I know I'm a few months late on this particular bandwagon, but I just stumbled across the brilliance of The Seventeen Magazine Project and have fallen in love with it. Jamie Keiles, a sassy and skeptical recent high school grad, took a single issue of the ubiquitous Seventeen magazine and lived with it for a full month. She used the hair and makeup tips, aped the fashion spreads, tried out all the activities ("add pretzels to cookie dough! Bake it"), posted the hot guys on her wall, and attempted the flirting techniques. It's a great idea for a project, and her accessible and totally readable voice is a brilliant counterpoint to the often-breathless tone of Seventeen and its brethren, where makeup advice is frequently followed by a train of exclamation points designed to turn waterproof mascara into, like, the second coming of the Christ child.
She smartly points out where Seventeen falls down on the job. Apparently, eating Indian food is for "fearless" girls, as if mutter paneer is something that's going to grab at you from under your bed, and her take on the "exotic/global" prints on fabric rightly looks at some of the weirdness around cultural appropriation. Also addressed are the obvious gaps in the magazine's scope. As a fashion rag, Seventeen does okay, but as far as addressing IRL issues like sexuality? They have some flirting tips for picking up guys (and they are all guys), but don't address the queer community unless you search for it online, and the results aren't inspiring. The models are fairly diverse, but Hispanic faces are severely underrepresented. And she gently chides the editors for the inanity of the lifestyle suggestions, pointing out that shopping and styling one's hair shouldn't take up the majority of someone's waking hours.
She gives props to where Seventeen succeeds, as in the fashion-heavy special prom issue, and her tone is tolerant. She's not mad at the magazine, but I am glad that she culminated the project with a call for suggestions for other reading material for girls and young women.
I read Seventeen when I was in the eighth grade, having been given a subscription by my grandmother. I was totally fascinated and more than a little daunted. I was shy, frizzy, short, and my body was decidedly not "bikini-ready." These worlds, these girls, which were glossy and perfect and smiley, were like some alien tribe that was sent to both inspire and intimidate me. The magazine has stayed exactly the same: flirting tips, gross-out period stories, and impractical fashion suggestions. The majority of the girls I went to school with wore oversized hoodies and flared jeans. Showing up for History class in wedge heels and a Liberty-print minidress wouldn't have been fashionable or even fashion-forward; it would have been a non-sequitur.
Magazines, especially the rags like Cosmopolitan or Seventeen that aim to be all-encompassing reads, are fascinating to me. It's a tired joke that Cosmo recycles sex tips, but I really don't envy the glossies their endless need for new, approved materials. Cosmo, especially, has the added disadvantage of trying to cater to a readership that is actually fairly conservative. Blow-jobs tips aside, Cosmo readers (and the girls who are still on training wheels with Seventeen) have come to rely on the magazine for a careful monthly regurgitation of same-old-same-old. The sex is heteronormative (how often do you see tips on, say, going down on a woman?), the clothes are uniformly tarty, the women are all tanned and shiny, and the dudes are all ripped.
Keiles is far too young to remember Sassy - I doubt that she would even be old enough to have read Jane - but she does highlight Bust, Bitch, and New Moon (nothing to do with Stephanie Meyer, I promise) as alternatives that might appeal to Seventeen's oddly wide target demographic of 12-19 year olds. Bust, specifically, is a good choice, because it combines an irreverent editorial voice with a sincere interest in fashion, beauty, the entertainment industry, and celebrity. It's exactly the right tone for a girl who's realized that Seventeen isn't going to be her handbag much longer. And the guys they feature are more likely to be my own personal cup of tea: Justin Theroux, anyone? Mmm. Diversity is the spice of life, and Cosmopolitan and Seventeen actually become less appealing when they only showcase a tiny slice of (young) womanhood in their viewpoint.
I love projects like TSMP, because it highlights how much energy women have to spend to become "normal." None of us rolls out of bed, coiffed, tweezed, dyed, made up and dressed. I'm no natural beauty, and I certainly benefit from, as my mom put it, "combing [my] hair and, uh, trying," but I find it exhausting and demoralizing to try to squeeze myself into this fashionable, straight-haired, skinny-person mold. For a high school student to realize that fashion and beauty are fun, but can come at a high price, is so valuable. It takes some of us years to realize what Keiles demonstrated in a month: marching in 17-17 time is really hard to do.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Hipster: TNG
A couple weeks ago, as my mom and I were in the car, she made fun of my old-school music choices. I had grabbed some Elton John and Talking Heads for the ride into Port Elgin. She told me a story about how, when she worked at an architecture firm, she brought some tapes into the office, inadvertently impressing her cool-kid workmates by showing up with David Bowie and Patti Smith. Then I looked down at myself and realized that everything I was wearing was something my mom had either bought for me or second-handed my way. And it occurred to me that maybe, my mom is cool.
A few years ago, there was a media bubble about the idea of hipster parents: folks who had been involved in their city's music/arts/food/fashion/activism/whatever scene, and who had maybe met and married in a punk-rock/delightfully twee wedding ceremony. Now they were on the verge of parenthood, and wanted all the accoutrements of coolness in size 0-6 months. They were obliged with family-friendly eateries that specialized in both small children and 100-mile-diet fare, with tiny black onesies, and by kid's music that wasn't totally cloying and terrible. The hipster parents got their druthers, and a mini-industry was created to serve the parents who, along with reading and potty-training, introduced their offspring to chicken vindaloo and accessorizing.
