The Work of Hegemony and Other Thoughts

My head, my heart.

Last week I went to see Sunil Yapa (an author I wasn't previously aware of) interview Junot Diaz, as part of PEN Canada's Ideas in Dialogue series (? Actually not sure if this is a series).  The talk was called "Mind the Gap: Crossing Imaginary Lines" and it was pitched as a talk about diaspora, globalization, reading as a radical act of empathy, and writing as resistance...which I mean, OBVIOUSLY DID YOU PUT ALL OF "MY" CALLING CARD WORDS AND PUT THEM INTO A BLENDER TO MAKE A WOKE SHAKE FOR ME TO DRINK OR WHAT?!?

I invited my new friend N, and was all like, "Have you ever read any Junot Diaz?" and she's like, "Um, yeah, obviously.  His stuff is catnip for woke POC."  And I was like, "ummm, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about,"  but I clearly didn't and have never read his stuff, but I am now!

Anyway, we went last week and we walked in and she kind of drew in a breath because he was RIGHT THERE and of course I was so clueless I thought N was impressed that the Blum Appel salon had a bar set up and sells drinks, because I had no idea what Junot Diaz looked like, or how awesome he would turn out to be.

The talk was INCREDIBLE.  I came away and my mind was blown.  As a woman of colour, as a feminist, as a terrible writer, as a reader.  I will post it for you and you will watch it and you will hopefully be as inspired as I was.  It was one of those talks where I was so spun up after I had to wander around a bit because my mind was jittery with all the things said.  I biked home and didn't remember my trip at all because I was so in my head and I came home, went down to the basement, and removed my bra and idea-barfed all over the Dotytron because I needed to get it out of me.

There's an old Funkmaster Flex mix from the early aughts where throughout the mix he would jump on the mic and trigger a million bomb-explosion sounds and it was the most exuberant, amazing mix of life.  Every time Junot Diaz would say something I would hear one of those bomb-explosion sounds in my head.  My mind = blown.

He talked about hegemony, and how people of colour, women, poor people take on the "work" of policing ourselves in the service of hegemony.  Hegemony would not function without us willingly taking on that work.  There is so much of that work to do.  MIND=BLOWN.  How colonialism is predicated on the idea of "I am white, therefore I am human.  You are not white, I am not sure that you are human."  MIND=BLOWN.  How as a writer, he doesn't write for other writers but for readers.  Because readers are a more forgiving audience.  He said that other writers are not giving and supportive or want you to succeed in the same way readers do.  He talked about how he bore witness to his mother's almost predatory ownership of his sisters' body and didn't recognize that privilege until much later in life.  He talked about family.  About hanging out with activists.  He answered amazing, brilliant, thoughtful questions (which, as you all should know, NEVER HAPPENS) from the audience.  One woman asked him a two part question and the first part was: "Have you watched Lemonade."  LOL!  Then she asked him what he thought of it.  He was so funny.  He said he knew better than to mess with the Bey-hive.  He also said that there are people who would critique this piece because it is a tool to make millions of dollars.  He said that POC have a long history of inserting our narratives into objects designed to make millions of dollars.  He also reminded the audience that not too long ago, all we would have wanted is the opportunity for a black woman to make millions of dollars with her art.  MIND=BLOWN.  He talked about how Lemonade was distributed on a medium (HBO) that traditionally has not been very kind or mindful of people of colour.  He said to be wary of white liberals, who like to say they support POC but frequently don't want to have anything to do with actual POC.  He talked about how for him, it's easier to disguise the meta and the meaning in the writing, to hide the big picture ideas/thesis, then it is to go back and put the meta and the meaning in.  MIND=BLOWN.

It was pure fire.

One of the things I came away with, based on the idea of hiding the meta/meaning/thesis, was to make an effort to be a bit more intentional in my writing.  I'm working on a project currently (it's in the very, very nascent stages), and I started it just writing. Getting stuff down on the page.  It was a challenge getting into the groove of writing fiction again, and I'm clearly rusty, but it came back, though a little creaky.  What I realized is that I should have a goal for each scene, to avoid the automatic writing trap - where you just write for 30 minutes or an hour and you end up with a few pages that might have some killer metaphors and the roots of a character, but strung together don't really go anywhere.  I'm going to try that approach and see if it works.  If the next time I sit down to work on the project I start by saying, I want this scene to tell me something about the protagonist's family, friendship with X, how she feels about herself.  What's the big picture thing I want the reader to take away from this scene, and then write my way around it.  Hiding it if you will.  It was a total breakthrough moment.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to take that away and operationalize it, but I'm certainly going to try.

I haven't seen Lemonade yet, but I've certainly seen the output of the cottage industry that functions around all things Bey.  Of course, that meant that I came across Warsan Shire and her beautiful work that gave structure to much of the Lemonade movie (I refuse to call it the visual album).  You can hear her work on the her Bandcamp here.  It is incredible. I love her voice and how she speaks her own words.  I can't get enough.

This actually dovetailed neatly with a recent realization that poetry is still an art form.  I was wondering - do kids even read poetry anymore?  SHOULDN'T THEY?  I have Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds on my list of to-reads. I want Lolly to read it with me.  I think I'm too out of practice with poetry to go in alone.  But maybe that's my own bias and insecurities talking?  I should be able to go it alone, yes?

I'm obviously going to add some Junot Diaz to my reading list, because he is officially catnip for THIS particular woke (sometimes?) POC.

Fin.

