It's my 200th post, and since I woke up with a sore throat, I've decided to don my finest pair of cranky pants and tell you all to get off my lawn. So to speak. Or to attack the very premise this blog has been based on. Namely: do hipsters even exist any more?
I mean, okay, yeah, sure, they do. There are plenty of folks with their fingers on the pulse of heart of the scene, or something equally meaningless. Writers and their editors, musicians and their internet admirers, fashion mavens and students, techno-geeks and media obsessives: they're all part of the hipster scene, still, because every generation and every city has its strata of people who are devoted to the New and the Now.
But when Leah McLaren (hiss!) puppy-dog-eyes the hipsters of Toronto's Queen West as "cute...with their porno mustaches, their ironic 8-track collection [and] their penchant for Top-Siders," it's enough to rage-grind my teeth into nubs. She trots out the Brooklyn-and-Berlin demographic, again, as if we haven't all heard about those neighbourhoods and cities as the epicentres of cooldom for the past, oh, decade. It'd be cute if she wasn't behaving like my grandma - this backlash began quite some time ago, Leah - and getting paid handsomely by the Globe to do it. Eye Weekly's Kate Carraway, in her brief survey of 2010's hipster scene, asks why hipsters have been dismissed as frivolous: "why these items and ideas — the straw-man black-framed glasses and who-cares-y-ness and the emphasis on detailed knowledge of art and culture mini-movements — are so potent for, say, half of a generation who have some access to an allowance and the internet. Writing off the unmanageable emotional ennui of the post-coddled, the deadening consumerism that the 1990s wrought and the subtlest class warfare probably EVER — while not even attempting to grasp why Vice's safe anarchy made total sense to millions of teenagers — is a serious Grown-Up Problem."
Carraway raises more of a point than McLaren, although I might just be biased. The whys and wherefores of the hipster isn't an issue rating a thesis statement...is it?
Challenge accepted! I came of age in a time when hipsters were just starting to resurface in pop culture. "Hipster" was previously an old-person word, more attached to the wanderings of Kerouac than the stylish pop music of Vampire Weekend. But as our culture moved into the new millennium, "hipster" started to mean someone who was posturingly cool: Marc Jacobs advertising campaigns, a sneered lip at white-bread teen comedies, more serious pop music. In a post-Britney world, a pair of black-rimmed glasses signified a rejection of all that bourgeois prepackaged bullshit. Ceci n'est pas les Ray-Bans, right? The internet brought emerging trends to the forefront like no tastemaking magazine could - websites devoted to "street style" curated fashionable looks from all over the planet into easy-to-ape slideshows, and the explosion of vintage stores and online shopping meant an escape from the mall's dreary sameness.
And then there's that other thing. I was seventeen years old in 2001, an year that was widely touted as bringing us "the death of irony." I know, it's lame to blame stuff on the World Trade Centre attacks, but it's hard to dismiss that moment as the defining pop culture moment of my generation, at least until they release the Hoverboards. The comfortable middle class had been attacked - okay, not really, but you'd never know it based on all the hysterical news coverage of A Post-9/11 World. The comfortable middle class's teenagers and college-aged students were thrust into a world that was suddenly less excited about looking forward into a newly scary world. Our popular culture longed for the pre-terrorism days, a nostalgic look back in time to when America (read: fancy white people) were mighty and powerful beings.
We ended up with fashion designers who ripped off 1980s punks in a bid for edginess, or bands who were compared (favourably!) to Hall and Oates. Hell, even the much-derided Tron has come back into style. What passes for edgy is often a ill-communicated attempt at politics: remember those controversial keffiyehs? Even war protests came with its own accessory.I know fashion is cyclical, but it seems weird that so much of what's considered "cool" these days has its origins in a hipster's childhood. Teens and 20-somethings are often folks with some cash; without a kid to support, or with the firm financial truss of living at home, we can blow our disposable income on, well, disposable stuff: beer, sunglasses, mp3s. And it's undeniably comforting to have these motifs of the past surrounding us. The uber-maligned Pabst Blue Ribbon, long rejected as the beer of hipsters, has been around since 1893, but its sales peaked in 1977 - right around the time our parents were hipsters themselves. In the new millennium, what we all seem to be longing for is a taste of what we had before.
We're feeding on leftovers, and hipsters, who, in a different generation would have been excoriated for recycling their parents' trends, have been praised for it. We like comfort. We like sameness - how many times have you heard someone exclaim, "Hipsters! They think they're sooo special, but they all look the same!" Maybe this media ripple about hipsters and their place in the world will force some of our generation's tastemakers to expand our collective horizons. Instead of lauding dingy dive bars, retro-inspired fashions, retread music and movie pitches, and the utter refusal to get our shit together, move out, on and up in the world, we can start making our own new stuff. I'm hungry for the Next Big Thing, not the last gasp of a now-futile demographic.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
That Krampus Spirit
You know, for once I'm not feeling down on the holiday season. In fact, aside from the incessant, cloying holiday music piped into Shoppers Drug Mart, I've barely registered the Christmas hoopla at all.
This sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. Arriving at my parents' place, I found my mom's paper mache carolers perched by the door, and glittery snowflakes suspended from the chandeliers. I was charmed! December 18, a scant week before The Big Day, and it was my first real run-in with Christmas. In years past, I've been hypersensitive to the holiday cheer. Too much (read: any) exposure to it, and I was transformed into a poisonous cocktail of Scrooge and the Grinch. Who, you know, isn't an especially fun character, especially for folks like my mom, who genuinely likes Christmas. She was sad to learn that I wouldn't personally decorate for Xmas; if she left the house bare for the month of December, I'm sure my peabrain would register it as "different," but I wouldn't rush out and replace all the vintage Rudolph dolls and stuffed singing church mice with gleaming new decorations.
