Tri Me

Speaking of personal challenges - oh, sorry, were we not? We are now - I'm thinking about upping the ante, active-wise.

I was not what you would consider "sporty" in high school. Gym class was an unkind period for most teenagers, and I am not unique in feeling that the combination of unflattering shorts + sweaty faces + having desperate crushes on fully half the guys I went to high school with = a mini-heart attack every time we had to assemble for 50 minutes of self-conscious exertion. I was also what might be considered round, although it is hard to judge. Skinny fifteen-year-old girls are a totally different species from thin adult women: they are skinny in that "I just had a growth spurt" kind of way, not that "I spent a lot of time on my core" sort of way. Since I haven't had a growth spurt since the sixth grade, I never got to be a skinny fifteen year old girl. And yes, parts of me still resent that.

So I never played on the baseketball team or the lacrosse squad (although I was in Reach For The Top with my friend Jess, where we both had to be trained out of answering the questions in the form of a question - thanks a lot, Jeopardy). I did enjoy badminton, but that was mostly because it's a deeply goofy sport. It's tough to really suck at badminton.

My unwillingness to participate in team sports starts back in kindergarten: I "played soccer" by lying in the grass and ignoring the encouraging shouts from the coach, my parents, other people's parents, and my teammates. I had fun.

Something happened in university, though. Maybe it was the forty (!) pounds I gained when I took a year off school. Maybe it was finding out that the gym isn't an evil place. Don't get me wrong: I hate working out. The sweaty grunts and intimidating Spadex ensembles aren't encouraging to your average Joe-Schmo (or Jane Schmane...I guess?). Plus, I have a hard time not staring at people. I know it's bad form: I like watching bodies. Is that a crime? I do it on the bus, too. Does that balance things out? (I know the answer is no, and that I am a creepy weirdo. Sigh.)

While the machines make me nervous and the rowing machine gives me hives, the gym also contains wonderful spaces like the squash courts. I love playing squash. It's one of the very few sports where obscenities are okay, where crashing into the wall sometimes happens as part of gameplay - not as a result of my oafish gracelessness - and goddamn do you ever sweat. It's also competitive without being a team sport. I hate feeling like I've let people down when I fluff team sports, but with the solo endeavours, the only person who screwed it up is me.

With a new sport in my back pocket, I started losing some of those forty (!) pounds. I'm no great shakes at squash, but it is fun and fast. Then I started biking. Which clearly, I love. I just got back from a bike trip to Guelph, which was fun in the "my vacation kicked my ass" sort of way. Who knew that Halton Hills was actually hilly? I thought it was one of those subdivision-type names, but I was wrong. Painfully wrong.

I've since lost most of those 40 (!) pounds, and converted most of the remaining Cheeto-fat into muscle. Now I want a new challenge. I was thinking about maybe training for a triathlon. Not your scary Ironman deal. Something friendlier. Something like a Sprint Triathlon, which seems way more manageable. I've always been fascinated with adventure-type sports. The Patagonia catalogue, with its 3%-body-fat rock climbers sprinkled over gorgeous vistas? Yeah, that's basically porno for me. It makes me want to do the Iditarod (what a fun word to say!), learn how to horseback ride, and go over Niagara Falls in a pickle barrel. Failing that, it makes me want to get really good at playing catch.

Running a marathon just sounds painful, but I think something like a triathlon would be fun. Maybe a duathlon, since I'm a little afraid of deep water. Or a biathlon, which is cross-country skiing and shooting (!), and is disappointing for not including some competitive girl-girl making out. I don't want to turn into one of those droning bores who talk about things like carbo-loading and electrolytes, but it would be nice to kick a little ass every now and again...especially if the ass in question is my own.

Smelly Hippies

As I was leaning over the sink at work this afternoon, washing the hippie stench out of my armpits, it occurred to me that the low-impact organic lifestyle I attempt to maintain is seriously in need of a closer look. Not a closer whiff, though: you can probably smell me from there.

I usually love all that of-the-earth nonsense that makes organics a megaindustry, but has anyone noticed that, um, they don't seem to work as well? The low-impact toothpaste fails to freshen my breath for more than 45 seconds! The au-naturelle deodorant I try to use makes me smell worse than I do if I wear nothing at all! Guys, I'll just come out and say this: I am afraid of the Diva Cup.

