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.

Living and Thinking and Carrying On

Things I've been thinking about, lately:

1) Decentreing whiteness (and heternormativity) and how so many (white, heteronormative) people get so bent out of shape as soon as they're not the focus of like, everything.  It's like, seriously?  Have some chill for once in your damned lives.  The number of assumptions that get made on a daily basis by white people about what the cultural touchstones should be has been really chafing me lately.

2) Further to the above, I've been thinking about how annoying white moms are on the internet.  I mean, as was rightly pointed out to me, "that's on you." Haha!  That's true, I don't have to go looking for anxious, spun up, privileged intensive mothers who are going to make my blood boil with their neuroses and anxieties and constant need for validation from randoms.  But sometimes...I come across it and it makes me SO ANGRY that capable women are choosing to be oppressed and neurotic about the dumbest s**t, that I just can't even.

I got into it with this woman on my twins forum who was basically ready to fire her nanny because of some small infraction (the woman's son wouldn't let the nanny leave because he wanted to hold the nanny's umbrella and so the nanny told him to go take a bite of an apple and then she would let him hold the umbrella and when he went to eat the apple, she snuck out - this of course led to a chorus of [all white] women freaking out about how "deceptive" a practice this is, etc.,) and then of course the conversation spiraled into these wackadoos and their wackadoo expectations for the less privileged (almost universally), women of colour (ditto) who look after their children for not very much money at all.  These employers expect gold-plated service but certainly don't pay the amount that you would assume if you expect your caregiver to basically have a Phd in child psychology, or be an exact proxy for the parent.  There's a different between a caregiver and a parent.  There are huge structural differences between the (often vulnerable) people we pay to look aft our children and us.  It sucks, and you know what, lady?  Some people have real problems.  Why don't you go to Emergency a few more times because your kid has a "strange rash."

Further to the above, someone posted this thing on Facebook that was women's stories of being "assaulted" in child birth by medical practitioners who performed c-sections "without consent" and where women were "shackled" to fetal monitors and "strapped" to hospital beds and "forcibly" coerced into one "medicalized" procedure or another.  My immediate reaction was, that this whole thing of women thinking they know better than medical professionals about what's safe and natural for their children is what lead to the anti-vaccine movement?  I ended up running it by my midwife friend who had some smart points - namely, there's a difference between trauma and assault.  Lots of births can be traumatic - she said that she even found my birth, with the twins, traumatic, but that there is a fundamental difference between trauma and assault.  Like, having to have your baby's collarbone broken so that they can fit through your pelvic opening is super traumatic.  Labour and delivery is such an intimate experience that it's kind of already poised for trauma - you're dealing with life and death!  I think it's wonderful that evidenced-based decision making and women becoming their own health advocates is more and more of a thing, however, we need to strike that balance and dichotomizing the issue so that you have midwives on one hand and evil, military-industrial complex OBs on the other doesn't really sense.  As I was looking into this, I saw that some people use the term "birth rape" which is hugely problematic.

3) I have so many thoughts on the Ghomeshi trial, which is obviously a flashpoint for feminists.  I think ultimately, I feel like I can support and believe women who have been the victims of sexual assault and at the same time, feel like he is absolutely guilty in the court of real life, but that also, the judge's verdict does not constitute a miscarriage of justice.  I don't know how the courts will reconcile the fluidity of consent with the necessary standard of guilt required by the law, I don't know that the courts are the place to do this, even as they are so much a necessary piece of the larger framework.

Right now, I have a kid who likes to strum his junk like a guitar and thinks it's hilarious to do so in mixed company.  I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that and how to manage that, in a way that preserves his innocence and still doesn't allow the calcification of misogyny.

I recently read Chester Brown's The Playboy, which is a comic that was originally published in 1990 and was reissued.  It details Brown's (author of Louis Riel, among other comics) anxiety and guilt around masturbation and purchasing Playboy magazine.  The Dotytron and I both read it, and even though we both agreed that Chester Brown, as a person, is kind of gross, the Dotytron thought that Brown does a good job of honestly representing the shame spiral that happens for adolescent boys faced with the driving compulsions of their desire.  Like, apparently it feels like your brain kind of shuts off and your primordial lizard brain takes over when you're masturbating and then when it's done and you've had an orgasm, then shame comes flooding in.  Shame at what?  He (the Dotytron) posits that the shame is rooted in how quickly the lizard brain takes over and how subsumed the person is to it - like your desire to masturbate is so all-consuming that you're embarrassed and how you let it control your life.