Still Bucktown, After All These Years

This batting stance from Lindsay = everything to me, right now.  After our epic family whiffle ball game at my sister’s house, the Dotytron and I immediately went out and bought some bases, a bat, and a whiffle ball and have been having some (exhausting) games with the kids on the street after dinner.  Lindsay’s batting stance is simultaneously unconventional and ineffective, but he really commits 100% and for that, I cannot fault him.  That lunge, and that tongue sticking out, do me in, every time.

Have I talked to you about how Quincess falls all the time?  Seriously, all the time.  He never puts his hands out and always falls and conks his head.  He gets GIANT, ugly goose eggs on his little misshapen noggin.  Even if he doesn’t make impact with the floor, when he falls, the goose eggs stick out so far that it gets conked again. We suspect it was from his time in the helmet, when he was a crazy man who “crawled” like this: 

Never forget.

Recently I took him to the doctor because we were starting to worry – how often does a kid have to fall and get a giant goose egg on their head before you start to be concerned?  Well, as it turns out,  depending on how they react post-fall:  it can be quite a lot.  Like, more than the Quincess’ current number, which seems to be averaging a head-conk a month (this month he’s got 2).  His pupils have never been wonky (one bigger than the other), he always cries immediately, he doesn’t get sleepy, or nauseous.  He eats normally, he doesn’t act funny, he responds appropriately, so there hasn’t been any indication that he’s had a concussion, which is when the doctors would be concerned. 

The other week we had my ex-bf and his new gf over for dinner.  I was just telling them about how he falls a lot, and he was standing beside me and somehow tripped, from standing, over his own feet, hit the ground, and rolled onto his back, crying.  “Quincess! What happened?” I cried.  “Ionow,” he said, through his own tears, on the floor on his back, which made me laugh so hard.  I’ve been trying for months to record a Quincess “I don’t know” because it’s the cutest disavowal you’ve ever heard in your life.  Lindsay tends to give you cow eyes and spread his hands out, but he doesn’t run the words together in quite so winning a way.

However, Lindsay is taking after the Big Yam in his ability to articulate.  Behold:

Quincess is usually very good about sharing.  He’s never so attached to whatever he’s playing with that if Lindsay comes barrelling up and acts like a giant baby about not having the toy in question, if I ask him to give it to Lindsay, he usually does it, with no fuss.  The other night, he was carrying a tennis ball and was running from one end of the backyard to the other, dodging and ducking and somehow managing to keep it just out of the hammy grasp of Lindsay, who was crying in frustration.  At one point, Quincess looked up and caught my eye and gave me the most knowing, devilishly pleased grin, it slayed me.  He’s a sneaky one, that guy.  When you catch him fiddling with something he’s not supposed to be touching and you say, “Quincess!” to stop, he’ll drop whatever he’s doing and do this exaggerated arm flail, both arms back and forth in tandem, which is a dead giveaway that he’s been up to something no good.  It’s a caricature of: “doo-de-doo, nothing to see here.”  I’ve been trying to catch that on video too, because like that Arrowsmith song, I don’t want to miss a thing.

We took the Big Yam to see the new Pixar movie, Inside Out.  Somewhat predictably for a Pixar film, the Dotytron and I were bawling our eyes out.  I would say that it is one of the least child-appropriate Pixar films in their entire catalogue (depending on your child, of course).  The Big Yam got basically nothing out of it.  I kept asking probing questions, "why is she scared?  Where are they going?" and he was consistently, "I don't know."  To put this in perspective, we recently showed him the original Jurassic Park and when the T. Rex first comes chasing after the jeeps, the Big Yam breathed, "Goll-lee!" It was so cute!  I mean, really.  Kids using anachronisms are just the best.

Inside Out is a journey through the emotional growth of a pre-teen girl, taking place almost entirely within her mind, with lots of clever nods to brain science and psychology concepts.  SUPER KID-APPROPRIATE, AMIRITE?!?  Obviously, because it’s Pixar, the story is nuanced, touching, emotionally resonant and at times, quite funny.  Does my kid understand a bit about entering the “abstract thought” room and “deconstructing”?  No!  It shouldn’t even be marketed to children.  I also found the characterization of the central character’s interior emotional life, lacking. 

A design critic friend of mine recently talked about how the “colour relationships” in Pixar films are terrible and I have to agree.  After recently watching Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, and Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, there is something to be said for the subtlety of older Disney animated films and animated films that aren't made in the North American vein.  Pixar films frequently look like a daycare exploded on film (see: Toy Story, Up, Inside Out).  The beginning part of Wall-E escapes this trend, but otherwise the animators tend to err on the side of garish.  Bill Peet, whose stories I loved as a child, was one of the animators on Sleeping Beauty:

Can you imagine ever seeing anything looking like that in a modern, mass-produced animated film?  Or, check out Eyvind Earle’s concept art for Sleeping Beauty and try not to have your heart sing:

Kids can handle subtlety.  Look at the vast range of illustration styles in children's picture books.  It's one of the reasons why I can't stop buying them.  As a rule, I generally loathe kids movies that are too pop culture referential.  For a shorthand: any film that features an extended anthropomorphic dance sequence to a modern pop music number (Reel 2 Real's I Like To Move It - I'm looking at you here), makes my skin crawl.  I think my reactions to a lot of kids' movies can be summed in this trailer for the new Peanuts aberration:

This is what the Peanuts are about now  I mean, really.  Charles Shulz is spinning in his grave.