I want to believe, though! But it's just not enough. I'm anti-toxic chemicals, but I'm also anti-reek at work. I know, I know: humans are supposed to get a teeny bit funky, especially when we move around. It's natural. For thousands of years, our thick-browed ancestors used "all-natural" methods of personal care, which clearly blow our hormonal/chemical bag of tricks right out of the water.

Except, like, ew: camel poop is not a contraceptive I want to use. I know that's a touch disingenuous, but come on. Today's smells were not good. I can't imagine anyone smelled all that fresh before the invention of antibacterial soap.

Buying that stuff is that whole consumer-activist song and dance. If I eschew being Zestfully clean in favour of Lush, then I can extrapolate all kinds of other conclusions about who I am. I care about the planet! I'm in the know! I'm into eco-concious fanciness! If I spring for a ZENN, then I'm putting a middle finger up to all those H3s that are basically smoking a pack of Marlboros right into the atmosphere's face. I knit my own feminine care products and dread my armpit hair.

Hm. No. (Not just the armpit hair, although, admittedly, I've wondered if it can be done.) It's the same problem I run into when people are really into, like, indie music. It's self-definition by way of consumer habits. I buy CDs instead of downloading them; ipso facto, I am what passes for "old-school" in today's attention-span-of-a-hummingbird society. I buy nine-dollar deodorant that makes me smell like a rotting beached whale, and I feel like I've "helped" "something" - vague good feelings about buying a product.

Now, I'm not crapping on all concientious purchasing. Some of it makes a difference, even though often that difference is diluted by oceans of the usual poisons (corporate greed, lies, semantically slippery definitions): I'm thinking here of Fair Trade, which does do good work. Other companies, like the feel-good and tasty Nantucket Nectars, are owned by Dr. Pepper: even if you think you're giving your juice money to a couple o' bucket-hat-wearing dudes, you're...not. Bummer.

Anyway, long story short: I will continue buying the hippie-dippy goofball versions of products, because I am sort of a goofy hippie person (albeit one who has no use at all for the icky aesthetics - sleek and black is the way I dress, even if I do sweat all over the sleek, black clothes). Why? I know buying organic-ish stuff is participation-lite, but I do actually walk the walk occasionally. Even though said walk makes me sweaty.

Who Wears Short Shorts?

In the post-Bush world, it cannot be denied that Michelle Obama is a total fox. Especially coming after Laura Bush, who looked vacant and bland as toasted Wonderbread, Michelle O. is a treat. She's all muscular and shit: she looks like she might be able to bench-press Mister President, which potentially would make for some sexy bedroom fun.

I always enjoy is when the political media gets whipped into a frenzy vis-a-vis fashion. It's fluffy, you know? People get so worked up about whether or not the First Lady whould be showing her arms, or wearing a headband, or admitting to being pregnant. It's like, hello? Priorities? There are, like, wars and stuff? Not to mention that people rarely get all ga-ga over the Pres' suits. I know it's been said before - how lame it is that First Ladies get excoriated for their fashion choices, while their husbands are the leader of the Free World? There's a canyon-sized divide between What Matters and What Doesn't Matter, but the female partners of politicians get reduced, time and again, to window dressing. Criticized window dressing.

Before I get all Women's Studies about the whole thing, I'll get to the point. Shorts. Do they matter? Who wears 'em? (Hint: I do. I love them.) Are they appropriate for the First Family? Are shorts a cause or effect of global warming? Are we seriously still talking about this?

In any case, like any good upper-middle-class American family, the Obamas (can I admit to constantly thinking "Obama" is a first name?) took a jaunt over to the Grand Canyon. And, like hundred of thousands of American tourists, Michelle Obama elected to sport a pair of shorts on her travels. So did her daughters, and they took in the sights and sounds of the American Southwest in garb that reflect the insane heat suffered in that part of the country. I don't know what 100 degrees farenheit is in real temperature, but I do know that it's warm. Like, balls hot.

In any case: shorts, like weaves and tube tops and other tricky items of clothing, should be worn by those who can pull them off. You got nice legs? Show 'em! I wear shortie-shorts for two reasons: one, I hate being hot, and two, I bike a lot. I have earned my gams, and they certainly won't be around forever. Michelle Obama, who clearly likes the gym, has earned her pins as well.

Look, I say the hoopla is all about context. If she - hell, if anyone - was roaming around in the blazing hot Arizonia sun wearing a natty wool pantsuit, I would question her brainpower. What she wore to the inauguration was charming and appropriate without being staid, and I love her green shoes.

