumflex eyebrows is on the Heroes team.

(l-r: "Sugar" Kiper and Tom Westman)

"Sugar" Kiper

Survivor: Gabon

"Sugar" is another one whose genuine heroicness is in question, as no one from her original season seems to be able to stand her. On the other hand, her season also has one of the least likeable casts of genuinely miserable people in recent Survivor memory, so that might have something to do with it. "Sugar" is notable for playing one of the more hilarious strategic games to actually work, which is that she felt very strongly that "good people" should win the game (don't get me started on the idea of "good people" in Survivor) and did everything she could to ensure that this happened. The problem with her strategy was that what she defined as the "good people" was prone to changing haphazardly, always accompanied by tears and often right before Tribal Council. Basically, "Sugar" played the game entirely emotionally, and somehow ruled with an iron fist while doing so. Not one of the best players in the game's history but certainly among the most aggressive, with glimmers of brilliance and malice sneaking through (her spiteful blindsides of Ace and Randy come to mind), and definitely among the more interesting psychologically: her time spent on the show coming to terms with the recent death of her father, along with her conviction that Bob, who reminded her of her father, should win the game, resulted in more than a few moments of wrenching vulnerability and viewer discomfort, and quite possibly helped Bob to victory. Also, she's apparently dating J.T. now? Not sure what the hell that's all about.

Tom Westman

Survivor: Palau

Tom Westman is the last of the heroes, and while I don't traditionally buy into the alpha male who dominates the game and wins all the challenges, even I must confess to being swooned by Tom Westman, who did all of this and won. He's not without his shady moments -- him and Katie teaming up to bully former friend and emotional basketcase Ian into effectively quitting the game on Day 39 is particularly low -- and I'd probably hate being on the same tribe as him because I'd feel talked-down-to all the damn time, but Tom is proof that sometimes you can be the provider, the challenge winner, and a cunning strategist -- and still win (which, believe it or not, used to be rare). Plus the fact that he's a silver fox who repped for the over-forty crowd rather than the typical cocky twenty-something alpha douche from L.A. who usually fills that role is just aces for me. The problem for Tom is that since this is his first time back, everyone will look back on his unblemished dominance in Palau, which places a huge target on his back. Tom will need to lock into a solid alliance quickly to avoid an early dismissal from a tribe stacked with muscle that doesn't really need his challenge prowess as much as Koror did -- though it has to be said, Ulong frequently lost challenges to combinations like Caryn/Gregg/Katie and Coby/Janu/Jenn. For reference, Caryn [bless her heart] was an ashen and bitter forty-something, Katie [bless her heart] was... a bigger girl, Janu [bless her heart] resembled nothing more than the lovechild of a scarecrow and a mop and spent every day in the hammock crying, and Jenn [bless her heart] unknowingly had cancer at the time. And Stephenie couldn't beat any of them. Perhaps the Heroes would be wise to keep Tom around for a while after all.

Thanks to Julian for the images used in this post.

Shitty Commercial: Me, with singing.

2009-12-21T20:29:00.000-08:00

On the bright side, I'm much more present in this one, and much cuter. Truly I have re-enacted Brett's switch from invisible-and-possibly-gay Anderson Cooper soundalike to glorious positivity magnet. Also I cuss in what is ostensibly a holiday spot. So really, there's something for everyone.

Consider this my gift to the sorry lot of you. (There's more footage of me kicking around out there; if I find it, I'll post it here.)

Happy holidays!

Shitty Commercial: Me. Oh, God, me.

2009-12-03T20:42:00.001-08:00

By now you all know about my short-lived stint on reality TV or something like it: OUTtv's Queer Prom, of which I was undeniably the star and if motherfuckers disagree I'll ~bust their windows~. Not so here, where I am demoted from a delightful and charming Borneo Colleen to a milquetoast and forgettable Samoa Brett.

And also, because it bears saying before you all say it for me: I know. I'm looking pretty fucking rough.

My theory is it's God punishing me for my complete lack of sincerity by taking it out on my face.

Before we go, how about a nice picture to remind everyone how attractive I am?

Secret: I don't give a fuck who you donate your money to as long as you think I'm cute.

Shitty Book Report: "One Night, Two Babies" by Kathie DeNosky

2009-11-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

I shit you not.

WARNING: this particular entry is probably pretty NSFW, unless you happen to work at a brothel. Trek on at your own risk.

The prelude: I've never been much of a consumer of romance fiction, though I more than anyone delighted in the blackballing and subsequent downfall of noted plagiarist and writer of by-the-numbers Injun porn Cassie Edwards. Rather, I've always been fascinated from a distance by all of this talk of "love shafts" and "denim prisons." I had been intrigued by the hardcover Danielle Steel books my mother used to keep on the coffee table (and you wonder how I got to be so classy); as a youngster of eight, I asked to read one and my mother conceded. It may seem like a foolhardy idea, but I only made it about half a chapter into Kaleidoscope before getting bored and wandering off to play on the Windows '95 version of MS Paint. A mother always knows.

My current interest in bad romantic fiction, and Harlequin Romance in particular, sprung from two factors. The first is the recent announcement that, in celebration of Harlequin's 60th year of providing spank bank material for bored hausfraus and closet homosexuals, HR would be releasing a plethora of online material, absolutely free. I encourage you to peruse the stories there, particularly the NASCAR-themed Speed Dating and the hilariously-titled Baby Bonanza, which glamorizes a strange and previously unknown-to-me fetish I call Billionaire Baby Porn. As you will see by the end of this book report, One Night, Two Babies is very much a prime example of BBP.

The second wellspring from which was born my newfound HR obsession was the discovery of certain "moving-out" artifacts left in the lobby of my best friend Matthew's apartment complex by a former tenant who no longer found use for them. Among said artifacts were two particularly interesting pieces of literature: the first was a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex so old that a hasty foreword warned that, while perusing the book, the reader should "take into account the recent discovery of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome." The second was the book you see at the top of this post: One Night, Two Babies, by Kathie DeNosky. I took it. I had to. And I read it, in public (don't judge me until you've had a three hour bus commute, alright?), and now I will report my findings back to you.

The premise: Okay, the plot is a bit contrived, so you'll need to follow me here. This book is a part of a series called The Illegitimate Heirs, the premise of which is apparently that a crazy old billionaire named Emerald Larson discovers that she has six illegitimate grandchildren thanks to her son, who is a huge playboy (and, apparently a strict Catholic given his devout opposition to birth control). Being demented and having money to burn, Emerald sets up trust funds for all of her newfound heirs. The heirs consist almost entirely of men who look exactly alike:

All five men were well over six feet tall, had muscular athletic builds, and bore a strong facial resemblance. (p.179)

Essentially, the same guy. However, this would be too contrived, so one of the heirs is a woman. Who... happens to date a guy who looks exactly like her half-brothers. Cough. Oh, and it should be added that all of these men are gadabouts and cads, and part of Emerald's big scheme is to play matchmaker and set each of them up with women who will have their kids so they can settle down. And that's the series. Like seven or eight books of this. We happen to have the book about the female heir, Arielle Garnier, who believe it or not does not have the worst name in the book. That honour is stolen away with the cameo appearance by her half-brother, Hunter O'Banyon.

If you had to reread that paragraph three or four times over before it made sense: trust me, it's better than reading the book.

The plot: Arielle and billionaire resort tycoon Zach Forsythe spent a week of endless passion in Aspen. This weekend in Aspen is repeatedly referenced in the text as being exciting and stimulating, so of course we never see it. We instead come in eight months later, when Arielle is pregnant and looking for her baby's father. Zach walks in like "hey whats up lol" and Arielle is likee "wtf" and they pick up there.

The conceit is that Zach wanders into the pre-school Arielle runs by pure happenstance, but in the world of crazy old billionaire Emerald Larson, nothing is left to chance -- this is of course a cleverly-orchestrated scheme. Zach happens to observe Arielle exhibiting certain symptoms -- huge appetite, morning sickness, a noticeable glow -- and concludes what all of us would: that she is sick with the flu and nothing more. He then bullies her into coming to his palatial estate (for her own good, you understand) and entrusts her to the care of his old-fashioned Texan housekeeper Mattie, a salt of the earth type who immediately detects that Mattie is pregnant and gently coerces her into revealing the truth to Zach. If you've noticed that coercion, gentle and otherwise, is a main theme of the story, then well done. Also a theme: meddling old biddies who stop at nothing to get other people hitched. If that's your gig, I suggest you read Mary Worth instead: it's many times shorter, just as boring, and Mary does some pretty cold shit sometimes. (I simply must write a blog in the near future about Mary Worth, sociopath-at-large.)

Zach, upon the revelation that his former flame is pregnant, does what any sensible Byronic hero does and pressures Arielle into marrying him. She puts up a token defense, to give the illusion that she's "liberated" and has things like "thoughts" and "opinions," but really all she wants is a rich jerk to push her around. But Zach's not just any jerk: he's a jerk with a heart of gold. How do we know?

He's got a tragic past. The reason he's so set on marrying Arielle and raising the kids with her is that his former wife, upon getting pregnant, dared to terminate the pregnancy. She didn't get an abortion, of course, because that's too edgy for the set who buy their erotic literature at the grocery store bookrack, so instead she "starved herself until she had a miscarriage." It seems like a bit of a contrivance when someone with as much money as the wife of Zach Forsythe could afford the fanciest abortion in town, the kind where they leave the mint on your pillow afterwards.
His sister Lana got into a car accident, so he's helping her and raising her kid. Said sister and child only appear when it's convenient to the plot, to give Zach "character depth," and during a brief stint at the end when Zach's foolish-but-sexy male pride encumbers him from telling Arielle he loves her. Lana then offers advice so important and memorable that I literally needed to check the text to remember her name.
The news of his sister's accident is, of course, why he rushed away from Aspen in the first place, leaving Arielle to nurse a broken heart. He also used a false name at Aspen, but only because he didn't want special treatment from the staff at his resort. What a guy.

I'm gonna gloss over the rest of the story at this point because I figure I might as well give you some reason to read this masterpiece -- and I'm sure all of you are rushing to amazon.com right now (seriously, click the link; there's a sample of the text there. LIVE MY HELL.) -- but it basically consists of Zach bullying Arielle, her putting up a token defence, and then acquiescing. I've included an example for flavour:

"How long will it take you to back an overnight bag?" he asked as he helped her into the back of his limousine.
"Why would I need to pack?" she questioned, when he slide into the seat beside her.
"Because I'm moving you into my place." It was more important now than ever that Arielle took good care of herself.
"No, you're not." She shook her head.
[...]
"We'll spend the night at your apartment and move you into my home tomorrow morning."
"No, we won't. You're going to drop me off at your place and then go home to yours while I call my brothers. End of discussion." She sounded quite adamant, but he noticed that she wasn't scooting away from him, was allowing him to hold her close to his side.
"Sorry, darlin', but I told you that I would be with you every step of the way." He kissed the top of her head. "And that means from here on out, we'll be doing whatever needs to be done together." (p. 76-77)

Fact: I just opened the book to a random page, confident I'd find an instance of this shit, and I was right. Also a fact: you'll notice that he calls her darlin'. It's supposed to be hot. By the end, he's calling her darlin' two or three times a page. It makes me hard every time.

Also sexy: Zach's scent/cologne are described on two separate occasions as "woodsy." Yum.

The plot twist: Arielle and Zach find out halfway through the book that Arielle is not just pregnant.

She's pregnant... with twins!

I feel like it's not a very good plot twist if it's readily apparent from the title of the book.

The porn: Because why lie? It's why we're all here. Having read the entirety of One Night, Two Babies, I can confirm what I had suspected from the start of the book:

Kathie DeNosky is a virgin.

Failing that, she is the single least compelling writer of incredibly vanilla sex I've ever encountered. I mean... perhaps it's the fact that I'm used to the nifty.org method of people having massive amounts of sex which escalate in intensity and improbability until the last chapter where they're fucking their blood relatives in spacesuits on the moon (crying all the while, because nifty characters love to cry to during sex [I assure you, my interest in nifty porn is similar to my interest in Harlequin porn (don't you dare judge me)]). And I know that Arielle is pregnant here so it's not like he can just throw her against the wall and tummy-fuck her until the baby breaks (though from the way he fetishizes her baby bump, you wouldn't know it). But man, the sex here is absolute dullsville. If I were an unfulfilled housewife who wanted to do the nasty with a Texan billionaire, I would want him to fuck my shit up. But maybe that's just me.

Out of 184 pages, a total of 10 are devoted to sex. Mind you, these are pages the size of fortune cookie slips, so that's really like a paragraph and a half of nookie. Their average romp lasts only five pages. By contrast, they spend six pages on a lunch date in San Antonio walking around in an open air market and making small talk. I'm not gonna lie, I maybe skimmed over those particular six pages.

I didn't skim over the sex, though; I chose instead to read it in the back row of my English Lit class, blushing and hoping no one noticed what I was reading. So, to give you what you all came for, here's some Bad Sex Euphemisms. (If you've got a weak constitution, you might want to skip ahead):

As Zach revealed himself to her, her eyes widened when she noticed the strength of his thick arousal rising proudly from the patch of dark hair at his groin. (p. 111)

She felt his body pulse with need and her own body respond with a tightening deep in the most feminine part of her. (p. 112)

As they moved together, his lips skimmed over the sensitive skin of her throat, accelerating the delicious tightening in her feminine core. She desperately tried to prolong the swirling sensations building inside her, but the hunger he created became a force she couldn't resist and he gave herself up to the power of his lovemaking. (p. 114)

When he cupped the curls at her apex and his finger dipped inside to stroke the soft, moist folds, she moaned and arched to his touch. (p. 142)

That's pretty much it. The best DeNosky had to offer, though if you didn't cringe from second-hand embarrassment you're a better man than I. Presently I need a shower, to wash off not the lasciviousness but the bad purple prose. That having been said, I've read worse. Even DeNosky's bad sex is mediocre.

Wrapping it up: One Night, Two Babies is very similar to the film Twilight in that it's not even so-bad-it's-good. It's just incredibly boring. It's 184 pages of a poorly-written couple with a massive power imbalance talking about a baby. I heartily recommend it to anyone whose has been abandoned by their baby daddy, as a kind of bizarre wish fulfillment tale. Everyone else should steer clear.

The good: Zach isn't the worst Harlequin Romance hero you'll ever meet, not by any stretch of the imagination. Be thankful he didn't rape anyone.

The bad: Much ado is made of how Arielle and Zach fell for each other's playful banter and witty conversation, and dear God, I wish they'd been gracious enough to provide us with some of that during events of this book, because this was mundane as hell.

The ugly: My 'literature' tag now consists of Twilight, Tagalog romance novels, and One Night, Two Babies. I am a veritable Rhodes scholar.

That last one made me depressed. I shall seek a drink.

An open letter to a fellow theatre-goer.

2009-11-04T02:09:00.001-08:00

Dear Woman I Met Thankfully Briefly at a Recent Showing of Evil Dead: The Musical at The Vogue in Vancouver,

First of all, hi. I hope this letter finds you well (I don't, really, but we'll get to that in a bit). I don't know if you remember me; I assume you don't, since you did everything you could at the time to obliterate me from your memory even as I was still speaking to you. If you don't, let me refresh you. I was sitting next to you in about the seventh row at opening night. My friend was between us -- he's a local musical theatre reviewer, and I was his plus-one. You were also the plus-one of a theatre reviewer for a local paper -- quite a high muckety-muck gentleman, too, if I remember correctly, which perhaps betrayed me into expecting a level of noblesse oblige from you that I never received. How silly of me.

It also meant that you received your ticket completely free, at which point the evening should be a wash for you at best -- wasted time, certainly, if you didn't happen to enjoy the play, but nothing more. Perhaps, also, the social annoyance of being forced to rub elbows with the lower classes. I know that when you sign up to join a fairly prominent local theatre reviewer for an evening of musical hobknobbery, you expect something more along the lines of champagne flutes and mink stoles and maybe a monocle or two. What you do not expect are the posse of die-hard white trash girls who sat behind us with chainsaw laughter and obnoxious grunts anytime they recognized one of the lines in the play culled from Raimi's original work, which are plentiful. If I may be frank, though, I would much rather spend an entire evening in the company of those girls than I would ten minutes with you, as I suspect I would have a much better time and probably get tricked into enjoying myself once or twice.

I can't imagine I'd have a worse time than you did, however, surrounded by poor people and musky odors and subpar theatre. Indeed, I seem to remember your leaning over and expressing that sentiment to us: the play was boring and trite and you'd rather be anywhere else, and what did we think of it? And you know what, you're not wrong: the play's not especially good. But, as I told you, I found the over-the-top atmosphere very enjoyable, and I was very much having a good time just watching the reactions of other people and revelling in the whole thing, and maybe just forgetting that the book of the play wasn't great and concentrating on the fact that it was a lot of fun, which it is.

I don't know if it was the fact that my opinion ran counter yours, or the fact that I was gauche enough to wear something as common as a T-shirt, or what it was that made you decide that it was imperative to immediately stop talking to me and begin speaking to my friend. Nor do I know what made it so important that you completely ignore the rest of my contributions to the conversation, or to act like I wasn't speaking at all and begin talking over me to my friend, who just happened to share your opinion on the production. Thank you also for ignoring me the second and third times you spoke to my friend during and after the second act, respectively. I want to assume it was some sort of avant social experiment of yours: an attempt to create a production more awful than the play we were watching. If that was your aim, I applaud you and the subtlety with which you carried out your completely unethical psychological experiment.

If that is not the case however, and I suspect it was not, I think you're just kind of a bitch. So there's that.

Please accept my cordial apologies for: 1) sitting next you or even vaguely proximal to you; 2) answering your question on my opinion of the production in a way that did not suit you; 3) attempting to continue the conversation like a civilized human being; 4) having a sense of humour about myself and in general. I apologise particularly for this last one; we should all strive to attain your level of utter self-seriousness. I suspect that it is something that comes with many, many years of extensive work at being a complete and utter pill. So for that, I salute you, and am duly humbled.

I look forward to seeing you at future productions in the city, of which I am at many, so I can continue to impress you with my perceived lack of intelligence, wealth, and taste. Conversely, I expect you to impress me with your level of still-being-a-bitch.

I am certain you won't let me down.

Kisses,

My suckiest Hallowe'en costume ever.

2009-10-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year again: a time for bite-sized Snickers and weird families that give out religious literature instead of candy and scrambling around to create a costume at the last minute so you're not socially ostracized at the party. That's right, it's Hallowe'en, so get your shit together because there's only a week and a bit left. It's incumbent upon you to dress however you want -- in the past three years, I have been a strawberry, a kitty, and a cat burglar (all of my good pics of the latter are sadly gone; fucking ephemeral Facebook. Know that I had a money bag.) -- and my penchant for cutesy costumes and being a kitty dictates that this year I will be an angel kitty, or, if you prefer, a dead cat. However, I thought I'd take the time and celebrate the spirit of the season by telling you about my worst Hallowe'en costume ever.

I was in the second grade, and I'd been planning to go out as a devil. In years prior, I'd been an alien and a skeleton, which was really just me wearing the skeleton costume without the facepaint. My mother, you see, had one of those mom things where she was absolutely paranoid about facepaint and would not let me wear it. I have no idea why -- she had this theory it would make me sick. Which is fine for used facepaint, but unopened stuff? Really? She must have seen a news story or something about it, which is literally the only reason she ever does anything. (I should add that this was the reason I was the only lion in the choir of my elementary school's production of The Jungle Book without a nose and whiskers, which may consequently be why I'm a kitty every fucking year.) My late grandmother had a similar thing with bare feet on concrete -- she was convinced I would get pneumonia and die. Also if I walked around my fly down, a seagull would come and steal my dick. I feel her absence every day.

Anyway, this year, I wanted to be a devil, so my mom ordered the costume for me and we waited until the day came. Well, the day came, and the costume in question was a little defective; namely, the tail was coming out of the crotch rather than the ass, which would amuse me now but is a little risqué for a seven-year old. Maybe it would fly in Europe?

It was at the point where all of the good costumes were sold out of the stores and we had to embrace the dreaded alternative: the homemade costume. Now, being a youngster, I had faith in my mother, and assumed that this costume would be no worse than the many times I'd been late in thinking up a costume and had been forced to go as a goalie (which seems like a handy idea since every Canadian boy has old hockey gear kicking around but believe it or not, full goalie gear isn't the costume most conducive to mobility on a night that involves a fuckton of walking). I will now give you a hint as to what my mother, after a night and day of wracking her brain furiously, came up with:

Give up?

My mother sent me out trick-or-treating as a Mongolian. To this day, I don't know if it was racist. I hope it wasn't. I don't know where my mother would even acquire a prejudice against Mongolian people as I can't imagine there's a huge pocket of Mongolian immigrants in the Lower Mainland. I wish I had a picture to show you, but I'll have to settle for describing it to you: imagine a furry conical hat, a furry suede vest, mascara smeared all over my face, and what I seem to remember as track pants. That's it. Me as a Mongolian. Also note that my mother, who wouldn't even let me put brand new facepaint on my rosy little cheeks, apparently had no problem with coating my face in extensively-used mascara. I guess the difference was that she had used it. If you're gonna spread germs, might as well keep it in the family.

I have no idea what my mother meant by this costume; I have to think she was going for Genghis Khan (whom I didn't know was a noted Adidas consumer). Either way, it was the kind of costume that had absolutely no cache when I was telling the story to my grade two classmates. They didn't know what a Mongolian was. I didn't know what a Mongolian was. I'm quite sure my mother didn't know what a Mongolian was, so it was really an ill-advised costume for everyone involved. Every house I went to had no idea what I was supposed to be; I seem to remember one family calling its patriarch to the door to take a picture of "Rambo," after which I wanted to cry and wage war on the country of Mongolia (and China and Russia for good measure). I went home, sat around with cold cream on my face all night, and then ate my candy. My undeserved candy. Fun-sized Twix never tasted so bittersweet. (The candy cigarettes did, but they always suck.)

That was the year that kind of killed Hallowe'en for me. I did a few more stints as a goalie but my heart was never in it, until senior year of high school when I stumbled on my friend Lyse's childhood strawberry costume and co-opted it for my own needs. Since then, it's been a kitty parade. I'm pretty much just holding out for my own kids, whom I will dress in ridiculous costumes until they get old enough to have their own say in what they wear, at which point I will sell them and buy new, younger ones.

My biggest evil plan is to adopt twins, and dress one as a bee and one as a flower, and velcro the bee's ass to the flower's face. Cutest crib death ever.

Have a happy Hallowe'en, everyone!

Plenty of Fail: Don't! Wake! Daddies!