It’s been a jam-packed start to summer vacation.  We’ve had a lovely couple of weekends.  The Big Yam, being the risk-averse, self-preservationist soul that he is, has not been a fan of his new two-wheeler.  He’s been very much against it.  Our neighbour gave us a Co-Pilot Wee Ride bike trailer (like a tandem bike that attaches to the parent bike), so we hooked that up, loaded the twins into the Chariot, and spent a windy morning at the beach two Saturdays ago.  It was so nice, even if the beach did stink, and even if the whole process of setting up, packing, and tearing down did take just as long as the time spent at the beach itself.  

One Saturday we met MHui and co at the new Guu in North York and we brought the Big Yam.  I hyped him up about it and pitched it as a restaurant where “everybody yells at you” and he was so thrilled with the novelty of taking his shoes off in our section. 

Proof that the Dotytron and I have very different ideas of fun: on Father’s Day, me and the kids were booted out of the house so he could sleep in (until 7:30am) and then wax his car (???)  Last night, I went upstairs to read (current bedside reading: Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal – I am so fun!  Party time!) and went back downstairs near midnight to find the Dotytron eating all dressed chips I didn’t even know we had and watching Adventures in Babysitting, “It’s SUMMER VACATION!” was the answer I got in reply to my raised eyebrow.

SUMMER VACATION INDEED! This past week was intensity in ten cities.  I took the days after Canada Day off and it was non-stop action.  Canada Day: park hangs, bike ride, frantic street party prep, taking the Big Yam to see Inside Out, and then the Street Party – which was exhausting.  The next day: first Micelli Monday of the summer – Children’s Discovery Centre, home, nap, swimming, dinner.  Then the next day, my sister and her family and my youngest brother and his gf Aunt Viv (has to be said in your best Fresh Prince of Bel-Air voice), and my mom came over and we went swimming and we hosted dinner and then the boy nephews slept over.  The next day, we went to a memorial service for the Dotytron’s uncle, went back to my mum’s house, had dinner out at Congee Queen, then BACK to our hood for ice cream, games, and another round of nephew sleepovers.  Sunday we woke up, took the kids to the Farmer’s Market, then to my grandma’s nursing home for a birthday lunch, then grocery shopping, then home, then swimming, and then I STRAIGHT UP PASSED OUT AT 8:30PM FROM BONE-TIRED EXHAUSTION.  

It was the good kind of exhaustion.  On our way back downtown on Saturday, as I drove onto the off-ramp of the highway, dusk settling into the nooks and crannies of the Don Valley Parkway, a car filled with sticky, sun-kissed and rice and lobster e-fu noodle-stuffed children, I had one of those moments where I marveled at my life.  Sometimes, I have to turn to the Dotytron and say, "When you were in high school, did you ever think you'd be an adult, driving in a minivan to get ice cream, with KARL LAGERFELD from Markham High and our 4 year old and 2 year old twins?!"  

 We've had my friend E staying with us for the past few days, and now the 2nd edition of Micelli Monday is happening, followed by the most ambitious weekend of life: TWO NIGHTS OF PARTYING for me and the Dotytron.  TWO! WHO AM I?!?  We are planning on hitting a rave on Friday night followed by an EDM festival with my youngest bro on Saturday.  If we manage to survive to tell the tale, it will be a legendary feat.  The kind of weekend that sustains two former partiers through years and years of 6am wake-ups and bleary, weary contemplations of how to fill the interminable hours that stretch before us on a rainy weekend day.  The stuff that will make us feel forever young again.

Sorry, didn't mean to end this on a downer.  We are going to try to suck the marrow out of life this weekend - will report back.

Fin.

Catching up

We’ve had a few blasts of warm weather, and while the projected 27 degrees forecast last weekend was making my doomsday-inclined heart palpitate – seriously the California drought is no joke!  How are people not freaking out about this MORE?!?  WHY IS THERE GRASS AT COACHELLA?!?!!!??? – when I’m given to a more superficial frame of mind (often), my thoughts have turned to spring summer style.

This year Lagerfeld is going in a bit of an unexpected direction.  Well, not really that unexpected, more of a return to the silhouette I favored in my rave days of dressing like a boy on the bottom/pocket square on top.  I recently bought a long-sleeve vintage Vision Street Wear t shirt and that’s forming the foundation of the look I’m going for.  Think Stacy Peralta, think Gleaming the Cube, think long shorts, blocky kicks, So-Cal, 80s.  I love me a long, bulky shorts like you wouldn’t believe, my favorite pair being a pair of Canadian army surplus fatiques that I chopped to a mid-calf length about 15 years ago and have been wearing ever since (moving the button on the waistband incrementally from year to year, of course).  I’m going to intersperse this with my usual Mrs. Roper, muumuu, tent dress routine – a habit I can’t shake.  Except now, bike shorts under the dresses are part of my life because my thighs rub together and that’s just the way s**t goes, sons.

If you still stubbornly read a lot of blogs (and I do), there’s a brand that bloggers of a certain ilk go crazy for, and I just don’t get it.  Ace and Jig.  They make $300 jumpsuits that look like tea-towels you find at the cottage.  I don’t get it.  If the patterns were distinctive, it’d be one thing, but they all kind of look like Turkish linen towels to me.  Y’all know I love me a Mexican Oaxacan embroidered dress/top like the next hippie, but something about the type of fabric pattern on the Ace & Jig stuff just doesn’t turn my crank in the least.  They’re like the worst possible serape blankets you could have, but you’re wearing them.  It’s like a faded cactus, wilting in the sun.  