Like so many family things, Christmas is a layer cake. The decorations are just frosting: they pretty up the family dinners, the kids in pajamas clutching new toys, the champagne in the hot tub, the cookies for Santa, the wistful longing for gifts you know you'll never get, the traditions and the memories. Some of those memories are great, like the year my sister received a board for Christmas, with a jolly promise that it would become a dollhouse. Some are less awesome, especially if you're from a family with issues - booze, food, money, parent/child relationships, sibling drama, and travel stress all comes into play for plenty of people. Maybe you - if not, you're lucky. And if not you, then definitely some of the people you care about, people with whom you might celebrate the holidays.
When you think about it, the end of the year is kind of intense. There are so many events packed into, like, a month (although I swear I heard Christmas ditties in October this year, which is insane and, of course, unacceptable), and not just for the Christians, either. Muslims have Eid, Jews have Hanukkah, and everyone is oppressed by their decision not to live on the equator and therefore engage in seasons, leading to "days" in Toronto that are less than nine hours of sunlight. If the sun even shines at all that day. Raise your hand if you'd like to come with me to Miami for a while; I bet we could get a killer group rate. Ready? Okay! Next week!
Anyway, no matter what your cultural heritage, there's a place for darkness in the holiday months. I've finally stumbled upon Krampus, who promises to make Christmas way more bearable in the upcoming years. Krampus is a European (mostly German and Serbian) tradition that hitches up with the popular Saint Nickolas figure. While Saint Nick obligingly brings the treats, Krampus brings the coal. For especially naughty kids, Krampus also, uh, escorts them directly to hell. Which I LOVE.
It's always sort of bothered me that there was no yin to Santa's yang: every story has a black hat and a white hat, a saviour and a trickster. In the year 2010 in North America, Christmas has two good guys (Santa and The Baby Jesus) and no bad guys, unless you count whatever sadistic advertising agency is drumming up the schmaltzy seasonal ads that are ostensibly designed to sell razors but end up making the audience feel like they should call their fathers immediately to make sure they haven't died. But there wasn't a real sense of urgency around the be-good-or-else line of reasoning. If I was morally decrepit, I might take a miss on the gift basket. Worse case scenario, I get some lumps of coal? Pfft. But Krampus puts a more terrifying spin on the season. My kids will be well versed in Krampus. It's only fair.
It's not just the discovery of an archaic seasonal demon that's put a smile on my face. Being home is nice, being newly employed is a heady treat, I've fallen in love with a new TV show, there have been some great friend visits and some lovely dates. For a time of year that's usually been a real buzz-kill, this December has actually been surprisingly great. Maybe it's part of getting older. When you're a kid, Christmas is the point of your whole life: presents and missing school?! What? After I outgrew the childhood version of the holidays, I took a scorched-earth approach to the season, hating its frivolity and commercialization and resenting it for the intrusion on my schedule. Now I'm sort of excited about it, because it's bringing new traditions and old friends into my life. How I can stay mad at you, Saint Nickolas? But seriously, next year, bring your Krampus friend to the office party. He looks like a hoot.
This sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. Arriving at my parents' place, I found my mom's paper mache carolers perched by the door, and glittery snowflakes suspended from the chandeliers. I was charmed! December 18, a scant week before The Big Day, and it was my first real run-in with Christmas. In years past, I've been hypersensitive to the holiday cheer. Too much (read: any) exposure to it, and I was transformed into a poisonous cocktail of Scrooge and the Grinch. Who, you know, isn't an especially fun character, especially for folks like my mom, who genuinely likes Christmas. She was sad to learn that I wouldn't personally decorate for Xmas; if she left the house bare for the month of December, I'm sure my peabrain would register it as "different," but I wouldn't rush out and replace all the vintage Rudolph dolls and stuffed singing church mice with gleaming new decorations.
Like so many family things, Christmas is a layer cake. The decorations are just frosting: they pretty up the family dinners, the kids in pajamas clutching new toys, the champagne in the hot tub, the cookies for Santa, the wistful longing for gifts you know you'll never get, the traditions and the memories. Some of those memories are great, like the year my sister received a board for Christmas, with a jolly promise that it would become a dollhouse. Some are less awesome, especially if you're from a family with issues - booze, food, money, parent/child relationships, sibling drama, and travel stress all comes into play for plenty of people. Maybe you - if not, you're lucky. And if not you, then definitely some of the people you care about, people with whom you might celebrate the holidays.
When you think about it, the end of the year is kind of intense. There are so many events packed into, like, a month (although I swear I heard Christmas ditties in October this year, which is insane and, of course, unacceptable), and not just for the Christians, either. Muslims have Eid, Jews have Hanukkah, and everyone is oppressed by their decision not to live on the equator and therefore engage in seasons, leading to "days" in Toronto that are less than nine hours of sunlight. If the sun even shines at all that day. Raise your hand if you'd like to come with me to Miami for a while; I bet we could get a killer group rate. Ready? Okay! Next week!
Anyway, no matter what your cultural heritage, there's a place for darkness in the holiday months. I've finally stumbled upon Krampus, who promises to make Christmas way more bearable in the upcoming years. Krampus is a European (mostly German and Serbian) tradition that hitches up with the popular Saint Nickolas figure. While Saint Nick obligingly brings the treats, Krampus brings the coal. For especially naughty kids, Krampus also, uh, escorts them directly to hell. Which I LOVE.