My own parents have remained pretty cool throughout their children's lives, although my dad has had a series of weird haircuts that escalated in badness until he just shaved his head. A lot of childhood is just unbelievably dorky: selling cookies door-to-door, fleece jackets, french-braids, piano lessons, dolls, orthodontia, playing "the floor is lava," and throwing up in the car on long trips. Even the most Williamsburg of parents don't get to escape those unhip years. They morph into "cool parents" who will wax poetic about Band of Horses one minute and then hold a tissue up to a drippy nose with instructions to "blow" the next.
My mom is, of course, "a cool mom": she invites my friends to the cottage and drinks wine with them once they arrive. My dad is a cool dad: he gets us sushi and insists on buying Viva Puffs long after his kids will admit to craving them. They're both very good at being parents. They're encouraging without being pushy, have unshakable faith in their family, and love us regardless of how many times we've screwed up and started land wars over control of the television.
But my parents, especially my mom, are also cool sort of empirically. My mom wears these headscarves which she claims are to cover up her haircuts, but end up making her look all bohemian and beachy. She listens to music, introducing her kids to bands like Midlake, and is hip to young artists like Basia Bulat. She's a fantastic artist, which she would dismiss as malarkey except that it's true: examples range from gorgeous quilts to hand-painted cribs, and her design eye is unimpeachable. These are all qualities highly prized by the hipsters of my generation: arts, music, fashion. If I met her as a peer, I would be intimidated by her. Since she's my mom, I just steal her ideas.
That isn't to say that my mother isn't also a good human being. She's funny and thoughtful, so generous, smart, sensitive, opinionated and a good listener. Her friends and my friends love her. She tolerates my dad's ugly home office chair even though it looks like it fell out of a Dilbert strip into her otherwise sophisticated home. I know any relationship, including marriage and parenthood, is one of compromise and give-and-take; both my parents manage to do that without sacrificing themselves, showing me and my siblings that it's possible. Which is, when you think about it, very cool without being hipster in the slightest.
But there are these little details about her that make her kind of hipster-cool - she's refused, in her fifties, to get frumpy, oval-shaped, or stock the fridge with I-give-up foods like creamed corn or bologna. She wears a little scarab pendant from Egypt. She once, in her youth, went to Poland with my dad, her then-boyfriend, and got too freaked out by the small-town women and their chicken-killing ways to help them murder that night's dinner, so she took her shy self inside and drank vodka with the men. When she travels, she rents convertibles. She runs art classes for kids in the summer. She once called a town councilor at his home at six in the morning to complain about a super-loud town maintenance crew. She is a badass, and a role-model, a fashion template, probably a hipster, but totally a mom. She's the coolest mom I know.
A few years ago, there was a media bubble about the idea of hipster parents: folks who had been involved in their city's music/arts/food/fashion/activism/whatever scene, and who had maybe met and married in a punk-rock/delightfully twee wedding ceremony. Now they were on the verge of parenthood, and wanted all the accoutrements of coolness in size 0-6 months. They were obliged with family-friendly eateries that specialized in both small children and 100-mile-diet fare, with tiny black onesies, and by kid's music that wasn't totally cloying and terrible. The hipster parents got their druthers, and a mini-industry was created to serve the parents who, along with reading and potty-training, introduced their offspring to chicken vindaloo and accessorizing.
My own parents have remained pretty cool throughout their children's lives, although my dad has had a series of weird haircuts that escalated in badness until he just shaved his head. A lot of childhood is just unbelievably dorky: selling cookies door-to-door, fleece jackets, french-braids, piano lessons, dolls, orthodontia, playing "the floor is lava," and throwing up in the car on long trips. Even the most Williamsburg of parents don't get to escape those unhip years. They morph into "cool parents" who will wax poetic about Band of Horses one minute and then hold a tissue up to a drippy nose with instructions to "blow" the next.
My mom is, of course, "a cool mom": she invites my friends to the cottage and drinks wine with them once they arrive. My dad is a cool dad: he gets us sushi and insists on buying Viva Puffs long after his kids will admit to craving them. They're both very good at being parents. They're encouraging without being pushy, have unshakable faith in their family, and love us regardless of how many times we've screwed up and started land wars over control of the television.
But my parents, especially my mom, are also cool sort of empirically. My mom wears these headscarves which she claims are to cover up her haircuts, but end up making her look all bohemian and beachy. She listens to music, introducing her kids to bands like Midlake, and is hip to young artists like Basia Bulat. She's a fantastic artist, which she would dismiss as malarkey except that it's true: examples range from gorgeous quilts to hand-painted cribs, and her design eye is unimpeachable. These are all qualities highly prized by the hipsters of my generation: arts, music, fashion. If I met her as a peer, I would be intimidated by her. Since she's my mom, I just steal her ideas.
That isn't to say that my mother isn't also a good human being. She's funny and thoughtful, so generous, smart, sensitive, opinionated and a good listener. Her friends and my friends love her. She tolerates my dad's ugly home office chair even though it looks like it fell out of a Dilbert strip into her otherwise sophisticated home. I know any relationship, including marriage and parenthood, is one of compromise and give-and-take; both my parents manage to do that without sacrificing themselves, showing me and my siblings that it's possible. Which is, when you think about it, very cool without being hipster in the slightest.