But: pffft. I like fashion as much as the next broad, but I seriously could not care less about shorts and their relative appropriateness to events with regards to political wives. I sort of can't believe anyone else can, to be honest. It's the lamest sort of lip service: in theory, she's important enough to write about. Because of who she traded wedding bands with, however, she's been cast away into this bog of lameness: who she wears and who she shares a bed with standing in for what she does and what she cares about.

I say wear those shorts, Mrs. Obama. Wear them when you take your kids to the zoo, or when you hit the beach, or when you take the family for ice cream. Wear them knowing full well that, even though you're a lawyer and a mother, you're getting papparazzi'ed when you go about your business. I'll wear mine as I gad about the city, not getting photographed (also not flying a private jet to my vacation destinations...), and feeling just fine about it.

Film At Eleven

Last weekend, my dad brought up the topic of "best movie ever." Not favourite movie, which is different - favourite movie totally has more wiggle room. You can see the point of all different kids of serious, high-brow, important movies, but still cop to loving Back To The Future more than any other flick (as I unabashedly did. "Dad! George! Hey! You on the bike!" is probably the best line ever filmed). There are tons of favourites that are silly,

In 1998, the American Film Institute published a list of what they considered the 100 best movies of all time. Only eight were released after 1985. After Schindler's List, which came in ninth, Silence of the Lambs led the pack in 65th place. The top ten were all classic movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With the Wind, both of which always seemed like gigantic snores to me. There are some late-model movies on that list - for example, I enjoyed The Graduate immensely, and Pulp Fiction is great.

But most of those movies evoke a different era. Not just the majority were produced before I was born. The humour is different, the pacing is statelier and the styles have changed. I'm not saying that they're bad or anything; I'm maybe pointing out that festishizing the past, especially in the arts, ain't no way to get any juicy new geniuses out there.

I mean, sure: Tarantino and his generation are good filmmakers, but they're mostly reinventing the wheel. David Foster Wallace has pointed out that true imagination doesn't always get rewarded - mention Blue Velvet, and there's a 50-50 chance someone will shudder in horror - but it seems like the ability to take interesting, difficult work and transform it into a quotable exercise in esthetics (which Tarantino does) will net you serious cash. Someone like Wes Anderson has done this a half-dozen times: assemble a bunch of quirky characters, sprinkle with nostalgic name-drops (The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, Jacques Cousteau and A Charlie Brown Christmas, for starters), and serve to an adoring audience.

Actually, I do adore Wes Anderson movies: he has a gift for creating (or, you know, re-creating) gorgeous visual tableaux. His characters aren't so much characters as they are costumes...and that's kind of okay, you know? It's just not great film-making.

If movies are going to reach past entertainment and strive for the status of True Art, critics and audiences both need to stop reaching for easy 99-minute stretches or digestible facsimiles of challenging work as the height of American cinema. (As far as Canadian cinema goes, forget it. Quebec has a successful film industry, but Canadian movies are either Toronto dressed up as Boston or Bon Cop, Bad Cop, which, like, no.) I'm not saying there's anything wrong with presenting movies like Requiem for a Dream or Annie Hall as interesting entertainment, but art? Really?

Which is why the "best" movie is such a tough question. Do we judge on entertainment value? Avant-garde vision? Use of film stock? Use of Bruce Willis (and has anyone checked out the insane shoot he did for W magazine?)? The AFI's criteria was based mostly on outside influences - awards, cash and praise - and less on what the films attempted and how successful they were.

My favourite movies change daily - I can usually find a soft spot for The Big Lebowski, though, because that movie is awesome. My most-loathed movie is fairly constant: The Heart of Me was a wretched failure, starring Helena Bonham Carter's pitiful and emotionally unstable haircut. Someone else (someone blind, probably) loves that movie, and thinks I'm a loser who "doesn't get it." Fine. There are people who don't understand the humour of Harold and Maude, the visual glory of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the sheer gee-whiz coolness of Toy Story, the wackadoo weirdness of Being John Malkvotch. None of those movies really falls under the "art" banner, though. Fine! I'm not asking for the best movie of all time - I'm asking for the next favourite way to kill 120 minutes.

Building Blocks

Maybe I'm lucky or asymptomatic, but is anyone else getting the vibe that the Do-Good Express has been roaring through our generation something fierce?