It's always sort of bothered me that there was no yin to Santa's yang: every story has a black hat and a white hat, a saviour and a trickster. In the year 2010 in North America, Christmas has two good guys (Santa and The Baby Jesus) and no bad guys, unless you count whatever sadistic advertising agency is drumming up the schmaltzy seasonal ads that are ostensibly designed to sell razors but end up making the audience feel like they should call their fathers immediately to make sure they haven't died. But there wasn't a real sense of urgency around the be-good-or-else line of reasoning. If I was morally decrepit, I might take a miss on the gift basket. Worse case scenario, I get some lumps of coal? Pfft. But Krampus puts a more terrifying spin on the season. My kids will be well versed in Krampus. It's only fair.
It's not just the discovery of an archaic seasonal demon that's put a smile on my face. Being home is nice, being newly employed is a heady treat, I've fallen in love with a new TV show, there have been some great friend visits and some lovely dates. For a time of year that's usually been a real buzz-kill, this December has actually been surprisingly great. Maybe it's part of getting older. When you're a kid, Christmas is the point of your whole life: presents and missing school?! What? After I outgrew the childhood version of the holidays, I took a scorched-earth approach to the season, hating its frivolity and commercialization and resenting it for the intrusion on my schedule. Now I'm sort of excited about it, because it's bringing new traditions and old friends into my life. How I can stay mad at you, Saint Nickolas? But seriously, next year, bring your Krampus friend to the office party. He looks like a hoot.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Crazies
My pal Kelli recently wrote a post about her summer-induced weight gain. A yearly cycle, she figures it's the beer, the hot dogs and the fro-yo that adds a few pounds to her frame, and in the winter she takes it off with a more rigorous workout schedule. It should be noted that Kelli fluctuates between "bony" and "svelte" in her annual gain/loss rollercoaster, and she looks great, fit and toned, no matter how much she moans about her ice cream consumption and the effect it has on her ass.
I'm the opposite. Usually I'm more active in the summer months, when biking and walking and sweating and not wanting to eat anything except ice pops and watercress melts (ha!) off the pounds . My body type is curvier than hers - even at my skinniest, I probably weigh in a few classes above her. But now, unemployed, post-surgery, and without a defined workout schedule, I'm getting...fat.
Oh, boo. I know it's not kosher for women to say they're fat. We've all been socialized to refer to our overweight friends as "a little heavy" or tell each other, "she's a big girl" and do that thing where we hold our arms away from our bodies and sort of shake them a little - I guess to convey all their glorious jiggliness . But rarely do we break down and actually verbalize the words "fat" or "overweight" or "obese." It seems too harsh for the people we care about, so we tiptoe around the words and use those ridiculous jiggly arms.
Let's be clear: I am not what you might call "sane" when it comes to weight and body issues. I've spent upwards of a decade struggling with eating disorders and the auxiliary body image issues it creates. Sometimes, when I look at my body, I feel humiliated and betrayed. Later that day, I might feel strong and sexy. It's a crapshoot. Certain things trigger the bad-body-moods more reliably than others: if I weigh myself, it's almost guaranteed to bother and annoy me for at least a few days, and to make me hyperaware of my physical flaws. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with the idea that I can gain some weight without wanting to throw myself under a streetcar; it's taking even longer to figure out how to get to a healthy size without going crazy in the process.
But. The numbers don't lie, and I've gained. The Body Mass Index calculations, while flawed, does give you a rough estimation of where you should be, weight-wise. My sister is adamantly opposed to it; since it fails to take into account extreme muscle mass (which would be an indicator of fitness, not obesity), it's apparently flawed and untrustworthy. I use the BMI system, mostly because it affords me more wiggle room than the height/weight ratio system. But no matter what system you use to calculate where you are and where you should be when that scale stops spinning, nobody can deny that there's magic in those numbers. And when they creep up and up, it causes a certain mindset (hello!) to freak right the fuck out.
One of the main issues with eating disorders is that they reward the sufferer with endorphins, those fun-ass brain chemicals that make us feel better. Learning how to eat and exercise without the benefit of the euphoria is...sort of a drag. In the sense that exercise is hard and annoying and makes you sweaty, and alternative methods take, like, ten minutes. They also lead to a next-level spectrum of bodily impairment, which exercise, unless you're doing it wrong, won't do. And they make you crazy. So don't do it. Eat your food, keep it down.
So I'm trying something new: acceptance. Oh, I'm still not really pleased with the way I look. But I'm trying to focus on the positive. I have great hair. My ass seems to have some admirers. I'm not deranged. When I feel crappy, I'll go for a run. And since I'm feeling pretty crappy about my bod these days, and the numbers on the scale, and how tight my pants have gotten, I bet I'll be going for a lot of runs. Nice, sane, healthy, non-crazy runs. Wish me luck.
I'm the opposite. Usually I'm more active in the summer months, when biking and walking and sweating and not wanting to eat anything except ice pops and watercress melts (ha!) off the pounds . My body type is curvier than hers - even at my skinniest, I probably weigh in a few classes above her. But now, unemployed, post-surgery, and without a defined workout schedule, I'm getting...fat.
Oh, boo. I know it's not kosher for women to say they're fat. We've all been socialized to refer to our overweight friends as "a little heavy" or tell each other, "she's a big girl" and do that thing where we hold our arms away from our bodies and sort of shake them a little - I guess to convey all their glorious jiggliness . But rarely do we break down and actually verbalize the words "fat" or "overweight" or "obese." It seems too harsh for the people we care about, so we tiptoe around the words and use those ridiculous jiggly arms.
Let's be clear: I am not what you might call "sane" when it comes to weight and body issues. I've spent upwards of a decade struggling with eating disorders and the auxiliary body image issues it creates. Sometimes, when I look at my body, I feel humiliated and betrayed. Later that day, I might feel strong and sexy. It's a crapshoot. Certain things trigger the bad-body-moods more reliably than others: if I weigh myself, it's almost guaranteed to bother and annoy me for at least a few days, and to make me hyperaware of my physical flaws. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with the idea that I can gain some weight without wanting to throw myself under a streetcar; it's taking even longer to figure out how to get to a healthy size without going crazy in the process.