But there are these little details about her that make her kind of hipster-cool - she's refused, in her fifties, to get frumpy, oval-shaped, or stock the fridge with I-give-up foods like creamed corn or bologna. She wears a little scarab pendant from Egypt. She once, in her youth, went to Poland with my dad, her then-boyfriend, and got too freaked out by the small-town women and their chicken-killing ways to help them murder that night's dinner, so she took her shy self inside and drank vodka with the men. When she travels, she rents convertibles. She runs art classes for kids in the summer. She once called a town councilor at his home at six in the morning to complain about a super-loud town maintenance crew. She is a badass, and a role-model, a fashion template, probably a hipster, but totally a mom. She's the coolest mom I know.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Twenty-Something-Elses
The New York Times Magazine recently published an article about this so-called extended childhood/early adulthood that folks my age are apparently "suffering" from: a pathological unwillingness to move through some of the Big Life Steps that, I guess, serve to separate the men from the boys: graduation, leaving home, financial independence, marriage, and babies. I guess my demographic is clutching onto various holdovers from our angsty teenage days, in that we (okay, I) take a long time between enrollment and convocation, or we're unwilling to relinquish our parent's money, or pop the question, or pop out a kid. The question the NYTM raises: is this lengthy space between high school and "adulthood" a healthy new era full of self-discovery, or is it merely a chasm filled with self-indulgence?
I was chatting with a girlfriend tonight, and she mentioned that one of her colleagues is about to father a child. She felt that, at the age of twenty-eight, he was too young to making new lives happen. I pointed out that he had been married, and settled, and employed, for a while: he was right on track, life-cycle-wise, to becoming a dad. It felt like there's a long stretch of highway between his place in life and my own.
Progress has been made, however. I just moved back to Toronto, after a self-imposed exile/brain vacation in my hometown, and it feels like this is where I'm supposed to be. My parents' home is so comforting, but it's not where I live anymore. My life is in Toronto. My time in Stratford was sort of a sleepaway camp for the newly graduated: save money, reconnect with the family, work a forgettable job. But it wasn't like coming home, to the place where I feel most like myself.
It's not that I'm not grateful to my family for putting up with a summer's worth of messes and computer cords across the living room floor. I happen to like the people I'm related to: we're a smart, funny bunch of folks, and spending time with them was decided not a chore for me. But there was an odd disconnect with the town around me. The last time I had a Stratford summer was five years ago. I loved to binge drink and work crazily long hours at a busy eatery. This time, I was much more interested in sitting on my back porch and talking on the phone to people about kissing protocol, board meetings, and business ventures. Realizing that your family and your parents helped shape you into the person you are today, but that you also need to leave that household to find your own path, is step number one to Big Adult.
Most mid-twenties Toronto citizens have hit most of these markets in some way or another. The general trend among my pals is long-term relationships, often with the kind of cohabitation that makes the Catholic church fan itself like a distressed Southern belle. Not many of my friends are married, and only one of those young-person unions has worked for more than a couple years. Tripping into a full time job doesn't make someone an adult, especially not the type of entry-level jobs that are often a recent graduate's most likely option. Transferring your financial dependence from your parents to your bank is, at best, a lateral move. Having a child is often not the same as "deciding to have a child" in your late teens and early twenties. And so on.
The article uses the word "settle" freely: people settle down, essentially affixing themselves to a lifestyle. Settling down is a sign that one is stable: reliably at the same address for more than a few months, able to pay off a bill, feed a child, procure a job. Maybe the author also meant the calming-down after the headiness of adolescence. But settling also has negative connotations: settling means "accepting despite a complete lack of satisfaction." Maybe my cohort's unwillingness to march into adulthood, to hit all our markers, is the result of not wanting to settle while we settle down. Instead, we're looking for alternatives, creating new and different milestones for ourselves. Instead of "getting married," maybe we're having happier shorter-term relationships. As we move out of our parent's houses, we're moving in with self-selected families made of up friends and relatives. We're taking control of our reproductive destinies by using birth control and destigmatizing terminations, thus acknowledging that children aren't, for everyone, the ideal project to take on once we graduate at the ripe old age of twenty-two.
And we're less likely to take shit from those who poo-poo our recalcitrance about the whole process. Is this new pause after teenagerhood and before parenthood a generation balking at a culture that's raised smart, hard-working kids and then shunted them into a world that seems like a lot of drudgery for not a lot of joy? Or is this a genuinely new step in the process of becoming an adult? That remains to be seen. But the hand-wringing, the insistence that my generation is screwing it up, needs to stop. We may not be adults, but we're not idiots.
I was chatting with a girlfriend tonight, and she mentioned that one of her colleagues is about to father a child. She felt that, at the age of twenty-eight, he was too young to making new lives happen. I pointed out that he had been married, and settled, and employed, for a while: he was right on track, life-cycle-wise, to becoming a dad. It felt like there's a long stretch of highway between his place in life and my own.
Progress has been made, however. I just moved back to Toronto, after a self-imposed exile/brain vacation in my hometown, and it feels like this is where I'm supposed to be. My parents' home is so comforting, but it's not where I live anymore. My life is in Toronto. My time in Stratford was sort of a sleepaway camp for the newly graduated: save money, reconnect with the family, work a forgettable job. But it wasn't like coming home, to the place where I feel most like myself.
