surprise!

you weren't expecting THIS little face-lift, were you? aren't you secretly relieved? i know i am. the fact that my blog header was hovering OVER the existing template header has been niggling and naggling at me since i threw the darned thing up 3 years ago. isn't this better? comments/constructive criticism would be appreciated. this has been the product of way too many hours on a commitment-free sunday that would have been better spent doing more tangible face-lifts, like touching up the paint on the walls and trim at lil' ugmo.

so the weekend. elvis bossa nova was fun, even though we could only stay to hear one of their numbers. they've come a LONG way since the last time we saw them, in their early days at the dakota. it's a much more polished, full, swinging sound now - they're well deserving of all the accolades they're getting. bwong met up with us there and we caught the opening band together - they were kind of a folksy, rootsy, twangy thing. the best part was that the lead singer/guitar player broke the string on his guitar, played out the tune, and then asked the audience if there was anyone there who knew how to change a guitar string. so i naturally looked over at the dotytron, who firmly shook his head and said, "no way. i do that all day for kids in band." the dude up on stage continued his banter for a bit but then went, "seriously folks, if anyone know hows to change a guitar string out there..." at which point bwong and i started hooting and hollering and pointing at the dotytron and shouting: "IAN! IAN! IAN!" and causing such a ruckus that basically the dotytron HAD to slink up to the front of the stage and grab the guitar and change the strings off to the side. it was kind of the best (for me and bwong, not so much for the dotytron.)

of course i took a photo to commemorate:

then we saw some of our high school peeps (sadly, no appearance by the dotytron's ex-gf) and then tried to make it out to evil dee but me and the dotytron got into a bit of a tiff and dr. rei wasn't itching to go and so it all fell apart. we kept lingering at elvis bossa nova so that we could hear 1 song, but by the time that happened, we were too late for the $5 cover at the drake underground AND there would have been a massive line. the good news is: the dotytron and i are no longer in a fight. we technically resolved it that night.

yesterday we did our errands and then went over to nany and poppa's for dinner. what a FEAST! nany is the best old-skool, kind of 70s hip, mom-cook i know. this is what she made us. we started off with one of the weirdest, unironic salads i've ever eaten. it consisted of canned pear halves, with mayonnaise in their little cores, and iceberg lettuce chunks, sprinkled with grated cheddar cheese:

totally weird, right? strangely tasty, though! kind of crunchy and sweet and slippery with a bit of sharp salt from the cheddar. awesome.

then we had pot roast, with green beans mixed with cream of mushroom soup, bob evans' mashed potatoes (which i was raving about, thinking they were homemade, and then started raving even MORE when i found out they were bob evans' mashed potatoes AND they were NINETY NINE CENTS), and carrots and onions. this was served with these things that nany off-handedly referred to as little "jiggers" - which is basically buttered white bread with the crusts cut off that's been baked until crispy:

the star ingredient in the pot roast? lipton's onion soup mix, natch.

i contributed dessert, which was a sour cream apple pie with cinnamon streusel and vanilla ice cream:

nany sets a mean table...you can kind of get a glimpse of it here, beyond the dotytron and em's head:

it was a lot of fun. we came home and basically passed out.

i had a strike of inspiration last night to make a breakfast of biscuits, sausage gravy and eggs. the very THOUGHT of this breakfast had me hankering for sunday morning from about 10pm saturday night on. sunday morning could NOT come fast enough. can you blame me? check out the goods:



this was a FREAKING KILLER breakfast of champions. zomg. i can't believe it's taken me this long to realize i could make this. i gotta say, if i ever open a brunch place, i would probably be a zillionaire. nobody ever gets it just right. like, they serve you 10 different kinds of benny (which i find excessive), but then you have to go someplace else for corned beef hash. and the corned beef hash place ONLY has corned beef hash and no huevos. and NO ONE in toronto serves biscuits with sausage gravy and eggs, i'll tell you that much.

i tried a new technique for the biscuits - almost like a quick puff pastry...you smear the biscuit dough with butter, fold it like puff in thirds and then turn it and pat it out again. you do that three times. the recipe is from by way of blackberry farms by way of gourmet magazine. the recipe is here: buttermilk biscuits

on the way to pick up our water filters for our hippie dippy terra cotta water filtration system...i came up with a new me-ism. this is AFTER i spent a good chunk of time laughing at my own responses to the "things in a box" game we played at the farm. yes, you read that right. i was remembering my OWN answers to the "things in a box" game and laughing out loud about them - almost a week and a half after the fact. but c'maaan...they were pretty gold.

category: places you would feel comfortable taking a stranger
my response: loblaws and/or shoppers

category: things that don't live up to the hype
my response: apple versus pc

category: things you do on your break from work (this was from 2 years ago at the farm
my response: research native american history