The Wonder Twins do this odd thing where they trade off weeks of being a giant PITA.  Last week, it was Quincess, who was INCONSOLABLE during dinner every night.  Now this week, he’s been the sweetest little dear, happily eating lots of whatever is put in front of him, while Lindsay Lou Lou is a pill and screams for “Ohk!” [yogurt] and then upends everything on his tray when I don’t give him what he wants.  He also wants everything “whole!” and as soon as he’s done eating yells, “SCHIIIIIIDE?!?” [outside] where he puts on a bike helmet (“hat! Haaaaaaat!!!”) that’s 10 sizes too big and stands on a Radio Flyer 3-wheeled scooter, giving everyone cow-eyes until they opt to ruin their backs by bending over and pushing him around.  Quincess’ preferred outside activity is to push around a little baby carriage and then wait for you to turn your attention elsewhere before running into the road and laughing maniacally.  Meanwhile, the Big Yam is off in his own world playing superheroes and screaming that he’s not ready to ride a bike for a million hours.  It’s a really relaxing vibe we’ve cultivated.

Last weekend we had a visit from SMckay and the Dotytron hosted a bourbon night with his teacher friends.  While he was prepping that, SMckay and I gave the kids freezies and took them to the park, which resulted in this line from the Big Yam: “Come in my face, freezie! Come in my face!”  It was kind of awkward.  This tends to happen when SMckay comes for visits.  The last time, she was supervising the Big Yam’s bath and said something like, “No standing in the tub!” and he said, “Yeah, you do, to wash your butt and your wiener.  What’s a wiener?”  SMckay: “Oh dear.” 

Saturday morning I went with her to see the Basquiat exhibit at the AGO.  I’m glad SMckay gets me to the AGO and my art history roots.  The Basquiat exhibit was kind of amazing.  I went to the Alex Colville one and was intellectually into the exhibit because the exhibit was well curated, but I’m not generally into Colville’s style of work.  Basquiat’s work is something I would hang in my home.  Keith Haring is too cartoony for me, but Basquiat’s work is very visceral, and politically charged, and manages to be so on-the-nose, now, 30 some-odd years later.  The audio commentary was wack.  A lot of Toronto beat poets and academics who were simultaneously over-intellectualizing but also missing some of the obvious points in the works.  Commentary on a  piece that counterbalanced the a Native American with an African American man in shackles focused primarily on the very obvious statement about slavery, while failing to pay attention to the very clear parallel being drawn between the oppression of the two peoples, and how their cultures were effaced by white people.

We had my mom and brother and his fiancée over for a Mother’s Day dinner on Saturday and it was fun.  Bruce Wayne’s fiancée got me an awesome mother’s day present in the form of the best dinosaur planter/terrarium ever!  It’s amazing and I love it and love the colour.  That aqua blue/green colour is a favorite of mine and pops up in other things I have:

Mother’s Day was a bit of a gong show.   The original plan had been to keep it low key and chill.  I got an awesome card from the kids (all orchestrated by the state) and the plan had been to go and get dim sum and then to Pacific Mall to get a new iphone case for me.  In my heart of hearts, I should have known that Mother’s Day dimsum would be a gong show, but I quashed those misgivings.  We had gone back and forth on plans to see Momma D on Mother’s Day, and finally called her with our impromptu dim sum plan, planning on being home to put the twins down for their nap so I could work on my quilt and just putter (my favorite thing in the world). 

The plan went horribly, horribly awry.  The first place we went to, had a lineup out the door, and I was #57 for a table (I think they were at 20).  So we packed up and went down the street to some random place, which I think stays in business based solely on taking the overflow from the better place.  There were 4 or 5 groups ahead of me, and so I grabbed a number and told Momma D and the Dotytron to take the kids to a patch of grass by the parking lot while I waited.  Cut to 1 HOUR LATER, to me standing behind the hostessing stand and acting as the hostess, because the restaurant staff were completely inept and were handing out numbers but not managing the restaurant flow.  People were cutting the queue and sitting down at tables as they were being cleared, so as far as the restaurant was concerned, because no one was managing it properly, tables were never available, because it was just a constant flow of unethical people plonking their jerk butts down.  There was no order.  After an hour, with everyone hungry, we left.

Somehow in the process, Lenny had his wrist wrenched and was in pain, so he bawled the whole way back (we called an audible on the whole mission).  There was talk about going to a different dim sum restaurant on the Danforth (a place that does mostly takeout and has maybe 2 tables), but I put my foot down.  Anyone with kids knows that you don’t take hungry, confined kids to a second (sit-down) location.  Poor Dotytron.  Momma D and I are very different in our approaches and I think he felt conflicted by trying to appeal to us both.  I knew though, that if we had gone to the restaurant, it would have been incredibly stressful dealing with a place that in all likelihood has no high chairs or is kid-friendly, when the kids were all on the verge of melting down.  I also know that the bulk of the work managing them would have fallen on me, and while I don’t put stock in Mother’s Day (especially after this one), I do know that I should at least get to decide not to put myself through that.  Instead we went to a park, I got us pizza, and we hung out and watched the kids and it was lovely.

This week has been a monster.  My blood pressure has been skyrocketing at work and I’m feeling kind of tender and sore about it.  I’m looking forward to that extra day.  We have a fun one planned, too – movie night tonight at home, visits with Tillers and Jen tomorrow and their lovely kids, dinner at Momma D’s house (do-over!), fireworks in the park with the neighbours on Sunday, and hopefully a walk at the Scarborough bluffs with Dr. Rei and family.