It's not that I'm not grateful to my family for putting up with a summer's worth of messes and computer cords across the living room floor. I happen to like the people I'm related to: we're a smart, funny bunch of folks, and spending time with them was decided not a chore for me. But there was an odd disconnect with the town around me. The last time I had a Stratford summer was five years ago. I loved to binge drink and work crazily long hours at a busy eatery. This time, I was much more interested in sitting on my back porch and talking on the phone to people about kissing protocol, board meetings, and business ventures. Realizing that your family and your parents helped shape you into the person you are today, but that you also need to leave that household to find your own path, is step number one to Big Adult.
Most mid-twenties Toronto citizens have hit most of these markets in some way or another. The general trend among my pals is long-term relationships, often with the kind of cohabitation that makes the Catholic church fan itself like a distressed Southern belle. Not many of my friends are married, and only one of those young-person unions has worked for more than a couple years. Tripping into a full time job doesn't make someone an adult, especially not the type of entry-level jobs that are often a recent graduate's most likely option. Transferring your financial dependence from your parents to your bank is, at best, a lateral move. Having a child is often not the same as "deciding to have a child" in your late teens and early twenties. And so on.
The article uses the word "settle" freely: people settle down, essentially affixing themselves to a lifestyle. Settling down is a sign that one is stable: reliably at the same address for more than a few months, able to pay off a bill, feed a child, procure a job. Maybe the author also meant the calming-down after the headiness of adolescence. But settling also has negative connotations: settling means "accepting despite a complete lack of satisfaction." Maybe my cohort's unwillingness to march into adulthood, to hit all our markers, is the result of not wanting to settle while we settle down. Instead, we're looking for alternatives, creating new and different milestones for ourselves. Instead of "getting married," maybe we're having happier shorter-term relationships. As we move out of our parent's houses, we're moving in with self-selected families made of up friends and relatives. We're taking control of our reproductive destinies by using birth control and destigmatizing terminations, thus acknowledging that children aren't, for everyone, the ideal project to take on once we graduate at the ripe old age of twenty-two.
And we're less likely to take shit from those who poo-poo our recalcitrance about the whole process. Is this new pause after teenagerhood and before parenthood a generation balking at a culture that's raised smart, hard-working kids and then shunted them into a world that seems like a lot of drudgery for not a lot of joy? Or is this a genuinely new step in the process of becoming an adult? That remains to be seen. But the hand-wringing, the insistence that my generation is screwing it up, needs to stop. We may not be adults, but we're not idiots.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Gaga Order
I realize that even talking about Lady Gaga is, at this point, sort of an exercise in futility. Whatever your thoughts on the Princess of Weird, she's proven herself to be a dominant part of the current pop landscape. She's a spectacle, in every sense of the word. The costumes! The hairstyles! The stage shows! The music videos! The magazine interviews! And, oh, right: the music.
The Lady is clearly filling some sort of void in our pop culture. She's undeniably talented, but I can't be alone in thinking her personality can be grating. Her recent interview with Vanity Fair left me with a bad taste in my mouth: obsessed with her fans, she comes across as someone who has left the real world firmly behind in her quest for what analysts in the 1970s might have called "self-actualization." In her case, it comes by producing an OTT public face that has the kind of empathy that empresses have: loving her subjects en masse, but unable to identify with anyone individually.
I knew about Lady Gaga well before I had heard any of her songs, and when I finally did catch a snippet, the lyrics were about "disco sticks." It was the sort of build-up/let-down cycle that alienates people right away. I was like, this is the girl with no pants? Months later, the video for "Bad Romance" was released, and it felt like Gaga finally hit the next level of exposure. She was suddenly everywhere - she met the Queen, for god's sake; my parents know who she is - and that kind of 360-24/7 exposure is a heady thing. She often snarls at the camera; her videos all seem to have some sort of violence, imprisonment, forced performance, violation. For a pop performer, she wrestles with some pretty intense imagery. Her fans, of course, love her for it. Comparisons to Madonna abound for Gaga, but she skipped the charming and DIY phase of "Lucky Star" and went straight to the over-produced and over-exposed "Sex" iteration. The version of Madonna, in other words, that the public grew tired of and disowned for a while.
Even though he's not in her league, I tend to equate her with the other reigning princess of pop, Adam Lambert. In some ways, I think Lambert's story is timelier: inspired to audition after going to Burning Man and indulging in mushrooms, Lambert shot to fame as the glitziest contestant on the 2009 cycle of American Idol. Where others (like me!) would have been overwhelmed by that media machine, Lambert rose to the occasion, donning shoulder cages and performing the everliving daylights out of showy rock songs. He was coy about his sexuality, instead focusing on the spectacle of Idol. While he was the runner-up that season, Lambert went on to have a couple hit songs and a Rolling Stone cover, officially come out of the closet, and take his rightful place as the sort of B-list dance-music-maker that commercial radio loves.
He's much safer than Lady Gaga: his focus has always been on entertainment, whereas she seems bent on deconstructing something deeper. Her stage shows and music videos have a deadly streak to them: she's constantly showing up in outfits that evoke mutilation and pain. Lambert, as a product of the Idol universe, needs to keep things light, consumable, marketable. But they're both cut from the same cloth. Both Gaga and Lambert need desperately to be looked at, to be seen: otherwise, neither of them exist. Both have their surfaces buffed to the highest gloss. The production values on these two performers are outrageous. Lady Gaga needs the machinery of the media so much: she needs to be photographed, to be written about, to be noticed. Otherwise, she's just Stephani Germanotta, and that ain't no monster's name.
