Category Archives: Pop Cult-ure

Tale As Old As Time

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Oooh, the new Beauty and the Beast movie is out! I can’t wait to see it! I say this in theory, in reality it will probably be months before I actually see it. Revised statement: I can’t wait for it to be on Netflix so I can watch it in the comfort of my own home with a glass of wine!

I really loved the original movie, although I was sixteen when it came out. I loved the bookworm, BRUNETTE heroine, I loved the music, I loved the whole story. Although, when you think about it, it is an incredibly bizarre story. Woman saves her father by agreeing to be a prisoner for life in a giant castle filled with kitchenware and various inanimate objects that are somehow alive, woman develops Stockholm Syndrome and falls in love with her captor, who appears to be some kind of buffalo, and her love is enough to transform him from buffalo to heartthrob. Oh, and he’s royalty. Buffalo royalty!

Not to mention there’s a fading rose that is basically the beastly-buffalo version of a female biological clock.

But despite the weirdness of the story – like most fairy tales, I guess, there isn’t really a fairy tale that is not crazy-town-bananapants – I love it. I find it frankly hilarious that there is some kind of uproar about poor, gay LaFou, and his unrequited crush on Gaston. THAT is the controversy, here? I mean, a woman falling in love with an English-speaking buffalo probably counts as bestiality.

All of which reminds me of the winner of the 1976 Governor General’s Literary Award, Bear, by Marian Engel. Known as the most controversial Canadian novel ever, it is a story about a librarian in Northern Ontario who is lonely and ends up in a sexual relationship…with a bear. An actual bear, not a big, hairy man.

“Shocking, erotic.” “The unthinkable.” Well.

On a completely different note, I have had two odd things break lately. The first was my trusty pair of tweezers. I guess that’s not a totally different note; without my tweezers I would be somewhat bear-like in appearance. Certainly in a furry sort of way, anyway. Did you know that tweezers can just stop working? Well, they can. I suppose this is what happens when you cannot even remember how old said tweezers were. I do not even remember purchasing the tweezers; perhaps they just materialized one day, I don’t know. All I know is that I do not remember purchasing tweezers EVER, in my lifetime. Suffice it to say that my tweezers have been with me for a long time, keeping control over my Martin Scorsese eyebrows for decades.

Well, a few weeks ago I went to tweeze my eyebrows and lo, I couldn’t. I kept wondering what was wrong with me. Did I suddenly lose what little hand-eye coordination one needs to tweeze one’s eyebrows? Was I actually drunk at 6:45 in the morning? I didn’t THINK so. Then it occurred to me to try to grab a hair from my head, and I couldn’t. That’s when I knew. RIP tweezers. You lived a long, productive, busy life.

Strangely enough, shortly prior to this I had discovered via Mimi Smartypants that a new technology exists and is for sale in your local drugstore: tweezers equipped with a small UV light for illuminating what you may have thought were invisible hairs. What an age we live in.

I was perusing the tweezer section at Shoppers’ and lo, there was the exact item. Revlon has a UV-light-equipped set of tweezers, and although it was more expensive than I thought a pair of tweezers should be, I purchased it. After all, my old tweezers lasted decades, so I’m guessing that this pair will last a while. I hope, at least.

The problem is that when you shine a UV light on your face to illuminate hairs, it is very disconcerting, to say the least. You will discover all sorts of hirsute horrors. I mentioned this to a friend of mine (HI TARYN) and she wisely suggested that no one in society is walking around shining a UV light on other people’s faces, so we are all probably safe. However, you cannot un-know a thing, such as having a beard’s worth of chin hairs.

The other thing that broke was my ice cream scoop. Again, I have no idea how old my ice cream scoop is, but I likely bought it somewhere around the time I moved out of my parents’ house. Again, this is some time ago. However, I wasn’t even scooping ice cream that was particularly hard; it was a (homemade, god, I love my ice cream maker) vanilla with (homemade) caramel swirl. It was pretty soft, really, and when the scoop ended up in two pieces Jake and I looked at each other with shock. I mean. How does that happen?