This spurred a conversation about how to negotiate this, as the parents to three boys.  Is the shame and guilt necessary?  Does it have to be that way?  My favorite podcast, Pop Rocket recently had a sex-themed episode and two of the hosts, who are around my age talked about going into bookstores or the library and taking out the sex manuals and moving to a different part of the store/library and furtively thumbing through the pages.  HOW INNOCENT IS THAT?!?  Like, now, you can see the most depraved, disgusting, dehumanizing stuff with the right search string (or even a very wrong search string!).  How do you mitigate THAT? How do you make sure that your kid is processing and on some level, critically engaging with the stuff that shapes their sexuality?

Hell if I know.

Snapchat is kind of the best.

Last weekend was B-A-N-A-N-A-S.  But it was the kind of soul-affirming weekend that grizzled parents need sometime to remind us that we are multi-dimensional people with brilliant, smart, funny, dear friends.

Auntie Em got the twins these jackets recently and they are THE BEST.  Look at these guys!  It's almost like they get along!

I made a new friend!  At JJ and S's house, we were invited to brunch along with their colleagues, whom we had never met before.  At first, the Dotytron and I were like, "no new friends" and were kind of being sour pusses about it, but it turns out these people are AWESOME.  They live in our 'hood, they are both professors at U of T, they are funny, and the woman was automatic kindred spirit.  We are both obsessed with American Crime Story and Togetherness and she is just lovely and smart and their daughter is adorable.  This is a woman who described author Junot Diaz as: "His 'decolonial' love' shtick is kind of catnip for woke WOC" - a million heart eyes emojis.

 Corned beef hash is pretty much the best dish post-late-night dancing dish in the world.

That night I went to Pusha T with my buddy Merrick and it was everything this ol' gal needed.  Pusha T was incendiary.  The crowd was a beautiful multi-ethnic mix of hip hop heads and I got to dance my butt off and it was amazing.

Came home and Record Club was in full swing, which meant that I got to swan in, high off an amazing hip hop show and try to weasel my way in as the only woman in Record Club with my thoughtful insights into Kamasi Washington's album, The Epic.  Late night, and the next day the Dotytron was pretty ruined, so I made myself some corned beef hash and eggs, and then the Dotytron rallied enough so that we could take the kids to an east side indoor play space, which we love, because it's big and clean and the Dotytron and I can go head-to-head on the pop-a-shot game:

Twin A is terrible at this.

Our general modus operandi when doing stuff with the kids is to act like giant idiots and have all the fun while our kids tool around untended.  Half the time we take the kids to a playground, the Dotytron and I are challenging each other to weird parkour or rock climbing stunts while our kids give us the side-eye and other kids stand staring at us, mouth agape, because we generally cavort like fools.  Being able to be a ding dong around kids is very important.  Never lose your silly.

 Then on Sunday, our supper club of mostly high school friends met at Magic Noodle on Harbord. They do Northern Chinese hand-cut noodles in broth and some small shareable plates.  I got the brisket soup which was delicious, and the noodles were fantastic (nicely chewy), but the small plates were hit or miss.  In the top right of the picture above you can see there's a chicken dish which had this weird, mala-style Sichuan peppercorn based sauce that just tasted weird and funky.  We got this potato salad which was good, and lamb skewers (also good).  I don't know if I'd go again, especially given we're on such a ramen kick lately.  

 Quincess wearing his goggles.

Speaking of ramen, we took it easy this weekend and visited my grandma in Markham, followed by Sansotei with my mum.  This crew.

Sansotei why are you so damned delicious???

Some of what I'm doing on Snapchat - a van full of Peppas on the way to the pool.

 

My classic bin of beans made its first appearance for the twins this weekend.  It kept them quietly occupied and giggling for about 30 minutes?  Which is next level.  But then they started dumping beans everywhere which was annoying and inevitable.