LOL! it was during this little laughing fit (did i mention that i was driving?) that the dotytron decided that he doesn't find me 1/8 as funny as i apparently find myself. for those of you who don't know the game, a category is pulled and read out loud. players then write their responses to the question/category prompt. all the answers are collected and read out loud to the active "player" in that round. the player has to match the response with the person they think wrote it and they get a point for each correct guess. all incorrect guesses go to the person reading the categories (there's variations on this part.) it's pretty darned fun.

anyway, the new lagerfeld saying was instigated by some a**hole honking at me while i was trying to decide which lane to go in. at which point, i said, "look. sometimes you just gotta suck the tit, and go." which makes NO SENSE but is so freakin' funny that i'm laughing out loud just typing it out. this will be added to the long list of me-isms...the most notable one being: "stick a gun in me - i'm done."

we went skating today for about a half hour...by the end i was definitely cruising with a bit more confidence and getting a bit more a rhythm going, plus my ankles were stronger and not as hurty, so i'm gradually improving. that or my skating muscles are wakening from their torpor and harnessing some long-forgotten vestigial memory of my grade 6 skating lessons.

tonight for dinner i made us tourtiere - ground pork cooked up with onion, garlic, potatoes, frozen peas, seasonings (plenty of thyme, sage, a bit of rosemary) and stuffed between two flaky crusts. served with my apple-pear-cranberry relish and a wintery salad of romaine, radicchio, sliced pear, and toasted chopped hazelnuts in a maple balsamic vinaigrette.

fin.

I WANT I WANT I WANT

all my complaints around berserker aside (an unavoidable pitfall when one has a large and disparate group of adult-ish friends, a zillion hobbies, demanding families, a mortal soul, and a tendency to submit to the intractable laws of time), i quite like the rhythm of 2010. work-filled, fulfilling days on the job, lunch-time strolls with dr. rei, home for a home-cooked meal, some yoga/physical exertion, paper-work/crafting/general house tidying, in bed by 10pm for an hour of reading, asleep by 11, and weekends free for more extensive home projects to tackle and socializing.

'tis good, yah.

tonight we're double-booked. first up is our friend bobes' band, elvis bossa nova's cd release party at the lula lounge. they're getting rave reviews and CBC fans will want to listen to their interview on Q with jian gomeshi next week. then after we're hooking up with hamcamp klik and peeping evil dee of black moon/da beatminerz at never forgive action at the drake underground (for the low, low price of $5 before midnight - hotcha!)

what fun! super-pumped for some dancing and rubbing shoulders with high schoolers (sure to come out of the woodwork for this), chief amongst them possibly-thrillingly!-the dotytron's high school ex-gf (the only significant gf of note [the supernova that is moi notwithstanding] in his illustrious career tangoing with the opposite sex.) plus, the usual crew will be there, the fox, ori, B & G, etc. evil dee should also be good...you know me, i know next to nothing about le hip hop but i likes to dance to it and we haven't been out dancing in some time. plus, black moon and smif'n'wessun are kind of the goosetang's patron saints.

dinner tonight was an attempt to clear out leftovers. i had leftover chicken noodle soup and an extra-stuffed croque monsieur. so tasty and comfort-food-yen fulfilling.

okay...things i want, aka

roll call of awesome:

currently, if you recall, we have this limited edition offshore records print above our sofa:

it's a little lonely up there...and it would be nice if the print was bigger, but it's hard finding stuff to flank it. well...i've decided that i'll probably move that print elsewhere and replace the above-the-sofa real estate with three of THESE gorgeous posters commemorating 2009 as the international year of astronomy, by graphic designer simon page:





LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. i love the cool, clinical, spare aesthetic and the muted, 70s colours. there are more...but these are the front runners. they come in a 13x19 size or a 18x24 - i'm going to cut out sheets of newspaper to block them out on the wall in each size to see which size would suit the space best. i think a grouping of 3 would be ideal. LOVE THEM.


this is one of the best halloween costumes i've ever seen for a child:

the colonel!



my fixation with paper-cut work is unabated. behold, the genius of helen musselwhite! i think my inability to have any patience for fine, precision-oriented detail work (no embroidery, paper-cutting, or elaborate cake decorating for me!) makes me appreciate people who can craft such stunning, intricate pieces all the more.

gotta bounce, kids.

fin.

berserker

okay, so january is going BERSERKER right before my very eyes! weekends are booking up like whoa and i'm already looking into mid-february for social stuff. like, wtf? add to that yesterday i logged mad OT at work because things at work are also intensity in ten cities. and they're not even sitting at the moment!

speaking of sitting or not sitting...alls i gotta say about this stephen harper situation is I TOLD YOU SO (about micheal ignatieff.) you can't trust a guy who looks like that, with his crazy, craggy eyebrows. anyone who was getting down on stéphane dion for being too intellectual and mousy is now paying the price with ineffectual leadership of the liberal party. you guys were all seduced by glitz and glamour. quiet intellectuals all the way! our federal politics are an unfortunate farce!