I guess I liken it to those stories you hear about people injuring their backs or shoulders or knees doing absolutely normal, non-strenuous activities. I bent over to pick up a shoe and my back went out, or I was walking down the street and suddenly I collapsed in pain. Maybe my poor ice cream scoop had been having issues for years and finally snapped.

If only my life were a Beauty and the Beast kind of situation, with animated kitchen ware. Oh, the stories my appliances and utensils could tell.

Abbie’s Favourite Cookies

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On the radio last week, they were having a contest to win tickets to see Brian Wilson – of Beach Boys fame – in concert. I actually thought that Brian Wilson died a long time ago, which is the reason I am rarely, if ever, upset by celebrity deaths. I often think that the death has happened already. In any case, today I learned that Brian Wilson is the same age as my mother-in-law, which seems a bit old to be singing Surfin’ Safari and Fun Fun Fun, but who am I to judge? You do you, Brian Wilson.

The concert itself is titled Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds – The Final Performance. That feels a bit ominous and if I were him, I probably wouldn’t want FINAL in the title of my performance, but perhaps it helps with the ticket sales. Who knows? I remember a few years ago I saw KC and the Sunshine Band on television – maybe it was American Idol? I don’t really remember – performing Get Down Tonight and to be frank, it was pretty grim. There is something inherently depressing about watching disco stars attempt to perform in the exact same way as they did in the 1970s. Change can be good, aging disco stars. Embrace the change.

In other local performance news, Wayne Newton is touring. I repeat: Wayne Newton is not only alive, but touring! I was even more shocked to hear that than the Brian Wilson news. Sadly, it appears that touring is something that Mr. Las Vegas needs to do since he is – allegedly – in financial distress, which should be a cautionary tale for anyone whose expenditures exceed income. Of course, if at any time you feel that you just cannot live without a peacock aviary and exotic animal menagerie, perhaps you might need a new financial advisor.

I just this moment learned that Judge Wapner passed away, at the great age of 97. Again, who knew he was still kicking? Certainly not me. RIP, Judge Wapner.

One thing I love very much about being part of a yoga community is that I get to make friends with people of all ages. I have many sweet young friends, and it is lovely to be able to celebrate with them as they go through their engagements, weddings, and pregnancies. At the moment, I know of four little yogis due to be born between April and July, which is exciting and happy news. I highly recommend becoming friends with such sweet young mamas, so as to share in a lot of joy and excitement.

One very special yogi was born back in November; her mama (HI ABBIE) is a wonderful, sweet friend of mine who I miss a lot, since she moved away a few years ago. I used to make these cookies for her, since they were her favourite. In my head, I always call them Abbie’s Cookies. Last week another young yoga friend had a birthday, and so I baked these cookies for him; I kept the base the same but added in lots of healthy extras, because he’s a very health-conscious individual, even on his birthday.

My much-loved grandma once told me that when she experiments with a recipe, she would make it exactly as the recipe stated the first time, and then would change it subsequently to her own tastes. When I first started cooking and baking, I would be terrified to do this, convinced that one wrong step would ruin everything. Let me reassure you: rarely is this the case. I mean, yes, I have had some flops in my time. Observe, if you will, my attempt at free-styling white chocolate raspberry cookies:

But to be honest, mostly things work out. And so I loaded these cookies with lots of yummy healthy things, like chopped apricots, pumpkin seeds, coconut, hemp, and flax (and chocolate chips too, because I’m not a monster). When I would make them for Abbie I would add in peanut butter chips. You could swap out everything for dried cranberries and white chocolate, you could put in butterscotch chips and raisins. What I’m saying is that you do YOU. Have fun with these cookies. Throw in everything but the kitchen sink or take out everything but the chocolate. Just bake them with love and watch the love come back to you. xo

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*click here to learn everything you ever wanted to know about flax eggs

I have one simple request: to have sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads.