But. The numbers don't lie, and I've gained. The Body Mass Index calculations, while flawed, does give you a rough estimation of where you should be, weight-wise. My sister is adamantly opposed to it; since it fails to take into account extreme muscle mass (which would be an indicator of fitness, not obesity), it's apparently flawed and untrustworthy. I use the BMI system, mostly because it affords me more wiggle room than the height/weight ratio system. But no matter what system you use to calculate where you are and where you should be when that scale stops spinning, nobody can deny that there's magic in those numbers. And when they creep up and up, it causes a certain mindset (hello!) to freak right the fuck out.
One of the main issues with eating disorders is that they reward the sufferer with endorphins, those fun-ass brain chemicals that make us feel better. Learning how to eat and exercise without the benefit of the euphoria is...sort of a drag. In the sense that exercise is hard and annoying and makes you sweaty, and alternative methods take, like, ten minutes. They also lead to a next-level spectrum of bodily impairment, which exercise, unless you're doing it wrong, won't do. And they make you crazy. So don't do it. Eat your food, keep it down.
So I'm trying something new: acceptance. Oh, I'm still not really pleased with the way I look. But I'm trying to focus on the positive. I have great hair. My ass seems to have some admirers. I'm not deranged. When I feel crappy, I'll go for a run. And since I'm feeling pretty crappy about my bod these days, and the numbers on the scale, and how tight my pants have gotten, I bet I'll be going for a lot of runs. Nice, sane, healthy, non-crazy runs. Wish me luck.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
In The Key of Suck
I blame Glee. When the ultra-popular teenage soap started last fall, glee clubs were a minor and half-remembered slice of high school, a place for the musical-theatre nerds to blow off steam between angsty productions of The Secret Garden; now it's a place for middle-aged soccer moms to showcase their mediocrity during the holiday season.
Let me back up. I occasionally do some ushering for the Ryerson University theatre. It's a good gig: show up, rip tickets, watch a show, and get paid. Last year I lucked into the holiday dance showcase, and this fall I worked the Toronto Film Festival (hot tip: Let Me In isn't as good as its Swedish source material, and the hipster romance Blue Valentine is unbelievably boring!). Tonight, I ushered in a thousand friends and family members to a local singing choir - I'll omit the name, to save the well-meaning participants more embarrassment than they already suffered - and watched as they butchered nineteen radio hits.
They were a sweet bunch, in their black knee-length dresses and their black collared shirts. During one number, they donned sunglasses. It was cute! But they weren't talented. No, their talents lay elsewhere. I'm sure some of them are great drivers, or wonderful at decorating cupcakes. I have no doubt that some of them are experts on, like, oral sex, or Michael Caine impressions. But were they talented songbirds? They, unfortunately, were not.
Clearly influenced by Glee, the group included Rolling Stones numbers and closed with the Journey song "Don't Stop Believing", which both opened and closed the first season of Glee. This was right after they massacred "Your Song", the Elton John classic that my parents favour. I love that song; this version was offensive in its terribleness. Other selections included Sly and the Family Stone and the Black Eyed Peas (this choir was fully 100% white, it should be noted), and a stiff version of "Hide and Seek" that left me scratching my head.
So, here's the problem. I like singing. I like it when adults sing - many of the CDs I buy are by adults. I like it when children perform, because children are usually pretty cute, and cuteness gets you a lot of mileage with me. But if you're an adult and you want to sing in public, you should do what other adults do when they want to sing in public: get blind drunk and go to a karaoke bar. You don't rent a hall and charge your favourite people money to come watch you clap your way through "Go For A Soda." That's silly.
Professional choirs are something else entirely. When you have to audition to get in, it changes it from being the 40+ equivalent of those Little League games where everyone gets a "Participant!" ribbon, into a legitimate artistic endeavor. But if you can just show up? If the only obstacle for joining is buying a knee-length black dress? That's sort of...lame. I'm not saying don't sing. I like singing, even though I'm horrible - I have this reedy little voice, and I've listened to so much Fever Ray at this point that I sing with a Swedish accent - but just reconsider joining a league of equally middle-of-the-road performers. It's just a little embarrassing.
Look: if you're a good singer, audition for a grown-up choir; you know, one with standards. And if you can't get in, then maybe singing isn't for you. There's no shame in being bad at something. I'm no good at stock car racing, so I don't spend a lot of time on the ol' oval. "But it's not hurting anyone!" I can hear you saying disapprovingly. Yes. It's hurting. It hurts to have to lie ("That was so good!"), and hear your favourite songs ruined. These men and women have other talents, I'm sure of it. Maybe it's time to showcase something they're actually, um, good at. But I know this is a pipe dream...I'll see you next year, at the 2011 Holiday Showcase!
Let me back up. I occasionally do some ushering for the Ryerson University theatre. It's a good gig: show up, rip tickets, watch a show, and get paid. Last year I lucked into the holiday dance showcase, and this fall I worked the Toronto Film Festival (hot tip: Let Me In isn't as good as its Swedish source material, and the hipster romance Blue Valentine is unbelievably boring!). Tonight, I ushered in a thousand friends and family members to a local singing choir - I'll omit the name, to save the well-meaning participants more embarrassment than they already suffered - and watched as they butchered nineteen radio hits.
They were a sweet bunch, in their black knee-length dresses and their black collared shirts. During one number, they donned sunglasses. It was cute! But they weren't talented. No, their talents lay elsewhere. I'm sure some of them are great drivers, or wonderful at decorating cupcakes. I have no doubt that some of them are experts on, like, oral sex, or Michael Caine impressions. But were they talented songbirds? They, unfortunately, were not.