2009-10-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

Hey, all. It's time for another installment of "Plenty of Fail," the reason you're embarrassed by online dating. I know I promised I'd leave Metro Vancouvers vast online landscape, mostly for my own safety, but I figured I'd take one more shot at the Pacific before I moved to greener pastures across this great continent of ours. This edition's profile comes from someone whose name I've lovingly changed to "Keith," not for any reason other than it's the first name I thought of (sometimes even my creativity is not boundless). Keith is a 23-year-old gay man from Richmond, B.C., and the last thing he wants to be accused of is looking for the early bird special:

Hey my names KEith.FIRST OFF IF YOUR OVER 25 DO NOT MESSAGE ME AND IF YOU DONT HAVE PICS THEN DONT BOTHER, IM NOT TRYING TO BE MEAN BUT I DONT NEED ANOTHER DADDY AND I WANNA KNOW WHO IM FLURTING WITH SO GET A PIC!.... What can I say about my self... I really should pay a friend to do this. My goals and dreams? Well I think i wanna work in film ive been acting for 8 years and ive been working as a actor for a good part of my life, but i have been thinking that maybe there are other areas that i would like to try.Going out with my friends is what i do most days i love to go to partys or clubs with them, im a big Gilmore Girls fan and 24, family guy and its sad to say but i do watch the Hills, i love Justin Timberlake, but thats it for the boring stuff. im looking for a guy who knows who he is and knows what he wants in life, im looking to find that great guy who will make me belive in love agen! i just want a chill guy with no drama, and that is a hard thing to have in the gay sene but i still have hope! well thats about it send me a messaged if ya wanna talk

Also of note: Keith lists his profession as an "actor/hair style'st" ("hair style'st" is totally the superlative I got in my high school yearbook) and lists his only two interests as "just like to have a good time" and "Going out with friends and going to see movies and i love music." This immediately clues me into the fact that Keith and I would get along robustly because one of my very favourite qualities is when internet users talk to search engines like they can answer back, and I suppose this is the dating site equivalent (nothing beats looking over the shoulder of the someone in the library and watching them type in "WHY IS MY WIFE CHEATING I GIVE HER EVERYTHING SHE WANTS" in all caps into Ask Jeeves [apparently my search engine knowledge is stuck in 2001. Lycos? AltaVista? HotBot? Anyone? Fuck this shit; I'm going to download some mp3s on Napster.]).

Let's take it, in Plenty of Fail style, point by point:

1. The first thing I want people to know about me is that I am belligerent and exclusionary.

The beauty of sites like Plenty of Fish, OKCupid, eHarmony, etc., is that they usually have very handy buttons that let you dictate the parameters of the kind of person who can message you -- specifically, age. It's much easier to just set your specifications to "users 18-24" and then you don't waste x amount of characters on your profile. That having been said, I don't know who the fuck Father Time here thinks he's fooling; if Mr. 23 can't bear the great indignity of dating someone two years older than he is because that would be robbing the grave, then I imagine he'll be shattered to know that time is a linear phenomenon and one that tends to move forward. I'm glad you've got a daddy; it's a pity he didn't teach you to use your inside voice. ALL CAPS is always gauche and makes you look like, well, the kind of person who demands things of search engines in libraries and still uses Ask Jeeves even though it's 2009.

2. I'm bad at writing dating profiles.

a) We know. b) This reminds me of one of my very favourite fanfiction phenomena (yes, I'm familiar with fanfic conventions; can you believe I'm single?) whereby every summary looks something like this:

Endless Love by dracoxharry1992

draco luvs harry but harry does'nt know if he is reddy for a commitment or not. lol im no good at summaries r'n'r. X3

First of all, let me clear up your misapprehensions by stressing that I've never read nor written Harry Potter fanfiction in my entire life (save for the absolutely brilliant "My Immortal" which you must all read / watch on YouTube). Saying while you are doing something that you are incompetent at it just makes everyone watching you agree. That's some America's Next Top Model judging challenge shit right there. And, much in the same way that dracoxharry1992 has planted the seed that she can't write summaries, Keith has made us all wonder if perhaps he wouldn't be better off having a friend write his dating profile, because he can't possibly have done a worse job.

3. I work as a actor.

I promise from here on out I won't do too much riffing on bad grammar/spelling because it's pretty snobbish and elitist, but I really do want everyone reading this to do a quick brush-up on their indefinite articles because you never know when someone will be ripping apart your online profile for their private amusement and it really helps if you give them as little ammo as possible.

4. I am embarrassed by the fact that I watch "The Hills" but not that I watch "Family Guy."

I don't want to date anyone whose priorities are that fucked. More to the point, while I can certainly understand a beyond-reasonable commitment to pop culture (or why else would we be here, right?), I really think that if that's the angle you're going to work with, you need to work it harder than "I don't like daddies, and here are four shows that I like that tell you nothing about me." Also, they're all shows that are now cancelled, were once cancelled, or are on the brink of cancellation, and I have to imagine that's because the show's creators found out this guy was watching them and no longer wanted to enable him. That may be harsh and unrealistic but I am both of those things.

5. I want a chill guy with no drama.

This is a common request. So common, in fact, that you will see it in every single gay dating profile you'll ever encounter. And, much like "No cheaters," (did you know that Cheaters has its own dating service? I can practically smell the waft of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage and Cheeto dust coming from those forums as we speak) it's one of those things that's kind of... no one goes into a dating profile like "I need someone who wants a histrionic, high-drama boyfriend, because it's gonna be coked-out 3 am phone calls and Dynasty-style slapfights from here on out!" "No drama" is code for either "I need to assert that I'm better than other people" or "I have significant internalized homophobia" and judging by how outstandingly gay this young man is, I plump for the former.

Now, I know I said I was above this, but since photos are such an integral part of the online dating process, I figured a compromise of sorts was in order. The photos I will include will always have faces obscured, in whatever manner I see fit. For our inaugural photo, I decided to honour one of our local sons, Christopher Paul Neil, and make sure we were all down with the swirl:

Alright. I'm not going to get into "is it tacky to post shirtless photos on a dating profile?" (my answer for that tends to be that it's tacky if all of your photos are shirtless, if they're webcam-grainy, or if they rank more than a 5 on the 'Porn Scale'), but something about this photo in particular is jarring.

First of all, I'm sure you all picked up on the Hitchcockian overtones at play; this guy is three quick cuts away from being stabbed to death and bleeding chocolate sauce all over the porcelain. That having been said, I don't even hate the composition here. There's actually some vaguely pretty things going on with the shadows. What I'm more concerned with are the following:

1. Who took this picture?

2. Is the shower curtain closed, in which case the camera is soaked, or open, in which case Keith is showering, with the curtain open, so someone can take his picture?

3. Is he wearing some sort of bottoms or is he legit naked? Of these two options, which is weirder?

4. Why is he looking at his hands? Is this one of those "I've just killed someone oh my God what have I done?????" showers? If so, whom did he kill, and why?

5. Who took this picture?

Ideally, any picture on a dating profile should answer more questions than it raises. This one raises substantially more.

The note I will end on is the following: Keith's headline states that he is happy to no longer be looking for a date, suggesting that he is in a relationship. His status of "looking for friends" confirms this. I find this so deeply depressing that I need to take a shower. In grayscale. If you need me, look for the tub with no shower curtain. Unless you're 27, in which case don't you have some creamed corn to be snacking down on?

Plenty of Fail: When online dating goes horribly wrong...

2009-10-05T01:44:00.000-07:00

I've been told I tend to get a little too wordy on these things, so I'll cut it down to basics and just explain what I'm about to do here, as it's particularly heartless. Online dating: it's 2009. We've all done it by now, and those of us who haven't are just biding time until we're old and eating out of cans of Hormel and then using the empty cans as decorative candle holders. (As an aside, I'm super sick right now [H1Nwhut!] and all I've been doing to pass the time is lighting candles and taking hot showers. Thank God I have blogging to balance it out or between the steam and the smoke I'd die of oxygen deprivation.) Online dating is a double-edged sword; as much as all of the usual pitfalls apply, I have met some perfectly delightful people and gone on some lovely dates and made some very good friends. The flipside of that is, well, the focus of this series. I call it "Plenty of Fail," because some people just can't quite figure the whole "online dating" thing out.

Our first article will focus on a young gentleman from Coquitlam, whose name has been changed to protect the innocent and because I don't like embarrassing people, not really. More to the point, I'm afraid that someone I know will be friends with this dude, and I'm much more comfortable mocking people behind their backs than to their faces. So, for the sake of this entry, we will call him "Cinderella" for reasons that will become apparent upon reading his profile, which I will now post, in its unedited entirety:

My name's Cinderella. For those who take the time to actually read this, thank you. I appreciate it. Yes, I am gay. I met this guy, my ex, most amazing person I've ever met in my life. I felt on top of the world when I was with him and everything seemed perfect. We no longer are together due to his selfishness, therefore I am single. I don't want guys to come on my profile and say, "Wow, you're hot." or anything like that. It's way too over-played, and frankly...not a turn on. Yes, I know I'm good looking, we all are in different ways. I want a guy to message me and say, "Wow, you're beautiful. Do you mind getting to know one another." Now that right there folks is charming and genuine. I really want to find a guy that's going to make me feel special. Someone who treats me like gold, and not neccessarily made of it. I don't want them to judge me or try and change me for "better" or "worse" because if you really like me, you'll like me for who I am and what I bring to the table. I will say that I am a caring, loving guy who just wants to meet his prince charming and hopefully sweep me off my feet. Clearly easier said than done, yet I hope it's pretty d*mn close. I don't want someone who's fake or unfaithful because I'm aware of all you promiscuous disgusting gays out there. Honesty is probably the number one factor that makes or breaks a relationship. Personally, I'd like for my man to be able to tell me what's bothering him or what he's done wrong, etc. and vise versa. Cheating is the number one thing I can not tolerate. I hate them and all they stand for. I've been cheated on in the past, and it's not pleasant. I guess I can just sum this up by saying I want an old fashioned guy in a modern form. If this sounds like you, or close, please don't hesitate to message me. I'm always up for discussion.

Other factors that may influence your opinion of the gentleman in question include his penchant for making kissy-face in every photo, but that's a matter of personal preference. He also chose to list only one interest, "movies." Oh my God! Me too! Soulmates!!! (As an aside, the only thing more vapid than listing something as generic as "movies" as your only interest is choosing "music." You know who else likes music? Everyone.)

In order to break down exactly why this is so awful with maximum efficiency, and because I have an English Lit essay due shortly and I might as well focus on structure, I will post his argument point-by-point and then expand upon those points.

1) My name is Cinderella.

So far, so good!

2) The very first thing I will bring up is my ex-boyfriend, and how happy we were together. I will then end with a bitter rejoinder, to show that I am Not Over It.

Here's where we hit a bump in the road. There are two impressions you decidedly do not want to make in your online dating profile: that you're still hung up on another guy, and that you're a bitter Betty. When I'm browsing these profiles, I often ask myself: a) do I want to be in perpetual competition with that guy from the candlelit shrine in his bedroom, and b) am I attached enough to my pets that I'll mind if he kills them after we break up?

3) I am very attractive and hear about it so frequently that I am tired of the sentiment.

On the one hand, you know, I can obviously relate. On the other hand, having seen this guy's pictures (which I will not share with you, ostensibly out of respect but in actuality to save myself the inevitable awkward confrontation), I will say this: he's not unattractive. It's hard to tell because all of the photos are overexposed, or dark and grainy, or he's making that fucking kissy face. From what I can tell, he's attractive in that 19-looking-25 ways that certain gay guys who smoke too much, tan too much, and do too much shit to their eyebrows are. The best example I can think of is about six months ago when I was in a Moxie's and I made the remark to a friend that one of the staff (a mutual acquaintance) exemplified the Moxie's policy of hiring mutton-dressed-as-lamb 30-year-olds, only to be informed that the server in question was 17. Whoops. (In my defense, this is the same server who, after being told that I was Hispanic, said "oh, you mean like Italy?")

4) I find it genuine and charming when someone expresses awe at my beauty.

Absolutely. Because when someone I barely know tells me that I'm beautiful immediately after meeting me, you know what I think? "What a genuine person. And so astute, to judge my beauty so quickly. This is not a ploy to get into my pants at all." Fast fact: anyone who calls you beautiful on the first date, let alone the first sentence, is full of shit. Sex excluded because we all say dumb shit during sex. Another exception is if you're dating James Blunt, in which case I just kind of feel sorry for you because I can only imagine how tedious that must be.

5) I need to be 'swept off my feet' because I subscribe to an outdated Disney model of romance whereby our eyes must meet across a crowded room.

I hate this, and I hate the sheer amount of people who cling to it as the ideal. It's so pervasive and I honestly find this "Prince Charming" complex so boring. Who wants Prince Charming? There's no passion there. It also excludes any conventional means of meeting a mate: bars, clubs, parties, mutual interests... online dating sites... All it really leaves is junior proms, and simulated junior proms. And, newsflash, we are in a recession, and it is very expensive to rent out a gym, hire 400 extras, make a balloon arch and then put the extra balloons in the basketball hoops. The whole sentiment in general is very high school, and not like... actual high school. Like teen sitcom high school. Bad news, motherfucker: the WB shut down in 2006. All that's left is the CW, and all of those kids are 35 and addicted to heroin.

6) I am a 'caring, loving guy.' I feel that using the phrase 'all you promiscuous disgusting gays' underscores this point nicely.

If I had to use one phrase to describe the tone of 95% of male-male online singles ads, I would use "inexplicably hostile and defensive." There's such a bizarre need to differentiate oneself from the bad gays, and this manifests itself in a variety of different phrases. Classic examples include:

"I'm a masculine guy looking for the same; not into femme guys at all (no offense)"
"Not into the scene; if you want to spend all night at a club, then stop reading here."
"Looking for a low-drama guy"
"I'm gay loud and proud and if you can't deal with that then MOVE ON SISTER."
"Not into fucking every guy I meet (unlike most of the gay community, it seems...)"
"Tired of the gay guys I meet; looking for someone more normal..."

These sentences are meant to appeal to people with the same gripes. In effect, they say, "message me, so we can bond on how much more awesome we are than (x group)! We are such good people!" Point being: chill the fuck out. Instead of talking about what you're not, tell me what you are! Unless you're Cinderella here, because the answer to that seems to be "bitter and clingy."

7) I will go out of my way to rant about infidelity like a scorned lover on Cheaters proving that I am, once again, Not Over It.

The best part of it is that this is totally unnecessary and just makes you look crazy. No one in the world goes onto a dating site thinking "I want to hook up with someone who thinks cheating is good." All this really does is weed out the polyamorists, who probably checked out somewhere around "Prince Charming" anyhow. Oh, sorry, not true: it also appeals to other crazy people with axes to grind against cheaters, and lands you in a relationship where both of you are crazy jealous and end up in a one-room with no furniture and both of your backs against the walls because neither of you will let the other out of his site. And good luck with that fucking tinderbox.

8) I will use the phrase "old fashioned guy in modern form" as my euphemism for "please do not have flaws. Any flaws. At all."

Because the second Cindy here realises that you talk too loud in the theatre or you voted Liberal or you don't cuddle after fucking or you get grumpy when you drink, your ass better sleep with one eye open, because there's gon' be some Lorena Bobbitt shit going down.

9) Feel free to message me, or rather, my baggage, as that is what I have chosen to present here rather than myself. The End.

I feel like this point speaks for itself.

So what did Cinderella do right? Well, that first part, the one about "my name is Cinderella." He fucking nailed that one. Beyond that, the biggest flaw here is the impossibly high standards. He's clearly looking for someone to replicate the feelings that his first love aroused in him, which... seems unlikely. By that token, he basically needs someone to be his Prince Charming and sweep him off his feet, which... you know, let's discuss that. It's not 1955 and you are not Lorraine McFly. Stop waiting for motherfuckers to sweep your off your feet. If your dating agenda consists of "you will bust your ass to make me swoon and I will sit here and be swooned, possibly with some sort of umbrella drink and someone fanning me with a frond," it is time to reevaluate your dating schema. It takes two to tango, and just like you want to be swooned, other people want to swoon, too.

In the meantime, stay safe. It's a big scary place online, and I wouldn't want anyone as beautiful as you to get hurt. No, really. You're the most beautiful person here tonight, babe. I mean it. Honest.

Love, Filipino style.

2009-03-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

On the way to a life-drawing sesh back in 2007, Tifanie and I purchased $10 worth of Pinoy romance novels. The covers are poorly drawn to the point of being appalling, the scenarios are ludicrous, and yet, there's something about them that draws the eye. So, two years later in a spate of boredom and mild ennui, I decided it was time to unearth these treasures and treat you all to them in a venture I like to call "Love, Filipino Style."
(Click the thumbnails for painfully large versions of each cover, to inspect them in all of their gruesome glory.)

Hindi Ka Na Mag-iisa by R.M. Custodio

One sentence first impression: This is what happens when abstinence-only sex education is taught in schools.

The skinny: You remember when you were fifteen and you'd see these things in porn -- 69 sex upside down on a marble toilet and the woman's head is like, jammed between the toilet and the counter and the guy's sitting on the toilet tank or something? (I never claimed to be a physics student.) And you thought, wow, that's really hot. And then you came to the age where you were actually having sex and you realised something as mundane as having sex on a tile floor was enough to hurl your back into spasms painful enough to wish you'd never lost your virginity in the first place? I don't know a lot about the Philippines or the porn thereof, but I have a feeling a lot of little Filipino boys and girls are deeply disappointed when it comes time for that big moment and their would-be paramour doesn't want to sit on the bed and wrap their legs around said boy or girl's neck, and we have this novel cover to blame for that.

Of course, it bears noticing that Claudine -- we'll call her Claudine because the heroines of these Pinoy romance novels without exception have names like Claudine or Suzette or Precious -- pretty much has our piece of beefcake in the ill-chosen undergarments locked into place with her legs and the hand under the chin and whatnot (my mom calls the hand under the chin "the Breach hold," after Ms. Breach, a particularly harsh elementary school teacher she had during a time when capital punishment of six-year-olds was not particularly frowned upon). Far from using this power for any sort of sexy-times, though, she's just kinda staring really intently into his face. Maybe she'll just kind of secrete a gob of drool and let it slowly inch toward his face before sucking it back in at the last minute. I bet she gets off on it.

Context clues: It's hard to decipher the back cover because I don't read Tagalog, but the back of the book identifies these two (or at least some pair in the book) as Linda and Edwin, and includes the phrase "by choice" in (partially italicized!) English.

Glaring issues: I don't see the point of a lampshade when the lightsource comes from below it. Also there doesn't seem to be any viable means of support for the canopy on that canopy bed. Maybe it connects to the ceiling or a towel rod, like a shower curtain? That's the hallmark of a classy hotel room right there: a wicker bed surrounded by a shower curtain. Also look at that chest of drawers and tell me it shouldn't logically lacerate the bed.

Final call: Linda holds Edwin hostage in a hotel room with rattan furniture (possibly subletted by Rue McClanahan) to fulfill her weird drool fetish. By choice.

Hanap Ko'y Pag-ibig by Lara Sandoval

One sentence first impression: A scorned lover tries to run down a Chinese woman from an American Cold War propaganda film. With her bike!

The skinny: Man, this one is both awesome and incredibly racist. Check the narrowed eyes on that biker woman. She means serious business. I bet she just chased stereotypical Chinese woman off a rice paddy or out of a General Tso's or something similarly typical of a racist caricature. Good luck running with those bound feet, sweetheart! This book is so racist it even tries to create new stereotypes in addition to portraying old ones, like "Chinese women wear their hair in twin braids like Swiss milkmaids" and "Chinese women wear white American Apparel t-shirts with a single, bizarre, unnecessary pleat down the front."

Meanwhile, let's talk about earnest Baywatch guy up there in the top right. Near as I can tell, he is Lorimar himself, looking down on the fantasy world of his novels. He peers down from his sunset world and sees the Chinese being driven out of the book and smiles wistfully. Then he pats himself on his one shoulder with his one arm and settles down for some halo-halo or something similarly awful.

Context clues: "Tumakas si Gia sa Vietnamese refugee camp nang malaman na ibabalik na sila sa Vietnam." Wow. Huh. I thought I was joking but I guess this book really is just a big racist tirade against the Vietnamese, hey? You make me sick, Lara Sandoval.

Final call: I think we need to write some angry letters to Lara Goebbels in her native tongue, don't you agree?

Mahal Kong Stuntwoman by Alexa Roz

One sentence first impression: A paean to the simple joys of laying with the one you love and laughing at fruit.

The skinny: These two are clearly beyond the "man, I'm hungry, I could use an apple" stage of being high and well into the "apples are fucking funny" stage of being high. You can practically smell the weed and incense wafting from this cover; I bet that sensibly decorated granny room smells like a Grateful Dead concert. I'd say the apple is some sort of Biblical allusion but frankly I think I'm giving our girl Alexa Roz too much credit. I will admit that it's possible that a snake could be lurking within the confusing pattern of those throw pillows.

The name suggests that at least one of them is a stuntwoman. My money's on her. Most likely she gets baked and attempts some sort of high-flying trickery, with only her gigantic hair to break her fall. Seriously, look at the body of that mane. I take it back; the snake is hiding in there.

Context clues: Wow. This woman's name is actually Suzette. See, and you thought I didn't know what I was talking about. Anyway, Suzette is our blazin' stuntwoman and Jason is the Chong to her Cheech. We also see the presence of a Linda, so it looks like our leg-grappling saliva fetishist from the first novel is back, trying to hold Jason captive with her denim thighs and her wicker lies. Only Suzette can save him by jumping over Mahal Kong gorge on her motorcycle -- if only she can tear herself away from that blacklight poster she's gotten lost in.

Glaring issues: I hope she's wearing a bra because I don't imagine that blouse made out of my grandmother's chintz table cloth offers the girls much coverage. Incidentally, my grandmother's name is Linda, which is... disturbing, in this context.

Final call: This is probably the only one so far I'd actually read; Suzette and Jason seem pretty chill. Plus the cover art is a damn sight above some of the stuff we're about to see.

Dahil Bigay Ka ng Maykapal by Jocelyn Puedan

One sentence first impression: Imagine Ugly Betty, only set at a beauty pageant in the Philippines and America Ferrera is replaced by Charles Grigsby from the second season of American Idol in a maid's outfit.

The skinny: This one seems pretty obvious. A forlorn and humble maid wants badly to be a beauty queen, but knows it will never happen. A corporate mover-and-shaker with no top lip, meanwhile, is told by his employer, the pageant's sponsor, that ratings are down and they'll need to rig the pageant for a more ordinary kind of girl to win the contest, so the public can relate to her. CM&Sw/NTL is tasked with making over Ugly Maid (who is far too plain to be a Claudine or a Precious) into a palatable pageant contestant. During the process, the bitchy reigning queen, pictured right, makes multiple passes at our boy CM&Sw/NTL and cuts down UM with her harsh Tagalog words.

CM&Sw/NTL, naturally, falls in love with UM, and UM begins to finally believe in herself and her inner beauty. Moments before the pageant, it's revealed that corporate sponsor was attempting to rig the pageant not for ratings but in order to claim money on bets to replace the money he's embezzled from the company's shareholders. He is arrested and UM turns on CM&Sw/NTL for his dishonesty. She no longer believes in herself and it shows in her performance, which is shaky. During one break, though, CM&Sw/NTL uses his position as emcee to make an impassioned speech to UM about his love for her. The audience applauds, UM regains her confidence, the judges are touched, and UM wins the competition by legitimate means. Bitchy rival throws a fit but comically slips and falls off the stage. The film ends with CM&Sw/NTL and UM's wedding. Heart wipe to the end and that's one more in the can. The American adaptation would star Anne Hathaway and Patrick Dempsey, with John Lithgow as the evil corporate sponsor and Maggie Grace as the bitchy beauty queen.

Context clues: "Iibigin pa rin kaya siya ni Keanu? Imposible!" I'm wrong, apparently; replace Patrick Dempsey with Keanu Reeves. And Kate Hudson with Carrie Anne Moss. And the bitchy beauty queen with Laurence Fishburne. This story is better now, actually.

Glaring issues: THERE IS A SINGLE TEAR COMING FROM THE CENTRE OF HER EYE. That is disturbing and hilarious. Has the artist never seen a person cry before? Also, I don't know if you can see it on the scan but that maid has killer forehead acne. She is not just "TV ugly," she is actual ugly. And might want to invest in bangs. Also, judging by the lighting on lipless corporate Keanu guy, the beauty queen's shoes are apparently incandescent.