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This week has been a seemingly endless series of irritations, both of the minor kind and of the more sweeping variety, and I have been – possibly due to Female Cyclical Emotional Upheaval – unable to keep my usual Om Shanti outlook and am instead empathizing with Cersei Lannister. Yesterday, I felt that I, too, could happily burn the whole city down while pouring myself a glass of wine.

I won’t go into the sources of all my various irritations, just know that they ran the gamut from pinprick to outright rage-inducing, and yes, I am putting some of the responsibility on myself and my Lady Emotions, but honest to god, encounters like I’ve had this week make me despair for Common Sense and Logical Thought Processes. How does one not suffocate from having one’s head up one’s own ass all the time?

Anyway. Deep breathing and on to less rage-inducing subjects. It is Teacher’s Convention right now, and Family Day is Monday, so the kids are home from school. Yesterday I took Mark to get a haircut at the barber shop in our neighbourhood that we have been frequenting lately (and by “we,” I mean “the kids.”). I walked inside and went to sit down and lo, on the table next to me was a large pile of pornographic magazines. I have so many questions. For one thing, why is porn in barbershops still a thing? It’s pretty awkward when walking in with your twelve-year-old son, who is, happily, oblivious to it. Or so it seems. But really, how many people are going to the barbershop for porn and a haircut? It’s always made me wonder, who are these men (I assume men) who walk in, ask for a trim, and open Penthouse to the centrefold, tilting their heads to get the full view? For another thing, who buys porn anymore? Has the barber never heard of the internet?

Coincidentally enough, I was driving home from yoga and I had the News Talk Radio on, for reasons that I do not understand myself. The radio host mentioned that Playboy is going back to nudes now. Going back to nudes? I thought – and honestly, I am not a person who has ever bought or even really looked at a Playboy, so it could be my own naivete – that Playboy was all nudes. I know people used to say they “bought it for the articles” but I always thought that was just a weird excuse to look at Kaitlyn, age 21, who likes margaritas, movies, and walking on the beach. But I could be wrong, and I probably am, and in any case it was pretty early in the morning so I could have misheard the whole thing. I am not about to look it up, you can believe that. I don’t want anything like that on my search engine and I most certainly don’t want that kind of advertising popping up in my Facebook algorithm.

Last week I was at Costco, and when I was leaving, the older man who checks the carts – and flirts with me – said I had the healthiest cart he had ever seen, and that compliment has been a source of pride and happiness all week. All week. Clearly I have issues that go far beyond the excessive amount of fruit and vegetables I load up with. In a week of annoyances, the memory of that exchange has made me stand straight, with my head up high, even more so than when the drunk guy in front of Walmart said that I sure am a pretty lady.

Well, we all like a good compliment, don’t we? Even when the giver of the compliment is inebriated at 10:30 in the morning.

I was at the salon getting my hair cut and coloured – my hair seems to be growing more rapidly now, which is gratifying but also results in more startling roots – and I spent much of my time reading The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. If you haven’t heard about it, the backstory is that Keegan was a rising star in the literary world, and had just graduated from Yale when she was killed in a car accident. When I say “just graduated,” I mean that she died FIVE DAYS after graduation. This book is a compilation of her stories and essays, and is tragic in that she was a beautiful, thought-provoking writer already, at age 22. It’s worth a read, although I found I liked her non-fiction essays much more than her fictional stories. Perhaps I am too old to appreciate the type of fiction that she was writing.

In her title piece, that went viral after her death, she says, quite poignantly in retrospect, “We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time…What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.” Despite the fact that I am NOT so young – in fact, I am two decades older than the stated age – this spoke to me, as someone who has reinvented her life a number of times. We can do anything, you guys. We can.