Twin A double-fisting this disgusting breakfast concoction I force them to eat: steel cut oats, mixed with full fat cottage cheese, apple sauce, vitamin D droplets and hemp/flax oil.  It's so gross!  

 

Twin B singing the Totoro main theme in Japanese.

Twin A has a huge sweet tooth and loves all things cake, cookies, ice cream, chocolate, etc.  When we had Momma D and Ehmdo over for dinner last night, we took a break after finishing dinner to tidy up the kitchen, pack away leftovers, and open presents before the cake portion.  I popped my head out of the kitchen and saw that Twin A was still sitting in his high chair, so I asked Ehmdo to take him out.  She said that she had tried to do that, but he refused.  As it turns out, he was doggedly sitting in the chair because he was waiting for the dessert portion of the meal.  He sat there for 30 minutes, craning his neck to see the action in the living room, and refused to let us even turn his chair to face the living room.  Such a crafty little sugar butt:

Wanting to be involved, but wanting more, for cake.

For the birthday dinner I roasted two chickens, made gravy, roasted potatoes, roasted cauliflower, and roasted brussels sprouts.  It was an all-oven meal:

I also made this cake, which is known as "The World's Best Cake."  It's Norwegian in origin and features two duplicate layers of butter cake, with a layer of almond-flecked soft and marshmallowy meringue adhered to the cake, and the two layers held together with whipped cream.  I think next time I might add some sliced strawberries to the middle layer, but otherwise, it might not be quite the "world's best" cake, but it's pretty damned delicious.  I've posted the recipe below.

Other things I've eaten/made lately:

I made Smitten Kitchen's spaghetti pie (which is based on cacio e pepe) and I thought it was kind of meh.  I used good fontina and the cheese flavour was kind of pungent but the overall dish was bland and the baked spaghetti texture just wasn't a good fit.  We had this with a classic chocolate cake (I used this Food52 recipe), which turned out good, but not as fudgy as my go-to devil's food cake recipe and the frosting was only so-so.  Still on the hunt for the perfect quick and easy chocolate frosting (not buttercream).  This cake was adapted from the classic Hershey's chocolate cake recipe and I honestly think the Hershey's is better.  Can't improve on that.

Breakfast burritos: scrambled eggs with spinach, piled in a large flour tortilla that's been spread with refried beans (I made mine but easily could be canned), with some grated cheddar.  Rolled up burrito style and then pressed on a panini press and served with tomatillo salsa, sour cream, and guacamole.

Ribollita - basically a version of minestrone with kale, and lots of vegetables and plump canellini beans.  Topped with a very necessary dollop if Italian style salsa verde (parsley, mint, garlic, capers, etc.) and big slices of my sourdough bread with grated parm, toasted for dunking.

Yellow dhal with coconut and muttar paneer and brown basmati rice.

Leftover Micelli Monday taco meat became a giant taco salad - a whole heap of greens, diced tomatoes, sliced black olives, tossed together and topped with the taco meat, optional beans, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, and crunched up tortilla chips for extra texture.  

The Big Yam is obsessed (OBSESSED) with pulses of all shapes and sizes.  Good thing this year is the year of the pulse, according to the WHO.  This is an oldie, bacon-braised lentils, atop a bed of baby spinach, and breaded, fried pucks of goat's cheese to be smeared on crusty bread.  It's a go-to meatless meal.

My St. Paddy's day meal.  Once I started baking corned beef, I've never gone back.  I smear it with a paste of brown sugar and grainy mustard and then bake it in a foil packet until tender. With champ and roasted brussels sprouts and maple carrots.

This was the birthday bundt cake that I made for my mom that she didn't care for.  The recipe (from Baked Occasions) had me right up until I was supposed to mix a portion of the batter with cocoa powder and chocolate and use that to make the dark tunnel.  I dunno, I think I just like a classic, pound-cakey kind of bundt cake.  The chocolate-coconut tunnel was kind of dry and crumbly and tasted neither chocolately or coconutty.  I wouldn't make this again.