you know what else is a farce? this 10 nominations for best picture oscar business. i was reading my beloved "entertainment weekly" last night and they were giving the rundown on who they think is going to squeeze in now that the nominations have doubled. "an education"??? please!!! "invictus"??? snooore! "avatar"?!??? i can't tell if people are ACTUALLY getting stupider or not. "avatar" was dreck! whatever happened to substance, wit, a light hand? and don't even try to sell me on "precious" - that's torture porn for the "new yorker" set. no thank you. i'll watch it just to see how right i am about it.

okay, now that the righteous indignation has settled a bit, i can recommence with my book reviews. the last 2 and then i'm all caught up. i just placed about 40 holds at the toronto public library and signed up to participate in ANOTHER book club, so methinks the likelihood that i'll have a backlog shortly is a foregone conclusion.

i read "the lovely bones" cuz i wanted a quick, easy read for transit and it showed up on the book swap truck at work. a big, fat, MEH. it's okay, i guess. i was kind of spectacularly unmoved by everything, other than having some heebie jeebies at the murder and sexual assault of a young girl by a sociopath thing - which shows that the book had an AFFECT, i guess, but WHO WOULDN'T GET THE HEEBIES at the thought? the book is mildly interesting...everything about it is kind of mild - mild humour, mild look at family relationships in the wake of tragedy, mild imaginative use of the perspective of a 12 year old girl, mildly affected faux, literary style. just not my thing...i didn't get what the fuss was about.

"important artifacts and personal property from the collection of lenore doolan and harold morris, including books, street fashion, and jewelry" is ever-so-clever, stylistically. i didn't know what to expect going in, just that the book was generating buzz so i ordered it from TPL. what the author leanne shapton gives you, is a tantalizing, meticulously curated glimpse into the progression and eventual dissolution of a relationship as told through personal belongings itemized for an auction catalogue. how perfect for our consumerist, voyeuristic times! the two subjects, lenore doolan and harold morris are impossibly privileged - she writes for the new york times and he is a professional photographer, for crissakes! and they're oh-so-hip in an aged, slightly bohemian way (i'm an ageist so i find aging hipsters in general off-putting) - wearing designer commes des garçons and marc jacobs clothes and travelling the world with novelty figurines and first edition prints in tow. what's fascinating for a nosy parker such as myself, is how the collection of items and the careful, clinical descriptions seductively conceal and reveal. you really do feel like you're allowed access into the inner workings of the two individuals' private lives (i found the tale was told more from the perspective of lenore) and it's fascinating what the detritus of our possessions or snippets of our daily communication (excerpts from emails, to-do lists, pages ripped from journals) can scream to the ignorant outsider. it makes you think: what would the story of my belongings be? would it be accurate? what hidden clues do we leave behind in the wake of our consumption? the text also works on the meta-level: how does one construct a "story" out of objects? what is the role of the reader, the cataloger, the historian, the chronicler? i thought this was a very successful attempt at this kind of thought-excercise - compulsively readable, too. i'd borrow it from the library though - this isn't one worth buying.


tonight for dinner i made us a veggie udon noodle stir fry with broccoli, japanese eggplant, red pepper, snow peas, mushrooms, scallions, and tofu all bound in a standard cornstarch ("wonder powder" to you stephen yan acolytes)-enriched soy/sesame oil/ginger/garlic sauce (the photo is a little shaky cuz i had hungry "heroin" hands.)



fin.

9 book reviews

but, but, i r tired chat.

i was kicking around the idea of going to dr. rei's steeltown buddies' weekly comedy show...but i found out they don't go on until 10pm. considering that to be a fully-functioning adult, i have to be in bed by 11pm...so not happening.

the roomie popped by tonight for a little visit. i like having the roomie so close by. it's nice having friends pop by for a visit like it ain't no thang. she thinks my training bras/american apparel sports bras are a-ok. i suspect it's because we're kindred spirits in not knowing how to be girls.

STOP THE PRESSES. best email from my sister, ever. so, my sis and little ze get home late. eat dinner late. she decides to skip the bath for the kids and says it to rico (outlaw bro). little ze turns to her and says...

"you're a hot mess."

LOL!!!!!!!!! can you see why i don't EVER want that kid to change? he's hi-larious.

anyway...things i love about my 'hood:

- roomie w/i walking, 2 minute drive distance
- H, that guy, and sweet baby D within same distance
- skating rink at the bottom of my street
- yarn store w/i 10 minute walk
- tonnes of amazing restaurants close by
- my massage therapist is w/i a 10 minute walk
- amazing mid-century modern furniture stores w/i walking distance
- the dotytron's parents live up the street
- access to a super-regular bus to subway AND two 24-hour street car lines

in other news...i really want to get this backlog of book reviews done...so here goes. i totally went through a comic phase, where i read 9 (soon to be 10) in rapid succession, with 2 novels as well. since late OCTOBER. that's crazygonuts! just because they're comics doesn't mean they weren't hard-hitting.