And on that note, I am going to get my Friday started, and hopefully it will be less angst-filled than this week has been. It will definitely end with wine though, and I haven’t yet burned the city down OR commissioned sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, so things are looking up. Have a good weekend, my friends. xo

Sweatin’ to the Oldies

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I was driving home from yoga on Tuesday when I heard on the radio that Southern Alberta is under an extreme cold warning; Calgary is NOT included in this warning. I looked at the dashboard and the temperature read minus 26. What does a city have to do to get an extreme cold warning around here?

It’s already started to warm up, thankfully, and the streets are merely a mess of mushy snow and frozen-over ridges, which is much better than the sheer ice/ snow piles that they were. This morning I decided to wrap up warmly and take Barkley to the dog park since it was minus 15, which is my personal cut-off. I regretted the decision upon arrival but powered through, because this fuzzy little face was so happy.

Who’s a good doggy? Barkley is! Barkley’s a good doggy!

The grade seven gym class, having completed the Dance Unit, with their foray into the Cadillac Ranch and Cotton Eyed Joe line dances, are now in the Cardiovascular Health unit. Yesterday they participated in Tai Bo. Tai Bo! With Billy Blanks! The general consensus was that the video used was “creepy.” Creepy or not, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see 12 and 13 year old kids doing Tai Bo.

I do not know how the curriculum is created, but it seems to have a very large Nineties push. I wonder if step aerobics will be next. Oh, how I loved step aerobics. I would probably still love step aerobics, given the chance. I remember going through the group workout schedule in university and being able to attend such classes as Step and Pump, Interval Step, and Boxercise. Those were the days, when I would don my sports bra, shorts, and – inexplicably – ball cap for a workout between actual academic classes.

I just now remembered why I wore a ball cap to work out in. It was because of my extremely layered Rachel haircut; it was impossible to keep the hair out of my face otherwise.

Continuing with the video workouts, perhaps Sweatin’ to the Oldies will have a chance to make a comeback. I earnestly, and without irony, like Richard Simmons. Although for these kids, “The Oldies” could be defined as anything between 1995-2005, songs which often seem to me as “just released.” Maybe he has a “twerking” workout. A twerkout, as it were.

Discovery: the entire collection of Sweatin’ to the Oldies is available on Amazon for $282.53, which seems like a lot, but there is only one left in stock, so I guess Amazon knows what it’s doing.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! Stay warm. xo

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Glory days

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The other day I had just finished showering, preparing to teach an evening class, when the dryer finished its cycle. I brought the basket upstairs, in my bathrobe, and pulled on a pair of socks that were on top. I am now ruined for non-dryer-warmed socks. Regular socks are just a sad imitation of a superior product. However, it would be pretty bad, ecologically-wise, for me to run the dryer every time I put on a pair of socks, and yet it is a very tempting prospect, especially on a day like today when we are in “winter storm warning;” at minus 21 with a ton of snow I wish I could just live in the dryer. Or maybe have clothes made out of electric blankets.

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Brr!

Speaking of ecological warriors, because of changes – FINALLY – made by the CRTC, I was able to actually see Superbowl commercials yesterday! For those of you not in Canada, this is a huge thing. Local stations would take over and instead of seeing the big-time commercials, we would see locally-made commercials for a furniture warehouse, or commercials for the actual television station that we were watching. Normally my husband would just record the whole game, start late, and zap through the commercials. But not this year! This year I got to see this one with Melissa McCarthy and this one, which is my new favourite thing and, proving that advertising really does work, I am going to look into this hair care line.

My hair has reached critical “it’s winter” dryness and that, coupled with my grey-root situation that is typical in this stage of my hair-colour cycle, is making me feel a bit dreary. I am trying to reconcile my I-Am-Woman-And-Growing-Old-Is-Beautiful-Screw-The-Youth-Culture mentality with my Eeek-Don’t-Look-Too-Closely-In-The-Mirror mentality. Know what I mean? I want to not care about my marionette lines and my undereye circles and my forehead ridges, but vanity, it is the last to die. I wrote this piece all about self-care and I love it, I really do. I think it’s one of my favourite things I’ve written in recent memory, and I believe every word I wrote, and yet it is HARD sometimes, to smile while looking in the mirror. I mean, in some ways it’s not, because I suffer from a mad case of Bitchy Resting Face, and smiling alleviates that.