Final call: If this had been the final installation of The Matrix instead of Revolutions, I would have been far more enthused about the entire series. "Enjoy a film with Keanu? Imposible!"

Turuan Mo Akong Lumimot by Gemma G. Imperial

One sentence first impression: Finally, a romance novel where every character has Down's Syndrome!

The skinny: Oh my God, I have no idea. Clearly our girl in the men's Oxford shirt with the D.J. Tanner hair is a watchful overseer in the vain of Lorimar the Racist, but I don't really know what exactly she's watching over from up there. Maybe she's just there to ruffle her hair photogenically and make sure the dopey-looking sausage-bodied characters don't wander too close to the ocean, where sailboarders zoom by four inches from the shore. I don't know where to go with our protagonists without dipping into the "mentally handi-capped" well any further, but... seriously, I don't see any other explanation for it. I'd say she was drowning, but she looks so happy about it.

Context clues: Looks like these two are "Alona" and "Jason Jimenez." Possibly some relation to our boy Jason from Mahal Kong Stuntwoman? I hope not; I thought he and Suzette made such a cute stoner couple. It would explain the dazed looks on the faces of the two leads, though, and the presence of D.J. Tagalog up there. "No," she says, smiling down. "This will not be sufficient. Jason needs a fierce bitch with gigantic hair, like me." And then Suzette comes crashing onto the beach on her sailboard and Jason drops Alona right there. And Jason asks "whoa, dude, are you alright?" and Suzette holds out her apple like "yeah, dude, I just got distracted by this apple." And they laugh and a relationship is forged. Poor Alona, though. She was doomed to be dumped by her name.

Glaring issues: I'm not even gonna touch the anatomy on this one but I will say that I hope when D.J. Tagalog gave Jason his new girlfriend she also did something about that hunchback.

Final call: I am going to get so much hate mail about that Down's Syndrome comment. If there's one thing this blog has taught me it's that the eyes of disability advocates are focused on me like a fucking laser beam.

Hahamakin ang Lahat Masunod Ka Lamang by Arielle

One sentence first impression: A set of identical twins have a baby together and their mother comes back from the dead to express her disapproval, horrifying them.

The skinny: Have you ever seen those images of nymphs that supposedly grew on bushes found by monks but they look suspiciously like they were carved out of fruit? That baby is totally carved out of fruit. And seems incredibly calm, considering all of the screaming and haunting going on around it. Maybe the baby is dead, or one of those horrible fake babies that looks real and barren women buy them and project their emotional pain onto them, and take them out to the park in a stroller and you look it and it's clearly a fake baby and it's so weird.

I bet this ghost, Arielle, came out of its tiny river to steal the Twincesters' souls, and she was like "and I'll take the soul of your baby, too!" And the girl is like "oh, it's not real," and Arielle is like "what? Then why do you carry it around?" and the guy is like "we can't have kids because my sister-wife Janice Lumayag has the pasma from showering after midnight" and Arielle is like "fuck this shit is too weird for me, I'm going to the refugee camp to chase away some Vietnamese with my ghost bike."

Context clues: The couple are Johnny and Chariz and the baby is Andro -- as in, ANDROID??? The plot thickens. Maybe we'll finally see who'd win in a fight between a ghost and a robot.

Final call: I think she has a tiny pocket on the front of her insanely tight skirt. I bet that's where she keeps the pee cartridges for her fake robot baby.

Kailian Darating Ang Pagako Ng Bukas by Ben E. Libria

One sentence first impression: Sometimes, a wind comes that's so powerful it blows the skin off your face.

The skinny: Man, this one might have even worse art than Ugly Matrix Beauty Pageant, and that's saying something. Those eyebrows were clearly drawn on as an afterthought, possibly because they were blown away by a wind so fucking strong it's making that girl's entire head of hair go completely horizontal. Seriously. Even the hair that's not even exposed to the wind by virtue of being on the other side of her head. Our non-conformist hero, meanwhile, has clearly grown accustomed to his blustery surroundings, and has welded his sunglasses to the side of his head and sewn his bad-ass ascot to his shirt.

It's hard being a rebel, though. Sometimes, as you stand there in your mom jeans and touristy Hopi Indian beadwork belt, pointedly ignoring the shoreside smoothie bar, DJ booth and Stonehenge in the background... it gets lonely. And you think back on the only woman you ever loved, so light-hearted and gay, who wanted to play in the hurricane and got her face blown off her skull, and you sigh. You sigh and shed a single tear that's blown away before anyone will ever see it. Then you put your sunglasses back on, brush the dust off your giant pleather jacket, and go and get a kiwi-mango smoothie.

Context clues: This novel is rife with hilarious, stereotypical Pinoy romance names, like Marshia, Rhodora, Alessandro, and perhaps the most Pinoy of all, Linabelle.

Glaring issues: That is... really not what wood looks like.

Final call: Maybe Manila was just not meant to have its own James Dean.

Kailan Tama Ang Mali? by Lou Zapant

One sentence first impression: When approaching a woman for potential courtship, it's important to make sure she has no defence mechanisms handy to disable you, like bear mace or razor-sharp teeth.

The skinny: This novel takes place primarily within an orthodontist's nightmare. Seriously, Vampirina here is an absolute mess of receding gums and fangs. Couple that with her crow's feet, laugh lines, and weird sunburning/lack of definition on her chest, and she is basically a cosmetic train wreck altogether. The one thing she does having going for her, though, is awesome, full-bodied, Suzette Stuntwoman hair. My theory is that this is our Downsy friend Alona, who received pity from D.J. Tagalog and got some Whitesnake extensions of her own. Now, though, thanks her painful experience with Jason Jimenez and his sailboarding, philandering ways, she implicitly distrusts all men and bear maces them at a moment's notice. Then she feeds of their neck veins with her fangs.

Later, when Alona returns her ridiculously tight skirt to her friend Chariz covered in blood, Chariz will ask where all the blood came from. Fortunately, Alona will be able to appease Chariz with some Weeboks for her fake baby and all will be well.

Context clues: The girl is Loise. The guy? The suavely-named Ric Enriquez. He's a ladykiller, that one.

Glaring issues: The teeth pretty much take centre stage here, but I have to wonder where Loise-Alona is sitting. Inside/outside a car? On an airplane toilet? The mind boggles.

Final call: If you mentally subtract the hair and look at what we can see, it becomes clear that Loise-Alona is built like a linebacker in a pencil skirt. This woman is pretty much equipped to take down any natural predator she might have. We should all be scared of her.

Incubus by Zunikka Nepo

One sentence first impression: I feel like this was maybe improperly placed in the romance section.

The skinny: I'm sorry, but I don't know what this bitch expected to happen when she invited a green monster with bloody fangs into her bedroom. Maybe he sweet-talked his way in. She was like "I dunno, man, you're hairy and you have yellow eyes, I think you're a monster." And he was like "no, no, I'm the bassist in an indie band, I have a beautiful soul." And she's like "what's your band name?" And he's like "Incubus. We're in talks with a label but it's nothing definite yet" and she's like "I've never heard of you guys" and he's like "sometimes I DJ on weekends. DJ Anabelle Custodio?" and she's like "well, alright," and then they get home and he's totally a monster. She should have known the only DJ in the Philippines is the all-powerful D.J. Tagalog.

Context clues: The inside front page is labelled "property of John Evangelista." That is... not surprising.

Glaring issues: I feel like nothing about this makes sense so pointing out that the woman's body does not remotely resemble that of a human is just nitpicking. At least her lampshade apparently works.

Final call: If Filipino women's hair is really as amazing and full-bodied as these covers seem to indicate, I really need to make a trip there soon.

Twi harder.

2008-12-15T22:04:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks back, Matthew and I took in a late showing of the film version of Stephenie Meyer's magnum opus, Twilight. Twilight takes place in a Washingtonian berg named Forks, all the more convenient because nobody loves rain-as-a-plot-device quite like our girl Stephenie. Rain to symbolize depression, kisses in the rain, rain by which to listen to your Linkin Park CDs and brood about how your vampire boyfriend won't touch you -- and do note that I'm not exaggerating even remotely; SMeyer routinely posts playlists on her website by which to read her tomes and the only comment I'll deign to make is that they're maybe a little heavy on the Blue October and maybe a little light on the anything-listenable.

The two main players of our journey to Forks are:

Edward Cullen - the gay vampire, or possibly "vampyre" depending on how fruity SMeyer wants to go. Edward lives with an adoptive family of Draculas in Forks. The text version of Twilight is careful to remind us how jaw-droppingly beautiful he is, usually through a convoluted string of adjectives and adverbs that read like an entire class of ninth grade creative writing students were jammed through a blender set to "mince." And mince Edward does, poncing about the high school cafeteria with his fellow Draculas in what can only be described as a painfully colour-coordinated wardrobe of navy blues, drab greys, and milky periwinkles that seems a whole lot like the production crew bought the entire far wall of a Le Chateau and then couldn't afford the rest. Edward is over a hundred years old, having been born in a time before women could vote and showing with his every breath that he wishes that were still the case. When it gets sunny, Edward's skin sparkles. I feel like there is nothing I can contribute here to amplify the inherent stupidity of that idea, so why don't we move on?

Bella Swan - Bella arrives from Phoenix to a town full of admirers who are in love with her and want to be her, as often happens outside of the hallowed world of fanfiction, except where it never does. Bella also has the not-actually-a-flaw of being mildly clumsy, possibly included as strike-proofing for when critics invariably call Bella out as a Mary Sue, or worse, a blatant retconning of Stephenie Meyer's adolescence, which she can't be because her eyes are sunset beige and Stephenie's are more of a caramel latte, and those are at least three shades apart on the Home Depot colour wheel. In future installments, Bella will fall into a deep depression when Edward leaves until she finds another man to control her, be elated when he returns and devote her life to him, get married right out of high school, and become pregnant with a Dracula baby that makes her drink blood and kicks so hard it breaks her ribs. It makes the idea that Bella is a Stephenie proxy even more disturbing that it already was, which was "substantially."

(As a note, I've found I really enjoy the phrase "he is a Dracula," much in the same way I enjoy the phrase "she looks like a Frankenstein.")

The plot follows the linear progression one might expect. Bella moves to Forks as some sort of unnecessary act of self-sacrifice for her mother, mostly just to show us right off the top what a selfless martyr she is. (The mother, as an aside, unwittingly scores the film's best line when she asks her daughter of her new undead beau, "is he indie?" I don't know what it is about the use of "indie" as a modifier that absolutely seems to baffle people, but "indie" is the new "groovy" and I'm calling it right now.) She moves in with her father, who mostly exists to make the same kind of "jealous fathers hate boyfriends" jokes you'd expect out of what I would call the Mormonest movie that ever Mormoned, if I didn't feel guilty about saddling the Mormons with the sack of tripe that is this movie. She goes to high school and everyone loves her except! the allegedly beautiful Edward and his allegedly beautiful family, each of whom get roughly one line throughout the film. Bella actually repulses Edward, to the point where it throws off his totally natural American accent and makes him sound like he's talking through a bag of dicks for most of the film.

Of course, Edward secretly loves Bella, protecting her from a car accident induced by the only black person in Forks, a gang of street toughs who want to do something to her that has to at least be more pleasant than a vampire baby ripping your vagina in half, and a host of other misfortunes -- her cereal was too dry so Edward moistened it with his sparkly tears because she's too much of an ineffectual waif to walk to the kitchen and get the milk herself without tripping and falling because whoooa what a zany klutz; that kind of thing -- before finally confessing his love to her. There's something he's not telling her, and rather than taking it to Maury like any sensible girl her age would, she Googles it and of course immediately realises that he's a vampire. Apparently the Cullen family's entire secretive existence in Forks hinges on the fact that nobody ever uses a search engine, because when you Google Image "vampire," pics of '05 Cullen family vacation to Cancún are the first result.

Forced to out himself to her in a creepy, "call me daddy" scene where he all but makes Bella lick his boot, Edward then introduces her to his family of Draculas, each of whom, in the grand tradition of vampires as very sexually-fluid, gender-non-conformist creatures, are jarringly heterosexual and in fact completely monogamous, in committed relationships with the people posing as their adopted siblings because that's not remotely creepy. Then there's vampire baseball, and I begin to realise that this movie is actually the longest in the world because it's been like an hour and a half and there's still no sign of an imminent conflict. Thankfully, a bunch of not-as-beautiful-as-the-Cullens-and-I-bet-they-don't-sparkle-either Draculas arrive and start to hunt Bella, while the Cullens do their best to hide her because that's what you do when someone threatens your thousands-of-years-old secret existence, is you give up all of your potential safety for them. She's just that special, guys. Stephe -- Bella is just that special.

I wish I could relay to you the intensity with which nothing happens in the final scene, a showdown in a dance studio wherein Bella does nothing to buck her streak of being totally helpless and waiting for Edward to save her. I will say that it's funny that she ends up in a Phoenix hospital with her mom being given the cover story that she fell down a few flights of stairs at a hotel, and that that story is accepted without question, which shows you what an utter fucking spaz Bella is. Edward agrees to take Bella to prom, and off they go together, to dance under a conspicuously well-lit gazebo, utterly alone, with her begging someone she's known for a grand total of maybe a week and a half to turn her into a vampire as well. In conclusion, Bella is stupid.

On its own, Twilight is no worse than every other bad movie you've ever seen; in fact, its worst sin is that it's overlong and a bit boring. However, when you realise that this is a movie with a female lead (Kristen Stewart), overseen by a female director (Catherine Hardwicke), and adapted by a female screenwriter (Melissa Rosenberg) from a source text written by a woman (Stephenie Meyer), the whole thing becomes troubling. Far more troubling than the average rom-com, which still upholds antiquated ideas of a woman needing a man to be happy but at least refrains from inflicting the amount of punishment to its female lead that Bella receives, or the Disney movie that creates rigid, structured gender roles but often gives its heroine at least one redeeming characteristic. This is a piece of media that has gone through multiple pairs of female hands and somehow, someway, no one objected.

I guess my point is, far more than something that's vulgar or racy or edgy or peppered with cusses, how could someone in good conscience let their daughter read this without first having a long talk about the gender roles portrayed within the book? It takes a lot to turn me into a pearl clutcher, but here we are. The very last thing I would want of my daughter -- and I want to take the time to say that, while I'm currently not in the mind of having children, if I'm ever in a situation where the pregnant mother is being forced to DRINK BLOOD to support the RAVENOUS, VIOLENT FETUS, we are ABORTING THAT FUCKER before you can say "Bristol Palin" -- is for her to be the kind of personalitiless, spineless, unempowered cypher that the Twilight series glorifies. The even more disturbing idea is this: the fact that the Bella character is so utterly unremarkable save for the lone caveat of her being clumsy makes her perfect for any little girl to insert themselves in her role, which is exactly the point. If the character is outspoken or shy and the reader isn't, then the illusion is lost. But beyond making everyone in the book outstandingly attractive -- which, of course, you should aspire to be, because no one would ever love someone who's not physically beautiful (a notion reinforced in the physical descriptions in SMeyer's other book, The Host, lest you think that she's a one-time offender) -- Bella is left as a blank cheque, a perfect canvas on which one may paint herself, and on which Stephenie Meyer almost certainly did.

(As a bitchy aside, SMeyer has claimed that the Twilight series is based on a variety of books, with the first being framed around Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and the final, Breaking Dawn, around Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I must not have been reading AMND closely enough, because I missed the part where a demon baby gnaws its way through Hermia's uterine wall. Shakespeare can be tricky.)

As we left a theatre full of squealing pre-teen girls -- every stereotype you could imagine was true -- we heard a woman of maybe her early twenties declare that she wanted an Edward for herself, presumably as a part of some sort of barter whereby she gave away her right to own property and her legal status as a "person." She went home and presumably had some manner of damp dream about Edward Cullen watching her from a dark corner as she slept, the only traces of him visible the end of a lit cigarette and a clump of sparkles. I, on the other hand, went home and sat up through the night, envisioning a nightmarish future wherein Stephenie Meyer is declared military despot and my future daughter rebels by signing her legal rights over to a broody vampire with bad hair and an unconvincing American accent. As she joins a group of like-minded girls, preparing to get vampire-pregnant and to never have to make another decision again in her life, I rend my shirt atwain, drop to my knees in the symbolically pouring rain and wail one question to the heavens:

"IS HE INDIIIIIIE?"

Edit: The original version of this post totally included the epithet "retard," which I was critiqued on and have since removed. I later made a decent-length followup post justifying my use of the word. It touched on the idea of reclamation, thoughtful use of words, etc. - points I still agree with. At the end of the day, though, I've decided I'd rather not make someone with mental illness or disability feel like shit because I'm enamoured with my poetic license, so I've deleted the justification post and changed the article around a bit. Sorry if I was an asshole. I think the spirit of the original article is still preserved; namely, that Stephenie Meyer sucks. And also, I've since seen New Moon and Eclipse, and they suck, too. I can't believe there are two more movies left and that I am going to pay to see both of them.

The only political post you'll ever see me do, unless I'm lying.

2008-11-02T23:42:00.001-08:00

So I've been obsessively keeping up with this particular election, and you have, too. Maybe you haven't been doing it the way I have, watching CNN day in and day out, fastidiously neglecting schoolwork in order to catch the McCain-Obama town hall debate or doing research on pork barrel spending, the Bridge to Nowhere, public financing and myriad other utterly disinteresting and totally inconsequential social and political phenomena in order to fully understand the ins and outs of this election. Maybe you just think Michelle Obama has excellent legs, or you love the way Tina Fey says "William Ayers" (both totally valid).

Some things are universal to all elections, though, and it's at this point that I give credit to and issue rebukes toward the bolsterer and bane of every political campaign: the pundits. The Candy Crowleys, Donna Braziles, James Carvilles and Lou Dobbseseseses. Your opinion on punditry largely depends on your perception of the media's responsibility to the public, and punditry is the break in the track, the place where the train goes largely off the rails and starts reporting on shit that really doesn't matter. Nobody has ever cared about anything a pundit has said, or anything they ever will.

The bottom line in this sort of... impassioned rant upon which I'm about to go off is that TV news pundits are ultimately tools of the campaigns. I don't think there are very many people out there who would argue that Barack Obama's connection to William Ayers is even remotely relevant. In fact, I'd say it's not particularly interesting either, although that does a good deal to betray my own personal political leanings (although I don't personally have any real enmity toward John McCain, a decent enough guy [as far as the GOP goes] whom I feel is at best someone who's had to make a bunch of bizarre compromises to appeal to the more extreme sections of his voting base and at worst is just a puppet of the far right, though I'd argue his short temper and lack of empathy make him far from the ideal president). Nor do I think Sarah Palin's claim of having put a jet on eBay particularly needs to be debunked -- in fact, I'd prefer to leave it up in the air (no pun intended) because I believe it adds to her air of fabulous craziness.

In these two cases (and particularly, I've found, on behalf of the McCain campaign, though I added the Palin example in some half-assed attempt at bipartisanship), the good people at CNN have just acted as tools to disseminate campaign literature. It requires no actual work, and it's journalism at its laziest. You can interview Joe the Plumber as often as David Caruso drops witty one-liners and doffs his glasses on CSI: Miami, and that doesn't make either of them relevant. Does that make it bad? In a perfect world, I'm saying no. It entertains the fuck out of me, for one thing, as does everything about the broken-ass US political beast (although the enfeebled Canadian goblin isn't much better, and I don't mean Stéphane Dion) -- my particular favourite is the primary caucus system, where you publically group up with your neighbours and cheer for the candidate you love best, as though some kind of gigantic pep rally is the best way to decide the most powerful person in America. Notice I don't say the free world, because y'all bitches gettin' overtaken by China. Belee dat.

However, this isn't a perfect world. Rather, it's a world full of trailer park-living, cousin-fucking, backwater Joe Six-Pack hicks who FW: FW: FW each other emails in gigantic 18-point fuchsia Comic Sans, deriding Senator Obama for believing in the Koo-ran, comparing his wife to a monkey, and proposing longwinded, often bigoted speeches purportedly by Ben Stein, Bill Cosby, and other favourite figures which invoke the "good old days," rather than attributing them to their actual authors, crazy motherfuckers with volatile stills of moonshine and a Mustang up on blocks in the backyard. And in that sense, punditry is destructive. Because Barack Obama is not a socialist and Sarah Palin did not flip off a small child at a rally (although I would strongly advocate voting for her if she had, so it's a pity), but pundits discuss the issues as though they hold any weight. And they don't.

On its surface, I love it, mostly because I'm a giant gossip and I love hearing how Joe Biden asked a guy in a wheelchair to stand and receive applause. But it doesn't matter an iota, and it saddens me to think people will go to the voting booth with that in mind. Enjoy the political gossip for what it is, and keep the issues separate. And vote on the latter.

With my love/hate of punditry aside, this election is tomorrow, and it's reminiscent of a high school graduation: half relief, half disappointment. It's gonna be a long time before we have an election like this, full of dynamic personalities and crazy gaffes and a Vice Presidential candidate who shoots wolves out of helicopters (although Dick Cheney shot old men in the face, which I guess is almost as good). So, in that spirit, it's time for me to give my yearbook comments on the various figures of the 2008 election:

To Rep. Ron Paul: I've always hated 4chan and the internet in general, but I want to thank you for solidifying that. I also want to thank you for proving, once and for all, that the internet vote doesn't amount to shit, because all of the web denizens out in the vastness of the WWs are too busy playing Second Life, masturbating to anthropomorphic wolf porn, or cultivating their neckbeards to get out and vote. As fun as it would have been to have a cantakerous 78-year-old vagina doctor in the White House, somehow I'm a bit relieved that we won't be inaugurating President Paul in '09.

To Gov. Mike Huckabee: You are crazy as hell. Not fabulously crazy like Bette Davis or Beyoncé, but actually, legitimately crazy. I'm sure your plan to put AIDS patients on an ice floe and float them over a waterfall was a revolutionary one back in 1992, when it was still wildly out-of-date, but any amount of backtracking now still doesn't make it any less insane. Your success in this election, however marginal, frightens me and makes me distrust Americans more than ever. I have no idea how you and Obama won caucuses in the same state. Also, your family is ugly as hell. No disrespect, but seriously y'all: Google Image "huckabee family" and tell me I'm wrong

To Rep. Dennis Kucinich: Though I agree with everything you've ever said and every viewpoint you've ever laid forth, you will never hold any public office higher than Congressman. I'd love you to prove me wrong, but in the meantime, please enjoy the fact that you dodged an assassination attempt from the Chicago mafia, have been re-elected twelve years straight, and are married to a British Amazon supermodel wife even though you are a tiny little leprechaun man. Know that karma has your back, even if you don't always get what you want.

To Fmr. Sen. Mike Gravel: I'm pretty sure you're still out there campaigning, even after being turned down by the Democrats, the Libertarians, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Boston Tea Party, and then having created your own Mike Gravel Party, and subsequently losing that nomination as well. Thank you for being everyone's angry old senile grandfather, and for peppering the web with avant-garde campaign videos like "Rock" and "Fire." Sarah Palin may be the pageant girl of this election, but you definitely win Miss Congeniality.

To Fmr. Rep. Cynthia McKinney: You are possibly the best in the world, and I would almost consider voting for the Green Party just for the extremely slim chance that my vote makes every electronic voting system in the world malfunction and have you sweep the election in a landslide. I would love four years of President McKinney abusing the press, swearing when she thinks she's off-mic, throwing tantrums and refusing to wear her ID badge. People like you are the reason America needs more than two viable parties. We need a president who wouldn't talk with Iran because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked at her funny, or, as you might express it, "with stink eye."

To Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: I don't know what's worse, that you lost the one thing you clearly wanted most in the world, or that your feminist mantle is being taken on by Sarah Palin, who wants to prosecute rape victims for wearing clothes that were "just asking for it." Go and have yourself a nice extramarital affair and forget all about this mess. God knows you've earned it.

To Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Prof. William Ayers: I get it. I really do. Sorry your views fall too far outside the aforementioned cousin-fucking mainstream to have anyone pay attention to your ideas. Make like Hillary and wash your hands of the whole thing. Or else work together on a plan to bomb Whitey.

To Sen. Joe Biden: You talk so much. You talk soooo much. You have delivered sentences that are longer than the body of this article. If you are elected VP tomorrow, be grateful, never speak in public, and do your best not to shoot anyone in the face, and you'll have already been better than the last guy. Also, way to go on that VP debate. You did pretty well for yourself, even if your opponent wasn't...

To Gov. Sarah Palin: Jesus Christ, where do I start? Thanks for bringing Tina Fey to the public consciousness. Thanks for making Elisabeth Hasselbeck degrade herself to a histrionic mess with each new day, not that she needed the help. Thanks for always having impeccable hair and a fierce new $20,000 blazer with each appearance. Thanks for making up a lesbian friend that one time. Thanks for giving the worst interview in the history of televised interviews -- I've seen five-year-old peewee athletes do better special interest fluff pieces. Thanks for obliterating the G at the end of every present progressive verb. Thanks for providing a legion of women with a new novelty Hallowe'en costume this year. Thanks for ensuring that your appearance will give every contemporary piece of pop culture a dated "2008" feel years from now, like O.J. Simpson in 1995 or Michael Dukakis in 1992. And, most importantly, thanks for almost, but not quite, fading away from the public eye if you lose tomorrow. Because as much as I think you embody the kind of aggressive ignorance that makes everyone incredulous about Alaska, I don't think I quite want you out of my life entirely. Become a consultant or something, like Geraldine Ferraro. There's nothing the GOP audience loves like pretty and brainless.

To Sen. John McCain: I don't hate you. Your campaigning sucks, your desperate terror-mongering is unbecoming, and I blame you for creating a beast you can't even control. You're working to actively deny civil rights to millions of people. And yet, I don't hate you. I do, though, question your choice of Sarah Palin, aka Harriet Miers if her nomination went through. It just screams of senility. Which, ultimately, is the problem: you're old as hell. And when people say "the VP is only a heartbeat away from the presidency," they're not talking about Obama, who has an off-chance of being assassinated, or getting in a car or plane crash if fate intervenes. They are talking about you. You are a million years old and you have had all of the cancers, all at once. Your heart is literally going to stop beating and you will keel over and die, probably within the week. And when that happens, we're all going to be kept nice and toasty under the book-burnings held by President Palin. Thanks.

To Sen. Barack Obama: You tick all of the boxes. You're eloquent, inventive, and your wife is probably the next Jackie O. (Please don't be the next J.F.K.) You will hopefully win the election, at which point the economy you've been saddled with will prove a logistical impossibility. You'll quietly be voted out of office four years later by a vengeful public whipped up into an ignorant froth, and then it's Farenheit 451, Palin-style.

So that's that. I'll be meticulously keeping up with my election map between rehearsals. I trust you all to do the same. And to all of the Americans out there: vote. Seriously. Ideally for Cynthia McKinney. That bitch means all kinds of fierce business.

More like The Murder Years, am I right?

2008-08-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

My forays into watching bad made-for-TV movies and chronicling them for posterity are well-documented. I'm sure what scant readers I have will remember my write-up on Perfect Body, the 1997 monstrosity starring the Pink Power Ranger, Goodwin from Lost, and an eating disorder so ill-defined it might as well have been Morgellons. I had to admit, though, that I was intrigued when, as I complained that I needed fodder for a blog post, my internet boyfriend Julian suggested No One Would Tell, a most excellent trash-TV flick which he very aptly summarized as "Fred Savage beats up D.J. Tanner." With a synopsis like that, how could I refuse?

(All of my made-for-TV indulgences are just holdovers until I can tackle the mother of all Lifetime movies, Queen Sized, starring Hairspray songstress and racist Top Model-maimer Nikki Blonsky.)

The only place where black and white come together in Nikki's world are on her cupcakes.

No One Would Tell, indeed, delivers on Julian's succinct premise: if you're in the mood for ninety minutes of Fred Savage beating up Candace Cameron, this is absolutely your film. And let me tell you, domestic abuse is never funny unless you're watching it acted out by Cameron and Savage in their mid-nineties finest: bulky vests, high-waisted Mom Jeans, and a collection of sweaters so stupid they send Bill Cosby weeping back to his Jell-O Pudding Pop in shame. Cameron in particular rocks the exact same powder blue turtleneck for much of the film, perhaps doing her damnedest to distract from the overwhelming abundance of denim overalls present throughout the rest of the production. 1996 was a rough year for everyone.

Cameron is Stacy Collins, a young optimist who spends her time taking in high school wrestling matches. It's during one of these meetings that she and her friends, Girl Who's Less Attractive Than Stacy and Is Possibly a Lesbian (Nicky) and Light-Skinned Dark Girl of Indeterminate Ethnicity (Val), first witness Savage's Bobby Tennison, a strapping young buck who enjoys hitting women, murdering them, and hiding their bodies, in that order. Stacy is indeed murdered within the first five minutes of NOWT, and the rest of the film takes place in flashback, though you spend the bulk of the time wishing that the flashback were somehow wrong in a way that would expedite her murder, such as her death actually coming at the hands of her mother at the morning breakfast table a good three days before her actual murder.

"Pep rally on Tuesday! Wear red! BLOOD RED."

It's worth mentioning that Val is played by Justina Machado, whose extensive fan club has uploaded not one, but two copies of NOWT to the internet. It's due to their mildly eerie obsession that I'm able to review this video for you today. Thanks for the crazy, jmachadofansite.

Anyway, Stacy and her friends do a bit of sassy girl power bullshit in the vein of Saved by the Bell: The College Years, until Stacy's eyes settle on Bobby as he wrestles and she thinks, "gosh, I wish he would beat me like that." So they're off, embarking upon a whirlwind romance of mushy words and shoving as Bobby slams Stacy into every available hard surface, and she makes up lies like she tripped and fell or she ran into a door or she fell asleep with her face on the iron. Of particular deliciousness is Stacy's hard shit-eating fall into a pile of rocks, as a butthurt Bobby dramatically rips up a poem he lovingly wrote for her and tosses it into the lake. Spoiler: that poem's not the only thing he rips up and tosses in the lake. Sorry, Stacy.

Meanwhile, we're treated to a "Stacy's mom is also in an abusive relationship" subplot that's as banal as it is uninteresting. Basically, Stacy's mom -- who, despite what the song would indicate, does not have it going on unless "it" is spousal abuse -- is dating this guy, Rod, who's a dick, and she stands up to him and everything goes well and she's totally not murdered. I guess this was included to keep the film from being utterly hopeless, which differentiates it from, say, Dancer in the Dark. The character of Carla, though, does her best Cara Seymour in the aforementioned Dancer by blatantly lying to get Bobby off the hook for Stacy's beating/murder. She's one of many members of an unsavoury and forgettable supporting cast, including the token arty/oddball girl whom I guess the producers were too cheap to hire Heather Matarazzo to play. Anyways, the point is, like mother, like daughter, which was actually the original title of this movie, before it was beaten by Fred Savage Beats Up D.J. Tanner and finally No One Would Tell.

"Be back home by eleven! Try not to punch her too hard."

We endure the Stacy/Bobby relationship as they get together, he becomes obsessive, calls her a slut for wearing shorts in school, hurls her into wall after wall and gives her conspicuous bruise after conspicuous bloody bruise, and slaps her at the fifties-themed sock hop that, true to the racial boundaries implied by the theme, is not attended by Val (who, to be fair, gets about four lines in the entire film and is probably played by a Swiffer during half of her non-speaking scenes). Finally, Bobby resolves to kill her, which is fine by me because I've been rooting her demise on for about twenty minutes now.

Anyway, the bottom line is, Bobby kills her, and presumably Danny Tanner's heart breaks somewhere in San Francisco and Winnie Cooper is struck with fear in Wisconsin or wherever the fuck. He tosses her in the lake, but is sold out by his reluctant accomplice and his stupid habit/motif of stealing flowers from centrepieces because I guess he's a giant cheapskate? Anyways, Nicky sprays Carla with her toxic lesbian pee and Carla disintegrates and everyone is happy except for Stacy, who's dead. Thankfully, Judge Sally Jessy Raphael (!!) is here to remind us all in voiceover about the dangers of domestic violence and give Bobby life in prison. Justice is served for everyone but the viewers, who just wasted one and a half health classes watching this tripe.

Always entertained fantasies of D.J. Tanner taking a stiff right to the face? Click here and watch No One Would Tell for yourself. But be warned: those YouTube commenters take this shit fo'real.

Craigslist and Cyndi Lauper: coming together to make dreams come true.

2008-07-15T03:05:00.000-07:00

For the background necessary to this post, click here.

Any of my friends can tell you I'm a Craigslist missed connections addict. I watch the site compulsively, just waiting for the time my number will finally come up, and there I'll be. I've posted my own, once, to apologize to a British man to whom I was apparently curt whilst ushering my friend Jessica onto a Skytrain at Granville Station. Likewise, I've seen ones posted by people I know (a daring attempt to secure a connection with an OUTtv cameraman with whom she apparently flirted to no avail). I'd say I've been checking Missed Connections Vancouver for maybe a year. W4M, M4M, even M4W or W4W because who knows if some wayward soul mistook me for a very stylish lesbian?

During this time, I've also been a man about town, being cute and doing conspicuous things. For Ali's birthday, I purchased a giant stuffed ladybug and a Fisher-Price recorder/cassette player. I walked around with them all day, certain they would ascertain me a missed connection. I've flirted with waiters and waitresses at Moxie's. I've picked up dropped coffee cups on the buses. I've wielded my bee-shaped umbrella. If anyone wanted to describe me as a pale, brown-haired guy with x, y, z trait, I made it jarringly easy for them. In the meantime, I've also directed friends to Missed Connections whom I thought might be them. Spread the wealth around, right?

This past week, I finally hit paydirt. I enclose for you, below, the text:

Deer lake park - m4m (True Colors)

You where sitting off to the side of me and my friends. You, white t-shirt and jeans. You and your friend came over and danced with us for a song. We sat beside the crazy lady in the yellow shirt and red hair.

That was me. That was decidedly me. I flew into a faggy little ecstasy and called Ali, Karim, everyone I could muster. I also, of course, responded to the person in question (who ended up being a good fifteen years older than I am, but that's neither here nor there because if Zsa Zsa can do it then so the fuck can I). I thanked him for the dance and confirmed his identity, and politely declined his romantic overtures. The thrill, for me, was not in the feasibility (none) of something happened, but in my diligent -- some might say obsessive, but I assure you they're exaggerating and I implore you to give me their names and hopefully some accident will keep them from being so hyperbolic in the future -- Craigslist-checking being finally rewarded. God had decided that for one evening, I was his favourite. Of course, I'm convinced that God decides I'm his favourite every evening, or at least that he alternates between myself and Helen Mirren.

But, dear readers (of whom I am most certain I have none), you might be thinking, "what's in this for me?" The nugget for you comes in the form of that last sentence. You may remember my waxing rhapsodic about the "crazy lady in the yellow shirt and red hair," though I described her top as green and really you'll see it's closer to a chartreuse than anything else. Well, by peeking onto this gentleman's Facebook page, I was able to come across photographic evidence of the goddess herself. I give you, in her truest splendor, Green Tank Top.

They don't do her justice, but they're the best I can do. I like the last one in particular... she's like an angel...

If you want your own Vancouver Missed Connection success story, then by all means, click here. If you're Green Tank Top and have stumbled upon this blog... then please contact me. I'm your biggest fan.

A magical evening with Cyndi Lauper, Rosie O'Donnell and others.

2008-07-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

I recently had the good fortune to come into a pair of free tickets to Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Tour 2008, a hodge-podge star-studded concert line-up that goes toward general support of LGBT rights -- a good cause, I'm sure you'll agree. I won't get into how I came about receiving these tickets, only to say that you'd be surprised how far playing a bit of late night Rock Band with the right set of gays will get you. The tickets were initially meant for the beautiful Ali brothers, Karim and... Ali (real name: Mohamed; yes, I'm dating the boxer, ha ha fucking ha), but Ali was unfortunately assigned to work and thus I was allowed the privilege of taking the younger Ali as my lovely date to the event.

The place was pretty much packed with people, ranging from lovers of the eighties (read: old people) to lovers of LGBT causes (read: lesbians) and everyone in between (read: old lesbians). Discussions with my gay friends about whether or not they would be attending mostly resulted in scoffs that only lesbians were attending, which is a typical gay reaction: to miss a concert based not on who's on stage, but who's in the audience. "More camp for me," I said with glee, and camp there was indeed. The line-up was indeed every bit as loaded as the tickets suggested, and there would be plenty to report on after the event. After navigating to Deer Lake Park, waiting in a surprisingly long line-up, and nearly being rejected by the ticket for not being Mohamed Ali (and after lying and saying that Karim was), we'd made it in. We parked our towel (awkwardly, as it turned out, behind a girl who knew me from school but to whom I was not particularly close; we politely ignored each other for the rest of the evening), and got ready for the show, hoping for a guest appearance from Captain Lou Albano or a surprise rendition of "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough."

The one aspect of the evening I absolutely dreaded was the amount of time we'd have to spend with the master of ceremonies, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Carson Kressley. I know that he's a polarizing figure, and my basic opinion on him in this: I don't like him, I don't think he's cute or funny or clever or charming, but I agree not to express any outwardly hostile opinions on him as long as he doesn't show up in anything I watch and generally stays out of my Kool-Aid -- and tonight, he was all up in my flavours. And I still don't like him; he's even more shrill in person. However, given that the nature of what he was doing was mostly vamping while the crew set up whatever new act was taking the stage, I'll give him a pass on a few repeated Anne Murray jokes and say that he was generally pretty on top of things and handled the evening well. Aside from a minor racist misstep about a Thai family going through customs, he was largely inoffensive. I don't like the man, but he did his job well -- even if he had too many fucking wardrobe changes for Deer Lake Park, Burnaby, BC. Far more interesting and integral, however, were the actual acts of the evening.

The first act was one Nona Hendryx, and if you are wondering who that is, you are not alone; many audience members could be heard musing the same thing going into her three-song set. Having seen the woman live, I can answer the question thusly: Nona Hendryx is Jesus incarnate. She burst onto the stage in a silver space jacket and assless fishnet stockings, all gigantic hair and gigantic voice, commanding the audience to move they asses. And, of course, no one comes to the True Colors tour to see Nona Hendryx. Nona knows that. She knows she's up first with only three songs for a reason, and she makes the most of them. By the end of it, you want, nay, crave more Nona. But, alas, she is a fleeting pleasure, and the show must go on. It would take far more than the rest of the concert, however, to forget the image the two-minute long interlude wherein Nona did nothing but shake her surprisingly taut 63-year-old ass at the audience. Like we're talking "she's gonna explode" ass-shaking. Jesus incarnate.

Playing off the Nona-generated goodwill was Joan Armatrading, the Maya Angelou of the blues world. Joan, too, was top-notch, but cool -- maybe a little too cool for this particular crowd. She gave off an air of aloofness and chill, and her sense of humour was perhaps too dry for a sea of lesbians clamouring for Sarah McLachlan. The music, too, was laidback and intelligent, a jarring contrast to the in-your-face assless bombastics of Nona Hendryx. All in all, Armatrading was excellent and fulfilled her duties, but maybe a bit too smart and a bit too mellow for this line-up. I'd see her again.

Next was Rosie O'Donnell, and I'm not gonna lie: I was excited for Cyndi, the B-52's, yadda yadda yadda, but I came for my girl Ro. I wanted to see her lay into Hasselbeck or Barbara. I wanted to see her bring Elisabeth out onto the stage and consume her whole. I refused to go home unless I'd had some Rosie secretion sprayed on me, be it sweat, spit, or unlikely as it was, vomit. So I was a bit surprised when they announced her third on the card, assuming that she was a big enough draw that they'd at least save her for closer to the end. When she finally performed, I understood why she'd been placed near the front of the card. She gave a surprisingly maudlin set that proved the old adage of nothing being more depressing than a sad clown. It was a long, melancholy tangent on her dead mother, with attempts at wistful anecdotes about her kids sprinkled throughout. She had a couple of funny bits in there, namely her Penny Marshall imitation and a crack about Rachael Ray's Dunkin' Donuts "terrorist scarf," but it was a largely depressing set that left most of the audience wondering if they were supposed to laugh or cry.

Given the tough slot following Rosie O'Downer was Sarah McLachlan. Now, I always knew that lesbians love Sarah McLachlan. What I didn't know is that lesbians fucking love Sarah McLachlan. It was absolutely crazy. And with good reason: the woman is absolutely amazing live. She's pitch-perfect, she changes up the songs to prevent boredom, she does a good mix of old and new, and she's got that good witty stage banter that the best musicians have and pianists in particular seem prone to. It helps, of course, that the audience was ridiculously pro-Sarah. If you've never heard hundreds of crunchy, granola-y lesbians with coolers and lawn chairs recite the entirety of "Ice Cream" while swaying in unison, you really haven't done fuck all. And it wasn't just "Ice Cream" -- Sarah could have announced that the next song would consist of her ripping a fart into the microphone for the next forty minutes and the reaction would have been manic cheering and a gigantic collective swoon. The lesbians, I swear to God, were building idols of her in the back. In other news, Sarah McLachlan also has a surprisingly filthy mouth. You work those cusses out, girl.

Down to two acts, and the group that finally got the audience dancing was The B-52's, who get way more mileage than you'd imagine out of what basically amounts to a set of novelty songs. They also made it rain: moments into the opening song of their set, the heavens opened up and the downpour arrived. It cleared up shortly thereafter, and actually refreshed the sun-parched audience, no doubt sweltering under the heat of the setting evening sun and the dozens of lesbians crowded around the stage making grabs for Sarah McLachlan's shoes. The band played, like McLachlan, a decent mix of old and new, and their instrumentation was the best of the evening. The audience loved them, and they loved the audience: they ended with "Love Shack" and "Rock Lobster," songs even my dead great-grandparents know, and the place went fucking nuts. They were similar in a lot of ways to Kressley, the emcee for the night: love or hate what they do, they certainly do it well.

It was time for the coup de grâce: the charging force behind the tour and champion for the masturbatory rights of eighties teens everywhere, the woman herself, Ms. Cyndi Lauper. Cyndi came on between a couple of the acts to tell everyone how important a cause equality was, and two things became rapidly apparent. The first was that Cyndi is absolutely precious. She's very diminutive but has a gigantic presence, and her voice is adorable. It's the kind of hardcore New Jersey drawl that's so fake-sounding it has to be real; she sounds more like a mob moll than anyone else I've ever encountered. It's like she was ripped out of the Dick Tracy movie. The second was that Cyndi Lauper was absolutely, unequivocally stoned out of her gourd. I don't mean this as some sort of joke or euphemism. I literally believe she smoked copious quantities of marijuana at some point before or during the show. As evidence, I put forth Cyndi's best moments of questionable sobriety:

her long, rambling monologue about how "diversity is important, you guys."
her unique method of opening the curtain for her act, sprinting across the stage with the bottom of it balled in her hand
her equally unique end to the show, where she sprinted to the side of the stage, paused, and announced that the curtain was on the other side, and then walked off the stage
the great moment wherein she harassed the stage musicians for being unable to tell her what key her next song was in
her inability to find Sarah McLachlan in time for their duet of "Time After Time" and her aborted attempt to start another song altogether before Sarah was rushed to the stage
her choice to end "She Bop" by booting the drum set
interrupting herself midway through her own lyrics to harangue the sound guys about reverb, and then lapsing back into the song as if nothing had happened
her bizarre habit of spitting into her hands before songs, which led to the following dialogue:

Karim: "Why did she just spit in her hands?"
Taylor: "Dude, she's Cyndi fucking Lauper. She could spit in my face and I would let her."

None of this, however, disabled Cyndi's capacity to impress. On the contrary, they only enhanced a very lively set -- and let me tell you, Cyndi Lauper throws a mean fucking party. She sprinkles her set with slightly surreal touches: her choice to do "She Bop" as a slow acoustic song, for example, or having Rosie O'Donnell on the drums for her performance of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." (At some point in the show, I realised I was watching Cyndi Lauper perform "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" live in concert with Rosie O'Donnell on the drums, and I wondered whose life this was a scene from, because it was certainly never meant to be a part of mine.) All of the classics were there -- "Girls," "She Bop," "Time After Time" (which was, as mentioned, a duet with Sarah McLachlan; all of the earlier acts save for Armatrading recurred individually in Lauper's performances, including the all-encompassing fierceness of Nona), and the unquestionable showstopper: "I Drove All Night," the song that made Karim and I queen out in a way I thought possible only in campy LOGO sitcoms.

The true stars of the show, though, were the audience, who displayed various levels of dance skill: the man in front of us, dubbed "Izod" for the letters on his shirt, who swayed back and forth with the most grudging semblance of rhythm, clearly dragged in by his girlfriend. There was clearly no place he'd rather not be. However, his tuneless swaying was very rehearsed; he'd obviously sat through one or two chick concerts in the past. I wish Izod luck in his endless quest to get laid by his mediocre-looking girlfriend. A woman in red in front of us mimicked hula moves to every song, regardless of its tune or tempo. The true star, though, were two fierce older cougars to our left: one in a green tank top, one in a bikini.

They truly were national heroes, dancing manically and with no particular skill to every song, tromping around the designated twenty-square feet of space they'd marked out with invisible lines in their heads, harassing the sitting people around them to get up and dance, and being met at first with tolerance and then with utter dismissive annoyance. Perhaps they had no self-awareness. Perhaps they just didn't care. All I know is they became the entertainment, more fun to watch than whatever was onstage barely visible due to the throngs of people. Green Tank and Bikini danced with fierce abandon, and Karim and I followed their example, dancing without grace or finesse and loving every minute of it. Truly, the pinnacle of the True Colors experience was when, during "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Rosie Mix)", Karim and I finally got the nerve to go up to Green Tank's crew and jam with them. We danced. We sang. We made a circle. It was magic. Bikini later got pictures of Karim and I, to commemorate having partied with us. Party on, Bikini. Party on.

The concert ended on a sweet note, as the entire line-up took the stage to sing "Everyday People" (complete with gigantic balloons launched into the audience by Cyndi and Rosie, who's apparently moved up from her Koosh ball addiction onto the harder shit), and ended with the tour's namesake, "True Colors." By that point, the rain had dissipated, the sun had set, and a cool breeze had blown through Deer Lake Park. It was a lovely end to a lovely evening of music. The lesbians went back to their vans, packed up their large dogs and left, and Karim and I headed home.

Not a bad evening for the price of a couple of games of Rock Band.

Big Bruvva UK, Week Three

2008-07-02T00:26:00.001-07:00

Another week down in the Big Bruvva house, and two more casualties. I'll address the points in the order they come to me.