 [edit: As it now takes me three weeks to write a single post, I’m including the post-Victoria Day weekend wrap-up in this one]

Our long weekend was extremely fun, but also filled with back-breaking BS labour that you have to do when you have a house – ie. sanding and sealing our deck.  That being said, it looks SO DARN GOOD and even though all I wanted was to throw money at the problem, in the end, it only took us about 4-6 hours?  We went with a clear sealant and I’ve never been happier.  The Dotytron was trying to convince me that we have to get a colour on the cedar because otherwise, it’s going to discolour, and that’s what we did 3 years ago, but I’m so glad we went clear – it looks so hype:

Visits with Tillers and Jen were so nice – we went to the park, they brought amazing homemade bread and burrata (!) and I tried to make friends with salad (despite Dotytron’s vocal objections).  The guys went to a new craft brewery in the ‘hood and then we filled up a bucket and let the kids go to town while the young-young ‘uns napped the afternoon away. 

Our planned fireworks on Sunday were a bust.  This was our fourth go-around organizing street fireworks and this is the first year we’ve ever been hassled by the cops.  I think it’s because we’re such a finely tuned machine.  Watermelon slices, blankets, popcorn for the kids, a bucket of sand, about 25 people – we were conspicuous and we got the attention of bike cops who told us we had to shut it down.  We were allowed to set off one more and then had to pack it up.  I was saying that the Dotytron should have lit them all off at once and shouted, “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” which would have been so funny!  Just imagine?  A white guy in Leslieville, holding his fist up and shouting “black lives matter” in response to being told to not light fireworks?!  So good. 

Scarborough bluffs mission was also a bust, but a hilarious one, in the grand tradition of M-R-I-H shenanigans.  At first, we were going to skip the bluffs because Dr. Rei and Dotytron were obviously in the mood to do nothing but sit around and talk about 90s hip hop for eternity.  Then, we opted to go to the beach as an alternative, but it was BUCK (obviously), so we ended up heading to the bluffs anyway.  As we passed a long line of cars snaking seemingly parked bumper-to-bumper on their way OUT of the bluffs, the Dotytron went into doomsday apocalyptica mode (which is the worst Dotytron mode of life) and was all like, “We’re idiots! We should abort!  Each car we’re passing is an hour of our life! Why did we do this?  This is so dumb, etc., etc.,”  We got to the bottom, couldn’t find parking, and realized we should turn tail and head back up, so we did, only to have Hanbo entreating Dr. Rei to at very least, Google a picture of the bluffs to show him, and the Dotytron was still going strong in doomsday mode and was (seriously) trying to convince me that I should call the police, tell them that a thousand people were stuck at the bluffs and needed their help to direct traffic and get out.  LOL!  It was epic.  In the end, it was fine, the line of cars moved relatively quickly and it didn’t break bad like we had thought it might. 

We ate Chino Loco’s at home.  The Big Yam, who had been angling for a brownie all day, couldn’t stomach his dinner and so was all angst-ridden about forfeiting his right to a brownie dessert.  He’s a forward thinking chap, though, and asked what we were eating for dinner on Tuesday.  I said that it was going to be rice and a sauce, similar to the deconstructed burrito he was turning his nose up at.  “AGAIN?!?!!!?” he cried, “COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” which was such a pure expression of supreme disappointment and dismay that the whole table broke down laughing.  “AGAIN?!??? COME ON!!!!!” will never not be funny.  Lately, in the same vein, he’s started shouting, “DARN IT!!!” when he’s frustrated, which is equally hilarious.

Meanwhile, these two little monkeys are routinely flouting doctor’s orders and engaging in mad bed jumping pre/post-nap:

I find this video simultaneously revolting AND compelling

We got a piano!  Best decision we've ever made, best addition to the house (including our children, j/k j/k j/k).  That's Linsday in his shirt from the Apollo Theatre that Momma D bought for him.  Our piano is a Heintzman from the 1930s that we bought for $250.  It's a beautiful piece and I love the way it looks.  It needs a tuning but needs to acclimate to our house first.  The cost of moving was as much as the piano.  

Droopy drawers

"WHOLE!!!" is this guy's eating rallying cry - which basically means that he wanted to eat a pork chop on the bone.

I made Smitten Kitchen's baked chickpeas for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and have since made it a few more times.  It makes the perfect work lunch.  Middle Eastern spiced chickpeas, served with dollops of yogurt tahini dressing, labneh (always labneh), and the classic Middle Eastern tomato-cucumber-red onion-mint-parsley salad, dressed with lemon juice, and mixed with crunchy pita chips - Smitten recommends homemade, but I used Stacy's naked pita chips, which are perfection.  It's like Middle Eastern nachos.  I will say that I think it's not necessary to bake them - I simmered subsequent batches on the stove with the lid ajar until almost all the liquid was evaporated and it worked out just fine.  This is the platonic ideal of summer food.  I love this dish so much.  

Fin.

The Thick of It

The heart of winter - we are in it.  The Xmas decorations have come down, our xmas lights hang mournful and unlit in the window, waiting for a warm day when we can take them down.  *Edit: we just flicked the switch last night and turned them back on again!  Huzzah!  Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld - leaving our Christmas lights on until April, since 2010.  Bits and pieces of our life strewn around the house, in a holding pattern because this renovation is taking a million years (which I guess makes sense when your contractor works a solid, 8 hour work week on your job?!).  It's unremittingly cold outside and the worst kind of winter cold, too - the kind with no snow!  What's the point of winter without snow?

Truthfully, I don't mind.  Our lives have been busy and full.  One might say too busy and full, really.  Weekend visits, hosting, the return of extra curriculars in our lives, made possible by the age of the babies now mitigating prospective babysitter's qualms.  The Dotytron went to a weekly neighbourhood jazz jam last week, I went to a Board meeting on Monday and hit up Quilt Sunday at a Parkdale sewing shop.  We hosted some friends for dinner Sunday, hosted a Friday PA day Micelli Monday session...we are happy, fulfilled.  Did I go to bed at 9pm last night?  Yes.  Was I lured in part because I'm reading a corker of a book?  Yes.  See?  No complaints.