 Fin.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The World's Best Cake
Serves 10-12, technique adapted from Sweet Paul Magazine

10½ tablespoons (1 stick plus 21⁄2 tablespoons) butter, softened

1 2⁄ 3 cups granulated sugar, separated

1 1⁄ 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

5 large eggs, separated

1⁄ 3 cup whole milk

1⁄4 cup sliced almonds

1 cup heavy cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F, with a rack in the middle position. Line 2 8" round cake pans with parchment paper. Grease the pans and the paper.  The original recipe recommended using metal pans over glass. I had metal pans so that's what I used so I can't comment on the glass.
2. Beat the butter and 2⁄ 3 cup of the sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and creamy, about 3 minutes.
3. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well on low speed.
4. Mix in the egg yolks and milk.
5. Scrape the batter into the baking pan (the batter will be thick - I used an offset spatula to spread it).
6. In a large clean bowl, beat the egg whites and the remaining 1 cup sugar to soft peaks. Spread on top of the cake layer. Sprinkle with the almond slices.
7. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the meringue is golden brown and puffed. Cool on a wire rack in the pan. Gently unmold one of the cake layers and place cake-side-down on a serving platter.
8. When the cake is cool, put the cream in a medium bowl and add some vanilla extract (I used 1/2 tsp. of vanilla bean paste). Beat to medium-firm peaks with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes.
9. Cover the cake on the platter with the cream. Gently unmold the other cake from the baking pan.  Place the other half, meringue side up, on top.
10. Let the cake sit for 1 hour in the fridge before serving.

Formation

By now, everyone and their mother has seen Beyoncé's Formation video.  The think piece cottage industry has dutifully performed its reactionary function with assiduous alacrity, SNL has done a spoof, we've almost (but not quite) gotten to the inevitable backlash.

My immediate reaction to the video was a deep understanding of why black social media was so enthusiastically embracing this recognition from their self-anointed Queen coupled with a healthy dose of skepticism about Beyoncé's sudden political awakening.  I had an in-depth conversation with Dr. Rei about it, where we discussed whether this piece was "for" a non-black audience and who gets to say whether Bey is "authentic" or not, and I've had some time to marinate in this and absorb some thoughts from people much smarter than I, enough to formulate a tenuous, hopefully reflexive response, with the caveat that, as regular and faithful readers of this blurg now, I have not now, or ever been a member of the Bey-hive.

1) I made peace with the authenticity of Bey's strategically timed-political awakening (the timing, not necessarily the authenticity as a whole).  If she wants to get overtly political in her work now, then she's a grown a** woman, making her way in a workaday world, so if she wants to address this head-on now, then by all means, go for it.  And if it makes her basic white girl fans take a minute to contemplate the larger issues and systemic oppression of black bodies in contemporary North American society, all the better for it.

2) I would argue that the imagery of the video, the aestheticization of the black experience and the signifiers of southern blackness that she/the director (and for the purposes of this writing, Bey herself will stand in for the choices of the director) are invoking, the heavy hand with which these are put into play, diminishes the affect and meaning.  There are real bodies that drowned in New Orleans.  Creating that stylized aesthetic distance is somewhat problematic, but I'm not sure where I stand on that, only that I have misgivings.

And because I am now, and forever more rooted in a Marxist understanding of class and cultural studies, I would argue that the substitution of Bey's body for those real people, is a semiotic leap I cannot, in good faith, take.  The class privileges afforded to Bey separate her from those bodies.  Those people drowned not just because they were black, but perhaps moreso because they were poor, and the collusion between those two lines is impossible to untangle.  If Bey was actually in Katrina, there is no way that George W. Bush himself wouldn't have sent Air Force One to lift her out.

I get what she's getting at, but despite her southern black roots, I feel like the association has been severed.  You can't be BFFs with Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, possibly the personification of clueless white/class privilege and then think that your black female body can be inserted into that symbolic narrative.

Or can you?  I don't think so.  I am also suspect of the invocation of Katrina, over 10 years after the fact.  But who am I to say?  Am I allowed to talk about this?  Do identity politics and resistance necessarily entail a zero-sum game where we have to pick which of our identities we privilege - why does Bey have to choose whether shes' identifying as a woman, black, or rich?