Ah, I should not focus so much on appearance, am I right? My friend and I were having tea the other day and talking about exercise and keeping in shape, as we grow older. “It’s not about aesthetics,” I said, and then, for the sake of honesty I added, “Well, maybe it’s a little about aesthetics.” I wonder what age I will be when I stop caring about my appearance. Death, maybe?

Does anyone else suffer from this internal struggle? I don’t want to care about my appearance, but I do. I want to celebrate my aging self, and I do, but I also am starting to fully understand why celebrities get plastic surgery. Can you imagine being an actress, seeing yourself in reruns? For the vain – scratch that, for anyone – that would be difficult. And in this time of filters and Instagram and photoshopped everything, it’s hard to remember what real people actually look like. And for me, I feel very strong and healthy, and so it’s sometimes startling to see myself in the mirror, pre-makeup in the morning.

On that note, I was half-watching a movie with my husband on the weekend: Fifty Fifty. It is a very touching – and, apparently true – movie about a young man with cancer and a fifty-fifty chance of survival. No spoilers here, except that we were 95% of the way through a movie when I realized that the mother was played by Anjelica Huston. She’s aged, I thought, then mentally slapped myself because of course she’s aged! She’s not dead. We should all be lucky enough to age. What a terrible way to think, especially while watching a movie of such content.

Am I alone in this? Anyone else struggling a bit with this whole “looking our age” thing? Come here and let me hug you and pat your back with my knobbly, veiny old hands. xo

I, for one, welcome Shakira Law and look forward to much dancing in the future.

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This morning I was at the barber shop with my youngest, and I popped on to twitter for only a moment. That moment was long enough to see this:

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YOU GUYS.

I laughed and laughed because a) I am not and never have been a Tolkien fan, but even I know the Lord of the Rings reference, b) STARBUCKS is giving out FREE ISLAMIC DONUTS, and c) SHAKIRA LAW.

I, for one, would welcome Shakira law, because my hips don’t lie either. We would all be dancing and hip-swiveling until the end of time.

The whole thing is so funny and ridiculous, and it really amused me until the realization hit:

Someone spent time and energy to make an anti-Muslim meme using a photo of a doughnut that was probably created on Pinterest for some kind of Hobbit party. Someone took the time to do this and also conflated Sharia with the fabulous Shakira, which, while funny, is the reason checking spelling is so important. This person also evidently had a grudge against Starbucks, probably because of their red cups.

This right here is the problem with memes. Anyone can say anything at all, and if that meme catches on, it’s passed around Facebook and Twitter and immediately becomes the gospel truth. This is how things like “Irish people were the real original slaves” happen.

Side note: the Irish were undoubtedly mistreated by Americans during their wave of immigration and were certainly, collectively, plagued by hardships. However. If ANYTHING this should be a warning to the public about the dangers of xenophobia.

So I’m sure that doughnut meme probably had a bunch of people up in arms, people who were not interested in Our New Hip Swiveling Overlords, people who immediately boycotted Starbucks and called the police about their brown-skinned neighbours’ suspicious activity of bringing doughnuts to the neighbourhood potluck. I am going to say this once: DO NOT JUST BLINDLY PASS THINGS ALONG IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE ANY CRITICAL THINKING OR RESEARCH REGARDING THE TOPIC. This goes for “news articles” and the like.