Except for how I was verbally threatened by a psycho on my way home from picking out the basement flooring.  I might have cut a guy off (but I'm not sure?), he leaned on the horn, I gave him the customary gesture one does, he stopped his car in front of mine (in the middle of the road), got out, and started banging on the window the my car and saying all kinds of rude, racist, sexually graphic things.  It was terrifying.  He looked like Bob from Twin Peaks.  He was probably mentally unhinged, definitely had anger management issues.  I took down his license plate and have been meaning to call it into the police non emergency line.  I wish I had pepper spray in my car, I would have sprayed his eyes out.  I don't understand why people (men) think it's okay to say certain things to people (women) in anger.  Like, why go there?  It reminds me of the "appropriate" responses we're constantly trying to inculcate in our children - like, the Big Yam now will (sometimes) say, "I'm SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW!" I totally get that response.  People and strangers can make you mad.  If the guy had said, "You cut me off and I'm SO MAD AT YOUR RIGHT NOW!!!" I would have been like, fair enough, you're entitled to feel how you feel.  The level of detail and sexually charged violent undercurrent is not cool.  The galling thing is he took down MY license plate number (!)

The upside is that we picked out our flooring?  *Weak laugh*  We have decided on a white ash looking laminate.  We went back and forth.  Our architect recommend vinyl flooring.  They have high end vinyl now that looks like wood, comes with an acoustic backing, is virtually indestructible and 100% waterproof.  It's also kind of pricey (the good stuff is, anyway).  It's also plastic, at the end of the day.  The laminate we chose was 1/2 the price of the vinyl, and really, the basement is going to be for our personal use - it's not super high traffic, it's not a rental, we're not a condo building, so it's okay.  The waterproof argument is specious to me.  If my washer malfunctions and floods the basement, sure the floors will be okay, but it's not like I'm not going to have to replace drywall and all the other business, right?

We chose something that looks like this:

It's a white ash.  I wanted something neutral, light, and airy for the basement.  It's a basement, it doesn't get any natural light (only the bathroom and the bedroom down there will), so I wanted something that would contribute as much as possible to making the room seem expansive.  It has a slight grey wash to it, without being aggressively grey, and the floor doesn't have orange tones, which I like, because those orange tones just remind me of that awful 80s/90s parquet flooring that everyone had.

This is kind of the feel I'm going for, without being quite so stark and overtly Scandinavian/Helmut Newton-y.  About 75% less Helmut Newton.  And Helmet Lang.  LOL!  It's going to be warmed up with brass and warm wood, and big fluffy rug, and colourful throws, and oh yeah, a million kids toys and pieces of lego crunching underfoot.

This week I played a bass clarinet that the Dotytron brought home to practice with and we watched the movie Birdman and last night I went with an old friend to see Miranda July interviewed by Sheila Heti:

The average median age of the audience was about 25 and everyone looked like they had just slouched out of an Urban Outfitters store.  I was in my work clothes - black & white ikat print dress over a black turtleneck, tan belt, forest green (what my friend KD calls my "Masters" green blazer) blazer, and forest green tights, with black boots - I think I looked like I had slouched out of an Anthropologie - so one step up!  Probably more like I slouched off the Modcloth webpage.  Oh well.

Sheila Heti is the editor of that book Women In Clothes which I haven't taken a look at yet, but is all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  She's generally all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  I haven't read any of her work, but I'm thinking of suggesting her novel, How Should A Person Be? for the next next Academic Book Club.  It's described as "...A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millenium."  It's a mix of memoir and fiction and apparently features graphic, uncomfortable sex scenes.  Like Girls meets The New Yorker.  I think it would be a good hate-read and at least engender a fruitful and spirited discussion.  I suspect the book will infuriate me and I won't find her a good writer, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?  Book club is never good when we read something beautiful and affecting and unimpeachable.  I read a critique about her much-lauded Women In Clothes project that takes the editors to task for featuring mostly white people.  Heti herself sports the misguided baby bangs of Janeane Garofolo circa Reality Bites.  Also, she's not young.  She seems nice - she smiled shyly at me when I passed her at the venue.  She makes for a horrid interviewer though.  Apparently she and Miranda July are quite close friends, but you wouldn't have known that from their interaction.  It was quite stilted and awkward.  Heti's questions didn't really seem to go anywhere and July's answers kind of spun off into nothingness.  I was like, guys, did you not go over this in advance?!?  Come ON.

It's always interesting to hear artists talk about their process and I did enjoy Miranda July's first film, You Me and Everyone We Know.  I also read her first collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, when it first came out, but was unmoved by the writing at the time.  That being said, she wasn't a very pithy speaker.  It was all very airy and floaty, words floating above their heads without coming down to ground on anything concrete.  She talked about a performance art piece she does where she auctions off items' belonging to members' of the audience and then gives the accumulated money to the person in the audience who "needs it the most" at that very moment.  I found it an interesting take on the fluidity of capital.  In that vein, I accompanied my friend who got her book signed and so I had Miranda July sign the paper bag that had held my kathi roll dinner and I'm thinking of putting it up on ebay.  The Dotytron and I had a conversation about performativity and capital afterwards which means that the talk wasn't for naught.

Heti and July referenced Tavi Gevinson so I think that's all you need to know about that.  I admire Tavi but I will also say that her performance in the film Enough Said was the worst element about what was otherwise a sweet, naturalistic, grown-up movie.