Post-colonial studies taught me about strategic essentialism as a tool for working around the homogenizing effects of global capitalism.  Is that what Bey is doing?

3) I think it's important to divorce the reception of the video and read that as a separate thing.  There's the video itself, the audience, the constructs that make the production of such a video possible (music industry), the author of the video, and meaning is constructed in the spaces between all of these forces/actors.  I think the fact that for the most part, black social media lauded the video and wanted to see this mass-market representation of a particular black experience reflected is in itself, a worthy by-product and its own discussion.  Who is the audience for this video?  Is it white America?  Is it black America?  Is it a primer for white America to understand black America?  Does this hunger for reflection trump the more problematic, perhaps (and I say, perhaps) exploitative elements of the imagery?

I haven't come to a conclusion on this, but these considerations, this nuance, is all a necessary part of the conversation.

Less controversial - Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau's cringe-inducing number at an MLK event:

I showed this to Academic Book Club last week.  When I showed it to the Dotytron, I was like, "Isn't this the worst?!" and he's like, "Totally, she white-lines it through 9 different key changes in that last line!" which I think misses the point, but is so endearingly Dotytron.

Pretty low-key weekend up ahead for us, for which I am extremely grateful.

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.

No Dog Left Behind

I'm gradually emerging from my plague ridden state.  Monday was the first day that I've actually felt well again, after a fairly intense 3 week illness.  I spent most of the week previous in a sickness induced, didn't-get-the-job-and-feeling-surprisingly-crushed-about-it mind funk, emerging from my stupor to obsessively refresh the Weather Network site and track the satellite imagery because we were hosting TWELVE (12!!!) kids for the Big Yam's dinner and a movie birthday party.

It was intense.  Some people didn't RSVP and of course I didn't chase them because quite frankly, I was hoping they forgot and I didn't want to hear "oh yes, actually we ARE coming!" I was already getting stomach knots thinking about all those f**kers in my house.  We kept it very, very simple.  We showed Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs outside on the deck on a projection screen and prefaced that with a dinner (also outside) of hot dogs and Kraft Dinner with a fruit tray and a veggie tray.  Veggie straws, a bowl of gummy bears (as a shout out to the movie), and the piece de resistance, I made these cupcakes that look like spaghetti and meatballs (round tip yellow-tinted swiss meringue buttercream with a Fererro Rocher "meatball" dipped in a strawberry sauce and plopped on top).    The weather was being a pain and it kept threatening to rain all day, interspersed with glorious moments of sunshine.  We didn't know how to call it and finally just hoped for the best.  All the parents sent their kids with winter gear and sleeping bags and in the end, the rain held off and it was a lovely (albeit a tad cold) few hours outside.  One kid plaintively asked me at one point, "When do we get to go inside?" and I was like, "You don't.  This is an outside party."  LOL!  I'm a monster.

One kid was also being a whinge and finally I just said, "Do you want to go home?" and she said yes, so I just packed her up and walked her home.  For a few seconds it looked like she was waffling but I didn't give her a chance to change her mind.  I don't have the patience for that, man (which is why I'm not a teacher).  We served popcorn and lit an inaugural fire in our outdoor fire pit (read: corner of our concrete pad that we bricked in with leftover/found bricks).  In the end, my vision of a bunch of kids all snuggled up and giggling at the antics of Flint Lockwood and co. actually measured up to the reality, but not without some fraught moments.  It looked like things were going FUBAR when the party first started and all the kids were riled up and screaming like banshees in the backyard and I was frantically blowing up balloons to keep up with demand.

The weekend prior we had both my nephews sleep over while the rest of my siblings went to the annual hospital fundraising gala my mom's organization throws.  Little Ze, the older one, balked at eating one of my test-run cupcakes because he said it "tastes like pasta" and of course, the Big Yam picked it up and refused to eat the cupcakes I made for the party.  They also got properly country mouse-city mouse'd because our charming neighbours had one of their classic blow outs that somehow seemingly inevitably ends in a quasi psychotic episode with someone screaming obscenities in the street at an ungodly hour.  The Dotytron went to the bathroom and walked by the Big Yam's room to find my two nephews, wide awake, lights on, anxious and worried and unable to sleep.  Welcome to the big city, boys!  