Oh, and this isn’t limited to people of a certain political background, because mass meme hysteria can come from any side of the spectrum. For example, the other day I saw one circulating about a certain famous football player who shall remain nameless and it made him look ridiculous. Well, since my husband has had Superbowl talk on all week, I actually saw the interview that the quotes were taken from, and I can tell you that they were not only massively taken out of context, they were not even correct. However, the meme generated a lot of hate for this love-to-hate-him player, which is the goal of the meme-maker, I suppose.

Remember So I Married An Axe Murderer?

Charlie: Hey Mom, I find it interesting that you refer to the Weekly World News as, “The paper.” The paper contains facts.
Charlie’s Mom: This paper contains facts. And this paper has the eighth highest circulation in the whole wide world. Right? Plenty of facts. “Pregnant man gives birth.” That’s a fact.

This should be obvious, but strive not to be like Charlie’s mom.

Actually, maybe it would be kind of fun to make my own meme, like Colonel Sanders Puts An Addictive Chemical In His Chicken To Make You Crave It Fortnightly, and then see how many people immediately boycott KFC. No, that’s not harsh enough. I would have to say that KFC uses kittens that they get from the pound, instead of chicken. Or fetuses*. Because this is what the world has come to.

*KFC does not use fetuses or kittens in their chicken. They use chicken in their chicken. They are still pretty gross, in my humble vegetarian opinion.

Ooh! I know! I could circulate a meme saying that KFC is a front for crystal meth distribution and money laundering*! That’ll get them, those kitten/ fetus fryers!

*That was Los Pollos Hermanos, from Breaking Bad.

The moral of this story is that we should all do our research because in this age of social media, information and misinformation can travel fast. Do your part and do your research. And only pass along memes like this:

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Because that is HILARIOUS.

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl

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This morning I heard Copacabana on the way home from yoga, and it set the tone for my whole day. I have been doing the merengue and the cha-cha all day, humming about yellow feathers in my hair and a dress cut down to there. At least I know all the words to Copacabana, which makes it a little less crazy, unlike the time I had Fancy by Bobby Gentry stuck in my head. I only really knew the words Here’s your one chance, Fancy, don’t let me down so I basically had that on repeat for a few days. I would much rather sing about the hottest spot north of Havana.

My friend and I were walking our dogs and talking about the vast amount of food our sons consume each week. We joked that food preparation, in a house with pre-teen and teenage boys, is the equivalent of a part-time job. Since I have the irritating personality trait of needing to empirically quantify any such claim, I actually started noting down how much time I actually do spend grocery shopping, planning and preparing meals, baking, doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. The number of hours I spend doing those things per week was actually astonishing and I wish I hadn’t had the urge to do the math.

For one thing, I realize that this job is just going to get bigger and bigger for several years, and then, when the boys leave home, it is going to be gone, completely GONE, and I am going to be left in my empty kitchen, singing Landslide softly to myself while wondering what to do with all these cookies.

That, right there, is the reason I cannot wish away time, even if every single Tuesday I think to myself What? It’s only Tuesday? I don’t want to wish my life away. It’s already the end of January and life often feels like it’s a cartoon of pages flying off the calendar.

Anyway, with all the awful, terrifying, and disheartening things happening in the world, I am choosing to focus on my own backyard. There are lots of opportunities to make the world a better place, and as I said to my neighbour the other day, efforts that seem small in the grand scheme of things are actually not small at all to the people being helped. It’s a good reminder.

I am also focusing a bit on my literal backyard, because this happened:

 

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We have a huge backyard and when the kids were small they would spend hours out there, playing with Barkley and shooting water guns and running around. They are past that stage now, and I convinced my husband that a trampoline would be the cure for all that ails us.

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It arrived in pieces on Friday and my husband and I spent four hours on Saturday putting it together. FOUR HOURS. It was well worth it though, since it has been fairly mild for the past couple of weeks. We’ve all enjoyed it so much already and I’m looking forward to summer, when our house can become the neighbourhood hangout. I’m sure my kitchen time will increase substantially with a group of teen boys in my backyard, but it will be well worth it.

Be well, friends. xo