I'm glad I went.  I like going to things like that.  It is inspiring and gets me thinking, which I need.

Otherwise, I'm knitting a cowl that is the first knitting project that I've worked on in some time that has excited me.  Perfect for winter.  This is the yarn I'm using - the softest, squishiest, delicious yarn in my collection at the moment:

I tried my hand at free motion quilting for the first time using a fancy-fancy machine at the Workroom and I FELL IN LOVE with the process.  I'm going to try tackling it at home with my perfectly serviceable but not as bells-and-whistles-loaded machine.  This quilt is for the Quincess.  It suits his personality, methinks.  

This is a latin-style "porchetta" sandwich and a shrimp po' boy from a sandwich shop (Sully's) that opened up recently in the 'hood.  These were pretty good.  The fries there are tasty.  I would go back but I'm not about to rave about it or insist you travel across town to check it out.  So don't do that, okay?  You can do whatever you want, but don't blame me if it doesn't live up to the hype.  I'm not hyping it up.

A Spanish chorizo, tripe, pork belly and chickpea dish I had in the freezer, served atop polenta with a fried egg and gremolata.  That's good stuff, folks.

Classic weeknight meal - pasta with sausage, chickpeas, and kale and parm.  The babies have been jerks lately and are only eating the pasta.  It's not good.

See?  Look at how much attitude I get during a single dinner!  By the way, that "Waof?" Lindsey says while pointing upstairs is his way of asking for a bath.  Lately, he's been pretty good about saying "puh" and then pointing upstairs at the bathroom AFTER he's already done the deed.  We are so close to a breakthrough, but it eludes us yet.

Busy weekend ahead.  Heavy agenda ahead of eating burgers and fries and chocolate pudding with salted caramel, chocolate crumbs, and whipped cream, and watching movies with the boys, tonight.  Saturday is the Big Yam's day of activities: Chinese school, then ballet, then hip hop.  Meanwhile, the twins have inexplicably been invited to a birthday party (!)  Sunday is family chill time and then Super Bowl which for us means eating ribs and nachos and baked potato skins.  All in all, forecast is calling for a pretty cozy weekend in.

Fin.

Never Sorry

I went to see Ai Weiwei last weekend with some of the ladies on my street.  We had watched the documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry a while back and he's the current international darling of the contemporary art world.

To be honest, I wasn't a fan of the documentary - I thought it was weirdly fawning and it certainly didn't make you like Ai Weiwei.  He's a big cheater!  His real wife shows up for like, 2 minutes, or just long enough to basically say that they have a strong relationship (but in a weird way - this is before the revelation that he has a child with another woman comes out, so at the time as the viewer you're like, "well, that's a weird way of putting it, but okay, I guess?") and then you find out that he has a kid with another woman.  Ai Weiwei comes across like a bit of a breakcore child - like, someone who is kind of bratty and childish and ego-driven.  I get what he's doing and that China's government is corrupt, blah blah blah.  From the documentary, I thought the cleverest thing he was doing was "hiding in plain sight" as an artist - like using the tools of social media to effectively make himself so visible that he is beyond the reach of the Chinese authorities.  The film doesn't focus too much on his body of work and so I went into the exhibit not expecting much.

I was floored.  

The work is extraordinary.  It is evocative, accessible, and beautiful.  I get why he's such a successful contemporary artist.  There's nothing esoteric in the work - it's very easy to "read" and what it has to say about history, about the Cultural Revolution, about China, about unity, about nationhood, is incredible.  He has a piece where tonnes and tonnes of twisted rebar pulled from the aftermath of a devastating Shenzhen earthquake (where he alleges shoddy construction is responsible for the deaths of upwards of 5000 school children) was meticulously and laboriously straightened and then turned into an undulating sculpture.  He rescued old wood and uses Chinese techniques of wood joining to produce pieces that are modern, tactile, aesthetically pleasing, and speak to the effects of Mao's cultural revolution.

Moon chests - you can see all the phases of the moon as you walk between them.  One of my favorite pieces in the exhibit.

I loved it.  So maybe he is an enfant terrible (my mum called him "sensationalist") - the point is...he makes good art.  All that being said, you know what the documentary I want to see is?  I want to see something where they take apart the relationship between an artist's "helpers" and the artist.  Like, who REALLY comes up with the ideas?  I get that Ai Weiwei is obviously not going to physically put together all the work, but I have a sneaking suspicion that all the ideas don't come from him.  Like, I think that up and coming artists apprentice under him and probably shape pieces and are willing to forgo their name on the piece in exchange for access to some of Ai's connections.  It has to be that way, it's just not made explicit.  So, I bet you Ai is like, "I want to make something out of this old wood" but does he have a say in what the piece actually looks like in the end?  Do they show him iterations and he's like, "yes, yes, more like that, no, no, go to hell, dear god, no!"?  I'd love to see something that peels back the layers on that - I think it would be fascinating.

On the wall of the gift shop.  Super tacky, AGO!  C'mon!  Also: the gift shop is filled with terrible, Orientalist bullroar.  Not impressed.

After the exhibit the ladies and I went to Kinton Ramen.  It was good.  Not as good as my beloved Sansotei, though (what could be?)  I still have to try Santouka and then I will feel like my Toronto ramen comparative analysis will be complete.