Clearly influenced by Glee, the group included Rolling Stones numbers and closed with the Journey song "Don't Stop Believing", which both opened and closed the first season of Glee. This was right after they massacred "Your Song", the Elton John classic that my parents favour. I love that song; this version was offensive in its terribleness. Other selections included Sly and the Family Stone and the Black Eyed Peas (this choir was fully 100% white, it should be noted), and a stiff version of "Hide and Seek" that left me scratching my head.
So, here's the problem. I like singing. I like it when adults sing - many of the CDs I buy are by adults. I like it when children perform, because children are usually pretty cute, and cuteness gets you a lot of mileage with me. But if you're an adult and you want to sing in public, you should do what other adults do when they want to sing in public: get blind drunk and go to a karaoke bar. You don't rent a hall and charge your favourite people money to come watch you clap your way through "Go For A Soda." That's silly.
Professional choirs are something else entirely. When you have to audition to get in, it changes it from being the 40+ equivalent of those Little League games where everyone gets a "Participant!" ribbon, into a legitimate artistic endeavor. But if you can just show up? If the only obstacle for joining is buying a knee-length black dress? That's sort of...lame. I'm not saying don't sing. I like singing, even though I'm horrible - I have this reedy little voice, and I've listened to so much Fever Ray at this point that I sing with a Swedish accent - but just reconsider joining a league of equally middle-of-the-road performers. It's just a little embarrassing.
Look: if you're a good singer, audition for a grown-up choir; you know, one with standards. And if you can't get in, then maybe singing isn't for you. There's no shame in being bad at something. I'm no good at stock car racing, so I don't spend a lot of time on the ol' oval. "But it's not hurting anyone!" I can hear you saying disapprovingly. Yes. It's hurting. It hurts to have to lie ("That was so good!"), and hear your favourite songs ruined. These men and women have other talents, I'm sure of it. Maybe it's time to showcase something they're actually, um, good at. But I know this is a pipe dream...I'll see you next year, at the 2011 Holiday Showcase!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Dance Caving In
Last night I went to the Dance Cave, the venerable Toronto institution that specializes in retro dance parties and allowing girls to get humped by creepy perverts. I love the Dance Cave, more so since I spotted it standing in for Tom Cruises' "Caribbean nightclub" in the horrible movie Cocktail. I love it in a tolerant, sigh-inducing way. I love the way you can't wear sandals there because the floor is a sticky mess of beer and broken glass. I hate the infestation of crappy U of T kids on the weekend, with the full admission that I was once one of those crappy U of T kids. I love it, with strings.
But the main reason I love the Dance Cave, aside from when the DJ plays The Prodigy's 1995 single "Poison" during her retro-'80s night (and I danced so hard one of my boobs fell out a little), is that it's a node on the scene of the people.
Okay, I know that sounds stupid. Hear me out. Remember high school? Where everyone was mashed in together, so you had goths mixing with preps mixing with nerds mixing with pretty girls mixing with drama queens? Remember how awkward that was? Sometime after you left high school, you started to wonder where all the people who aren't you/your friends ended up. Whatever happened to the dramatic goth-lite kids who would smoke cigarettes behind the high school and come late to every class? What became of the stoner boys who were so beautiful and so high? Where did the D&D kids go, the ones who had twelve-sided die and tiny hand-painted figurines of warrior-elfs? What about the hipster-nerds, who started fight clubs in their mom's basement and who had girlfriend who never let them get to third base? Where are those people?
Because as we get older, we start self-selecting more and more for the people who are just like us. It's not a bad thing: I like my nerdy obsessions, and well past the judgmental, self-conscious confines of high school, I don't have to justify them. They're accepted by my friends and family as just Stuff We Are Into: Scott Pilgrim comics, zombie lore, bikes, weird beers, DIY haircuts, cheap sushi, the occasional foray into nature (or a close facsimile), the library. It's not that we don't interact with other people, other types of people. But do we brush up against them in such close quarters? (The subway during rush hour doesn't count.) We don't.
So even though we see the girl with blue dreadlocks on the subway, commuting to her CSR job with Rogers, listening to early Nine Inch Nails and staring into space like the rest of the ridership, we don't often see her in her natural habitat. If you want see the girls who wore cardigans and had a salon haircut, just stake out any brunch spot or Indigo books - you'll see her there, eating muffins with her boyfriend. But how many folks head out to the Dance Cave on a Monday night? Not a lot. And if you do head there, you're likely to see the girl with the blue dreadlocks. Why there? Why not at brunch? Because they rarely play big beat at Aunties and Uncles.
Frankly, I was chuffed to see a bunch of folks in their mid-30s to late-40s standing around at the Dance Cave last night. Clearly, they knew each other - maybe from other venues and events, maybe from working together through the years, maybe through friends. They were there because it was clearly one of "their places" - a venue that serves most, if not all, of their needs for a night out. And it was casual. Having a few beers and dancing to The Cure and the Chemical Brothers is just a Monday night, the way some folks always bookmark Saturday morning for the farmer's market, or Wednesday evenings for Bible study. It's a place to come together, and to feel comfortable (as comfortable as you can be dancing in leather pants and knee-high jackboots, anyway). I love that - there are so many ways of existing. Sometimes, without them right in front of my face, it's easy to forget that. Last night was a welcome reminder that, sometimes, the dark side just wants to go dancing.
But the main reason I love the Dance Cave, aside from when the DJ plays The Prodigy's 1995 single "Poison" during her retro-'80s night (and I danced so hard one of my boobs fell out a little), is that it's a node on the scene of the people.