brian fies "mom's cancer" chronicles his mother's battle with metastatic lung cancer. the effects it has on his family, himself, his relationship with his mother, and his mother's body from diagnosis to her eventual (short-lived) recovery. the emotions are raw and palpable, leaping off the page with an intensity that belies his simple, smooth, soothing line style. this shows the ravages of cancer and our pitiable arsenal of poisonous tools to combat it. it was deeply moving and depressing...the one uplifting thing was feeling empathy for fies' catharsis in publicizing his story and turning it into art.

i freakin' worship at the altar of brian wood. he also wrote "DMZ" which i've reviewed previously. his writing is so on-point...so vivid and so youth in revolt. lol! local is a collection of separate stories following a youngish girl/woman, megan, as she travels across america, finding herself in the process of living a ne'er-do-well itinerant lifestyle. each episode takes place in a different city in north america, wherever megan has temporarily planted herself in her hitchhiking bildungsroman. the illustrations are THE BOMB. this to me, is what i think of when i want rich, line-heavy, expressive, swirly, drawings. ryan kelly perfectly captures that alt-y, angsty, vaguely grunge aesthetic down to the meghan's scuffed cons and army surplus jacket and errant strand of hair in her spiky bob. sooooo good! i can't say enough good things about it. this is one worth owning for sure. the stories are addictive little pieces of grimey, heartfelt, candy - that thrum with the intangible pitch of the (temporarily) young and misunderstood. my only question is always...does that youth still exist? the punk-y, distorted-guitar, dinosaur jr., L7, doc martens kind? brian wood and adrian tomine seem deeply invested in that youth but i don't see those kids anymore. anyway, i highly recommend this to the moon and back.

i decided to go o.g. and check out will eisner's seminal work, "a contract with god and other tenement stories" which is widely considered to be a touchstone work in the maturation of "comics" into the "legitimate" literary form of "graphic novels." these interconnected, semi-autobiographical stories, show the lives of resolutely working class people (mostly jewish) in the bronx. it's bawdy, seedy, earthy stuff - faith, sex, love, and hardscrabble existences all tenderly rendered in a somewhat dated (to me) bulbous drawing style. i can appreciate it for what it means to the genre...but i wasn't in love with any of the stories...the best of them all is the title one. i can see how it is a landmark work for its uncompromising look at the regular, everyday lives of its' subjects - nothing is glossed over here.

"our cancer year" or, as the dotytron called it, "your stupid depressing cancer book for sadsacks" chronicles cult legend harvey pekar's battle with cancer (he survives) and its effects on his partner, joyce brabner's life. this is even more raw than "mom's cancer," probably because the drawing style is so crude and immediate - the illustrator (pekar always works with a revolving door of illustrators who bring to life his autobiographical observations on colleagues, work, and life in
cleveland), creates panels of scribbles and slanting, shaky, script that gives you the impression of hastily scrawled notes on events as they're happening. it reminds me of my grade 11 art exercise where you had to draw someone in one continuous line, without looking at the page. the text alternates between joyce's voice and harvey's and their immense love (and frustration) with each other is rendered with gut-wrenching honesty. a scene where joyce's body shakes with silent tears in reaction to harvey's pain during treatment made me well up. their love is so real - so deep, abiding, frustrated, honest, that when she comments about the night that she learned to cry without sound, in deference to his comfort and concern, it strikes a deep chord. be grateful that cancer treatment has come such a long way.

"stuck rubber baby" from a visual sense, is the antithesis of "our cancer year." howard cruse's tale of a closeted homosexual man coming of age during the civil rights movement the deeply bigoted south is depicted in an incredibly dense, cross-hatch style with pointilism details. i found the story to be lacking...i couldn't identify with the bland, vacant ambiguousness of the protagonist, toland polk. there were some moments of humour and veracity, but overall, the story was a boring and plodding, slumping from event to event with very little character development, depth, or nuance. i wasn't engaged per se - even as events turn for the worse. it seems to depict this weird nether region, where the histrionics aren't amplified enough to approach melodrama and the events are so plodding that even when there are shocking turns, it's all very muted and detached.

rutu modan's "exit wounds" is a quiet little family drama/mystery - tonally, it reminded me of "two lovers." it depicts a cab driver in israel, whose deadbeat dad goes missing, and who is drawn into the search by a mysterious, plain girl who was his father's girlfriend. i wasn't sure what to make of it. i wasn't sure if there was a larger story being told - about israel, about jewish-arab relations. maybe i'm reading too much into it. or being racist. not allowing the story to be itself. it left that weird indie feeling behind - where things just end and you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop - kind of "margot at the wedding" type vibe. i don't know where i stand on this one.