I met with Academic Book Club last week.  I love those women, but we have very, very different value systems and we have very, very different cultural references some times.  JJ mentioned that she was shocked about the revelation shaking up the food blogging world that the authors of the blog, "Thug Kitchen" turned out to be white.  Thug Kitchen won Saveur Magazine's best new food blog of 2013 award.  I'm not sure why.  I've linked the blog so you should read some entries.  I've read lots of pieces about the racism implicit in invoking the use of the word "thug" in the blog title and the tone of the writing (Gawker, Jezebel), but honestly, it's fascinating to me because ALL YOU HAVE TO READ IS ONE ENTRY AND YOU COULD DEDUCE THAT IT'S NOT A "THUG" (READ: BLACK) PERSON WRITING THIS VEGAN FOOD BLOG.  The whole "the authors are white!" reveal is about 15 billion degrees less surprising than the most mundane reveal on Scandal (a show the Dotytron and I both love).  Like, because the author swears (in the clunkiest, most inelegant way imaginable - you can tell it's an affectation and doesn't come from someone who drops f-bombs as part of every day speech), it's "urban"?  There's no slang, the tone is all off, and yet, the fact that people bought in says so much to me about the privileged, rarified world of food writing and foodie culture.  James Oseland as an arbiter of urban culture?  I think not.  

Anyway, those ladies are lovely but very different from I.  A few weeks ago I got to parachute in as a ringer to the Dotytron's Record Club and guys, RECORD CLUB IS SO FUN.  It's a bit of a bro-down, so I'm not sure I'd be welcome to join (they've also curated the guest list to the nth degree because the vibe is super important to them), but, as an example, the theme was jungle music and the guys came over and we played records and DJ'd and then went to a club and danced until almost 3am. By comparison, at Academic Book Club, it's shaking it up when we meet at a restaurant (this time we met at District Oven, which is a pretty terrible Middle-Eastern-ish restaurant where they don't salt the house-made pita, which is a criminal offense, in my books) instead of at someone's house where we talk about our kids and pick at a desultory spread of baby carrots and grapes and Carr's water crackers, which are my Platonian ideal of a disgusting cracker I want to get as far away from as possible.

As this post has already ventured into potpourri category, my proposed tattoo is taking shape.  A few weeks ago, while spearing the last lonely, cold, congealed hot dog off a plate, I said to the Dotytron, "No dog left behind, is what I always say," and then said, "I should get that as my tattoo!"  Imagine it, a cute, 1950s style hot dog with "No dog left behind" underneath?  That's such a good motto, isn't it?  Not only insofar as it pertains to hot dogs, but also as a motto for how you deal with friends, family, etc.?  

I'm feeling a bit low, lately.  Not getting the job, when it's an internal competition, and you've been with the organization going on eight years now, is tough, mentally.  I can tell myself that I wasn't the right fit, that it's about being the right person at the right time for the organization, and I can try to pump myself up with so many Sheryl Sandberg platitudes about how your career isn't a ladder, but a jungle gym, etc...but I still fell off the jungle gym.  On my a**, on concrete (this is an old school jungle gym - none of that recycled rubber composite padding here!  I'm having a bit of an existential crisis about it, probably exacerbated by the fact that I'm back at work after 15 months off, and this is my LIFE, ya know?  I'm (presumably) done having kids, so my career is where I'm going to be spending the majority of my time and energy and I'm feeling a bit lost and directionless.  

Other things that don't help: being sick, calorie counting so I can't even take comfort in a pile of empty carbs, getting reacquainted with rush hour TTC streetcars.  

Things that do help: visits with friends, eyelash extensions from SMckay, saying "to hell with it" and buying myself a (cheap) leather purse from ASOS anyway, fall, a long to-watch list on Netflix, slow cooker meals, moving bedtime up for all the kids so that I get an extra half hour of "me" time in front of the TV, with my knitting and quilting in hand, and more time for reading.  These guys:

REMEMBER THESE GUYS?!?  

OK.  Those nerdbombers are such giant nerdbombers.  Look at how clueless and overwhelmed by life they were.  For real. 