Starting with the most intriguing incident of this week and indeed this season, fight night. There's no doubt in my mind that Rex was acting like a colossal wank when he smudged Jennifer's painting, because Rex is just a colossal wank in general. The way Jen went on about it, though, was absolutely criminal, whinging because her poorly articulated paint dollops had been violated. Really, from the outset, I'm inclined to take her side: Rex had no right to vandalize her work and I would be similarly affronted, and Rex's apologies were about as insincere as Rex ever is. However, Jennifer is just so unbearable and the way her gaggle of flying monkeys crowded around her to defend her honour -- particularly after Rex had already apologized for the umpteenth time and there wasn't much of anything to be done -- was a lot like watching ants swarm onto a fallen ice cream cone, only Jen's flavour is Neopolitwat.

That said, it really was the fight that kept on giving, wasn't it? After watching Dale and Jen slop around at each other and make tee-hee insinuations and other such dullness -- it makes watching Jen complain about "boring" people like Kathreya and Rachel even more delicious, because it's not like she's been raising the pulse levels either -- it was good to see some good old-fashioned yelling, crying, and yes, a little bit of spit in the face. Watching Dale, Dennis, Mohamed, Rebecca and Stuart get idiotically involved for no particular reason was par for the course, but it was Darnell's "storm in, take no prisoners" brand of pointless yelling that really did the job for me. I like Darnell in general and this did nothing to alter that; it's just like your mother always used to say, the best way to offend an albino man is to spit in the face of an unrelated third party.

Big Bruvva, of course, took the necessary step of removing Dennis, because only on American reality television can you spit in someone's face and get away with it. I found it a bit sad, not because I particularly like Dennis but because I like the dynamic this schism of groups in the house has created, and because it's always fun to have a group of people to hate on and Dennis was a part of my group. The tricky part, as I've discussed with my Big Bruvva viewing partner Matthew, is that we're both fairly certain that inside the actual house, our propensity for shit-talking, gossip and immature antics would land us firmly in the Dennis/Jennifer/Sylvia camp. I wouldn't necessarily be all "you can't insult my friend like that!" like they all seem to be, because it just smacks of the self-righteousness they all certainly share, but I also couldn't fathom spending too much time with Mohamed and Rex before I killed myself. To make a long story short, they're all douchebags; I'm just most like Jen's type of douchebag.

As a minor aside, for all of his talk of leaving with dignity, Big Bruvva had to have someone waiting by the Diary Room door as Dennis exited in just his boxers. I appreciate that.

No more star jumps in the garden for you...

A moment of silence for Sylvia, who really stepped up the crazy in Alexandra's absence. Stuart wasn't in that house ten seconds before Syl had tossed that bunny (or, in the absence of a bunny, Mikey, the most rabbit-like of the housemates) into the pot and set the stove to simmer. I don't know what I'll do without her in the house FUMIN' about every last thing and hurling herself behind couches melodramatically upon the receipt of bad news. I will say, though, that she took the boos exiting the house with as much grace and aplomb as anyone could expect her to, and seemed suitably mortified at her behaviour in her Davinterview. Either way, the house will be less fun without her, and I'm disappointed to see the back of her -- particularly in lieu of Mohamed, who never did much of anything for anyone anyhow.

One person I'm happy didn't go home, though, is Mario, particularly with regards to his relationship with Lisa. I have no idea when I warmed to their brand of campy, embarrassingly sexually candid antics, but it certainly happened somewhere along the line. They're akin to the weird mom and dad of the kid across the street who were just a bit too liberated in their public displays of affection, but you love them anyways. Now, with the split in the house magnified, they're primed to glide into the final weeks of the competition, and I'll have no problem watching them through the fingers over my eyes until then, because they're cute. Cute and horrible.

Luke, meanwhile, is horrible but not particularly cute, and I'm glad the public is starting to come around to realise that. He's the epitome of a gossiping old crone, scuttling around and feeding stories to both sides. His blatant attempt to sway the noms with his "cookie love and happy house" nonsense was more transparent than a cotton t-shirt on Rebecca after a drunken dive into the pool, and I'm glad Big Bruvva attempted to punish him by taking away his noms -- only to be thwarted by their own shitty loophole. Either way, I look forward to he and his Justin Timberlake delusions taking a walk real soon and ending his downward spiral in the public opinion.

Another one who took a hit in the public eye is Rebecca, which is sad because as much as she's fallen in with the wrong crowd, the girl is an absolute mess and as such a delight and a pleasure to watch. I can't say I approve of or endorse her antics, and even though she never said it in so many words Darnell was more or less right in calling her out for wanting a miserable and overly dramatic house (and really, there's not any other reason to be friends with Jennifer in the first place), there's still something very fun about her and her constant need for nudity. Plus, one can't help but pity her as the house alternately excludes her (there was no real reason she couldn't have stepped in for the OK Go task) and mocks her out right (Luke and Rex have belittled her to her face, among others). I hope she sticks around for a while, if only to leave more sunscreen titty-prints on the sliding glass door.

It's like a beautiful monster.

We end, of course, with weekly Davina love.

Let's talk about Katy Perry.

2008-06-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I'm a wet blanket or maybe just too sensitive, but I can't help but bristle at the popularity of Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" for several reasons. I'll attempt to enumerate those reasons as best I can.... NOW!

1. The song, in spite of what it would imply, isn't even especially risqué or shocking. The tune is the same pulsing beats and thumping base you can hear if you switch the dial to any other radio station, and the lyrics are fairly insipid and harmless. It is, after all, a song celebrating the act of two girls drunkenly making out, presumably in a bid to attract the attention of the drunken male onlookers frantically snapping photos with their camera phones. It's not a defiant lesbian ballad, nor does it make any pretenses of being a defiant lesbian ballad. All of this basically means is Katy Perry is or purports to be the type of girl who gets drunk and makes out with other women in order to seem "hip" and "edgy" -- that is to say, a douchebag. And we are celebrating her douchiness in song.

2. My inner feminist revolts against this particular brand of douchebag because feigning your sexuality to titillate a man is pretty much scraping the bottom of any bar skank's bag of tricks (I use the term bar skank in a loving and sex-positive way as a self-identified bar skank). This isn't to say that it's wrong to use sex appeal as a tool or even as a weapon; God knows I'm guilty as sin on that account. But I like to think my particular brand of flirtatious manipulation has a bit more subtlety and skill than tonguing some dude for a MySpace picture (and, lest we forget, MySpace is Katy Perry's bread and butter). Basically, this song relies on the idea that men are horny idiots and that all a woman needs to do to turn him on is to degrade herself publicly.

3. This one, particularly, is a broad generalization, but a lot of the lesbians I know seem to be lapping this shit up and I find that frustrating. So I'm gonna make a call to reason for all my pussy-lovin' baby mamas out there: she's exploiting your culture and using this lesbian-for-a-day wannabe-bisexual bit pioneered by Tila Tequila and her crew of social networking website assholes to turn a quick buck. It's like when a mainstream actor makes little gay allusions or plays a gay role and the queens of the world lap it up (a phenomenon to which I am adamantly opposed, by the way, even more so than Katy Perry's latest single, "UR a Fucking Faggot LOLOL"). Don't let yourself get turned on by the fleeting glimpse of girl-on-girl love in the mainstream media when, after all, the entire song is riddled with Perry's insistence that, no, really, she's straight (but she kissed a girl! And she liked it!).

4. The double-standard pisses me off, because it's still an issue of it being socially acceptable for a woman to sexually experiment but not a man. You know if Justin Timberlake released some overproduced Timbaland number about Frenching some dude on a dance floor, his career would be effectively over (and the gay community would develop a collective case of the vapours so strong that it would literally overheat the world and every relative of the CGI polar bear from An Inconvenient Truth would die in an equally dramatic fashion). We're in a world where there's been something like thirty female-female kisses on primetime television, and something like seven male. (If these statistics sound dubious, it's because they are; they're from a while back and I can't find the real ones on the internet. I'm admittedly not searching very hard, because I'm having fun writing a mild dissertation about why Katy Perry is a prickjob.)

5. I can see Katy Perry ascending to the status of a camp icon and I want to nip that in the bud before it gets out of hand because frankly, we have enough icons as it is and I don't even like most of them. It's bad enough grudgingly paying my respects to Madonna without heaping more coals onto the flames.

6. It's really just not a very good song. And the chapstick product placement unsettles me.

That's about it in a nutshell. Like I say, it's probably just a case of my being overly sensy, and I'm sure if Katy Perry were a legitimate les and not just an internet ho with a penchant for releasing singles with titles like "UR So Gay," I'd be a lot more accepting of her newfound glory. Or if she had musical talent. That would be pretty sweet. As it is, though, she's just another online hack who was fortunate enough to strike it rich with an ironic song about softcore straight girl action. When I want my "talentless MySpace superstar with questionable lyrics" fix, I'm going straight to Riskay, thank you very much.

But, hey, maybe I'm wrong. If you, too, enjoy making Gloria Steinem roll in the grave toward which she gets nearer each time "I Kissed a Girl" comes on the radio, click here and enjoy.

Mourning a great.

2008-06-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Just a brief note, for all of you Big Brother UK (aka Big Bruvva) watchers out there, on the erstwhile removal of a legend from the Big Bruvva house.

I've gotta admit, I'm bummed that Alexandra's been removed from the house. In a lot of ways, it was basically inevitable. Alex had an ugly personality and a nasty habit of popping off at everyone in the most belligerent way about the least material issues. Her row with Mohamed over him cross-dressing on his birthday, for example, was beyond the pale, and her religious hypocrisy in that instance was pretty disgusting. And maybe it wasn't her best move to indirectly threaten to have the other housemates killed as soon as they left the house, although the same tactic has worked for other strong black womyn in the past, and fiercely so.

I don't think, though, that what she did beyond that constitutes bullying. Chipgate was ridiculous, sure, but the worst thing she did was lay into Becks for her shitty chips and called Stephanie a prick and a dickhead which, to be fair, most of us were thinking anyway. Her fight with Rex over the shopping task was basically Rex's fault, as it was pretty ballsy of him to ream her out for quitting what looked to be an extremely pleasant task and then stealing her lighter after the fact. Alex's antics have basically been those of someone cantankerous and unpleasant and aggressive, sure, but not fodder for being kicked off the show.

I'm not faulting Big Bruvva for its strict rules; in fact, they're part of why I prefer the UK series to its US counterpart, which recently not only let a man threaten rape and murder on a girl half his age, but eventually declared him the winner. (This, of course, is because Grodner is a massive, nasty cunt with four smaller versions of herself in the place where her vagina should be.) I just think the good that Alex brought to the house outweighed the bad. Witness, for instance, her many quotable catchphrases: "Stephanie gets on my tits." "Wowee whoopie-pants." "Pop pop pop." "You'll never know what ready is." And, of course, the immortal "remember I told you."

So, Alex is gone, and a new housemate is entering tonight in her place. It was probably for the best; the last thing Ofcom and Channel 4 need are floods of angry complaints about a housemate's behaviour, not that Alex was about to start an international incident like the last time (although her argument about Islam with Mohamed might have started a mild jihad somewhere in the colonies). I guess she had to go, but she was nominated, and it would have been nice if Big Bruvva just waited the extra two days to dispose of her the legitimate way instead of already starting the revolving door parade of housemates.

So, goodbye, Alex, you beautiful Croydon princess. We will look fondly back on your smoke-choked, ravaged voice, your nicotine-stained teeth and your ubiquitous ponytail and when this season of Big Bruvva goes down the tubes, we will, indeed, remember you told us.

To see Alexandra De-Gale in all her glory, click here.

Aaron Carter's career, as chronicled through his album covers.

2008-06-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

E! has contributed a lot to the world of trashy reality television. Where, after all, would the world be without gems like The Anna Nicole Show, Dr. 90210, and Denise Richards: It's Complicated (I'm sure it's cliché to say by this point, but it's really, really not). Its crowning achievement, though, is the Pulitzer-waiting-to-happen that is House of Carters, which proves that when you put together five marginally talented members of a "musical" "family," zaniness and legal misdemeanours will occur. House of Carters gets props for, among (very few) other things, one of my favourite reality TV moments: a heartrending recollection from the chubbiest Carter sister, of the time her parents took her to a fat camp when she believed she was going to an ill-defined "pony camp." It also deserves recognition for a more dubious accolade: re-introducing the world to Aaron Carter.

Aaron Carter is the somehow less musically gifted brother of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter (the blonde one, for those of you having difficulty distinguishing him from the other Backstreet Boys: Grandpa, Druggie, Open-Heart Surgery, and The Other One). His gig was basically that of an incorrigible pre-teen moppet who set the tween crowd all aflutter. Problem was, he hit puberty, grew uglier, his original fan base started menstruating and it was basically all downhill from there. With House of Carters, Aaron's taken it upon himself to reestablish himself as a legitimate celebrity. Now, far be it from me to deny anyone their right to self-improvement, and if he can get Hilary Duff and a pre-lesbian Lindsay Lohan to come to blows over him then more power to him, but I draw the line at him trying to set himself up as any actual musician of any repute. If you want to see why, I welcome you to join me on a spellbinding tour of Aaron Carter's discography up to the present day.

We commence with the first (and in my humble opinion, greatest) of Aaron's album covers, from his first album, the eponymously-titled Aaron Carter. I don't know what to question most here. For one thing, this has to have been the cheapest album cover shoot in the history of the medium. Edel America really broke the bank on the trampoline, quick shoot camera, and iron-on "A" appliqué. While we're on the subject, we should all take a moment to thank our deities of choice that the whole "red overalls with personalized varsity letters" trend never took off like the record execs apparently hoped it would (though slap these same overalls on Chloë Sevigny and they would doubtless be high art). There's also the matter of young Aaron's hair, a hideous centre-parted flop that's more nineties than Aunt Becky from Full House and Joe from Wishbone having sex on the Hang Tough apparatus from American Gladiators. (In the spirit of Aaron Carter, both Lori "Aunt Becky" Loughlin and American Gladiators are in the midst of their current-gen comebacks, the former on the new 90210 incarnation on the CW. No word on Jordan "Joe Talbot" Wall, whose career resurrection is about as likely as Soccer the dog himself coming back from the dead to reprise the role of Wishbone.) I've gone off on a digression here, so I guess the bottom line is that I'm really wary of any album cover that would draw this much attention to a little boy's crotch.

Moving on to Aaron's sophomore album, the pornishly titled Aaron's Party (Come Get It). I'm ambivalent on the use of parentheses in song titles, to the point where I alternate between thinking that as a musician they would be banned wholesale from my albums, and thinking that each song would in fact include multiple instances of parentheses and at least two sets of square brackets. This album cover is a vast departure for the last, opting for the Americana porn of little Aaron in a tiny denim jacket in front of what I can only imagine is one of those miniature American flags for the antennae of SUVs. This nauseatingly country set-up, along with Aaron's disturbingly Aryan visage, can only be a desperate ploy to cater to the White Nationalist segment of Aaron's dwindling audience. Look forward to Aaron's collab with Prussian Blue on "I Want Candy." It's a killer. The album is buoyed (or weighed down) by several idiotic skits between the songs, festooned with names like "Teacher," "Big Brother," and "Candy Call." One assumes Aaron picked his up predilection for terrible improv during his brief stint as a ZOOMguest in 1999.

Oh Aaron doesn't bother to hide its bemusement at the fact that Aaron Carter is still attempting success, even going as far as to proclaim it right in its title. Jive Records was apparently not impressed by the sales of Party, as they've seemingly only allowed Aaron enough budget to include four different colours on his album cover. It's alright, though, because the album's tracklist boasts more than enough colour on its own, particularly the hit single "Not Too Young, Not Too Old," which an aggressive moment of musical denial and the creepy male counterpart to Britney's "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman." Also impressive are tracks six through nine: "Baby It's You," "I'm All About You," "The Kid in You," and "Hey You." Aaron hopes that by talking about you, he can distract the attention from him. It's a pretty safe proposition, since Aaron's garnering about as much attention as Alfre Woodard in the second season of Desperate Housewives by this point.

In 2002, Aaron released his fourth album, Another Earthquake, presumably because his last three albums were earth-shatteringly mediocre. For this cover concept, Jive wondered what would happen if Aaron were dressed in fifty yards of undyed muslin and dropped in front of the computer-generated mountain range from Björk's "Hyperballad" video. The result is predictably scintillating. According to Wikipedia, "the album was praised by All Music Guide's Stephen Thomas Erlewine as Carter's best album," which is akin to choosing one's favourite tumour from a malignant cluster.

In a move than can only be describe as ballsy, Aaron followed his 100,000 album-selling smash success with three -- yes, three -- greatest hits albums: Most Requested Hits, Come Get It: The Very Best of Aaron Carter, and 2 Good 2 B True (pictured above). I have no idea what possessed him to think this could be done on the strength of four particularly weak albums, as each of the three compilations contained almost the exact same song list, with minor alterations. Aaron chose to promote a more mature image, purposefully eschewing his early hits like "Crush On You" in favour of his later fare. It's by this apparent logic that his musical masterpiece, "That's How I Beat Shaq," appears on all three albums. The lore of Shaq's conquering, apparently, is a legend that begs to be told at every occasion. I chose this particular album cover not only because it's his latest, released in 2006, but also because I think he looks like a very pretty lesbian here. Don't you agree?

Sadly, I think "pretty lesbian" is probably the best thing Aaron Carter can aspire to at this point. His fame is questionable, his talent is basically nil, and he doesn't even have pre-teen cuteness to tide him over anymore. But, hey, he can hope that House of Carters comes back for another season. If not, there's always pony fat camp.

For a kickin' Aaron Carter video, some awesome floppy hair, and the song that inspired this post, feel free to click here.

Kick it!

I liked you better when you were Kimberly Hart.

2008-05-31T21:09:00.000-07:00

I have something of a love-hate relationship with YouTube. The hate comes in as my friends forward me link after insufferable link of unfunny stand-up comedy, generic indie rock videos, and flavours-du-jour like "Shoes" and "Charlie the Unicorn" for the seventy-fifth time. Seriously. Candy Mountain. I gotcha. I've heard it. But the love comes in not only for those times where it shows you some unique talent or art, but as a treasure-filled archive of time-wasters. I've been known to peruse YouTube for Louis Theroux documentaries, old public service advertisements, and most damning of all, old Are You Afraid of the Dark? episodes. They've aged every bit as well as you'd expect.

It is in this vein that we delve into "Perfect Body," that masterful 1997 epic TV movie starring Pink Power Ranger and Felicity hag Amy Jo Johnson as Andie Bradley, a "young" gymnast who wants that Olympic dream... maybe a little too much. Her enabling coach is Brett Cullen, better known as Juliet's island boy-toy Goodwin from TV's Lost. Viewers who spend the entirety of Perfect Body's excruciating hour-and-a-half-long running time waiting for Cullen to be impaled on a machet, however, will be disappointed -- as will anyone who entered this debacle expecting anything surprising or remotely interesting to occur. Body was recommended to me by my friend Julian, who had seen it in every health class he'd ever been in. After a short bit of YouTube scouring that uncovered the nine parts (!!!) of the film, we were ready to settle in and begin the show.

Andie is a typical "teenager" who is somehow the daughter of Janet, portrayed by Wendie Malick, who is roughly six-foot-five. The Bradleys apparently live in a town adjacent to a nuclear power facility, not only because Andie is a good three feet shorter than her mother but because she is also the world's only thirty-six-year-old teenager. Andie, like every other character Amy Jo Johnson has ever played, is an accomplished gymnast. When Coach Goodwin spots her at a meeting, he implores the Bradleys to give up their life's savings and move to a new apartment just to support Andie's half-baked gymnastic dreams, which they do because they are idiots.

Andie: soon to be medalling gold in eating disorders.

It quickly becomes apparent, though, that the door to Andie's Olympic dreams can only be unlocked by the magical key of weight loss. Suddenly, it's morphin' time, only this time Amy Jo is morphin' into a raging bulimic with a goal of changing from Kimberly Hart to Trini Kwan, post-decomposition. Her switch from strict dieting to willful purging comes at the merest suggestion by rival gymnast Leslie, played by Tara Boger. It's the weakest example of peer pressure ever; Leslie says one word and suddenly Andie is vomiting bad attitude all over her friends and family (fact: changes in disposition and defensive attitudes towards one's eating habits can be signs of an eating disorder!).

Of course, every depiction we've ever seen of eating disorders in the media has taught us that they betray you at the least convenient possible time, so as we wait for Andie's inevitable collapse at her big Olympic trial (because she can't actually make it to the Olympics, after all, in part because Body has nowhere near the kind of budget needed to stage a fake Olympic event and in part because she's in her mid-forties), we're forced to endure the inane subplot of a love triangle between her, her dopey boyfriend, and a best friend so desperately in need of bangs that Julian and I took to calling her "Sinceer" throughout the program.

Sorry I stole your boyfriend, Andie! BFF? <3

Before the trials, Andie gets a warning about her self-destructive behaviour from nurse Brenda, played by real-life gymnast and eating disorder survivor Cathy Rigby. Brenda is every bit as no-nonsense as you'd expect, but the unnecessary casting of an actual gymnast with an eating disorder in the role makes the whole thing seem very insider, like something gymnasts might watch and giggle at how meta Perfect Body is, and then vomit everywhere. As foretold by Brenda, Andie passes out at her big trial, takes a wicked fall off the uneven bars (or maybe they're just parallel bars in patented TV movie "eating disorder wavy-cam"), and ends up in the hospital. Leslie, already an Olympic medalist, ends up advancing in the trials in Andie's place. The moral: it's okay to have an eating disorder as long as you push through the pain, and you will in fact be rewarded for it. Andie was simply not hardcore enough for the job. You'd think years of fighting Rita Repulsa in the mid-nineties would have prepared her better.

The next time we see Andie, she's healthy, well-adjusted, and ready to provide exposition on what it took to gain her weight back. Coach Goodwin and other such negative influences are out of the picture, presumably fighting it out with Michelle Rodriguez on a deserted island somewhere, and Andie's back with her dull boyfriend who basically cheated on her. Lesson learned: there's only two ways to live life; have an eating disorder or be a doormat.

There is one redeeming point to Perfect Body, though: what it lacks in educational or entertainment value, it makes up for in bitchin' Immortals-style mid-nineties techno beats and treacly "I have an eating disorder and I'm sad about it" guitar music. Gold star goes to what I will simply refer to as "Andie's Theme," a painfully overwrought acoustic guitar song that plays midway through the film as Amy Jo Johnson makes her play for Most Melodramatic Performance by An Actress Getting a Glass of Water from the Sink.

You can watch Perfect Body, if you're a total and utter masochist, here.

(P.S. I idiotically pulled the power source to my computer as I was writing this blog entry, so I want to take a moment to shout out to my baby mamas who invented the autosave feature on Blogspot. It's a life-saver, y'all.)

In praise of Donna Dewberry.

2008-05-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

Public access television is a wealth of writing material, a bizarre and varied amalgam of the best and worst the human spirit has to offer. It's a lot like thrift store shopping in that way: for every cute vest or gorgeous mini-dress you find, you're just as likely to find a Coca-Cola parody t-shirt in triple XL (and for real, you will find a Coca-Cola parody t-shirt in every thrift and vintage store). Public access is great for watching late-night, when the best infomercials have gone to bed and it's Windsor Pilates and Guthy-Renker straight on 'til morning, and you can often pick up a quick tip or trick from it along the way. Hence, Donna Dewberry, and my everlasting devotion to her.

