Well, okay.

"There’s nothing restrained or subtle about being crushed by the person you care about most in..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:43:00 -0400

““There’s nothing restrained or subtle about being crushed by the person you care about most in the world. It’s big and gaudy, and so it only makes sense that the songs about it are, too.””

- Starlee Kine from This American Life, Episode 339, “Breakup.”

An excellent podcast that I wish I had heard about, oh, almost a decade ago, and a very suitable preamble to my first real new blog entry in eons—to be posted Thursday.

Yeah. Like I’m gonna click on THAT.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:10:24 -0400

Yeah. Like I’m gonna click on THAT.

Sometimes when I get that nice, puffed-up feeling, like my media...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:14:17 -0400

Sometimes when I get that nice, puffed-up feeling, like my media diet is super elevated, I consult my Amazon “Recently Viewed Items” list.

Oh hey, didn't see you there!

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:45:09 -0400

Probably because there was nothing to read.

Attempting to fix that. Soon.

How JoJo and The Hairpin Let Me Down

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:39:00 -0400

Let me preface this by saying I am the world’s most faithful Hairpin fan, in both site visits and overall story mimicry. Hands down. I have my Safari browsing history and…Life…as proof. I happen to have it on good authority that my brain’s pseudonym is Edith Zimmerman and it operates the site when it is busy letting me down at my other job.

I am not the world’s biggest JoJo fan, and God help me if I ever met him/her (Editor’s note: I feel like they would be similar in temperament and annoyance quotient to Miley Cyrus or the guy in all those god-awful P. Diddy videos). That being said, I do quite enjoy her and rejoice in her above-average talent in the embarrassing cauldron of WhatInTheJesus we call Modern Pop Culture.

The first time I listened to Leave (Get Out), I flipped over the glass end table supporting my laptop, shattering both into one million post-feministy shards, and pinched the nearest testosterone-based life form’s arm. With vigour.

Or… thought about it.

When I saw the video for Baby It’s You, I beelined it to the local Tilt-A-Whirl in my super-seXXXable satin, cropped American Eagle varsity jacket, located the nearest mid-pubescent dude with the precision of a heat-seeking missile and demanded he win me a gargantuan purple bunny.

Irrespective of your musical leanings, we can all admit Bitch (JoJo…Sorry. Got worked up there…) has a voice. This is partially the reason for my excitement in reading one of today’s Hairpin posts entitled “The Wisdom of JoJo” by Bianca Mendez. There is a link to Double J’s newest YouTubeable masterpiece, “Disaster” in which she, according to the writer, “laments the crumbling of a relationship and its heated conclusion”.

Maybe this is indicative of my longstanding relationship policy (*cough* The Scorched Earth Treaty of 2005) or the fact that I recently severed my Action Hymen in a long-overdue “Die Hard” marathon, but I feel like when you call it a “heated conclusion” someone should exit the union in dramatically-emotional fashion. And, on fire.

See how JoJo slyly leads us to believe – at 2:36 – that there is something contained in Archetypal Douchebag’s jean vest. A grenade? Poison ivy? A starved ferret, perhaps? But no. Nothing. TEASE!

I suppose you could call the universally-dreaded “You-Called-Me-Out-in-Front-of-your-Hell’s-Angels-Buddies-so-it’s-OVER-Assface!” Stuff EX-change (See: 0:53–1:05) “heated”. There’s really nothing quite as uncomfortable as returning a dumpy, over-sized, Old Spice-y sweater to your erstwhile pinky-swears-soulmate as they give back your Ace of Base discography – except for, maybe, admitting that you adored any of those three things in the first place.

I…I just expected more from the both of you.

JoJo.

The Hairpin.

Ever since Women Laughing Alone with Salad left Me Laughing Alone With A (very minor, discreet, warranted) Adult-Pee at my kitchen table early in the new year, my entertainment threshold has been understandably elevated. I just expected more.

I just expected…a bear trap.

1:13

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:13:48 -0400

Definitely stayed up too late acquiring new musics (Rich Aucoin, Phoenix, old Strokes, fuckin’ always Rihanna) and reading heart-wincing articles on the tightly-packed regret of youth in an older frame.

http://www.elle.com/Life-Love/Sex-Relationships/Failure-to-Launch-When-Beauty-Fades

I’m not supposed to understand these things. It’s past my bedtime and I feel much too old.

In which I love Joan Didion and loathe critics who think a book review = regurgitating quotes after p. 100 to prove they read something.

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:58:26 -0400

In which I love Joan Didion and loathe critics who think a book review = regurgitating quotes after p. 100 to prove they read something.

I need a coffee. And like 12 punches in the face. Currently...

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:55:47 -0400

I need a coffee. And like 12 punches in the face. Currently thinking about telecommuting from under my desk.