Okay guys, yesterday, halmeoni (Korean grandma) came over and CLEANED MY FLOORS BY HAND. I have never felt happier/more guilty in my life.  She is AMAZING.  She came over and cleaned my kitchen, cleaned the kitchen floors, cleaned our hardwood, washed down our stairs, and went to town on our enclosed porch and everything is sparkling and I don't know what to do with myself!  She was like, "I'm not going to tidy, just dust" and I was like, practically prostrating myself before her, saying, "HALMEONI CAN DO WHATEVER HALMEONI WANTS!"  I don't know how I'm going to repay her.  My neighbour had told me that she likes folding laundry, so I had some baskets of laundry and tentatively suggested when she arrived that she might want to do that.  But halmeoni kind of looked at them sideways and never mentioned it and so I was like, "Halmeoni can do whatever halmeoni wants!"  LOL.  I want to repay her somehow, even though she has explicitly said that if I ever try to give her money she'll stop coming over.  I know she goes to church so maybe I can make a donation to her church?  Help me think of something, people!

I live on the best street.  My neighbour won tickets to a Thomas movie screening and said that her husband would take their daughter, and she'd give the extra set of tickets to the Dotytron and the Big Yam.  I was like, "Are you sure there aren't other Thomas-obsessed people in your life you could give the tickets to?" and she was like, "I think the Big Yam has earned this."  LOL!  Being obsessed with Thomas is his defining characteristic (and Totoro).  So they went to the theatre down town on Saturday morning.  I thought it was just a movie, but OH NO.  THOMAS WAS THERE. SO WAS SIR TOPHAM HAT.  They got crowns and there were all these train tables set up for the kids to play with and it was being filmed by Mattel apparently and they came home with swag bags with the DVD for the movie, a picture book, a train, a crown, and Thomas toothpaste (also: a "Thomas and Friends Yearbook" that was basically a Thomas the Bay Christmas catalog of Thomas gear that I promptly hid in the recycling bin).  It was so mint!  His first movie-going experience really set the bar high.

I took the babies to lunch at my neighbour's house yesterday.  Three of us have overlapping maternity leaves so we're going to try to do a weekly thing.  This week was kind of buckshot.  It has been visits every day so I think I need to dial back the maternity leave socializing.  It's just too hard to stay on top of life stuff if I go out every day.  On Tuesday I went on a 3 hour walk and it broke me.  I try to keep the Great Gazoo off the back of his head, so when I walk, I tend to wear him and push Prof. Gantok in the stroller.  I definitely gave myself some epic shin splints and back spasms after doing the death march.  I'm going to limit myself in the future.

Then, the funnest thing ever - SMckay came over to cut my hair and for a sleepover!  I love friend sleepovers!  I miss having a roomie.  I'm just meant to live with other people.  I like it so much.

Yesterday I kept the Big Yam at home with me.  We went to an indoor trampoline fantasy land that holds toddler-only times.  Ummm...BEST EIGHT DOLLARS OF MY LIFE.  It was amazing.  They have 4 or 5 different areas where the floors and sides are trampolines and the kids go buck.  The only reason I have time to blog today is because I got myself some guaranteed nap time out of it.  It was so cute.  I can't even tell you how much fun the Big Yam had.  It was all I could do not to join him - but to avoid the "popcorn effect" (their words...is that universal trampoline terminology?) they group people on the tramps by size, so only littles are allowed.  Parents and grown-ups have to stand on the walkways between the trampolines.

The babies wearing their Werner Herzog and Frank Zappa onesies.  So scary!  

We have hit a wondrous, wondrous milestone with the Wonder Twins - we have smiles!  And cooing!  Prof. Gantok especially, will happily lie on the back and squawk and air punch and spin his arms like a little spastic automaton after a feed.  The Great Gazoo likes to be held upright and mimics sticking out his tongue when you do it, often followed by a big, gappy, open mouthed smile that totally transforms his face.  Love it.  Love this age!

All three of my kids have killer, resolve-buckling pouts.  The roomie was holding The Great Gazoo one time and he was just lying in her arms, his lower lip protruding and she was like, "WHAT IS THAT FACE?!?"  Haha - if she was his mama there isn't anything he wouldn't get with that pout. Luckily, I'm made of stronger stuff.  She has tofu construction!

This week has been horrible for cooking, but here's what we've been eating, lately:

Breaded, pan-fried cod, homemade tartar sauce, kale salad

A Russian feast, courtesy of a Yummy Market run - perogies, salad Olivier (basically, a mayo-based potato salad with chunks of bologna), pickled herring on buttered rye, pickles, dilled beet salad, and Dotytron's special beer braised sausages with sauerkraut

I made a bourbon peach jam and have been obsessed with it slathered on everything.  I put a vanilla bean in and the bourbon gives the jam full-bodied floral, honeyed notes.  This is a farm breakfast of biscuits, jam, and hard boiled eggs.

Nicoise salad with seared salmon - loaded with vegetables from the CSA

The Big Yam is a big salmon fan, so we eat it alot for our seafood meals - salmon burgers with more tartar sauce

Grilled barbecue rubbed chicken, with my favorite grilled peach, halloumi, and baby arugula salad

This past Tuesday I made soupe au pistou, which is like French minestrone.  A pistou is a lighter take on pesto - pounded basil leaves with olive oil, garlic, and parmesan, but without nuts.  It really elevates the whole soup, which is loaded with vegetables and beans and zucchini.  To go along with it, I made us paninis with mortadella and robiola cheese, apparently a pretty classic combination.  Robiola is a soft cheese made with goat, sheep, and cow's milk.  Like a funky barnyard brie.  Combined with mortadella it is DIVINE.  I couldn't believe how long I've been living without this combination in my life.

When you look back, it appears as though I've been eating healthy, but what's not pictured is the 12 cookies I'm closing each night with.

Fin.