I'm not sure if it's a byproduct of living in co-operative housing for a fifth of my life (which, like, huh), but it seems like my tribe has a real tendency to work in non-profits, advocacy, education, social justice, the arts, and all kids of other hippie-dippie slices of the workaday pie. I'm not trying to be smarmy or self-congratulatory about the trend: I mean, work is work, and just because you run writing workshops or Grassroots doesn't mean your life is any freer/easier than the people who run investment seminars or Chevrolet.

Of course, being the age we are now, we also have a tendency to get those low-man-on-the-totem-pole jobs, which, no matter what sector you're working in, all seem to be the same. Answer the phone, send email, file stuff, lunch. Drive the truck, pick up the stuff, haul stuff around, lunch. Man the desk, greet the people, set out lunch, lunch. But somehow, even though we'd be doing the same tasks at a non-profit gallery as we would if we were working at some huge bedroom-community anchor, it feels different.

I've held very few corporate jobs in my life: I worked for six months at a chain bakery, and was mortified the entire time (I think mostly it was the truly injust all-white uniforms). Before and after, it's been mostly indie restaurants and co-op jobs. Small operations feel homier. If my boss's boss's boss lives in Vancouver, I'm going to have a hell of a time with the corporate hierarchy. If, on the other hand, the guy who started the place in 1991 still lives on the Danforth with his kindergarten-teacher wife, I'm going to feel like he's a little more connected to my community, and by extension, to me.

That's simplistic, for sure: there are zillions of other ways to measure a job's own personal value to the person doing it. However: my generation was raised by children of the 1950s - people who were in their narcissistic 20s when the Me Decade rolled around, but who simultaneously started the Environmental movement. My generation has been raised with the idea that we can do anything, and that things are going to hell in a handbasket.

So, working in the non-profit sector really speaks to something for us, you know? Something I love about Judaism is that there are certain inalienable responsibilities that must be attended: you must provide education, for example. It's just how things are. In the hedonistic and self-centered secular lifestyle that, like, 97% of my friends and family lead, there are very few "responsibilities" aside from tending to ourselves and our nuclear families. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of cheesedogs is what makes us happy, apparently. Which feels...kind of shallow.

I'm totally not shitting on people who work for The Man - like I said before, work is work, bills pile up, and sometimes it's really fun to in a crazy office building with hot interns and cantankerous mid-level executives and inappropriate co-workers with whom you can gossip. Plus, where would we be without The Office? I get it. Totally.

However, one demographic I always enjoy seeing on the street is that of the Balanced Older Lady: the woman in her 50s with the linen pants and the cashmere wrap. She seems to know things about Nia and fish oils. The BOL isn't vegan-strident, and she's clearly invested in making her life about feeling good and doing good...which are qualities I admire. I'd like to be like that, both in that mythical "someday" and, you know, right now. While I can't afford the hypoallergenic bee pollen that wards off arthritis (yet), I can work at jobs that make me feel connected to things other than a paycheck. If I'm going to spend one-third of my day doing something, I'd like it to be something I feel good about.

A Room of My Own

Even though it's completely declasse to talk about money, can I just maybe allude to the fact that having a non-full-time job in your twenties, with things like rent and groceries and phone bills lighting up like neon in your braincase, is not the delightfulness I was envisioning?

When I was a kid, memorizing Archie comics and ignoring my sister, I stumbled upon this one Veronica story that was entitled "THE GROOVY PAD" or something to that effect. I was a) eight years old in 1991 and b) had no concept of a "pad" being something you live in, rather than something menstrual and therefore discomfiting to the max. (This dated-slang phenomenon also perplexed the hell out of me when I read The Hardy Boys, who were always shouting "good night!" when it seemed like they were going to bite it. Confusing? You bet.)

THE GROOVY PAD was a story set in (when else?) the 1970s, starring 16-year-old Veronica as the spoiled rich girl who got her very own apartment. It was full of period details like burnt-orange shag carpeting and whorish purple eyeshadow that just impressed the hell out of me. Obviously, when she went to bed, the GROOVY PAD turned out to be in some improbably seedy part of Riverdale: smoking (!) men in trench coats and gusting wind equaling "you will get raped," clearly.

But, like, awesome? Her own place? All the whorish purple eye makeup she can shoplift (not that Veronica Lodge needed to, but it seemed like she would - the whole narrative had an huge undercurrent of seediness and trashiness)? It seemed like the glammest thing in the whole world, a total extension of the this-is-my-treehouse vibe little kids confer on basically every space they can.