There's been a lot of dithering about where Lady Gaga can "go" from here: public nudity? Faked death onstage? Something so outlandish it'll take some sort of intergalactic genius to conceive and execute it? Who knows. My mind doesn't work like Gagarino's. Part of me sort of hopes she's boxed herself into a corner with all the pyrotechnics and glitter. Maybe the most revolutionary thing Lady Gaga could do would be release some stripped-down pop album. No makeup, no costumes, and no inane comments about her "fans." Just the music, baby.
The Lady is clearly filling some sort of void in our pop culture. She's undeniably talented, but I can't be alone in thinking her personality can be grating. Her recent interview with Vanity Fair left me with a bad taste in my mouth: obsessed with her fans, she comes across as someone who has left the real world firmly behind in her quest for what analysts in the 1970s might have called "self-actualization." In her case, it comes by producing an OTT public face that has the kind of empathy that empresses have: loving her subjects en masse, but unable to identify with anyone individually.
I knew about Lady Gaga well before I had heard any of her songs, and when I finally did catch a snippet, the lyrics were about "disco sticks." It was the sort of build-up/let-down cycle that alienates people right away. I was like, this is the girl with no pants? Months later, the video for "Bad Romance" was released, and it felt like Gaga finally hit the next level of exposure. She was suddenly everywhere - she met the Queen, for god's sake; my parents know who she is - and that kind of 360-24/7 exposure is a heady thing. She often snarls at the camera; her videos all seem to have some sort of violence, imprisonment, forced performance, violation. For a pop performer, she wrestles with some pretty intense imagery. Her fans, of course, love her for it. Comparisons to Madonna abound for Gaga, but she skipped the charming and DIY phase of "Lucky Star" and went straight to the over-produced and over-exposed "Sex" iteration. The version of Madonna, in other words, that the public grew tired of and disowned for a while.
Even though he's not in her league, I tend to equate her with the other reigning princess of pop, Adam Lambert. In some ways, I think Lambert's story is timelier: inspired to audition after going to Burning Man and indulging in mushrooms, Lambert shot to fame as the glitziest contestant on the 2009 cycle of American Idol. Where others (like me!) would have been overwhelmed by that media machine, Lambert rose to the occasion, donning shoulder cages and performing the everliving daylights out of showy rock songs. He was coy about his sexuality, instead focusing on the spectacle of Idol. While he was the runner-up that season, Lambert went on to have a couple hit songs and a Rolling Stone cover, officially come out of the closet, and take his rightful place as the sort of B-list dance-music-maker that commercial radio loves.
He's much safer than Lady Gaga: his focus has always been on entertainment, whereas she seems bent on deconstructing something deeper. Her stage shows and music videos have a deadly streak to them: she's constantly showing up in outfits that evoke mutilation and pain. Lambert, as a product of the Idol universe, needs to keep things light, consumable, marketable. But they're both cut from the same cloth. Both Gaga and Lambert need desperately to be looked at, to be seen: otherwise, neither of them exist. Both have their surfaces buffed to the highest gloss. The production values on these two performers are outrageous. Lady Gaga needs the machinery of the media so much: she needs to be photographed, to be written about, to be noticed. Otherwise, she's just Stephani Germanotta, and that ain't no monster's name.
There's been a lot of dithering about where Lady Gaga can "go" from here: public nudity? Faked death onstage? Something so outlandish it'll take some sort of intergalactic genius to conceive and execute it? Who knows. My mind doesn't work like Gagarino's. Part of me sort of hopes she's boxed herself into a corner with all the pyrotechnics and glitter. Maybe the most revolutionary thing Lady Gaga could do would be release some stripped-down pop album. No makeup, no costumes, and no inane comments about her "fans." Just the music, baby.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Rundles In The Jungle
Maybe it's not the most couth move to discuss platefuls of delicious food during Ramadan, the season of fasting for Canada's Muslim population, but on the heels of a fancy family dinner last night, I'm just going to plow ahead and brag for a second.
One of my first boyfriends was a chef - like, a real one, a guy that had been to chef's school and wasn't afraid of cooking unusual dishes - and we used to eat Big Food all the time. Stratford, our hometown, is a good place to be if you're interested in restaurant food. While not terribly diverse when it comes to regional cuisines (we're heavy on the French and Mediterranean side of things, but underrepresented in all the glorious foodstuffs of the Thai, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese cultures. Stratford, as a town, is pretty white), we do have a number of high-end restos that will cater to your desire for lemongrass soup and rabbit with a mole sauce. We had a series of dates that took us to some of Stratford's finest places, places he had, at some point, likely worked. As a result, we were attended to most rigorously, and got all kinds of free wine and fancy little amuse-bouches. You want good food? Date a chef. He knows all the best restaurants.
Case in point: I was once taken to Canoe, one Toronto's high-roller joints, where we ate, like, fifteen courses of seafood and wine and gazed over the harbour. Even though I was ultimately not a match with my date (another chef, naturally), that night stands out in my memory as one of great pleasure. It was so nice to have a common thread between us, and a desire to splurge and pamper. The food was superb. The atmosphere at restaurants like that is one of unstudied wealth - the waiters, in their blue smocks, were experts at putting everyone at ease and taking care of their tables. It wasn't ostentatious; it was delicious.