This guy's new catch phrase:

He's really trying to make it stick.

Dinners around here, lately:

Hit up Ja Bistro with our Guu crew.  This is the large lobster sashimi platter.  They also served this blowtorched sushi (aburi) which is nice - kind of smoky from the edges getting singed, which offsets the sweetness of the rice and the cool centre of the fish really well.  Overall, I really liked the blowtorched stuff and obviously, a pile of sashimi is always delicious, but I felt like the giant ice platter didn't showcase each piece.  We were so busy gabbing and eating that I didn't get the full 

O-TORO-gasm that you get when the pieces are presented individually, or slowly.  I might go back, but I'm more likely to hit Guu up again.

Shrimp burrito bowl times

Last night's dinner was a sausage, kale, and white bean gratin with crispy torn bread topping and baked delicata and buttercup squash.  I pre-soaked and parboiled some cannellini beans and set the aside.  In a pan, I took about a pound of sausage out of the casing, and browned it, breaking up the chunks with a spoon.  Then I added onions, garlic, a bit of the bean water, and a whole giant head of kale, thinly sliced.  Cooked that down, then stirred in the beans and seasoned with salt and pepper.  I added some apple cider and about 2 ounces of smoked gouda, diced small to the pan, then topped it with bread torn into big chunks and tossed with oil, salt and pepper.  Baked until hot.  It was good, but needed a bit more...maybe some herbs, maybe some lemon zest, maybe some parmesan?  

I have a backlog of a million book and movie reviews.  Stay tuned.

Fin.

  

Holding Steady

The Wonder Twins had their 3 month check-up yesterday.  Prof. Gantok is weighing in a 9 1/2lbs and the Great Gazoo is about 8 1/2lbs, so they're you know, approaching 1 month old sized!  They killed it on their 1 month old assessment but I suspect that when I bring them back for their 4 month assessment, they will flunk.  The results of Prof. Gantok's ultrasound yesterday revealed that the new cyst was gone (or couldn't be detected) and the one that's been there from the get-go is showing no change in size.  So that's good.  We just have to continue to keep an eye on it.

I made this little graphic below to show how the Wonder Twins both look like their big bro, but in different ways:

It's like the Big Yam is a combination of his two little brothers 

- this pic is basically a punnett square (remember those? Grade 11 bio, say what!).  Also: I've got to stop taking pics with Prof. Gantok in the foreground, because he always looks WAY WAY WAY bigger than the Great Gazoo.

Now that the update is out of the way, can I talk about how much I hate Mackelmore (and by extension, Ryan Lewis)?  STOP LECTURING ME, MACKELMORE!  Gawd.  I hate, hate, hate him.  I am so not into some white dude from Seattle "saving" hip hop and civilizing it with his preachy, terrible music.  The Dotytron and I were talking about it - a white guy from Seattle who hasn't been a part of the "scene" in any meaningful way is not going to effectively address homophobia in a subculture.  Mackelmore might as well be Melissa Etheridge, for the effect he's going to have on those issues at large.  I know it doesn't have to be said: but I'm obviously not homophobic.  I just hate maudlin, heavy-handedness like that Mackelmore (and Ryan Lewis) song, "Same Love."  I also find the video really cheesy.  By the way, Ryan Lewis is like the "based on the novel Push by Sapphire" of the music world.  Anyway, my point is, changing notions of masculinity are going to have to come from people who are within the culture - like when the Game had that butterfly tattoo on his cheek.  

In other news of people I hate: Terry Richardson.  I know, I know, it's low hanging fruit, but still - that guy is THE WORST.  He directed that new Miley Cyrus video, for "Wreaking Ball" and it's so Terry Richardson that it makes me barf in my mouth a bit.  That being said, can anyone tell the difference between Terry Richardson and Dov Charney of American Apparel?  Not I.

Well, I ended up d**king around on the internet so much I ran out of time to gift you with additional pop culture reviews/musings.  I will say that I think Ai Wei Wei comes across like a bit of breakcore kid in that fawning documentary, Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry, but I will unpack that further when I have the capacity to be a bit more on point.

Fin.