Okay, I know that sounds stupid. Hear me out. Remember high school? Where everyone was mashed in together, so you had goths mixing with preps mixing with nerds mixing with pretty girls mixing with drama queens? Remember how awkward that was? Sometime after you left high school, you started to wonder where all the people who aren't you/your friends ended up. Whatever happened to the dramatic goth-lite kids who would smoke cigarettes behind the high school and come late to every class? What became of the stoner boys who were so beautiful and so high? Where did the D&D kids go, the ones who had twelve-sided die and tiny hand-painted figurines of warrior-elfs? What about the hipster-nerds, who started fight clubs in their mom's basement and who had girlfriend who never let them get to third base? Where are those people?
Because as we get older, we start self-selecting more and more for the people who are just like us. It's not a bad thing: I like my nerdy obsessions, and well past the judgmental, self-conscious confines of high school, I don't have to justify them. They're accepted by my friends and family as just Stuff We Are Into: Scott Pilgrim comics, zombie lore, bikes, weird beers, DIY haircuts, cheap sushi, the occasional foray into nature (or a close facsimile), the library. It's not that we don't interact with other people, other types of people. But do we brush up against them in such close quarters? (The subway during rush hour doesn't count.) We don't.
So even though we see the girl with blue dreadlocks on the subway, commuting to her CSR job with Rogers, listening to early Nine Inch Nails and staring into space like the rest of the ridership, we don't often see her in her natural habitat. If you want see the girls who wore cardigans and had a salon haircut, just stake out any brunch spot or Indigo books - you'll see her there, eating muffins with her boyfriend. But how many folks head out to the Dance Cave on a Monday night? Not a lot. And if you do head there, you're likely to see the girl with the blue dreadlocks. Why there? Why not at brunch? Because they rarely play big beat at Aunties and Uncles.
Frankly, I was chuffed to see a bunch of folks in their mid-30s to late-40s standing around at the Dance Cave last night. Clearly, they knew each other - maybe from other venues and events, maybe from working together through the years, maybe through friends. They were there because it was clearly one of "their places" - a venue that serves most, if not all, of their needs for a night out. And it was casual. Having a few beers and dancing to The Cure and the Chemical Brothers is just a Monday night, the way some folks always bookmark Saturday morning for the farmer's market, or Wednesday evenings for Bible study. It's a place to come together, and to feel comfortable (as comfortable as you can be dancing in leather pants and knee-high jackboots, anyway). I love that - there are so many ways of existing. Sometimes, without them right in front of my face, it's easy to forget that. Last night was a welcome reminder that, sometimes, the dark side just wants to go dancing.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Wedding Bells
Ever since one of my best gals from high school got engaged last month, I've been all over the wedding scene. Oh, I'm not a bridesmaid or anything - one of the benefits of losing touch with 90% of your high school chums is that you end up very uninvolved in the matrimonial party - but I've been thinking about my wedding, and about what my fancy day might be like.
I wasn't one of those kids who was obsessed with weddings. I wasn't really a dress-up kid; my sister was, but instead of donning pretend veils, she basically dressed like a Day-Glo version of Siouxsie Sioux. My younger sister has a juvenile punk streak a mile wide, which is odd, because now she dresses like a prepster with a hidden jones for jumpsuits. We all have our quirks.
I was more of the reading type, and the reading I did was balanced between trash-o-rama Sweet Vally Sagas and more highbrow kidslit like The Giver. Sweet Valley was just infested with melodramatic tales of lost love, where one night of passion before leaving for war turns into a young girl's "lifelong mistake" (i.e. pregnancy and shame-children), thus propagating the species for another generation without diluting any of the drama of the final-chapter wedding bells. Sweet Valley Sagas, for those of you with better taste or penises, were what you get when you combine one part icing sugar, three parts desperate love, a quarter-cup reincarnation, and a passing acquaintance with historical fiction. They. Were. Awesome.
In any case, though, they didn't fuel any obsession with marriage. My parents' wedding was low-key; my mom made her own wedding dress, a size-two number with ribbons. My dad sported an 1980s mustache. Although the last Royal Wedding was in 1983, the year of my birth, I don't come from a culture that's all about giant froofy dresses or spending tens of thousands of dollars on Your Special Day. My parents were wed in my grandparents' home. In my family, if you want drop thousands of dollars, you'd better be picking up some real estate.
But my family way isn't the only way to do things, and there's a serious wedding industry out there. The Canadian wedding scene alone rakes in about four billion dollars - to put that in perspective, that's more than we collectively spend on foreign aid and international development. From magazines to TV shows, from cakes to cake toppers, from gowns to feathery...hat...things, from rings to DJs to venues to celebratory DVDs, it's a mega money machine.
Depending on where you're coming from, folks seem to either buy into that, or want to go their own way. Wedding magazines regularly encourage couples to drop student-loan-worthy amounts on their wedding day, but some (and as much flak as she gets, Martha Stewart really is the best for this) point couples in a more DIY direction. Less traditional often equals less expensive, since wedding purveyors haven't clued in to the idea that 120 fancy cookies can be for a wedding the same way a four-tier cake is. And doing it yourself gives brides and grooms a level of control over their giant paper flower decorations that buying really misses out on.
My girlfriend from high school seems to be going the lo-fi route. Her engagement ring is a gorgeous pearl set-up, bucking the diamonds-are-forever trend that bloody De Beers pimps so hard. My mom got no ring - "I think I got a dog" - and my friend Rachel has long proclaimed that if and when she gets engaged, she wants a tapestry. "Rings signify ownership," she says. I tend to disagree, unless they're clamped around my ankle with a ball and chain, but during this summer's OTT heatwaves, I was like, "Screw diamond rings, what I want to be proposed with is a Dyson Bladeless fan."