In the years since, I've become a little allergic to restaurant eating (panic attacks in The Butler's Pantry will do that, I've noticed), but I'm slowly coming back to the land of normality. There are tricks I use, like not drinking until I get my food and having some bread on the table in order to ward off the I'm-so-hungry-I-could-die freakout, but mostly it's just breathing and being a little bit irritable until the appetizer comes. Restaurant eating, which used to be my idea of a great night out, has become a bit of a chore. I love food, but I hate not being in charge of it. Waiting 45 minutes for my main course? In a busy restaurant, that happens. I hate it. Makes me crazy. Makes my tablemates crazy, since I am a vocal whiner.
In any case. Last night, in a graduation celebration, my family and I got sort of dressed up (I wore a fur hat, my new favourite thing, much to the embarrassment of my sister, who has much better taste than I do) and got dinner at Rundles. My sister has worked there off and on for years, but it's intimidatingly posh. Thank god they've recently installed a slightly less swish room; it's more whimsical in its decor, and less openly servile in its attitude. Rundles' main space is reserved for proposals (both business and romantic) and Kevin Spacey, while their "sophisto-bistro" contained my family and a grandma supping with her teenage daughter. It was a little more our speed.
It was lovely. It was one of those nights we got to be ourselves, as a family and as individuals. It came right on the heels of a mini-festival of graduation celebration, but it wasn't about me. It was a chance to be together, in a beautiful place, eating delicious food. It reminded me of this graphic - all you need is love, and food, and water, and shelter - but the nicest permutations of all those things. Sure, sometimes it's easiest to grab a bite and eat in your car. But sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, we like to come together, make each other laugh, and celebrate each other. If we happen to do it in a place with salt cod croquettes and hot-smoked trout on the menu, then that's just the way we roll.
One of my first boyfriends was a chef - like, a real one, a guy that had been to chef's school and wasn't afraid of cooking unusual dishes - and we used to eat Big Food all the time. Stratford, our hometown, is a good place to be if you're interested in restaurant food. While not terribly diverse when it comes to regional cuisines (we're heavy on the French and Mediterranean side of things, but underrepresented in all the glorious foodstuffs of the Thai, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese cultures. Stratford, as a town, is pretty white), we do have a number of high-end restos that will cater to your desire for lemongrass soup and rabbit with a mole sauce. We had a series of dates that took us to some of Stratford's finest places, places he had, at some point, likely worked. As a result, we were attended to most rigorously, and got all kinds of free wine and fancy little amuse-bouches. You want good food? Date a chef. He knows all the best restaurants.
Case in point: I was once taken to Canoe, one Toronto's high-roller joints, where we ate, like, fifteen courses of seafood and wine and gazed over the harbour. Even though I was ultimately not a match with my date (another chef, naturally), that night stands out in my memory as one of great pleasure. It was so nice to have a common thread between us, and a desire to splurge and pamper. The food was superb. The atmosphere at restaurants like that is one of unstudied wealth - the waiters, in their blue smocks, were experts at putting everyone at ease and taking care of their tables. It wasn't ostentatious; it was delicious.
In the years since, I've become a little allergic to restaurant eating (panic attacks in The Butler's Pantry will do that, I've noticed), but I'm slowly coming back to the land of normality. There are tricks I use, like not drinking until I get my food and having some bread on the table in order to ward off the I'm-so-hungry-I-could-die freakout, but mostly it's just breathing and being a little bit irritable until the appetizer comes. Restaurant eating, which used to be my idea of a great night out, has become a bit of a chore. I love food, but I hate not being in charge of it. Waiting 45 minutes for my main course? In a busy restaurant, that happens. I hate it. Makes me crazy. Makes my tablemates crazy, since I am a vocal whiner.
In any case. Last night, in a graduation celebration, my family and I got sort of dressed up (I wore a fur hat, my new favourite thing, much to the embarrassment of my sister, who has much better taste than I do) and got dinner at Rundles. My sister has worked there off and on for years, but it's intimidatingly posh. Thank god they've recently installed a slightly less swish room; it's more whimsical in its decor, and less openly servile in its attitude. Rundles' main space is reserved for proposals (both business and romantic) and Kevin Spacey, while their "sophisto-bistro" contained my family and a grandma supping with her teenage daughter. It was a little more our speed.
It was lovely. It was one of those nights we got to be ourselves, as a family and as individuals. It came right on the heels of a mini-festival of graduation celebration, but it wasn't about me. It was a chance to be together, in a beautiful place, eating delicious food. It reminded me of this graphic - all you need is love, and food, and water, and shelter - but the nicest permutations of all those things. Sure, sometimes it's easiest to grab a bite and eat in your car. But sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, we like to come together, make each other laugh, and celebrate each other. If we happen to do it in a place with salt cod croquettes and hot-smoked trout on the menu, then that's just the way we roll.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
At The Drive-In
I'm not usually one of those back-in-the-good-old-days people, but I have to say, I'm sad for the future generations who will never know the old-fashioned fun of a drive-in movie theater. There's something nice about movies in general - the dark room, the big screen, the surround sound, the promise that you will probably be entertained, possibly wildly - and to marry that with hanging out in your car and eating popcorn with your dog is a genius idea.
I've been lucky enough to summer near a drive-in movie theater, so over the years I've seen a number of movies al fresco. I saw Wall-E with an ex-boyfriend, and we couldn't figure out how to turn the headlights in the new car off for, like, half an hour, committing one of those head-shaking drive-in bonehead moves that annoys everyone else at the show. I saw Grind as part of an end-of-summer staff party, leading to a host of quotes shouted at each other over the deep fryers. I saw Armageddon during a church youth group outing, where all the girls cried and all the boys make explosion noises with their mouths during the action sequences. It's one of the places I identify strongly with the cottage, and the cottage, to me, equals youth and freedom, nature and beauty, something just a little outside the ordinary. In our civilian lives, we go to the movies; at the cottage, we go to the drive-in.