Donna Dewberry is a lot like what I imagine Bob Ross would be like if he were the menopausal mother of an empty nest of kids who had nothing better to do than ornament every nook, cranny, and tchotchke in her home with flowers, vines, and curlicues. Her "one-stroke" method ensures that you never again have any excuse to exempt a piece of furniture in your home from her granny flowers, and her new denim painting kit means that even your wardrobe is no longer immune. Look forward to boot-cut jeans with glittery ivy creeping up the leg from here to eternity.

But the twist comes in the fact that "one-stroke painting" not only turns out pretty decent results, for what it proposes to be, but also looks pretty fucking fun to do. In fact, I will blatantly say it: I wish I could one-stroke paint. I want to be Donna Dewberry, living in this fanciful world of pink-and-white gradients, painting carnations and sunflowers and poppies and Jesus Christ, the roses. You can use any two colours, and you never have to clean your brush. You just "pick up paint" and move along to the next flower, or continue to the leaves.

The best part about Donna is that she's not a mommy about this. She knows there's a right way and a wrong way to one-stroke paint, and if your sample doesn't look like Donna's, you've failed. It's not a turn-off, though, as it just makes the painter strive to be more like Donna Dewberry -- which we should all be doing in our day-to-day lives anyhow. Watching Donna paint is a transcendent experience, and if you get the chance to catch her on PBS in the wee hours or The Shopping Channel in primetime, I urge you - nay, implore you to stick around and watch her in action. I guarantee you'll be a convert.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a hope chest that's conspicuously devoid of gradient lilies. I intend to remedy that.

You can visit Donna at her website. Please ensure your browser is AMAZING-compatible.

We need a revolution.

2008-05-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

(Thanks for most of the images in this post go to Super Mario Wiki. Thanks to Julian and Kevin, conversations with whom partially inspired this post.)

I'm currently at a point in my young life where, unlike the venerable Björk, my wanderlust has forsaken me. In spite of my affinity for the activity in the past, I have no desire to travel at the moment, having been put in the position to put down social roots in the place where I live for the first time and enjoying it very much. I'm not one to indulge in the traditional college activity of "backpacking across Europe" or its modern successor, "teaching English in Asia," as I'm very happy with where I am now and, more accurately, the people with whom I've surrounded myself. With that said, were I to win an all-expenses-paid trip to some isle in the South Pacific, I wouldn't be strictly opposed to such a notion.

It's in that spirit that I'm forced to take my flights of fancy and mental vacations through other media. Reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, for example, is a far quicker way to get to Looking-Glass Land than one would find in real life, and also probably involves far fewer shards -- and really, it's best in these things to involve as few shards as possible, to minimize the lacerations, you know. If you need a musical trip, "Kokomo" or "La Isla Bonita" are both absolutely insufferable songs about islands. In true resort spirit, a healthy (unhealthy?) helping of tequila makes either go down a little easier. And if you're more of a gamer than a music fiend, the Mushroom Kingdom of the Mario series is at your disposal.

The bureaucratic structure of the Mushroom Kingdom government has always been something that fascinated me. From what I can tell, it seems to have no actual viable means of government, besides a bizarre monarchy that sees Princess Peach as the diplomat to foreign lands and not much else. Perhaps it's this lackadaisical approach to governance that results in the kingdom having a total lack of domestic security that results in Princess Peach always getting kidnapped. (If there's any state that should have invested in a standing army by now, it's the Mushroom Kingdom.) The silent king or queen who foolishly leaves Peach in charge, however, errs as the naïve princess commits two cardinal sins.

For one thing, she doesn't seem to understand the concept that any large kingdom will always have its detractors. As a result, she's constantly inviting Bowser over for funsies and ludicrous games. I'm all for forgiveness, and reconciliation between nations can only be helpful in the long run, but when the head of an opposing faction has kidnapped you maybe six, seven, eight times in the past five years and help you captive in lava pits and floating castles and every other manner of death contraption, it seems counterproductive to invite him over to take place in your tennis tournament. Peach is a foolish girl with too much time on her hands; she might use that time to better refine the list of regulars who show up to her tea parties. People like Mario and Daisy and Toad are probably harmless, but I'm not sure Bowser and Petey Piranha and King Boo are the best choices. There's a reason the USSR wasn't part of NATO, is my basic point.

The second, though, and more troubling aspect, is that Princess Peach is in the habit of spending ludicrous sums of money on entirely trivial pursuits. While the peasants starve wearing nothing but godawful vests that have been out of style since the late eighties (but have come back in, which I'm sure gives them great comfort as they die of malnutrition), she blows the kingdom's surplus racing around in tiny cars and running around with her friends on gigantic board games and creating a weird hyperfuturistic soccer game, which what? In many ways, Princess Peach is analogous to a modern-day Marie Antoinette, cruelly frittering away the kingdom's money while completely oblivious to the needs of the poor. It's a wonder she and her decadent ilk haven't met the guillotine yet, although maybe they're just waiting for her to toss out a one-liner as eminently quotable as "let them eat cake!"

Let them eat my dust!

It's not just Peach who represents the corruption of the Mushroom Kingdom, though she's far and away the worst offender. Her group of celebrity friends, including the celebrated Mario, are just as bad as she is. She practically has the fat Italian bastard bankrolled to save her whenever her bacon is in the pan thanks to her total inability to resist the machinations of villains like Bowser or Grodus or Cackletta or whomever else can capture her with great ease since she's generally sitting around in her bedroom sniffing flowers when it happens. Peach, Mario, Luigi, Wario and the others are all basically rich kids with a lot of spare time, and when that happens, they seem to dedicate that time to spending their cash on whatever idiotic idea pops into their head. It is in that spirit that I count down the five most outrageous displays of excess in the Mario series.

5. Ice Palace (Mario Super Sluggers)

I won't get into the infuriating notion that upwards of six different stadiums seem to have been constructed in the Strikers and Baseball series for the sole use of Princess Peach and her gang of idly rich cohorts. It is my (admittedly vain) hope that these stadiums might someday be re-used, although every piece of evidence seems to indicate that the arenas are for one-time use and are thereafter abandoned for bigger, more lavish stadiums. I suppose the only upside is that the gigantic, abandoned enclosures can be used as homes for impoverished Toads, although I'm sure the futuristic mechanisms inside the soccer arenas will find some way to murder these poor souls as they sleep. They're probably better off that way.

I choose to single out the Ice Palace, from the as-yet unreleased Mario Super Sluggers, due to its infuriating pointlessness. No one has needed, or will ever need, to play baseball on a diamond made of ice. It is the most aggressively useless stadium in the entire Mario sports ouevre. It's not even like the Mushroom Kingdom has a hockey team that might put the ice field to good use. It takes a projected $440 million, according to the Washington Post, to build a new stadium. Princess Peach just wasted $440 million of the Mushroom Kingdom's taxpayer money so she and her friends could replicate that episode of The Magic School Bus where they played baseball inside that book on a field with no friction. Congrats, Peach. Hope it was worth it.

(To her credit, that episode did always look like it would be really fun to experience.)

4. Customized Tennis Courts (Mario Tennis)

Peach and company's hard-on for tennis is legendary. For about eight years now, the gang has been smacking balls around and sipping umbrella drinks while penniless Goombas on the outskirts of town succumb to the consumption. This is also where certain characters made their ascent to the elite; Peach expanded her social circle to include the likes of Daisy and Waluigi. She also included the likes of Birdo, Paratroopa, Shy Guy, and other newbies, which I'm thinking is because her little gaggle was conspicuously white prior to this event and Toad just wasn't cutting it as the token minority. Finally, she brought Baby Mario into the fold, which is a whole weird time continuum thing I'm still not quite comfortable discussing.

What pushes her little tennis gatherings beyond the pale, though, is the fact that everyone has a personalized, airbrushed tennis court in their image. The vanity there is staggering. Nevermind the amount of manpower it must cost to execute something like that. (And is the poor artist ever acknowledged? Never...) There's something very evocative about the idea that someone has no potable water right now because Princess Peach needed to paint Donkey Kong's face fifty yards long on a giant tennis court. Justice indeed.

3. Koopa's Seaside Soiree (Mario Party 4)

I've said repeatedly that the very idea of a giant, life-sized board game is both tacky and wasteful (although, it must said, extremely addictive as a player). For almost ten years now, Mario and the gang have been hitting dice blocks, collecting currency and purchasing stars (and, it should be noted, they seem to use the actual currency of the Mushroom Kingdom, the coin, in their sick little game. Perhaps those coins are best given to the poor rather than being used in a colossal game of Monopoly). I suppose this is preferable to other, seemingly more worthwhile pursuits, such as charity work or cultivating an actual hobby. Hell, I know if I had a huge board game at my disposal and a seemingly endless supply of employees to run the game and indulge me in pointless mini-game after pointless mini-game, I probably wouldn't do much else, either.

The worst offender of these boards, near as I can tell, is Koopa's Seaside Soiree, wherein the player donates money so Koopa can build his Koopa Kabana (which, I'm sorry, is precious). But when you land on a green ? space, whooa! A huge tsunami comes and crushes the kabana, and you're forced to start over. The Soiree is commemorated on this list for two reasons: one, the needless excess of continually rebuilding and destroying a fairly substantial hotel, the cost of which must be somewhere in the millions, and two, the tackiness of trivializing tsunamis a scant four years after the disaster that struck Southeast Asia. Princess Peach is a politically incorrect ho and possibly a racist to boot.

2. Rainbow Road (Mario Kart series)

The one track that will always recur, in some form another, in each of the Mario Kart games is Rainbow Road. The Kart series has subjected us to some of the most blatant excess in the entire Mario series: Daisy's private yacht, the multiple race tracks built in Luigi's honour, Wario's personal gold mine. But each of them pales in comparison to Rainbow Road, which is doubtless responsible for the deaths of thousands of labourers each year. The sheer amount of time and money that goes into building a gigantic race track out of distilled rainbows in the middle of the sky with no visible means of support is absolutely flabbergasting. This is done each year so Peach and her buddies can race around on it once in go-karts, and is then dismantled. Plans are then drawn up for an even more extravagant and ostentatious track for the next year. Disgraceful.

The runner-up to this particular track is Daisy Circuit from the newest incarnation of the series, Mario Kart Wii. In addition to the fact that a racetrack seems to have been carved out of the infrastructure of an existing city, Daisy has seen it fit to commission gigantic golden statues of her and her man-ho Luigi, both in adult form and baby form. I have no idea what kind of money they're throwing around in Sarasaland but Daisy seems to be even more loaded than Peach. God help her citizens.

1. Birdo's enormous fucking ring (Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour)

I've waxed poetic many a time on Birdo, the LGBT representative in the world of Mario and local fierce tranny (though I remain steadfast in my insistence that Daisy is a closeted lesbian and newcomer Rosalina is clearly a drag queen). And, in true fierce tranny style, she knows the beauty of accessorizing. It is for this purpose that she has chosen a gigantic honking diamond, roughly the size of a testicle, to wear on her finger at all times. Whether this is a proposal from Yoshi is unknown, as observers are still trying to figure out which of them is the male of the species (Yoshi lays eggs, but Birdo fires them out of her mouth... or, at least, what we're hoping is her mouth. Noise certainly comes out of it, in any event).

The rock debuted in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and hasn't left her finger yet (though you'd think she'd recognize that variety is the spice of life and switch it out on occasion, maybe for the Hope Diamond on a pendant or something), so she's certainly getting her money out of a ring that clearly cost at least in the hundreds of millions. That's a blood diamond, right there; the death toll for that particular piece of jewellery has to be in the thousands. And yet, she merrily wears it about, knowing that anyone who dares challenge her on it risks a concussion because her slappin' hand now weighs about an extra eight pounds. You work it out, Birdo. You work. It. Out.

So those are, in my opinion, the five most outrageous displays of excess in the Mario series. It's now upon us to pay close attention to our Yahoo! news feeds, lest the peasants start the revolt that's been overdue for so long and finally take Peach to the gallows. We owe the clueless princess a vote of thanks, though, as we've reaped the benefits of her uncontrolled spending for lo these many years. We must also give props to Birdo, for proving once and for all that a princess is no match for a queen.

On the SkyTrain experience, as a humble commuter.

2008-05-23T23:49:00.000-07:00

Note: This is my first piece of new material posted exclusively for this blog. I'm sure you're all atwitter.

One of the perks of switching to Blogspot from a less-definite format of posting my ideas all over the internet as a roving internomad is that I'm able to exploit the tag system that comes with the territory. Things like my letter to Nana from Super Smash Bros. or my breakdown of which members of the Saved by the Bell cast and periphery could be shit-kicked by Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, for example, are tagged as "pop culture." Other tags I utilize include the more broad "fashion," "television," "creative writing," and of course, "gay." Some of my tags, though, are very specific in their nature -- one such tag is "transit."

I don't profess to be anything other than totally ignorant on anything beyond the aesthetic means of public transit and how it effects me as a -- very frequent -- commuter. I know that at least twice, the 11:00 351 to Vancouver did not arrive at its assigned stop at King George Highway on Crescent Road, leaving me stranded with no other viable means of alternative transportation. I know that three buses of the same kind passed me by on 49th and Granville on the rainiest day of the year -- two with chyrons that screamed "too full!" and one with no excuse at all. And, perhaps less melodramatically, I know it's extremely hard to find my way to Helmcken and Howe in time to catch my last bus when it's almost midnight and I'm wandering around downtown Vancouver drunk off my ass. Lesson learned.

Being a frequent commuter, though, has served me three greater purposes: first, becoming acclimated to the transit system has made finding my way around Metro Vancouver a good deal easier than I'd found it previously. Second, the transit system offers me, as a vehicle-free tree-hugger, a good deal more independence than I'd be afforded otherwise. And third, and perhaps the most insufferably avant, it's affected a good deal of my artistic sensibility. I find myself writing, drawing, and thinking about transit -- and anything that stimulates me out of creative stagnation can only be a good thing.

Any of the friends on my MSN contact list, for example, can tell you about the frequency with which I will refer to the map of proposed SkyTrain lines house on Wikipedia. I love this map, and will enclose a copy of the map herein so you, too, can love it. Salivate over it. Print it out and tack it above your bed so it's the last thing you see when you go to sleep at night and the first thing you see when the rooster crows in the morning. Live it, love it, learn it by heart.

Porn.

The SkyTrain is more than just a means of transit to me, it's absolutely iconic. It's emblematic of my experience as a Vancouver commuter, and as such it holds a great degree of sentimentality and nostalgia in its cold, steely depths. (I suspect others, however unwittingly, feel similarly, thus the partial public resistance to switching from SkyTrain to LRT, even though it has demonstrable benefits. I know when I found out the Evergreen wasn't going to be legit SkyTrain I wrinkled my nose in distaste, only to un-wrinkle it in relief when the proposal switched tracks, pun very intended.) It's not often that I work in list format in my formal writing -- I far prefer tedious listing tasks, like jotting down the U.S. presidents or the original 150 Pokémon or, yes, the stops on the Expo Line -- for when I'm bored and looking to fill a page of foolscap -- but I feel like a list is the best way to properly rein in the SkyTrain joy that bubbles out of my heart like a wellspring of melted chocolate from a beautiful fondue pot. Or words to that effect.

1. On the SkyTrain lady.
Any Metro-Van commuter could extol, at length, the virtues of the SkyTrain lady - our goddess of domestic transit. I like to imagine that she is the omniscient guide of the SkyTrains, who keeps them running from station to station on the sheer power of her love for us, the commuters, and her desire to announce the name of every stop as many times as is possible in a day. Her pronunciation is a model of robotic exquisiteness: her slight lilt in "Royal Oak," her gentle persuasiveness in "Nanaimo," the precise eloquence with which she implores the passengers to "please leave the train at: King George." (As an aside, not that I'd ever question the will of SkyTraina, but I've always puzzled over the word choice there. Wouldn't "please exit the train" be a much better way of expressing what she's trying to communicate? I'm probably obsessing.)

When I am on the SkyTrain, SkyTraina makes me feel happy. I mouth each station along with her, revel in her "bing-bing-bong," and seek ways in which to emulate her in my day-to-day life. And because she makes me happy - exquisitely happy, in fact - I want her to be happy. I feel like the best way to accomplish this is to give her a day off her SkyTrain duties (most of us can find our way around the city, after all, save for a select few [I'm looking at you, turistas]) and set her up on a nice date with the hot male voice from the SeaBus. They seem like a perfect match; sure, she's a little more reserved and he speaks in pre-recorded sentences instead of algorithm-generated fragments, but I feel like they could make it work. They could to the Scotiabank Theatre, maybe take in a late show of Persepolis, he could walk her home... This could be the unified transit system we all want. A TransLink romance.

Secret no longer.

2. On the Millennium Line.
The Millennium Line is still something of a mystery to me, enshrouded in the haze of intrigue and my-not-living-near-Burnaby. While I could rattle off to you with precision the order of the Expo Line stations and my general opinion on them (though some are more forgettable than others; I'm looking in your direction, Edmonds and Nanaimo), I'm generally only good for naming a few of the Millennium Line stations. In addition, its terminus station, VCC-Clark -- though often spoken-of by SkyTraina -- remains the only SkyTrain station I have yet to see or experience with my own eyes. Someday, perhaps. I will continue to reach for that rainbow.

The Millennium Line stations can be sorted into three different categories: girly names, excessively long names, and other. The "girly name" group encompasses stations like Sapperton, Braid, Rupert and Renfrew -- stations at which no self-respecting man will ever disembark the train, for fear of total emasculation (in the event that this occurs, the revoked manliness can be restored at the hyper-masculinely-named Holdom, a title which evokes images of pure, raw, ball-grabbing maleness). The most egregious of these offenders is Rupert, which in a little known coup was named in tribute to TransLink B.O.D. member David Unruh's love of the ursine scarf aficionado.

The next station is...

Then we move into the overly long hyphenates: Production Way-University. Sperling-Burnaby Lake. Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth. It's not just the hyphenated stations wanting for brevity; stations like twin terrors Brentwood Town Centre and Lougheed Town Centre and Lake City Way, which evokes images of polygamist weddings with fifteen-year-old brides and preachers of questionable credentials, are equally to blame. They're jocking the style of Main Street-Science World, which has been around since the eighties, y'all, and bitches best learn to respect they elders. Stadium-Chinatown has already established itself as the hyphenate with indie appeal, and VCC-Clark has the new, fresh, urban style. Hence, it is my proposal that all of the overly long Millennium Line stations have their titles reduced by one word, and ideally two. It may seem drastic, but when your morning train stops at Sperling instead of Sperling-Burnaby Lake and you can use those extra four syllables on breaking up with the lover waiting for you at the station, you'll thank me.

The final category, other, encompasses all of the stations that don't fit the above estimate. Columbia is more Expo than Millennium. Holdom and Gilmore are lost in limbo, although Holdom really deserves its own category on awesomeness alone. Commercial Drive is... when Broadway was born healthy, Commercial Drive was the dead conjoined twin that accompanied it. And then there's VCC-Clark. And then there's Maude.

3. On the expansions.
Every day, I have the abject pleasure of driving in on the bridge and passing one of the new, semi-constructed SkyTrain stations, close to YVR (if I'm not mistaken, this particular one is either Bridgeport, Templeton, or Sea Island Centre), and glowing with delight. The Canada Line is the nearest it's been to completion in eons -- aeons, even -- and I intend to be the first one aboard to soak in the Richmond-bound delight when the cherry pops in 2009. Never again will I be stuck in that all too-common position of thinking "I have twenty minutes to get to Lulu Island before my sugar sculpture collapses, but no means by which to get there."

Looking into the future, though, means also observing the Evergreen Line: originally scheduled to be completed in 2011, but we all knew that was a huge pipe dream as soon as they said it. 2014 is the current goal. Even that's a little ambitious. I'm saying it's 2045 and we still have an uncircumcized little nub hanging off of Brentwood station as we argue whether Hover LRT is more efficient than Hover SkyTrain. It also means looking into the proposed future extension of the Millennium Line to take a complete route to UBC, due sometime in the early 3000s, and the plan to extend the Expo Line further into Surrey and eventually into Langley, which will be completed by our hyperfuturistic alien ant overlords in 45X6 A.Q. (after Quonos).

The most foreseeable hiccup, at least that's apparent on the posted version of the proposed SkyTrain map, is the ludicrous idiocy of having both a Landsdown station and a Lansdowne station (on the Evergreen and Canada Lines, respectively). This will ensure gaggles of confused tourists don't arrive at the proper station in time to meet friends, pay respects to loved ones on deathbeds, et al. We've also got a Coquitlam/Burquitlam situation going on, but that's easily sorted out by the fact that Coquitlam is actually a place and Burquitlam is some sort of weird, made-up imposter. Rounding out the buffet of not particularly well-thought-out name pairs are King George and King Edward, both of which should be replaced with King Babar in deference to the true heir to the throne. May he rest in peace.

4. In conclusion.
Ask around and everyone will tell you their favourite SkyTrain story. They might wax rhapsodic about the time that the homeless man across the aisle from them was looking at them a little too intently and gumming his lower lip a little too furiously, and they were forced to use the yellow bar on the window to summon the authorities. They might tell the tale of the trespassing commuter who tried a little too hard to resist the custody of the transit cops and was ultimately hurled onto the warning-emblazoned electric tracks for mechanical consumption as an example to all. They may tell the tale of the time the SkyTrain home from the English Bay fireworks was literally so packed that people died of heat stroke. Fond memories, all.

Regardless, the SkyTrain has carved out its niche as a uniquely Vancouver piece of nostalgia (unique as long as you ignore the fact that Bangkok and Tokyo, among other cities, have very similar transit systems). It is a symbol of the Vancouver experience and, whether you're trying to make out with your significant other on an empty car and finding that it's surprisingly more difficult than you'd expected what with the movement, or merely mentally willing yourself to shut out the musky odor of the damp stranger sitting next to you, it represents a range of different experiences within that larger category.

Final thought: I like the SkyTrain. I think the lady is hot. I am far too invested in a transit system that is overpopulated and has fucked me over time and again. It's like an abusive relationship, if your girlfriend has screechy wheels, is made of metal, and weighs four thousand pounds. And I think we've all been there before, fellas, am I right?

ETA: On the subject of name confusion: I see after the fact that there is also a VCC-Clark/Vancouver City Centre combo, and a Broadway/Broadway-City Hall pair. May God help us all.

This one's for the Brycer...

2008-05-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

My relationship with the Food Network is slightly different than that of Jasmine Minoza, writer of the note that inspired this one. I hate food. Hate it with a passion. My entire life would have been a far more pleasurable experience had food never even been introduced to it (not to mention I'd be fiercely skinny [I'M MY OWN THINSPO GIRL]). Nonetheless, I can appreciate the various idiosynchrocies of the Food Network chefs.

Some, I don't watch -- Bobby Flay and that Canadian pastry cunt come to mind. I can't even remember her name but she needs a hot poker to the face like no one I've ever met. I don't know where someone who makes pastry gets off being so smug about her line of work. Your occupation hasn't been necessary since Marie Antoinette took to the guillotine. We reject your decadence. We rejecadence.

Some, I tolerate. Ina Garten's boring WASPishness, gaggle of gay friends, and repressed homosexual husband come to mind; if she didn't serve a vital purpose to the American economy by singlehandedly keeping the orange carnation industry afloat, she'd be off the air by now. Rachael Ray is another example, although perhaps I'm just jealous of how she inexplicably got famous showing audiences how to make a casserole out of Alphagettis and smashed McCain's Smiles.