I haven't really been to a lot of real-type weddings. Maybe one or two, where there's a venue and a first dance and a sit-down dinner, and not in the last few years. My pals have mostly Done It Themselves: my friend Ewan had a choir of his friends sing him and his bride down the aisle. The friends were dressed as Star Trek crew members. Liz and Toby eloped: they invited my mom, who brought my teenage, basketball-shorts-wearing brother. One of the "bridesmaids" wore ski goggles in an attempt to neutralize the August sun's UV rays. It was...unusual. Nobody's worn ugly bridesmaid dresses or shoved cake in their beloved's face.
But I love pretty, fancy things, and I love love, so weddings are really appealing to me. I'm not a huge fan of polished, glossy business. I like my celebrations like I like my men: a little rough around the edges. For example, the recent trend of hand-tooled and rough-cut engagement rings looks gorgeous to me. It's lovely, not ostentatious bling, and unexpected. Or this couple's wedding photos, which were taken in a gallery and show off her dark teal wedge sandals and gown beautifully. I love that splash of the unexpected - not everyone wants to be a princess on her wedding day. Some of us want to be David Bowie.
No matter how a wedding shakes down, ultimately it's not about the first dance, or the chicken/fish, or the groomsmen shagging one of the bridesmaids, or any of the other things each couple strives for to set their party apart. It's a celebration of love, of unity, of promises. Whether it's just two people who love each other very much running down to City Hall, or a day-long affair with 400 of the couple's friends, relatives, neighbours, former bosses and personal shoppers, the point isn't the "stuff" of the wedding. Nobody cares if the entree has ginger or the flower girl trips. What people want, what we care about, is that magic moment that says, "You may now kiss the bride."
I wasn't one of those kids who was obsessed with weddings. I wasn't really a dress-up kid; my sister was, but instead of donning pretend veils, she basically dressed like a Day-Glo version of Siouxsie Sioux. My younger sister has a juvenile punk streak a mile wide, which is odd, because now she dresses like a prepster with a hidden jones for jumpsuits. We all have our quirks.
I was more of the reading type, and the reading I did was balanced between trash-o-rama Sweet Vally Sagas and more highbrow kidslit like The Giver. Sweet Valley was just infested with melodramatic tales of lost love, where one night of passion before leaving for war turns into a young girl's "lifelong mistake" (i.e. pregnancy and shame-children), thus propagating the species for another generation without diluting any of the drama of the final-chapter wedding bells. Sweet Valley Sagas, for those of you with better taste or penises, were what you get when you combine one part icing sugar, three parts desperate love, a quarter-cup reincarnation, and a passing acquaintance with historical fiction. They. Were. Awesome.
In any case, though, they didn't fuel any obsession with marriage. My parents' wedding was low-key; my mom made her own wedding dress, a size-two number with ribbons. My dad sported an 1980s mustache. Although the last Royal Wedding was in 1983, the year of my birth, I don't come from a culture that's all about giant froofy dresses or spending tens of thousands of dollars on Your Special Day. My parents were wed in my grandparents' home. In my family, if you want drop thousands of dollars, you'd better be picking up some real estate.
But my family way isn't the only way to do things, and there's a serious wedding industry out there. The Canadian wedding scene alone rakes in about four billion dollars - to put that in perspective, that's more than we collectively spend on foreign aid and international development. From magazines to TV shows, from cakes to cake toppers, from gowns to feathery...hat...things, from rings to DJs to venues to celebratory DVDs, it's a mega money machine.
Depending on where you're coming from, folks seem to either buy into that, or want to go their own way. Wedding magazines regularly encourage couples to drop student-loan-worthy amounts on their wedding day, but some (and as much flak as she gets, Martha Stewart really is the best for this) point couples in a more DIY direction. Less traditional often equals less expensive, since wedding purveyors haven't clued in to the idea that 120 fancy cookies can be for a wedding the same way a four-tier cake is. And doing it yourself gives brides and grooms a level of control over their giant paper flower decorations that buying really misses out on.
My girlfriend from high school seems to be going the lo-fi route. Her engagement ring is a gorgeous pearl set-up, bucking the diamonds-are-forever trend that bloody De Beers pimps so hard. My mom got no ring - "I think I got a dog" - and my friend Rachel has long proclaimed that if and when she gets engaged, she wants a tapestry. "Rings signify ownership," she says. I tend to disagree, unless they're clamped around my ankle with a ball and chain, but during this summer's OTT heatwaves, I was like, "Screw diamond rings, what I want to be proposed with is a Dyson Bladeless fan."
I haven't really been to a lot of real-type weddings. Maybe one or two, where there's a venue and a first dance and a sit-down dinner, and not in the last few years. My pals have mostly Done It Themselves: my friend Ewan had a choir of his friends sing him and his bride down the aisle. The friends were dressed as Star Trek crew members. Liz and Toby eloped: they invited my mom, who brought my teenage, basketball-shorts-wearing brother. One of the "bridesmaids" wore ski goggles in an attempt to neutralize the August sun's UV rays. It was...unusual. Nobody's worn ugly bridesmaid dresses or shoved cake in their beloved's face.
But I love pretty, fancy things, and I love love, so weddings are really appealing to me. I'm not a huge fan of polished, glossy business. I like my celebrations like I like my men: a little rough around the edges. For example, the recent trend of hand-tooled and rough-cut engagement rings looks gorgeous to me. It's lovely, not ostentatious bling, and unexpected. Or this couple's wedding photos, which were taken in a gallery and show off her dark teal wedge sandals and gown beautifully. I love that splash of the unexpected - not everyone wants to be a princess on her wedding day. Some of us want to be David Bowie.