Drive-in movie theaters used to be part of the entertainment landscape. Invented in 1933 by an American named Richard Hollingshead, the drive-in morphed from a curiosity with cars on blocks, to a full-fledged market for hormonal teens. An entire movie genre was created for drive-in theaters. Unsurprisingly, not very many of these movies are any good: kung-fu flicks, Blaxplotiation movies, beach-monster reels, crime capers, and more. Think of Tarantino's source material and you've got a pretty good understanding of what was being shown in all that fresh air. But the theaters fell from favour as people wanted to watch their big blockbusters indoors, and drive-ins all over North America closed.
I have no idea how the one near my cottage survived, but I'm glad it did. In addition to playing first- and second-run movies, this theater also occasionally indulges my fetish for goofy animations and retro aesthetics by playing a snack-bar jingle, one that highlights this venue's allegedly terrific nachos. Since the theater is run by white folks and the nacho "cheese" is that plasticky yellow goop that's served hot and salty, I kind of doubt it, but I like anything with anthropomorphized food, so, really, everybody wins.
Most of the time, I relish the idea of living my life car-free. I'm a cyclist, I've been one for years. But it makes me sad to think that my future kids may not get the pleasure of getting ready for a night at the drive-in: packing a bag of snacks and drinks, putting on their pajamas, grabbing a blanket to stay warm, and, just as the sky darkens, heading out to see a movie.
I've been lucky enough to summer near a drive-in movie theater, so over the years I've seen a number of movies al fresco. I saw Wall-E with an ex-boyfriend, and we couldn't figure out how to turn the headlights in the new car off for, like, half an hour, committing one of those head-shaking drive-in bonehead moves that annoys everyone else at the show. I saw Grind as part of an end-of-summer staff party, leading to a host of quotes shouted at each other over the deep fryers. I saw Armageddon during a church youth group outing, where all the girls cried and all the boys make explosion noises with their mouths during the action sequences. It's one of the places I identify strongly with the cottage, and the cottage, to me, equals youth and freedom, nature and beauty, something just a little outside the ordinary. In our civilian lives, we go to the movies; at the cottage, we go to the drive-in.
Drive-in movie theaters used to be part of the entertainment landscape. Invented in 1933 by an American named Richard Hollingshead, the drive-in morphed from a curiosity with cars on blocks, to a full-fledged market for hormonal teens. An entire movie genre was created for drive-in theaters. Unsurprisingly, not very many of these movies are any good: kung-fu flicks, Blaxplotiation movies, beach-monster reels, crime capers, and more. Think of Tarantino's source material and you've got a pretty good understanding of what was being shown in all that fresh air. But the theaters fell from favour as people wanted to watch their big blockbusters indoors, and drive-ins all over North America closed.
I have no idea how the one near my cottage survived, but I'm glad it did. In addition to playing first- and second-run movies, this theater also occasionally indulges my fetish for goofy animations and retro aesthetics by playing a snack-bar jingle, one that highlights this venue's allegedly terrific nachos. Since the theater is run by white folks and the nacho "cheese" is that plasticky yellow goop that's served hot and salty, I kind of doubt it, but I like anything with anthropomorphized food, so, really, everybody wins.
Most of the time, I relish the idea of living my life car-free. I'm a cyclist, I've been one for years. But it makes me sad to think that my future kids may not get the pleasure of getting ready for a night at the drive-in: packing a bag of snacks and drinks, putting on their pajamas, grabbing a blanket to stay warm, and, just as the sky darkens, heading out to see a movie.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The Horror, The Horror
While I fully endorse the apparently eminent zombification of North America and its attendant territories (what up, Guam?), I have to admit that, if society was going to be playing by the rules as set forth by a generation of horror movies, I would be woefully unprepared. My taste in "horror" movies skews to a funnier set; my scares often come with hysterical giggling after. Unrelenting fear usually finds me hiding in the kitchen, pretending to cook lunch. In reality, I'm totally avoiding the scary music.
I figure I come by it honestly; when I was 10, prime time for easing into horror movies, my sister was six and my brother was two. Movie nights were still family movie nights. As my siblings got older, their interests lay mainly with the Disney clamshells. My brother watched Robin Hood three times a week for two years - even now, whistling that opening tune brings me right back. My parents, especially my mom, weren't interested in letting Freddy Krueger babysit her children. The wholesome upbringing probably did a lot to damper down my latent anxiety, but it didn't do much to prepare me for horror flicks fifteen years down the line.
Everyone's definition of horror is different - for some, it's gorefests like Saw, while others like the atmospheric creepiness of The Sixth Sense, or the craziness of Antichrist, or the teen-slasher classics like Scream. Going back, we can choose from Carrie, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Night of the Living Dead, and a slew of other classic, and not-so-classic, movies. There's every level of bloodshed, every level of scariness, every possible villain, and, in the teen-slasher flicks, tons of nipples. Seriously.
While I don't often watch horror movies, I'll reading the living crap out of a big fat scary book. Somehow I'm able to handle it a little better. I guess folk wisdom dictates that books are supposed to be scarier than movies, because books can let your imagination wander. But I've always been a pretty visual girl. Scary movies? With the freaky music and the crash zooms on people's guts falling out or evil little girls? I am affected. That shit is scary! Somehow, I can read The Shining and then fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. Show me an unsettling film and I'll be up at three in the morning, wondering if I'm going hear the slow creak of the closet door, or if I'll just be stabbed to death by vicious clowns.