I remember childhood as a hugely public affair. I am still basically an introvert at heart, so to spend eight hours a day with kids - most of whom I didn't like/was afraid of/wanted desperately to be accepted by - and then go home to my family, where the person closest in age was my terrible sister (oh, don't worry, we're friends now), was massively stressful. My parents, who were saddled with this stressed-out nine-year-old, were probably kind of mystified. I felt exposed all the time. All I wanted to do was hide: I read a lot, ignored 85% of the normal growing-up socializing, and made forts out of every space smaller than 25 square feet.

You can imagine the type of lightbulb-over-head moment THE GROOVY PAD inspired. A whole apartment...for me?! What's weird is that I didn't just march into the post-highschool world and get my own GROOVY PAD. No, first, I lived in residence. Then I lived with fifteen housemates. Then I got my own place.

I'll tell the (terrible) residence and (for all intents and purposes, very fun) fifteen-housemates stories some other time. For now, I'll just mention that living with people is much less expensive than living alone. It's strange: you trade one psychic burden (people-stress) for another (money-stress) when you decide to swap out living arrangements. I, for one, like it both ways: it's really nice coming home to someone. On the other hand, it's really nice to cook dinner in you GROOVY PAD wearing nothing but whorish purple eyeshadow. It's all about choices, you know?

The Real Dirt on Toronto

Toronto stinks.

Not, as Allan Fotheringham claimed last week in a superlatively dickish column in the Reliable Globe, metaphorically. Doctor Foth made the churlish claim that NOW is some sort of moral barometer, and that the lowly Yellow Pages and its 300+ church listings couldn't hold a candle to the smut that NOW is peddling to Hogtown residents. Somehow, it seems that the sexual entrepreneurs populating the back pages of Toronto's weekly rag leads to the rest of Canada's hating on our 'burg.

Fothie Bear makes some totally wacky math calculations: his city is populated by about two million people, half of whom are women with no interest in sexual favours from lusty ladies (including lesbians and the curious-and-female would only wreck the math, so Fotheringham leaves 'em out). He then takes out a third of the population for being under twenty and "not interested," as well as men over fifty for the same reason. That leaves us with about 300,000 people (his math) perusing the hundred of ads. I assume that, in the Venn diagram showing the overlap between "NOW erotic advertisement users" and "disgusting perverts who wear hideous pleather peacoats and hit on drunk, sloppy women outside 24-hour convenience stores," A+B is rather large.

Wh-what? Pardon me, sir, but just because a man's gained his mid-life weight is no reason to count him out of the game...and while the flesh may be weak, I can imagine that there are many for whom the spirit is more than willing. In fact, I would say that men over fifty are the primary audience for all the Nadias and Jades and Lolas cavorting around wearing stars. Not to mention the fact that the teen years seem like nothing but one long nocturnal emission.

Since Allan Fotheringham is one hundred years old (okay, fine: a hale and hearty 77), I could maybe forgive him for forgetting the gland-driven howling that teenagers do. But just because your prurient ass gets all puckered at the thought of purchased sex, especially in relation to some church-vs.-NOW-ad ratio, don't assume anyone's buying it, everyone's buying it, or only certain types are buying it. It takes all kinds, as the song says, and I find it hard to believe that Toronto is the only metro area in Canada where you can purchase a piece of tail.

Old-man-driven hypocrisy aside, the reason my city smells like garbage is that it's literally covered in garbage. The strike is over! Bring out your dead! I'm glad Toronto workers are back on the job - while I was having fun pointing out to bitchers and/or moaners that these so-called assbags and jerkwads (the union) are garbage and child-care workers (demographics not traditionally known for the percentage of high schoolers who raise an excited hand when asked "Is anyone here interested in working for the city?!"), the subtle underwaft of rot and decay was crazy-making.

Now, on the eve of what I'm sure will be known as The Great Scrubdown, the strike went on just long enough to offer an anti-tantalizing whiff of what could have been the future. It reeks. It's gross. The garbage juice is everywhere, as are the flies. It's gnarly. And, barring some boneheaded move by Monsignieur D. Miller, it seems as though the flood the Truly Gross was diverted.

So: unions/city: thanks for working it out. Allan Fotheringham? You should have maybe spent more time exploring the real filth of the city - there was plenty to go around, trust me - instead of wallowing in some mathematically suspect and annoying moral sludge.