But there are some who cross into idolization territory. Paula Deen's Obesity on a Plate is one example; she could make the same casserole mentioned above using nothing but butter. Paula Deen's arteries are have more traffic congestion than Mary-Kate Olsen's vagina. Giada (fiercer with no de Laurentiis; she's a one-named wonder) and her gigantic eyes and crazy gnashing nightmare teeth are another. It always worth watching her show to see the creative ways in which she'll abuse her close friends and also the Italian language.

But if there's one woman I absolutely deify, it's Sandra Lee, the cougar of the Food Network (although with Giada getting on in years, she should watch her back. Literally; I bet Giada could sever an artery with those pointy motherfuckers in her mouth). She's got the WASPish charm of an Ina, the semi-homemade laziness of a Raytard, and, most likely, the alcohol-battered liver of a Kennedy. Below is my list of the top six reasons I love Sandra Lee:

6. She colour-coordinates.
Sandra Lee may be incompetent in a variety of ways, but I'll give her props for two things before we even start. One, unlike most Food Network shows, she actually cooks in her own kitchen (a similar tactic is used by food porn fertility goddess Nigella Lawson on her own show, I Have Gigantic Tits and Also There's Food). Two, bitch can coordinate every single appliance in her kitchen, and she changes it weekly. Nowhere is this more prominent than in the state of her mixer. Some weeks it's white. When the set changes, it's black. It's also been spotted in red, copper, chartreuse, lavender, and eggplant, just off the top of my head; I'm sure there's more. I don't know what kind of strings you need to pull to get a chartreuse hand-mixer. Maybe she just paints over the same one in the obscene amount of free time she seems to have on her hands. The exposure to that kind of excess paint fumage would also explain a lot of other things, so I've decided this decision satisfies me.

5. She makes tablescapes (???).
The tablescape is one of those great mysteries in that I'm fairly certain it's something Sandra Lee made up in one of her drunk, lonely stupors. With her husband perpetually absent (I GOT LOVE FOR ALL MY BABY MAMAS, as Fantasia might express) and her son Bryce -- a.k.a. the Brycer, to put it in Sandra's loveably sloshed cadence -- she just decided that every. single. meal needs some ridiculous elaborate table set up, the theme of which she decides arbitrarily. It might be an "under the sea" tablescape, with thematic sea horse name-cards, or a "autumn harvest" tablescape with the name-cards placed in hollowed tiny pumpkins. In any case, Sandra Lee is the last person left in the world who actually uses name-cards, possibly because she's too liquored up to remember the names of the people with whom she's shared a home for the past fifteen years. Which brings me to point eight...

4. She's an alcoholic.
This isn't out of the ordinary, as there are many times where I think Rachael Ray is also on the sauce before I realise that she's merely loveably handicapable. However, what is unique is that she is totally unabashed about her drinking problem. Every episode includes at least one cocktail, usually colour-coordinated to her tablescape, and she has the nasty habit of pouring the drinks into the mixing glasses right over the pitcher, so sometimes there's overflow. Substantial overflow. Sometimes she upends the bottle and overflows the fucker right into her mouth. I once saw an episode where she made three different sets of cocktails and drank them as she cooked; she was practically double-fisting near the end. Her interior organs must be more battered than Mary-Kate Olsen's vagina. She also makes "kiddy cocktails" for her children. I'm reasonably sure that these probably contain just as much alcohol as the real cocktails, and I'm equally sure that her kids never see a drop of it because she chugs every drink at the goddamn table.

If you need evidence on just what a lush she is, I think this video sums it up quite nicely. She's even ruining Jesus's birthday with that shit now.

3. She's vulgar.
As you watch more and more episodes of Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, the odds of her saying something graphic and completely inappropriate like "These kiddy cocktails are for the Brycer. He has a little girlfriend; he's a balls-out pussy-hound just like his dad." gradually approach one.

2. She's lazy.
More than any other Food Network chef, Sandra Lee just seems to hate cooking. I have no idea why she's made it her chosen occupation. She always seems actively disgusted at the idea of doing any of her own cooking and cuts the most ludicrous corners to keep this eventuality from occurring. Example: the Daffodil Cake. Let me clue you in on exactly what you're looking at here: that is a store-bought sheetcake, covered in storebought icing. She then put a store bought angel foodcake on top of that, covered that in storebought icing. Then she put storebought cookies on that and storebought cupcakes around those, being careful not to take the wrappers off lest the cake become appealling. She claims it serves eight. This is a lie because that "cake" could serve forty fucking people with leftovers. As an added bonus, she tells the story of commandeering the kitchen at Mario Batali's restaurant to assemble that disgrace during a friend's birthday party. That would be a horrendously gauche breach of etiquette if she weren't simultaneously sticking it to that fat fuck Mario Batali, to which I say "go Sandy go."

1. The Kwanzaa Cake.
There is nothing I can do or say that would do justice to the Kwanzaa cake. So instead I humbly submit it to you, and you may judge for yourself. What I will say is that nothing screams Kwanzaa like table candles jammed into a bundt cake covered in Corn Nuts. Oh, sorry, "acorns."

So there you have it. Six sexy reasons why Sandra Lee is the bomb-diggity. She'll never be hot like Nigella, or have anything approaching actual cooking talent, but at least she's not Bobby Flay. Everyone hates Bobby Flay.

Expo Line to King George

2008-05-23T09:56:00.001-07:00

dedicated to the love of my life, lady of the skytrain, whose dulcet tones make the ride back to surrey a little more bearable each time.

bing bing bong
increasingly atonal alarm
chyron of a siren whose sultry whisper snags your ear, says the stop, keeps you up
enunciates with razorblade precision,
derision, and the barest hint of dismissal.

sometimes under, often over,
brown tile rows and cold concrete realities
underfoot out of sight out of mind
mind the signs: cautionary tales of lightning bolts and fallen heroes
drawn too close to the thin yellow line.

deftly dodge dealers daggers, hopeless homeless bow away for a buck
harried harridans/perpetual passengers bustle by, downcast eyes
anonymity treasured, individuality eschewed
scramble to calcutta cattle-cars, the expo, alpha and omega
overseen -- higher being in a giardasil ad
a deistic pantheon push product, play coy
whiz by at a clip as the train groans its name
through a recurrent rain, symptom of a spring cold.

drenches an eclectic eccentric birdwatcher's list:
a graveyard, a car-lot church,
a religious message writ on a rooftop -- east and west meet on 22nd street.
windows distract, lack of contact
with colleagues summed up in smile scraps and averted gazes
a blur of nameless faces look away.

graduation: the doors slide, disembark, leave behind
listen for your name or one like it
now wait, conscious and cold and clamor for warmth
this is the terminus station.

A fun and unusual sort of game.

2008-05-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

More old cruft from my Nex. Please note, this was written more than a year ago; cut me some slack on my writing ability (or lack thereof). Not edited or vetted in any way since then:

It's time for America's fastest growing game show...

Kelly Kapowski was the cheerleader at Bayside, and blandly pretty in an obvious sort of way. She never hit the high five in the opening credits, and she wasn't a part of the Zack Attack. But we've all wondered, ALL OF US, how would she stack up in a DEATH MATCH against the Bayside women of past and present? This analysis will let you find out without all of the gore and clumps of hair!

Kelly Kapowski vs. Elizabeth Berkley
The Breakdown: Let's kick this off with a bang with Kelly Kapowski's chief competition at Bayside High: the leggy lesbo, Jessie Spano. I mean, she said she was dating Slater, but really... you knew. And in a battle of the Spandex Twin versus the Powerhouse Preppy (it was from the dance episode, look it up; I can still not BELIEVE Screech and Lisa won that shit. "The Sprain," my ass.), there are many factors to evaluate. When it comes to career choices, the point clearly goes to Tiffani Theissen: moving onto "90210," "Fastlane," and "Good Morning, Miami," she's had at least some success, however marginal. Berkley, however, went onto star in the superbomb "Showgirls" and has been slumming it in B-movie fare ever since. Hotness? Well, Berkley came into her own after leaving SBtB, so I call a draw. Physically, it's no contest: Jessie could rip Kelly's entrails out using just her teeth. In the end, it goes to a coin toss. Kelly's heads, Jessie's tails. Who gets the V? It comes down to the greatest line in television history. She's so excited. She's so excited. She's so scared. And she wins the deathmatch.
Advantage: Berkley.

Kelly Kapowski vs. Lark Voorhies
The Breakdown: Lisa Turtle was the obligatory minority at Bayside High, and also the only black person in all of Pacific Palisades, California (with the exception of that one black dude she dated who made her change who she was, because if there's one thing the SBtB producers are all about it's keeping the races pure). But Lisa was more than that: she was the source of ninety-five percent of Bayside's fashion faux pas'. Who among us will forget the fashion show where everything was made out of olive green corduroy? Not I. Her dream was to be a designer, but she might as well settle for "maid" because that's what black people do at Bayside. Although she might as well have just had a really good tan, with how her race factored into her character. They could have at least had her have an awkward racial moment like they did with Slater in the College Years. And what was up with that time she dated Zack for like... one episode? In conclusion, there are just too many questions.
Advantage: Kapowski.

Kelly Kapowski vs. Leah Remini
The Breakdown: You probably best know Ms. Remini as the stern, yet delightfully saucy Carrie on the CBS Raymond wannabe, "The King of Queens" (a fine show in its own right, or at the very least a damn sight better than SBtB). However, in the Saved-by-the-Belliverse, she's Stacey Carosi, the random beach club daughter chick that Zack fell in love with on his summer break. We were all supposed to be sad when it was over, like Stacy was, you know, "the one"... but that entire beach arc was possibly the stupidest storyline in SBtB history (and it has a lot of stiff competition, what with the whole "Hawaiian Style" thing and those episodes at Jessie's dad's wedding, and then there was the Zack Attack... and pretty much the entire run of the College Years... okay, maybe it wasn't so stupid after all). The point is, Zack went through condoms like most people go through chewing gum so it wasn't really that big a deal. And I'm about ninety percent sure that Stacy was never even mentioned again after the fact. So, in a strictly SBtB sense, the edge goes to Kapowski. But now, let's flash to the real world. Leah Remini is in syndicated reruns every single day, with new episodes on the way. When's the last time you saw Tiffani Theissen? I thought so. Edge to the MILF.
Advantage: Remini.

Kelly Kapowski vs. Leanna Creel
The Breakdown: Tori Scott was Bayside's second lesbian, filling in quite admirably for the absent Jessie. But where once there were ugly Western-style blouses, now there were leather jackets from the pride parade. She was the only girl left other than Lisa, and since Zack couldn't date the black girl, she was cast as the love interest. The only problem with that was the fact that she was totally uninteresting, an incredibly bad actress, and clearly, clearly gay. But since you couldn't have gay people on TV back then, that was that. Since Elizabeth Berkley and Tiffani Theissen (nee Tiffani-Amber Theissen) left the show halfway through the final season, they'd alternate the Tori episodes with the regular episodes -- meaning whenever Tori was around, Jessie and Kelly were supposedly elsewhere. Exploring their sexuality, let's say. But no one would ever talk about them, and they'd never talk about Tori during their episodes. The whole thing was just too weird. While I have no doubt that Tori could physically maul Kelly and would enjoy doing so (sexually), the fact is that Leanna Creel disappeared after SBtB and is basically considered the Cousin Oliver of the show in terms of scudbombing everything that made it appealing. I mean, my personal vote is for that little bitch Heather Hopper, but I in no way represent the majority. So it's a grudging win for Kelly.
Advantage: Kapowski.

Kelly Kapowski vs. Hayley Mills
The Breakdown: Ah, Hayley Mills. The sensible British one. Tiffani Theissen and Hayley Mills never shared a moment onscreen together as Mills was before the Kapowski Era - Mills was, of course, the infamous Miss Bliss. Saved by the Bell came into the world as "Good Morning, Miss Bliss", a Saturday morning show about a forty-something British teacher and her zany students. In fact, the early episodes have an almost distracting Bliss bent. The one thing the people in charge of the show never counted on, it seems, was that Miss Bliss in particular wasn't very interesting. The show was retooled, the name was changed, they all moved to California (even Mr. Belding, which... what the fuck?) and Bliss was dropped like a hot potato. So what has Hayley Mills been up to since the show? Well, she's been in every single bad TV movie sequel to the Parent Trap series you can name, and seems to have re-emerged into acting recently. But the bottom line is: Miss Bliss used to be the leading lady. Kelly took her place.
Advantage: Kapowski.

Kelly Kapowski vs. Kiersten Warren
The Breakdown: Kiersten Warren entered the Belliverse in the college years as Alex Taber, the nasal and annoying drama student who eventually became Slater's post-secondary fuckbuddy. I don't know when or how this came up; much like Slater and Jessie's relationship, it was mostly random and just kind of happened. I'm beginning to think that Slater doesn't even ask these girls out. But how does Alex compare to Kelly? Well, Kiersten's suddenly made herself topical with her new recurring role on "Desperate Housewives" as the nasal and annoying mother of Tom's baby (read: basically the same role she had on SBtB, only with a kid). And that's what it comes down to in this battle: Tiffani Theissen is just not relevant anymore, try as she might. Kiersten is relevant; barely, but it's there. And worst case scenario, she could always kill Kelly with her ridiculously high-pitched voice.
Advantage: Warren.

Kelly Kapowski vs. Essence Atkins
The Breakdown: Okay, this one is kind of mean, but follow me through on it. At the very, very beginning of SBtB: The College Years, it looked like none of the female leads from the high school shows were going to come back. Not even Tori, which... ouch. Huge slap in the face. So they brought in three new characters - Alex, Leslie, and Danielle. The latter was the token black girl, and was played by Essence Atkins. This lasted all of one episode. By the second episode, Danielle had mysteriously transferred out (maybe Screech tried to date-rape her or something, who knows?) and all of a sudden Kelly Kapowski had materialized from the ether and was going to college with the rest of the Bayside gang. This led, incidentally, to more equal coverage of the rest of the female cast, so they have Kelly to thank for that. Still, though, this is the most open-and-shut deathmatch yet. Danielle was literally on the show for one episode before Kelly bitchslapped her off into obscurity. It doesn't matter how many mediocre UPN sitcoms Atkins went on to do after that - which, believe me, there were lots, including the holy grail: Moesha -- it's an impossible deathblow to recover from. Atkins had no chance.
Advantage: Kapowski.

The Ex-cape Clause: because social interactions can be ~hard~.

2008-05-23T09:51:00.001-07:00

the right of the ex.
i believe whole-heartedly in a thing i call "the right of the ex." the right of the ex (hereafter known as t-rex for convenience and DINOSAURS!!!) basically exists because at some point in your life, you will inevitably fuck up and make out with/feel out/orally service/masturbate/have sex with an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. even if you think you won't, you will. consequently, i will spend the remainder of this note detailing something i call "the ex-cape clause," to which i believe all of western civilization should subscribe. sorry, thailand, you're on your own.

why do we fuck our exes?
i think the better question is, why aren't we fucking them right now? it's a complicated tapestry of reasons, which i will attempt to elucidate as best i can. i) leftover lust. even if someone breaks up with you, or you break up with someone, chances are you were at least attracted to them at one point. even if you're 100% sure that you're not still attracted to them, those remnants of the past can manifest themselves in bizarre and inconvenient ways. never underestimate the power of the human psyche. ii) vulnerability. if you're vulnerable or they're vulnerable or, god forbid, both of you are vulnerable, it can be easy to seek solace in something comforting and familiar. even if you know better, abstinence is easier said than done. iii) the boundaries are already gone. without most people, you have to go to the trouble of getting to know them, proving yourself desirable, taking it slow, etc., etc. short of hiring a prostitute or acquiring a fuck-buddy, ex-sex (aka s[ex]) is the easiest sex you're going to get. this ties in with reason iv, convenience. finally, and most damningly, there's sometimes v) you're still in love with them. this is the absolute worst, least healthy kind of s[ex] you can have. more on that later.

what is the ex-cape clause?
simply put, the ex-cape clause is as follows:

in the event that you, unattached and with consent, fondle/kiss/make out with/have coital relations of any kind with an unattached former boyfriend, girlfriend, or anyone you have dated, neither party will be held socially liable or obligated to the other in any way.

the reasons for this are simple. it might be easy when, in a moment of weakness, sally comes onto you at a party and you tap that ass like m.i.a. tap-taps that bed to the wall, to lord it over her for the rest of her life. however, it's just as likely that you, lonely and horny at 4 am, will send sally a lascivious text message that ends in some late-night rough 'n' tumble in the back forty behind the elementary school. it's not desirable and nobody looks good. the goal of the ex-cape clause is to basically give others the forgiveness and understanding you would hope to get yourself in the same situation. it doesn't mean they still love you and it doesn't mean they're bad people. it just means they were horny.

you may be asking, what if they come onto you and you're just not having it? then it's entirely up to you, as in any situation, to put the lecherous prick in his or her place. does the right of the ex apply then? i'd like to think it does, but in this kind of situation, the success of the ex-cape clause is entirely at the discretion of the person whom the advances were made upon. my personal advice is to be merciful and give the hooligan a pass, because you never know when you might need one yourself someday, but it varies from situation to situation. use the judgment that suits you best.

when do i lose the right of the ex?
there are two situations in which right of the ex cannot be conferred.

i) in the event that one person was the "victim" of the relationship, in that they were massively screwed over in some way due to emotional trauma, physical abuse, blackmail, drug addiction, the spread of HIV or other STIs, or any other malfeasance on the part of the non-victim, the non-victim loses all claims to right of the ex. the victim retains right of the ex.

ii) in the event of any sort of relationship-ending infidelity, even upon the forgiveness of the non-infidel, the infidel loses all claims to the right of the ex. there are two caveats: if the relationship isn't ended by the infidelity, the matter becomes more dicey and is left to the discretion of the non-infidel, and if the infidelity was somehow spurred by gross mistreatment of the infidel during the relationship (see "the victim clause" above) then neither of you should have right of the ex and you really should never see each other again, as tempting as it is, because you should know better. really.

have you ever had to invoke right of the ex, either as the person coming onto an ex or because an ex came onto you?
yes. absolutely. both. and because i've always been cool about the latter, my exes have always been cool about the former. it's a two-way street, people.

to help you understand the concept in its entirely, i've prepared some hypothetical situations:

q: i was at a party, and i had one too many jager bombs, and all of a sudden my ex-girlfriend started looking pretty good to me. the next morning i woke up with her next to me, condom wrappers strewn about the bed, and no memory of what happened the night before. can i invoke the right of the ex?

a: you could, but your more feasible defence might be the d.u.i.: dumbass under the influence defence. drunken hook-ups are the most common kind of hook-ups, but the liquor complicates things: did you fuck her because it was your ex, or because you were drunk and you would have had sex with anyone? pick whichever one seems like it'll ease the tension the best and go for it. knowing your ex's soft spots helps -- not like that, you perv.

q: things got a little heated with my ex-boyfriend last night, and i accidentally told him i still loved him... and then i kissed him. the only problem is, he's currently dating another girl. can i invoke the ex-cape clause and sweep the whole thing under the rug without his girlfriend finding out?

a: ha. no. the shit is going to hit the fan, sweetie, and you're the shit. and frankly, i hope i'm there when it happens, because it will probably be hilarious. officially: the ex-cape clause only works when both people are currently unattached. how you define unattached is largely a matter of semantics and leaves a lot of wiggle room for loopholes in this particular part of the clause, but if even one member of the duo is explicitly dating someone, it's a no go, ho.

q: i just had sex with a close friend... but we never really dated/broke up very recently/never had clear boundaries on whether or not we were dating. i like him, but don't know if he likes me/don't like him, but i know he likes me/were friends with benefits once but now we're not or maybe we are? please help. i don't know what to do.

a: sorry. just like the ex-cape clause, everyone has had one of those relationships, and unfortunately, there is absolutely no set of rules in the world for it. the on-and-off dating, friends with benefits, in-love-but-not thing is a weird-ass tangle of impropriety and social faux pas, and it can't be dealt with by any set of written laws. if you're wondering if your relationship fits these criteria, think of it this way: on facebook, if you had to choose the list of relationship terms, would you describe it as "it's complicated"? if so, welcome to hell.

q: i just had sex with my ex-girlfriend, and now she wants to get back together and i... really don't. am i allowed to invoke the right of the ex or am i just a terrible person?

a: both. well, not terrible, just insensitive. you should have been paying more attention to her emotions, brah. but, after all, that's what the ex-cape clause is for: so you don't have to start things back up everytime you put your dick in/wrap your vag around someone you've already been with. break it to her gently, but you do have the right of the ex here. next time, make sure you're not stepping into an emotional hornet's nest, though. each time we sex an ex, we should learn a lesson. :)

q: i just accidentally hooked up with a boyfriend only a month after we just ended our very serious relationship. can i escape scot-free with the ex-scape clause, or no?

a: no, because you're not far enough removed from the original relationship for it to be a mere booty call. this counts as "backsliding" and is a whole other kettle of fish. additionally, if you were the dumper, this looks especially bad on your part because it's leading your ex on. a good rule of thumb for the ex-cape clause coming out of very serious or very tumultuous relationships is the six-month rule. with casual relationships, the rule may vary.

q: i'm gay. do i still get to invoke the right of the ex?

a: yep. gay rules are the same as straight rules, only with more sequins.

q: i did it with my ex, and i accidentally got her pregnant. can i invoke the right of the ex to shirk my responsibilities and remove myself from the situation?

a: no. you are a terrible person.

so, in the end, who gets the final say?
sometimes, the matter is complicated and the waters are murky, and, for whatever reason, it is unclear whether or not the ex-cape clause can be invoked due to various extenuating circumstances. in these situations, the ultimate say always goes to the "loser" of the relationship: whichever person got the shortest end of the stick through the relationship. unfortunately, this will often lead to a battle of self-righteousness in which both parties claim to be the victim and no one is rewarded. in the event that there is no agreed upon "winner" or "loser," the final say goes to the person who was dumped. in the event that the break-up was mutual, the final say goes to whomever did not initiate the sexual encounter in question. in the event that either the encounter was mutually initiated or the initiator cannot be recalled/is in question, one person flips a coin and the other calls it in the air, and the winner of this coin flip decides shit, and maybe you should both stop being so fucking indecisive.

in conclusion.
these rules are just a precautionary. you really should do everything in your power to not come onto to your ex, or, if your ex comes onto you, to resist it with all of your fortitude. this is, however, easier said than done. the ex-cape clause is in place so we can all do the walk of shame with as little shame as possible. so, if you're tempted to feel vindictive and smug that your ex-boyfriend propositioned you one wild night after claiming he wasn't attracted to you anymore, wipe that smile off and give him a pass: it's the right thing to do and next time, it could be you.

This is my signature look.

2008-05-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

Fierce fierce fierce fierce fabulous. Worthwhile.

With apologies to Tuhnay Griggs:

Baby doll dresses over jeans and leggings.
It's a simple, universally flattering look, and for that reason alone, I'm tired of it. It hides all of your flaws and accentuates the positives, but it does that for everyone. So everyone does it, and it's dull as hell. Whatever happened to dressing to fit your individual body type? In spite of its user-friendliness, I deem this look Not Fierce.

Canvas shoes.
As much as it pains me, I think they're going out, and I'm doing my best to rage against the dying of the light here. Come on, people, get your shit together! We can squeeze out another couple of seasons of canvas Vans! Don't make me go back to laces. I don't think I could survive the transition.

Coats.
I'm liking the trend toward sophisticated coats (perpetuated, I imagine, by the wizards at H&M. Classy hos, all.) I commented that they were very sophisticated and urban, but not G-Unit urban, to which my friend Allison replied with a knowing nod, "...urbane." Thank you, Allison. Bonus points for pitch black and large buttons. Loving the huge buttons. Like fucking couch buttons.