Phone-it-in-Fridays! Yes.

Guy at 0:24 is so rude. He didn’t even say PLEASE. (Do you...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:24:21 -0400

Guy at 0:24 is so rude. He didn’t even say PLEASE.
(Do you think there is a modifier for Canadians?)

That time it was grey

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:04:14 -0400

THIS IS NOT FALL. There are no crunchy leaves; only dank, silt-laden sidewalks and TTC patrons covered in a pervy-moist film of urban grumpies. I really don’t know what I was expecting of October, being that I’m a “grown-up” who has a daily latte and minimal time for forts.

ANYWAY. What’s new with me, you ask? Oh, you didn’t? THEN STOP READING MY BLOG, INTERNET VAGRANT.

I am very busy editorializing, scraping the vestiges of summer skin off of my nasal bridge, sourcing alternate income, awaiting my iPhone 4S (a fitting tribute to Steve Jobs) and pretending I don’t need glasses. I’ve also developed a nasty habit of buying $100 worth of groceries and then finding solace in non-cupboarded food sources; I’m on this new diet where you eat one gyro every day and look on, gobsmacked, when your thighs no longer touch.

I could like Toronto.

Tonight I am headed to AAA Army Surplus on Baldwin to sniff out a heavy-duty khaki vest – the last piece of the sartorial puzzle for my Halloween debut as “Slutty Christiane Amanpour”. I ditched the whole Katie as Fried Egg concept when I realized that today was…today: Two days before a completed costume is required. There is something really awesome/disturbing about realizing you already own all of the good necessary to look exactly like someone else. Without shopping.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it: C.A. is an award-winning journalist and I have Booze-and-Joan-Didion Mondays. We’re indistinguishable, really.

Let's. Do. This.

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:31:50 -0400

For the umpteenth, well-intentioned time: I am announcing my promise to post on the regular. This is subject to change and – if we’re being realistic – at the mercy of my affinity for online teevs.

Discuss.

La-la-la-love these guys.Whale Tooth

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:18:25 -0400

La-la-la-love these guys.

Whale Tooth

Wub Ou?

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:52:12 -0400

Wub OOOOU!

Everybody was well-dressed and everybody was a mess. - The...

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:35:50 -0400

Everybody was well-dressed and everybody was a mess.

- The Strokes, “I’ll Try Anything Once”

Literary Line-Up

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 12:45:04 -0400

I’m the kind of gal who tends to start what she can’t finish (book-wise). So in the interest of slaying the ever-growing tower of books on —-and now, surrounding—- my night table, here is my list of books to read. In no particular order. Just so I can finally make it to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stubbing my toes on Kerouac, Sedaris and the rest of those hardcover nogoodniks.

Life - Keith Richards
Veronica - Mary Gaitskill
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - Toby Young
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss
Just Kids - Patti Smith
How Did You Get This Number? - Sloane Crosley
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live - Joan Didion Anthology
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain

Most of these are 1/3-1/2 finished.

See ya, 2011.

EEEAAAARRRRROOUUUWWWWMMMMMUUUP (Guest Post by a Whale)

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:12:55 -0400

EEEAAAARRRRROOUUUWWWWMMMMMUUUP (Guest Post by a Whale):

The science: Kewl. The .gif: Pure gold.

Thought of the Day

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:24:21 -0400

Are police officers allowed to have hair? Would it be against their uniform requirements to have luscious locks? Sitting in Tim’s last night with the Step-sizzle - along with 4 other married couples re-igniting their respective wilting romances over Bagel B.E.L.Ts and watered-down French Vanillas - I saw, not one, but THREE cops come in, not one of which displayed any follicular prowess.

Theory: Hair significantly reduces an officer’s aerodynamism when chasing baddies. (Guess who was raised on Donkey Kong.)

Alternate Theory: Helmet chafe?

Alternate-alternate Theory: Complicity with that bad-ass aesthetic of bald men who seem to silently boast that they survived a mean scalpin’ during a gang war/bar fight/Kenny Chesney concert. (See also: Every bouncer ever.)

Those damn, lovable Swedes. AGAIN!

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:58:00 -0500

Those damn, lovable Swedes. AGAIN!

"Does it break my heart? Of course. Every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was..."

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:47:53 -0500

““Does it break my heart? Of course. Every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of. I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent. I never thought about things at all. Everything changed. The distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn’t the world, it wasn’t the bombs and burning buildings. It was me. My thinking. The cancer of never letting go. Is ignorance bliss? I don’t know. But it’s so painful to think, and tell me: What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.””

- Jonathan Safran Foer

That time I wished I was a luddite

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:47:31 -0500

Setting: My gmail inbox

6:30pm: Jew Watch is now following you on Twitter!

9:03pm: KY is now following you on Twitter!