"epileptic" is french comic artist david b's account of his brother's battle with epilepsy, his bohemian, free-wheeling parents' attempts to find solutions for his brother's seizures, and his own retreat into an odd, disjointed dream world with bird-headed man talismans and drawing to buffer against the constant battering of his brother's seizures. it's critically acclaimed like whoa...but i wasn't feeling it. it was a little too impressionistic and meandering - too many tangents and journeys into his subconscious and the imaginary realm, not enough for me to hold onto. his parents don't make for sympathetic figures, which also makes for a trying reading experience. they keep flitting from one stupid new-age solution to another, joining cult after cult, totally a-critical and anti-intellectual - it's very frustrating because it's almost like they don't take their son's condition seriously. realistically, the "intellectual" alternative at the time wasn't very productive...it was institutionalization and electroshock. i'm not advocating that. still, i found his parents' flakiness supremely off-putting. i also wasn't a fan of the high contrast, picasso-esque, visual style.

phew! that's all the comics done. i just have 2 more book reviews and we're all caught up.

so...new year's resolutions are holding up fairly well on day 2. i went to my work's lunchtime yoga class today - which means 2 days in a row of at least 45 minutes of yoga. last night i made steel cut oats in the slow cooker, which meant waking up to a warm, steaming bowl of oats. i added 1 c. of coconut milk, some toasted coconut, and flaked almonds to the mixture so it was really nutty and toasty (a little too soupy, though.) a little bit of turbinado sugar stirred in this morning made it the perfect, hearty, winter breakfast.


tonight i made us penne with a simple "sauce" of pancetta, caramelized onion and fennel. with a salad of baby spinach, caramelized pears, toasted chopped hazelnuts, shallots, and shaved pecorino in a maple balsamic vinaigrette. very yum.

it's totally irrational but i'm already having anxiety about how few winter meal nights are left. I'M CUH-RAZY.

fin.

resolving to...

...before i continue with my flurry of book/film reviews, i'd first like to take a minute to think about what i'd like to do in the year to come. people can get mighty uppity when you start talking "new year resolutions" - like it's something bad or shameful or like you're putting yourself up for ridicule by being reflective and marking areas for (perceived) improvement.

to me, self-reflection is a good thing - and it makes sense that the changing of a year would engender the conditions that facilitate taking stock. it would be nicer if people took a mental inventory more often, but i'm not going to chide people for doing it during a new year. i think personally, taking stock is something that i'm constantly doing, but there are different degrees of reflexivity...the micro-level stuff (your garden variety, ever-morphing "to-do" list) and the macro-level, big-picture stuff that tends to happen more irregularly for most people.

i'm lucky in that i came from a talky family - we do our macro-level reflexive talk in front of each other, often at the instigation of one sibling or another's behavior - the airing of grievances, if you will. as a child saturday afternoons were frequently occupied with epic, "family meetings" - when the problems (real or imaginary) of one or the other of us would be put forward for the whole family to weigh in on. while the concern was sometimes needlessly inflated, misdirected, and unnecessary, the ability to address issues head-on, in a forum, with the ringing echo of lagerfeld house rule #1 "honest, honesty, honesty, honesty, honesty" as our guiding principle (note: there is/was only ONE house rule in the lagerfeld home), had a profound effect on the development of my ability to dissect and examine my self and sense of self.

most of my deepest, long-standing friendships (dr. rei, the roomie, montreal I, the dotytron) are with people with whom i can hash things out - about myself, each other, the wider world. there are no secrets, per se. don't get me wrong, the rules of etiquette and tact are more or less followed...but there's a dizzying, addictive freedom in the ability to talk through your issues with your nearest and dearest. i think that's one of the reasons why i'm so close to dr. rei, my sister, the dotytron - there are no barriers. there's a supreme comfort and care in working out your own ish in an environment where people really see you and understand you (for the most part).

this is all a circumlocutious way of prefacing my resolutions. maybe resolutions is too strong a word - "resolve" is kind of heady and stern. in the new year, i'd like to:

- pay off my debt, so that i can then turn around and ask the bank for a loan so that i can get the roof, kitchen, bathroom, stairs, air conditioner, humidifer/dehumidifier, deck, washer and dryer that i want. [digging out the basement so that we have a rec room and the dotytron's garage/studio ambitions are on the 5-year goal list].
- do a little more regular cardio, get back on practicing yoga more, work on my muscles a bit more
- recalibrate the "holiday" eating : daily eating ratio
- read more theory - stir the dusty annexes of my theoretical brain
- get my G2
- get my first aid certificate, learn CPR, etc.
- have a few more professional development rungs under my feet
- get on the assorted organizational things that go hand-in-hand with being slightly OCD and being a home owner.
- make this blog look prettier. i think we all pretty much know that i'm in it for the long haul with this here space...it'd be nice if i could make it look a little nicer...maybe migrate to wordpress? maybe have a new header? learn to do small visual/formatting tweaks myself?

oh blurg...where would i be without you? i'm so glad a stupid school assignment brought regular writing back into my life. i'd like this blog to be a little more thoughtful - not so rushed - i'd like to work on my writing skills some more.

i've almost finished my holiday film reviews...just 4 more to go and so, once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more -

in a moment of profound weakness of discrimination, i rented "sunshine cleaning" - there's absolutely nothing to say about this film, other than it's a rote, plodding, paint-by-numbers indie film that's trying to be "quirky" but does so without any attempts to ingratiate itself upon the audience or credit the audience with any intelligence. boooooooooring!