Gothic Lolita.
Never met one of these crazy bitches in my life, but I admire their tenacity. I don't know that I agree with any style philosophy that so severely limits your wardrobe choices, but any worldview that can solve every problem with MORE RACE is worth admiration in my eyes.

Gigantic insect-like sunglasses.
A staple of the drugged-out Hollywood teen queen. Not sure on them myself, so I defer to the judgment of fashion goddess Chloë Sevigny. Chloë says: they're okay! Thanks, doll. Bonus points for heart or star shaped glasses, like Caroline from Zoom. That bitch was on like twenty seasons.

Jaunty hats.
Never liked them. Never, ever liked them. Newsboy caps, these little Inca Sherpa knit things, none of them are redeemable. I will claim the caveat that I own two of the latter and am deeply ashamed, but in my defense I was at EFADS at Metrotown and they were like a dollar each. You can't say no to a bargain like that. Still, if I ever end up in a newsboy cap, I want someone to drill my eye out.

Knit berets.
The most insidious of the Meaningful Hats. For a look that screams "I take Film Studies, you guys," nothing will accomplish it quicker than this thing, seen on the heads of wannabe BoHos riding the 99 every day. Usually accompanied by stupid bangs, a sense of entitlement, and a "hey, I studied Marxism and a lot of the ideas were really interesting" boyfriend. Not Fierce to the nth degree.

Marc Jacob knock-off purses.
You know the kind, frequently aped by the Surrey Chav (see below). Quilted-looking thing, huge industrial chain, maybe some charms on it. I'm tired of it. There's such a neat trend towards funky bags, cool patterns and general convenience in storage (do you know how many tampons you can fit in one of those giant fucking purses that are in now? Like a million.) I don't know why people keep erring back to this Marc Jacob business. Do you use the chain to ward off attackers? Ditto goes for Louis Vuitton. It's cool on luggage, it's not cool here.

Makeup on guys.
Eyeliner in complimentary colours instead of just black, to make the eyes pop. That may have been the gayest sentence fragment anyone has ever typed.

Metallic jeans.
I don't think this is actually a thing, but I saw them on an Old Navy commercial during the break in Survivor: China, and I just want to let you know that I think this is a really bad idea, you guys.

Obnoxiously large headphones.
Love them, mostly because I predicted their advent during the era of the ubiquitous white iPod earbuds (now thankfully less prevalent, after spending the last two years inhibiting conversation and generally ruining the entire concept of social interaction), and now here they are, messing up hair and letting the world know you're too wrapped up in your dickless indie hits to care what they think of your disshevelled bangs. I don't know that I'm down with the huge headphones for me, but I recognize their fierceness on others.

Patterned rainboots.
These popped up out of nowhere this winter, but they appear to be a presence at least for the season: rubber rainboots, usually with snakes or guns or snakes eating guns or dinosaurs or plaid (!!!) or whatever. And, you know, I went back and forth on these, because they really do seem like something I should like, but in the end, I decided that I really would like them to go. Maybe replace them with basic rainboots but in outrageous colours; everything is so bland this season...

Pink on guys.
True story: I was at the Bedouin Soundclash concert at UBC, and there was a guy behind me wearing a pink polo with the collar popped. I shit you not. I felt like I was in a fraternity circa 2005. Anyways, straight up pink is pretty much on its way out, but pink accents remain cool. A pink tie, black shirt with pink accents, layering over a pink button-up shirt, shit like that. I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to indulge your inner gay, there's still time before Tyra Banks completely subsidizes the gay industry.

Scarves.
How fucking stoked am I that scarves are in? There's no quicker way to class up an outfit, protect yourself from the cold, and simply feel like an on-the-go grown-up than a scarf. Obnoxiously long scarves are even better. Did you know that in 1927, dancer Isadora Duncan broke her neck when her very-long scarf got caught in the wheel of her carriage, and she died instantly? I officially deem this The Fiercest Fucking Way to Die, Ever.

Skinny jeans.
Oooh, depends. You've got to have the legs and ass for it, and quite frankly, a lot of stumpy bitches don't. Then they get the wrong sized jeans - usually in burgundy - and they bunch up all weird, and then they date guys with vaginal facial hair who smell like cloves. It's just a coup of awfulness all around. General rules of thumb: if you're going to wear skinny jeans, invest in an eating disorder. Otherwise, you're probably not trying hard enough. Don't put shit in the pockets; pockets on skinnies are merely a formality. If you're truly the hipster your jeans indicate, a messenger bag should serve your purposes quite nicely. You can get one at Urban Outfitters, you fucking conformist. (Srsly tho, love Urban Outfitters.) For guys: underwear - use it or lose it. Boxers and skinnies are like the Capulets and the fucking Montagues. Either invest in a pair of briefs or fuck wearing underwear altogether. As a fiercely outspoken advocate of the latter, I... advocate the latter.

Skinny suits and ties.
I'm kinda glad it's in because it looks good on a lot of guys, but does Justin Timberlake actually have any other clothes anymore? I'm a bit worried. It's like when Ashton Kutcher popularized trucker hats a while back and it was like, does he take it off? Is he bald under there?

Surrey Chav.
For girls: insanely tight ponytail, quilted black jacket with that fake fur shit on the outside, Lulu Lemon yoga pants. For guys: mostly a gigantic, cartoonishly patterned G-Unit kind of hoodie, occasionally with gold leafing, usually supplemented by some kind of insane shirt with rhinestones on it. Natural habit: the 321 bus to Newton Exchange, outside King George Skytrain Station. Frequently on their cellphones, or "mobiles," I guess. You've met eight or nine of the girl, in particular. She comes in brown, black, white. She's usually recognizable by her blonde highlights. It's all really kind of tragic. Lone exception for this crazy Inuit girl I saw at the bus stop in what looked like one of those black jackets with actual fur all in the face. It was a little insane; she looked like Björk in Drawing Restraint 9. I kept expecting her to hack her legs apart with a flensing knife.

UBC Engineering letterman's jackets.
A totally minor and niche grudge, but you're only entitled to wear the jacket if you played on the team. Engineering isn't a sport, it's a big communal sausagefest and no one cares that you're an engineer. You're officially no better than Dilbert, and he stopped being topical in 1997.

Ugg boots.
Frankly, I can't believe this one is still an issue. I was sure these went out in late 2006/early 2007 and got replaced with various and sundry other forms of boot, but I guess not. Ugg boots, obviously, are Not Fierce, unless you've still got all of the pom poms attached. No one does, though. Also, I'm tired of Oprah's whack ass giving out Uggs during all of her "Favourite Things" shows. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Umbrellas.
When you live in B.C., and particularly Vancouver, your umbrella is your best accessory. Best bets: a cute deviation, like sunshine rays, kitty ears, or ladybugs (plastic kids' umbrellas are best), or a solid funky pattern like a plaid or a polka dot. Avoid the little black umbrella that everyone has or, worse, the umbrella with the company logo on it. No one needs to know your dad works at Schulz Meat Packing Plant.

Groups that are fierce.

Androgynes.
Not knowing your gender has never been hotter. Boys who look like girls, girls who look like guys (but not creepy squat guys, like pretty ones. Let's not go nuts with the acceptance here; ugly people still suck.) The trend toward general ball-less-ness led by the producers of Grey's Anatomy puts these former social outcasts at the forefront.

Elderly people.
The well-dressed elderly are to be emulated and revered, because they have their shit together. Church ladies, dapper gentlemen in tuxes, bold floral prints and a time where women were women and men were off at war. This group does not include the sloppy elderly, or anyone wearing white sneakers. Bonus points for well-dressed old Asian ladies and men with groovy walking sticks.

Hispanics.
Hispanics are the only main minority group to not have ever been fashionable or emulatable. Black culture has permeated the mainstream, and thanks to the myriad influences of anime, wu-xia, the internet and Gwen Stefani, it's a-ok to be Asian. Hispanic people are at the bottom of the fierceness ladder and as a halfer, that upsets me because it basically means Ugly Betty is my only hope, and that sucks.

The handicapped.
Wheelchairs are never fierce.

Shit that's not in, but should be.

1994-style sundresses.
With the little flowers and shit on them, a la season four of 90210 or Saved by the Bell: The College Years. If it's good enough for Tiffani-Amber, it's good enough for me. Bonus points if accompanied by a stupid Blossom hat with a sunflower on it.

Cat-eye glasses.
Preferably with rhinestones. Boxy emo glasses have had their time in the sun. Let's move on.

Cloche hats.
If we're going to go all pretentious and cloying with our headgear, why not cloche hats? We're about due for the twenties revival that Chicago was supposed to bring back in 2002, and if we're in a world where everyone looks like Amelie, we're one step closer to bearable.

EDIT: Apparently, after some research, cloche hats ARE back in. One down, four to go.

Ear muffs.
Quirky, cute, furry, keeps yo shit warm.

Halloween accessories.
Kitty ears, tinsel halos, angel wings... but then, you all knew that by now. It's not just for Halloween anymore.

The infomercial drinking game.

2008-05-23T09:45:00.001-07:00

this has been posted on my nexopia for eons but seeing as having a nex went out around the same time calling a frigid girlfriend a "freeze" did (sometime around grade seven, though i am SO TRYING TO BRING THAT BACK), my nex only exists to accommodate the shit i have posted in my blog there. i seek to slowly move stuff from there to here piece by piece and eventually eradicate every trace of its existence. with that spirit of internet genocide (internenocide?) in mind, here's a relic from a bygone age:

the (slightly updated!) infomercial drinking game.

general:

1 sip the product is being sold by a jovial Australian man.
1 sip the cohost is a vacuous blonde or a forgettable brunette.
+1 sip said vacuous blonde or forgettable brunette is referred to as a "television personality" to disguise her lack of a real job.
+1 sip the cohost seems to be doubtful of the product's abilities at first, but is quickly convinced and suspiciously knowledgeable of the item's selling points.
1 sip the product is being sold by any of the following: Billy Mays, Cathy Mitchell, Jan Muller, Ron Popeil, Chef Tony.
1 sip the product being sold is called a "system" even though it is clearly not a system in any way, shape or form.
1 sip the hosted segment of the infomercial goes to commercial... for the same product.
+1 sip every time this "commercial" is repeated (usually at least twice).
+1 sip an actor is shown intentionally screwing up a task even a functionally retarded child could master (i.e. chopping a tomato, putting the lid on a blender).
+2 sips this incompetence is shown in melodramatic black and white, as if it to suggest it happened in the past (that was then! this is now! new technology to help you open a cupboard door without a million kitchen appliances falling on you because you're a fucking moron!).
1 sip the product comes with what they would have you believe is an obscene amount of extra bonuses as a "special offer."
+1 sip one of these bonuses is some sort of booklet you wouldn't want to read anyways.
+1 sip one of these bonuses is an extended guarantee in some multiple of thirty days.
+1 sip one of these bonuses is a pair of scissors.
+2 sips the pair of scissors is used to open a jar.
+chug the pair of scissors is used to cut through an entire chicken.
1 sip role call: after all of the special offers are announced, they are immediately repeated in sequence for the benefit of those who apparently lost their short term memory in the war.
+1 sip as each item is spoken during the roll call, it appears on the screen as if by magic.
1 sip x "easy payments" of "xx.99" or "xx.95."
1 sip colour-coded anything.
chug you find yourself actually wanting to purchase the product in question.

specific hosts:

1 sip Billy Mays screams so loud you have to mute the T.V.
1 sip Cathy Mitchell stares at you in a way that makes you doubt the existence of the human soul.
1 sip Cathy Mitchell is selling you some sort of product you could never possibly need.
1 sip Chef Tony mentions his Italian heritage.
2 sips grotesque close-up on Jan Muller's age-ravaged divot face.
2 sips grotesque close-up on Ron Popeil's age-ravaged divot face.
3 sips nepotism: Popeil brings out a relative (especially a daughter) to do his dirty work.
3 sips Jenilee Harris makes a joke so stupid you can actually hear Richard Pryor spinning in his grave.
5 sips Jenilee Harris clearly forgets a line or reads a cue card.
chug the Didi Seven host does something so blatantly homosexual that you actually look for a gerbil crawling out of his asshole.

knives and blades:

1 sip the knife set features an improbably high amount of knives.
+1 sip the bargain becomes apparent when more than one third of the knives in the set are steak knives.
1 sip a tomato is sliced.
+2 sips a tomato slice is sliced.
+chug the second slice is sliced even thinner.
1 sip the host cuts through the middle of a can of frozen spinach.
1 sip the task of chopping onions is referred to with such gravity it is as though it is in some way fatal.
1 sip "no more tears!"
1 sip the host suggests putting one of the knives in your tool and/or tackle box.
1 sip a knife is unwisely used to saw through drywall.
1 sip a knife is used to saw through a sledgehammer, marble tile, or some other impossibly hard substance.
+1 sip said knife is then tested for sharpness on a tomato, a piece of paper, or some other thing even the dullest knife could cut.
1 sip a loaf of bread is in some way mangled.
2 sips the meat being cut is so raw that the cutting board being used looks like the bloodbath prom scene from Carrie.
2 sips all food chopped is deposited into a little square hole in the middle of the table.
+1 sip you think of how much the starving children in Africa would resent that food hole.
2 sips garnishing knife!
2 sips a knife's ability to CHOP THROUGH BONE is extolled as a selling point and not a major safety hazard.
chug a knife chops a pineapple in half IN MID-AIR.

cookers, pans and rotisseries:

1 sip convection cooking is mentioned in any way, shape or form.
1 sip the cooking technology is patented under a ridiculous name like "FlavorWave."
1 sip the lid has some kind of vents.
1 sip vegetables can be cooked on top of the machine, provided you like your vegetables in half a pint of scalding hot water.
1 sip uncomfortable close-up on fat drippings.
1 sip one of the selling points is its healthy product, yet we only ever see it used to cook red meat.
1 sip fish and/or an onion is mentioned as contaminating the taste of other foods.
+1 sip in order to combat this perception, we see something cooked along with fish and/or an onion.
+2 sips that something is cupcakes.
+chug the cupcakes are made with cola.
2 sips three or more chickens, hens or turkeys are crammed into a single machine.
2 sips a professional chef is interviewed about his or her use of the product.
+1 sip the chef in question doesn't speak English.
chug several whole cloves of garlic are injected into a chicken.

choppers and blenders:

1 sip the product name sounds more like a sex toy than a food processor.
1 sip the host asks who in the audience actually uses their food processor.
+chug someone actually raises their hand.
1 sip the infomercial treats the situation as though blending the tomatoes for the sauce is somehow equivalent to preparing the entire spaghetti meal.
1 sip the volume of the sauce is greater than the volume of the pasta.
1 sip dishwasher-friendly.
1 sip microwave-friendly.
2 sips having to grind coffee beans is extolled as an exotic delight rather than a tedious chore.
2 sips concrete is crushed.
2 sips a stick-style chopper is used in a Ziploc bag.
3 sips water is "blended."
5 sips a so-called "three second" chopper is held down for noticeably longer than three seconds.
chug the product is repeatedly praised for replacing other appliances and being compact... yet comes with so many extra blades and attachments that it necessitates an entire cupboard just to store its paraphenalia.

cleaning products:

1 sip an impossibly filthy shower is cleaned.
1 sip someone bleaches their bathroom while wearing a gas mask.
1 sip we see that not only does the product get the stain out of the carpet, but ALSO the matting.
1 sip mild soliloquy on the cleaning power of oranges.
1 sip tea is treated with the same severity as onions (see knives and blades).
2 sips a yellowed curtain is dipped in a fish tank.
2 sips a deck chair is pressure-washed.
chug a rival product is clearly intentionally misused to look weaker in comparison to the product being sold (most frequently by not diluting it).
chug huge white-trash hard water stain under a bathtub faucet (what the hell is hard water?).

the magic bullet, the single greatest infomercial ever:

1 sip "personal versatile countertop magician!"
1 sip quesadillas!
1 sip any sign, however subtle, that this party is in actuality a swinger party.
1 sip any sign, however subtle, that Mick beats Mimi.
1 sip Berman is an asshole.
+1 sip Berman says something unacceptable by any laws of social etiquette.
+1 sip passing mention of Berman's alcohol problem.
+1 sip you think that good friends might actually seek to help Berman but these vacuous ninnies are all so goddamn busy talking about their fucking colour-coded PARTY MUGS.
1 sip Hazel is a hag.
+1 sip you realize that the ash on the end of Hazel's cigarette actually defies the commonly-held laws of physics.
1 sip close-up on the chick who looks exactly like Mimi.
1 sip Mimi gets visibly angry at either Berman or NotMimi.
1 sip someone is wearing a summery dress.
1 sip a new attachment is introduced.
1 sip whatever is being blended uses cheese as an ingredient.
2 sips mention of the colour-coded party mugs.
+2 sips you realise that without the colour-coded rims, the serrated edges of those mugs would mean you couldn't drink without horribly lacerating your gums.
2 sips awkward banter between Mick and Mimi reminds us that not only are they actors, they're very bad actors.
chug anyone who's not Mick, Mimi, Hazel, Berman or NotMimi speaks for any reason at all.
chug Mimi mentions the "secret ingredient" in the recipe's TITLE.
chug idiot bitch looks for a coffee grinder in someone else's home.
chug someone says something so incredibly vacuous or stupid that you actually contemplate suicide.

miscellaneous:

1 sip a vacuum is used to pick up a bowling ball.
1 sip styrofoam packing peanuts are used to test anything wind-related.
1 sip a major celebrity credits their success to ProActiv Solution and/or Windsor-Pilates.
1 sip the before and after pictures are clearly two different people.
1 sip a small deli platter is compared to one towering with more meat than even a large horde could safely consume.
1 sip Chuck Norris!
2 sips use of the phrase "CASH in the TRASH!" or some variant thereof.
2 sips a Ron Popeil product has an absolutely ludicrous use.
2 sips a sweater is vacuum-packed.
2 sips a photo album is vacuum-packed.
+chug a sweater and a photo album are vacuum-packed.
chug the U.S. Olympic gymnast team is used to test the strength of a ladder.
finish entire bottle we see any person of a visible minority.

An open letter to my friend, Nana.

2008-05-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

Hey, Nana.

I feel like we haven't talked in a long time, though I know of course that we have. I've been tossing obscenities at you like so many motion sensor bombs, cursing your name time and again, ordering you around then dismissing you as "gay" and "retarded." It's nothing I'm proud of, and I'd like to take the opportunity to apologize. No one deserves that kind of mistreatment. But that's not why I'm here.

I guess the reason it seems like we haven't spoken in ages is that I feel like we're suffering a communication breakdown on a massive scale. I was under the impression, going into this, that we wanted the same things. I thought, "we're both competitors, and we're going to work together to get to the top." I see now that I was mistaken, and that this hasn't happened. Rather, I find myself doing the bulk of the work while you wander off, distracted by some shiny thing. Often you'll wander into an Electrode, or the waiting clutches of some opponent. In theory, I'm okay with that. Everyone makes mistakes every now and again. But it's been getting more and more severe.

I can't even take you to Jungle Japes anymore. You don't last two seconds before going for a swim and stranding me on my own. There's a time for gaiety and merriment, Nana, and this isn't it. Save the swimming for when we get home. Likewise, I feel like Mute City is a lost cause. I don't know if you just never practised your road safety or what, but you don't seem to look any way but down as you dive onto the racetrack and leave me to fend for myself. It's a two-way street, Nana, no pun intended -- and as my Up B attack fails and I plummet to my death because you're over on the other side of the stage getting punched in the face by Captain Falcon, I can't help but feel like you don't want this.

I can only want this to work as much as you do.

I think the problem may be that we have differing ideas on commitment. When I agreed that we'd be partners, I was under certain impressions. I thought we'd be blowing cold air at opponents together. I thought we'd be doing our adorable hammer spin together. And yes, I expected that if we needed to get back to the mainland, that we would belay together as well. Apparently, your version of our commitment included a clause where you get to wander off the edge of the stage for no reason every ten seconds.

I don't think that's fair.

I've put a lot of work into this, Nana. When we die, I'm the one who loses the life. You just disappear into a little flurry of sparkles. You're riding my parka-tails, and I think you know it. And it's not like I haven't tried alternate solutions. I've changed our costumes. Sometimes I let you wear the cute white jacket instead. That doesn't help anything; it just seems to make you more distracted. I feel like you aren't keeping your eyes on the prize. If you're cool living under the command of a gigantic sentient glove... then good for you. I'm not. There has to be more to life than this.

However, I don't write this letter as a mere indictment. Far from it. The purpose of this missive is to serve as a wake up call, like the harsh Fire Flower that scalds you after you've walked into the enemy team's Bellossom because you're just that stupid. I feel like we can still make this work. More than that, I WANT us to make this work. We're not a bad team. In fact, I'd say we're downright precious. What has it been now, Nana? Eighteen, twenty years? Let's prove to all of them that the bloom hasn't gone off the rose.

We're standing on the border of a new brawl, one that will prove our mettle as a team, or tear us asunder like a turnip plucked from the ground. I'm optimistic about our chances, Nana. We can still be winners.

Let's get this relationship back on track. <3

Kisses,

Taylor <33

On the momentous occasion of the creation of this blog...

2008-05-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am under no delusions that I harbour a special gift, nor am I operating under the assumption that I can ascend to the pantheons of the great bloggers in the blogosphere or whatever douchetarded portmanteau is being used to describe the phenomenon of journals created expressly for public consumption. My writing is on the shallow side of good, and my "enlightened" thoughts are almost probably entirely cribbed from a collage of pop culture phenomena, transit maps, old episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 and the nutritional information on the other side of food wrappers (fact: Craisins contain almost no redeeming nutritional value, but I still use them as my fruit and/or vegetable serving on any given day).

What I do recognize, though, is that I have an innate need to write -- to explore the ideas that pop into my head, to share these ideas with others, and to commit them to some sort of semi-permanent medium for future reference. I've gone through too many old blogs -- livejournal, Blurty (Blurty! I know!), Nexopia, Facebook -- each time crossposting the items to whatever new-fangled flavour-of-the-month site I've moved onto next. I need permanence. I need a home.

I'm not nomadic. I have no desire to run, to constantly be on the move to the point where I get my childhood sweetheart killed in a hail of gunfire and hide away as the assistant to a farmer in Australia before I am finally apprehended only to have my plane crash-land on an island with a monster made of smoke, like another UBC alum who is considerably more famous than I am. So, I'm setting my carpet down and peddling my little wooden puzzle-boxes, treasure maps, and fortune spells in this little corner of the vast eDesert. I welcome all weary travellers, and hope that in perusing my wares, you might find something you like.

On the name, Hearts in the Margins: it comes from my immature little habit (and I suspect I am not alone) of doodling hearts in the corners of my notebook when I'm in class and my mind wanders. It's a simple little exercise in tedium; I use two lines, though you can use one. And yet, I find it cathartic -- it puts my mind in a state of readiness, gets rid of my nervous energy, etc. The margins of my notebook have too often found themselves home to my slapdash ideas, jotted down in a fleeting hand to be examined later. And that is, after all, the point of this blog: to explore my ideas, train my thoughts, and mostly to be as wickedly self-indulgent as I'd like to be.

I hate self-indulgence. I try to temper my writing with restraint. But not here. Never here. This is my playground, bitches.

I'll cross-post some of my older stuff after I've gotten things set up a little more concretely. In the meantime, welcome to this little carpet of mine. Feel free to browse.