Horror movies make us face some of our ickiest fears. None of us sit around after work, planning for when the homicidal maniac rolls out from under our bed. Horror is useful for folks to get all sweaty about something scary in a safe way. Humans like looking at gory things. Could the Roman colosseum be considered an early outlet for our love of watching entrails blorp all over the floor? Maybe. All I know is, movies, with their corn-syrup blood, are a much more humane way of exploring our dark side. We can identify with the victims, sure, with their squishy parts all over the place; but, and it's not always charming to admit it, the killers are often pretty damned magnetic. We're drawn to the power, the violence, the single-minded commitment to mayhem and craziness. Villains that strike a balance between gentility and insanity - Hannibal Lecter is one notable example - are so interesting to watch. They make us second-guess what we think we know about evil. And villains that don't - all the possessed girls and hockey-mask-wearing nuts - are kind of fun too, with their gleeful destruction of their victims.
Toronto is one of the cities, uh, "blessed" with a horror (/sci-fi/action - basically anything where the probability of one of the characters getting a slug to the guts is fairly high) movie festival, and it joins New York, LA, Edinburgh, Cape Town, and loads of others in showcasing some of the newest releases and most memorable classics, along with all the freako flicks that aren't going to get the Criterion treatment any time soon. If you'd prefer to catch up on your horror content while lounging in the tub, grab a copy of Rue Morgue or Fangoria, magazines that specialize in the bloodier side of cinema. Horror movies are big business, an indelible part of our collective pychosocial imprint, and divisive in their likability.
I need to get over the fear and the gross-out factor and see some of these movies. I'm not going to sit through stupid films, but a lot of horror movies might be considered classics at this point, and they can appeal to my film-snob side as well as dangling fresh hunks of bloody human in front of me. Bring on the brains! Bring them with fava beans and a nice chianti! I will eat every bite.
I figure I come by it honestly; when I was 10, prime time for easing into horror movies, my sister was six and my brother was two. Movie nights were still family movie nights. As my siblings got older, their interests lay mainly with the Disney clamshells. My brother watched Robin Hood three times a week for two years - even now, whistling that opening tune brings me right back. My parents, especially my mom, weren't interested in letting Freddy Krueger babysit her children. The wholesome upbringing probably did a lot to damper down my latent anxiety, but it didn't do much to prepare me for horror flicks fifteen years down the line.
Everyone's definition of horror is different - for some, it's gorefests like Saw, while others like the atmospheric creepiness of The Sixth Sense, or the craziness of Antichrist, or the teen-slasher classics like Scream. Going back, we can choose from Carrie, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Night of the Living Dead, and a slew of other classic, and not-so-classic, movies. There's every level of bloodshed, every level of scariness, every possible villain, and, in the teen-slasher flicks, tons of nipples. Seriously.
While I don't often watch horror movies, I'll reading the living crap out of a big fat scary book. Somehow I'm able to handle it a little better. I guess folk wisdom dictates that books are supposed to be scarier than movies, because books can let your imagination wander. But I've always been a pretty visual girl. Scary movies? With the freaky music and the crash zooms on people's guts falling out or evil little girls? I am affected. That shit is scary! Somehow, I can read The Shining and then fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. Show me an unsettling film and I'll be up at three in the morning, wondering if I'm going hear the slow creak of the closet door, or if I'll just be stabbed to death by vicious clowns.
Horror movies make us face some of our ickiest fears. None of us sit around after work, planning for when the homicidal maniac rolls out from under our bed. Horror is useful for folks to get all sweaty about something scary in a safe way. Humans like looking at gory things. Could the Roman colosseum be considered an early outlet for our love of watching entrails blorp all over the floor? Maybe. All I know is, movies, with their corn-syrup blood, are a much more humane way of exploring our dark side. We can identify with the victims, sure, with their squishy parts all over the place; but, and it's not always charming to admit it, the killers are often pretty damned magnetic. We're drawn to the power, the violence, the single-minded commitment to mayhem and craziness. Villains that strike a balance between gentility and insanity - Hannibal Lecter is one notable example - are so interesting to watch. They make us second-guess what we think we know about evil. And villains that don't - all the possessed girls and hockey-mask-wearing nuts - are kind of fun too, with their gleeful destruction of their victims.
Toronto is one of the cities, uh, "blessed" with a horror (/sci-fi/action - basically anything where the probability of one of the characters getting a slug to the guts is fairly high) movie festival, and it joins New York, LA, Edinburgh, Cape Town, and loads of others in showcasing some of the newest releases and most memorable classics, along with all the freako flicks that aren't going to get the Criterion treatment any time soon. If you'd prefer to catch up on your horror content while lounging in the tub, grab a copy of Rue Morgue or Fangoria, magazines that specialize in the bloodier side of cinema. Horror movies are big business, an indelible part of our collective pychosocial imprint, and divisive in their likability.
I need to get over the fear and the gross-out factor and see some of these movies. I'm not going to sit through stupid films, but a lot of horror movies might be considered classics at this point, and they can appeal to my film-snob side as well as dangling fresh hunks of bloody human in front of me. Bring on the brains! Bring them with fava beans and a nice chianti! I will eat every bite.
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