"extract" was also pretty bad, but not terribly so. better than "sunshine cleaning" for sure. it was short on laughs and the scenarios were a little too ridiculous and not satirical/incisive enough to make it live up to the legacy of "office space."

"sneakers" is an oldie but a goodie. the dotytron bought it for me for xmas. this was precipitated by the fact that for the past 8-odd years that we've known each other, when the movie would come up in conversation (i would average that this happens maybe once a year), i would inevitably say, "like in 'sneakers' - that's a really good movie." the dotytron finally cottoned onto my unwavering loyalty to the integrity of the flick and so bought it for me and we watched it together and i gotta say, it holds up like whoa. to the point where we've thought about watching it AGAIN within the week (we saw it on xmas eve day) and we always feel the need to proffer the half-hearted attenuation, "i'd watch it again, for sure." guys, this movie is SICK. first of all, look at that cast. you've got: sidney poitier, robert redford, dan aykroyd, river phoenix, david strathairn, and mary mcdonnell. in a HEIST/CAPER. i freakin' love heist/caper movies. ESPECIALLY when the heist is pulled off by a bunch of nerdlingers, each of whom has a special/unique skill (this is years of voltron/mission impossible enculturation talking). i'm not talking "oceans 11" coolios, here. nuh-uh. nerds. when we tried to rent it at the film buff i was in the mood to see that kind of movie and even the capacious human-film-database minds at the film buff were unable to provide a suitable substitute that provides the same magical combination of smarts-nerds-laughs-caper. go get it. you won't be disappointed.

finally, on saturday night, back from the farm and unwilling/resistant to facing reality, we went on a date night, courtesy of some mcdonald's coupons (the new baked smore's pie is decent - but still nothing compared to fried apple pie) and "the fantastic mr. fox" at my favorite movie theatre, the yonge-dundas AMC.

be still my heart! my instincts nailed it on this one - it was an out-and-out, non-stop delight. total laugh-out-loud funnies! and believe me, i say this as someone who was getting sick and tired of wes anderson adulation - the tendency of hipsters to confuse smug and twee for legitimately funny and smart. the big improvement here is that we actually have A STORY instead of a collection of art-directed-to-the-teeth vignettes/tableaus. and the story is quite engaging as are the characters. something about anthropomorphizing woodland creatures and doing it in the dearest, sweetest, naive, homespun stop-motion style wins you over like whoa. the kind of trademark wes anderson-isms are all present, but by using animation instead of actors, it's SO much more palatable. the voice actors: jason schwartzman, george clooney, meryl streep, mario batali (!), and bill murray amongst others, all do top-notch work, imbuing their characters with individual identities that are then enhanced by the expressiveness of their quivering, furry faces. the realm of animation really allows wes anderson the freedom to give into his desire to obsess over every detail and construct elaborate sets without giving too much weight to the force of the art direction and having it overwhelm the plot (where there is one). the film never devolves into a series of hipster sight gags, which was a welcome respite from what i've come to expect from anderson's work. the whole film came together in a cohesive whole that was endlessly entertaining. definitely one of my top films of 2009. so charming! something i would definitely want to own, to re-watch again and again.


the dotytron thinks he's getting sick so tonight for dinner i made chicken noodle soup with chicken legs, skinned and shredded, orzo pasta, and diced up onions, carrot, celery, sweet potato and plenty of dill and parsley. we ate this with toasted, buttered ace bakery baguette. that should set him right.

last night we ended up bailing on the roomie, l'army and montreal I - we were all too lazy to leave our respective houses. speaking of houses - i noticed a house on our street is getting gutted for what looks to be a complete flip. the house listed at $329,000 but the sign said it sold for over asking...so i asked our agent today...it sold for $372,700 with multiple offers. WTF?!??? and they're GUTTING it - i mean, down to the studs. AND it's attached to a co-op!!! AND it had knob and tube and outdated kitchen, bathroom, and oil heat. i'm still reeling that we got such a decent deal on our place.

i've spoken enough for one day - i'll have to finish my book updates a demain.

fin.