No matter how a wedding shakes down, ultimately it's not about the first dance, or the chicken/fish, or the groomsmen shagging one of the bridesmaids, or any of the other things each couple strives for to set their party apart. It's a celebration of love, of unity, of promises. Whether it's just two people who love each other very much running down to City Hall, or a day-long affair with 400 of the couple's friends, relatives, neighbours, former bosses and personal shoppers, the point isn't the "stuff" of the wedding. Nobody cares if the entree has ginger or the flower girl trips. What people want, what we care about, is that magic moment that says, "You may now kiss the bride."
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Smilestones
Twenty-seven years ago today, my parents were the exhausted and probably terrified guardians of their first child - me! Hello! I was born in Toronto's East End, on a day that was probably much like yesterday: a little dismal, a little rainy. Late November isn't a great time for inspiring weather. It's not like spring, which has its organic fireworks display of fresh foliage and blue skies bursting forth. My parents had to settle for a new kid bursting forth, a process I'd imagine was a lot less picturesque.
But burst forth I did, and twenty-seven years later, I've turned into a passable main character in a pretty decent book. I have a fantastic family with supportive, funny parents. I have smart, thoughtful siblings. I lucked into a fantastic group of friends, most of whom called me on my birthday to wish me feliz cumpleanos, and I got especially lucky with my female friends (not in that way, pervs), because I have a seriously excellent coven of lady-pals. Sure, my chapter on employment is a little skinny, and I'm still neurotic and weird about any number of things (spiders, food, fears of looking stupid on the subway platform), but I think I've turned into a decent adult.
I'm actually pretty excited about getting older. I feel more comfortable in my skin (which, I know, is something women in their forties who just discovered the joys of, like, colonics and talk therapy usually gush about), both in the hey-this-body-is-pretty-nice sort of skin, and also more comfortable in my priorities. The jobs I'm looking for suit me, instead of just desperately grabbing at the first gig that makes me some paper. The men I spend time with are solid, decent guys who make me laugh. I've learned how to say, "Hey, you hurt my feelings" and "I don't agree with you" in ways that aren't tantrum-y. I brush my hair less. I spend less time obsessively thinking about how much I weigh. I spend more time thinking about friends, family, co-op, how to be a real live writer, bikes, and delicious food and snack ideas. I'm happier.
In the same way that January 1 is a magnet for stringent, punitive resolutions ("I'm going to lost one-third of my body weight, never drink beer again, and be nicer to the siblings I haven't gotten along with since birth"), and early September usually inspires dreamy attempts at new projects ("I'm going to renovate the kitchen and finally get around to writing that novella about man-eating duvets"), birthdays tend to inspire a similar stock-taking of one's life. Remember elementary school? The difference between seven and eight seems massive, and the trip into double-digits at ten, or official teenager-hood at thirteen, is mind-blowing. The new age, scrubbed clean of your fuck-ups of the past year, represents new promise. As a twenty-six-year-old, I was kind of a screw-up. I broke myself down: I quit binge-drinking, got help for an eating disorder, had panic attacks, and got some surgery.
My twenty-seven-year-old self knows better. This year could be a year of rebuilding after the flood. I'm looking forward to the kind of milestones my late twenties will bring: travel and fulfilling work, friends getting married, new businesses being launched, maybe falling in love, definitely showing off as much cleavage as I can. I mean, as much as I like getting older and all, I'm no Helen Mirren, and breasts are definitely one of those things that are better when we're younger. Everything else? We'll see.
But burst forth I did, and twenty-seven years later, I've turned into a passable main character in a pretty decent book. I have a fantastic family with supportive, funny parents. I have smart, thoughtful siblings. I lucked into a fantastic group of friends, most of whom called me on my birthday to wish me feliz cumpleanos, and I got especially lucky with my female friends (not in that way, pervs), because I have a seriously excellent coven of lady-pals. Sure, my chapter on employment is a little skinny, and I'm still neurotic and weird about any number of things (spiders, food, fears of looking stupid on the subway platform), but I think I've turned into a decent adult.
I'm actually pretty excited about getting older. I feel more comfortable in my skin (which, I know, is something women in their forties who just discovered the joys of, like, colonics and talk therapy usually gush about), both in the hey-this-body-is-pretty-nice sort of skin, and also more comfortable in my priorities. The jobs I'm looking for suit me, instead of just desperately grabbing at the first gig that makes me some paper. The men I spend time with are solid, decent guys who make me laugh. I've learned how to say, "Hey, you hurt my feelings" and "I don't agree with you" in ways that aren't tantrum-y. I brush my hair less. I spend less time obsessively thinking about how much I weigh. I spend more time thinking about friends, family, co-op, how to be a real live writer, bikes, and delicious food and snack ideas. I'm happier.
In the same way that January 1 is a magnet for stringent, punitive resolutions ("I'm going to lost one-third of my body weight, never drink beer again, and be nicer to the siblings I haven't gotten along with since birth"), and early September usually inspires dreamy attempts at new projects ("I'm going to renovate the kitchen and finally get around to writing that novella about man-eating duvets"), birthdays tend to inspire a similar stock-taking of one's life. Remember elementary school? The difference between seven and eight seems massive, and the trip into double-digits at ten, or official teenager-hood at thirteen, is mind-blowing. The new age, scrubbed clean of your fuck-ups of the past year, represents new promise. As a twenty-six-year-old, I was kind of a screw-up. I broke myself down: I quit binge-drinking, got help for an eating disorder, had panic attacks, and got some surgery.
My twenty-seven-year-old self knows better. This year could be a year of rebuilding after the flood. I'm looking forward to the kind of milestones my late twenties will bring: travel and fulfilling work, friends getting married, new businesses being launched, maybe falling in love, definitely showing off as much cleavage as I can. I mean, as much as I like getting older and all, I'm no Helen Mirren, and breasts are definitely one of those things that are better when we're younger. Everything else? We'll see.
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