2010

holy crap. look at those numbers in that subject line. 2010! this is the future! the future is now! isaac asimov, h. g. wells, arthur c. clarke, and all the grandfathers (and grandmothers, although admittedly, science/speculative fiction was primarily a dude's genre) of speculative fiction would be losing their minds at the wonders and glories of the 21st century. and yet, for all that, my favorite moments from the past two weeks spent in interweb and tech isolation are the ones spent with dear family and friends engaged in the simple, tactile pleasures that asimov et al would recognize all too well.

here's a brief rundown of what i've been up to.


xmas eve started with the best iteration of toad-in-the-whole i've pulled off yet. there is a certain gloriously transcendent je ne sais quoi about bread fried in a buttered pan that your garden variety buttered, toasted bread cannot ever approximate.

on xmas eve we went to momma and poppa d's and ordered indian food and played a redonkulously hard game or o.g. trivial pursuit (against the strenuous objections of emma-lee and myself - seriously, no one knows who won the oscar for best supporting actress in 1929!) then we went to see "up in the air." overall, i liked it - but i didn't love it. i kind of think it's overrated and the rave reviews are being unnaturally inflated because 2009 has been a particularly lackluster year for films, overall. don't get me wrong, it's quite good, and intermittently funny, but it doesn't make you think, per se. it's a character study about a man in transition - a man who flies from city to city as a downsizer-for-hire - delivering the news that bloated bureaucracies are too cowardly to impart and adroitly and deftly managing the inevitable emotional implosion of the objects. the man (played well by george clooney being george clooney), is detached, emotionally removed, preferring the rituals and social interactions of travel to real human connections.

as a commentary on the economic ravaging of america, i thought it was well executed - the quiet dignity it gives to towns that don't make the news very often - the omahas, the minneapolises, the kansas cities. the film tenderly puts a face to the realities of recession and the particular brand of detachment that allows a more fortunate person to remove another from engaging in their capitalistic pursuits and identities. i was less engaged with the emotional story of george clooney's epiphany. i thought anna kendrick was fabulous as the pert, eager, corporate shark in the making, and vera farmiga was exquisitely alluring as the thinking person's sex object. the directorial flourishes in the beginning i could have done without, but overall, it's a fine film. not one that i particularly want to revisit or consider brilliant, but well done nonetheless.


xmas morning saw me whipping together some panettone french toast and english bacon with the dotytron's family. we changed things around a bit. for the past 6 years, the tradition has generally been: wake up, mimosas, present opening for hours, late breakfast. this year, we decided to do breakfast first, then mimosas and present opening. it was a nice change as present opening takes a while and we're usually famished and then have to eat a giant turkey dinner shortly thereafter. i had panettone because the italian grocers i frequent did me a solid and helped me vac-pack some montreal smoked meat i picked up from schwartz's. in exchange, i offered to pay and was told to buy a panettone instead. it makes the BEST french toast. so custardy! the panettone soaks up the egg-milk mixture like you wouldn't believe...it's even richer than brioche french toast.


santa was super-generous with me. i got my big bag of salted pistachios and the blanca gomez print i wanted!!! and the beautiful leaves of canada print. assorted other goodies as well...a cute book and some much-needed stripy socks.

check out how cute emma-lee and the dotytron are in their snuggies! i searched (and by "i" i mean, my sis) high and low for the leopard print one after a chance sighting at a pharmacy in one of the towns near rochester the last time we were in geneseo. i should have bought it right then and there but i didn't...and then realized how perfect a leopard print snuggie would be for my outlaw sis. i'm so happy she loves it.

dinner was with momma d's sister, uncle jeff, cousin mark and cousin yeti and his lovely wifey. i made that caramel pecan banana upside down cake and we ate it with whipped cream.

that night we came home full of turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing (god, how i love stuffing). we homer'ed out on the couch and in a fit of frivolity ordered "julie and julia" on rogers on demand. UMMMM...did you know that you get that movie for like, HALF a millisecond? we watched like, 3/4 of it and when we tried to go back to it 2 days later it was GONE! what a scam! this movie was pants! i hated the book and i hated the film even more. don't get me wrong - the "julia" parts are great. julia child by way of meryl streep is engaging, self-deprecating, full of joie de vivre, and inspiring. julie powell by way of amy adams is a whining, miserable, complaining cow. she was like that in the book, too. totally undeserving of any fame she's garnered. the julie segments drag the whole movie down. i would have rather seen an entire movie based on the life of julia child.



the next day we packed up and hit up my family's xmas. it was a proper hootenanny, filled with movies, jokes, miss ramona's annual xmas post-dinner holiday play, karaoke on my bro chova's new ps3 singing game. i was feeling pretty down with a cold, but the dotytron, my sis and i came up with the following meal: roasted porchetta style pork (rubbed with fennel and lemon), pork cracklings, my sis' corn pudding, my corn pudding, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, fennel and potato gratin, and my mom's contribution was the non-thematically sound king crab legs. for dessert i made sticky toffee pudding with bourbon caramel sauce.

we saw "sherlock holmes" - the trailers DID NOT do this movie justice! i wasn't a fan of the guy ritchie flourishes during the fighting sequences, but RDJ can do no wrong, as far as i'm concerned. it was so entertaining and it was a nice update to the sherlock holmes cannon. the detective work is still there, there weren't many "cheap" action-movie hokey laughs - the writing and pacing was sharp and fluid. i really enjoyed the look of the film - the costumes were ace and the relationship between holmes and watson had a pleasant, exacerbated, bffs-for-life rhythm (my sis thinks there's a homoerotic subtext, which i think they should go balls-out on if there's going to be a sequel). we were all pleasantly surprised.

on monday we had little ze and miss ramona with us for an afternoon at the museum and then a sleepover. it was hilarious. the best lines of the day:

*in the car*
little ze: "RAMONA! RAMONA! LISTEN!!! RAMONNNNNNAAAA!!!"
miss ramona, exasperated, finally, "what"
little ze: "light bugs [lightning bugs] have lights. that come out of their butt."

*later in the car"
miss ramona: "little ze's brain is not very powerful."






LOL!!! those kids are hilarious. we had a good time at the museum. we went with H and that guy and sweet baby D. thank goodness they have a ROM family pass - we got to bypass the line and that was KEY. otherwise, it would have taken us 45 minutes just to get in!

the best thing about the museum is that everyone is exhausted by the end of it...the adults within 10 minutes of stepping foot inside the place, the kids came home, ate dinner and promptly slept for like, 12 hours. it was the best. what wasn't so the best was my nephew's fake vomit routine. he'll get up, say, "i have to go puke" and then go to the bathroom and grip the sides of the toilet like his life depends on it and hang his head WAAAAAAY into the bowl and do this awesome heavy-breathing routine for a good long while, and right when you, as the primary caregiver start to be ready to freak out, he pops his head up, fine as can be, and says, "no puke!" and goes about his merry way. for dinner i made them roasted tomato soup which they refused to try and grilled ham and cheese sammies. we supplemented ours with a croque hermaphrodite.

we bought each of them a book for bedtime stories. little ze's book was an alphabet animal book with glossy, high-res, arty shots of animals for each of the letters of the alphabet. i was trying to get miss ramona to practice learning to read by covering up parts of the word to see if she could identify her "sight" words that she's learning in school. the annoying thing about her is that she gets uber-lazy and stops trying and gives up. anyway, the word was "toucan" or something so i covered up the "tou" to get her to try to read "can." she started making the "c-c-c-" sound and out of nowhere, little ze stars piping up, "can. can can can can can. caaaaaaan. can can can can can!" he wouldn't stop! me and the dotytron looked at each other like, is he some kind of savant or something? with his not-very-powerful brain? lol! he did it for like, 2 minutes while miss ramona fake-tried to read. it was hilarious.


the next morning was the dotytron's big 3-0. i made us all belgian liege waffles for breakfast with pearl sugar brought by my friend LD who's living in brussels right now. the pearl sugar makes all the difference. we also had birthday bacon (which is regular bacon, served to someone on their birthday).


then we dropped off the kids, went grocery shopping for the farm and met up with the roomie, l'army, pingy (visiting from NYC) and I from montreal. we hung out for a bit and then went to the tulip for the dotytron's birthday dinner. the tulip has been around since 1929. i like it there. you get classic steakhouse/diner fare like liver and onions and veal parmigiana and steak tenderloin with green peppercorn sauce. you can ALSO get what i ordered, a 14oz prime rib, medium rare, au jus, with baked potato (or mashed, or french friend), vegetable, and salad with a scoop of complimentary ice cream...all for the bargain basement price of 20-odd dollars. like, seriously? are you for serious? it's so old skool! i love it! plus, i feel like it's on par with the keg, without the keg's exorbitant mark-up for mid-grade meat and execution. aces! i love me some pingy. she's living in this hilarious co-op house in brooklyn right now with a bunch of high-achieving grad students and lawyer-types and i'm dying to visit her.

after that, it was almost 4 days at the farm complete with a new year's eve party, nudity, and non-stop laughing. apparently, my american apparel training-bra isn't quite up to snuff. i'm not good at being a girl! lol! my attempts to "grow-out" my toenail polish colour was met with repulsion all around and was promptly fixed by a pedicure courtesy of the best damn hairstylist in all the world, smckay. i love the farm, so much. it's so much fun. we did a secret santa/yankee swap gift exchange and when the dust had settled, i had won me a SLANKET. zomg! if you think the snuggie is good, the slanket will literally knock your socks off. it's larger, so you can spoon and fit two people under there. it's made of a fluffier, softer, plusher material. it's got a kangaroo pouch AND little pockets for your feet! it's THE BEST INVENTION KNOWN TO MAN!

okay...i'm totally typed out. tomorrow i'll update you on date night with the dotytron, featuring one of my top flicks of 2009, "the fantastic mr. fox" and a belated birthday brunch with the dotytron's family at lady marmalade. it's like 7pm now and we're off to meet up with the roomie, l'army, and montreal I to watch "district 9" in their frigid house. guess what i'm bringing? it starts with an s and ends in "anket"

fin.