TV On The TV

Only getting two channels on my crappy TV means that I don't have a ton of choices when it comes to the company I keep while eating dinner. (And yes, I eat dinner in front of the television. I live alone. Human voices are a luxury in my house.) I get CBC, terrible reception on CTV, and SUNTV, which seems to program Boston Legal 24 hours a day. While I do love me some Jimmy Spader, that's a lot of Boston Legal. One might say too much. I say too much.

So, between the Boston Legal and the other channels, I watch a healthy diet of TV. When I was a kid, my mom put me on TV rations: an hour a day, to be discussed and agreed upon beforehand. Since all I wanted to watch was Dinosaurs and Blossom (those hats! And Joey Lawrence! What more could an eight-year-old ask for?), my predetermined television schedule was a bit predictable. Oh, and humiliatingly enough, I was banned from watching Full House. It apparently made me "smart alecky." How rude, indeed.

Anyway, now that I'm older and not even a bit wiser, I've taken up a tepid love affair with Canada's Broadcasting Corp. Sure, the logo looks like an exploding pizza, and the programming is hit or miss at best, but I kind of love it.

For example: I know everyone's been all "Battle of the Blades is super lame" (what's up, John Doyle), but in a meta sense, it makes for interesting TV. It's so Canadian, it's practically a totem pole wrapped in an Hudons' blanket wrapped in a beaver tail. (Mmmmm....) Hockey + figure skating + Maple Leaf Gardens + elimination round! = deliciously hokey TV. More successful are their attempts at comedy/dramedy. I have a totally embarassing part of my heart set aside for Little Mosque on the Prairie, and according to my mom, Being Erica is basically my life, dramatized. Plus, their news coverage is generally great, and they air stand-up comedy. Love it!

Canadian television can be so embarassing. There's something about the costuming, the quality of the lighting, the accents, the dearth of people of colour - it somehow still feels like tokenism, even though Toronto is super multi-culti - and the earnestness of the whole thing. Knock-off shows like So You Think You Can Dance Canada totally feel kid-sibling sometimes, and it's not helped by the cheesy sets.

On the other hand, I like that the CBC promotes a uniquely Canadian thing. Leaving out the wretched Heartland, the shows are generally funny, sweet and don't take themselves too seriously. Not overly heavy on the moralizing, the best ones pay attention to the homespun vs. big-city tensions that actually affect Canadians, while remaining character driven. Would I like more funny sugar in my Canadian-TV coffee? Absolutely. Is there something strangely old-school about the way the shots are framed? Yeah, sometimes. But barring the loss of all my brain cells - the only way I could sit through entire episodes of Shatner chewing on the scenery - the Canadian alternative, and the CBC, are an admirable respite from CTV's mindless lineup of crime shows and dance-offs. Thanks, dudes. If you bring back The Simpsons at five, I'll be all set.

Streets Are For People (Who Drink Beer)

It's no secret that I find a lot of my most-cherished possessions the same way homeless people find some of their food: on the side of the road, or in someone else's garbage. Oh, don't make that face. I'm not rooting through a Dumpster behind a truck stop on Route 66. Student living equals a whole lot of turnover in the roommate situation, and students are fond of moulting their possessions rather than packing them. Hence, I get a lot of free shit.

For example, I scored most of my summer wardrobe from boxes people abandoned in our basement. Sweet little linen pants, hoodies from expensive-when-new stores, sparkly tank tops, hot pants, cardigans and more. Some of these things were disasters, including the deconstructed praire-girl dress that looked cute in theory but gave me an ass the size of Montana. No problem, since the price is right and the return policy is "I'll just put it back on the side of the road." I scored a totally on-point pair of boyfriend jeans about three weeks before that trend was all over Katie Holmes. Thanks a bunch, neighbour!

It's not just clothes. I've grabbed books. Former housemates once brought home a VHS copy of Tremors 3, courtesy of some short-sighted chump who ditched it. How many hours of glee did that provide us with? Many. Notably, I've also scored a ghetto blaster. This was awesome, since I still had mixed tapes from high school. The ghetto blaster was also used as seduction aid by an ex-boyfriend, who made me a mixed tape during our courtship. In the age of the burned CD, it was 100% charming and retro. (Are the 1980s retro? Am I old enough to remember an age which is now considered retro? Damn.)

My parents are mystified by this. They think it's weird that I would cart home a jacket that I had found in a snowbank. Their confusion is an sham, though, since it clearly runs in my blood. My mom is fond of bringing home every piece of furniture abandoned on the side of the road (usually due to irredeemable ugliness), to be recovered "later." My grandpa used to squirrel away everything: broken alarm clocks, costume jewelry, TV dinner tables. When it comes to side-of-the-road shopping, I am purebred bloodhound. (Not like this, though.)

Anyway, last night my taste for the free encountered my taste for beer, and the results weren't pretty. My pal, who is also an incorrigible street picker (she calls it curb-scoring, which always reminds of seediness in that world's-oldest-profession sort of way), found some Portuguese beer on the side of the road. Last night, we drank it.

In our defense: it was unopened. Glass bottles aren't permeable. It wasn't going to be poisoned. For the prosecution: so very, very expired. It tasted less like beer, and more like rum that had been brewed by blind pirates in 1876. It was not delicious. But, since we had already had a few at a bar, we decided to slug some down and hope for the best.

Gather round, children, and allow Auntie Kaitlyn to lay some good advice on you: don't drink expired beers you find on the street. Attend all the pancake keggers you get invited to. Drink the prairie fires your sadistic friends order you on your birthday. Hell, wear that unflattering dress you found in your best friend's aunt's attic. Plug in the toaster oven you found on the side of the road - I'm sure the electrical shock will be bracing! But stay away from Portuguese street beers, because while you will feel like the bang/buck ratio isn't great ("I feel sober...I must be sober"), the hangover is remarkably unpleasant. Like God himself has decided to give the contents of your brainpan a brisk stir.

I'll keep picking up the excellent clothing options that those fly-by-night students leave behind, and I'll keep chancing it with the electronics and (probably moldy) books. But I have a new rule: street beers are a no-go. From now on, only items that don't have an expiration date are coming home with me.

Urban Outfitters

I have this unfortunate tendency to get, like, totally obsessed with things. If I buy a shirt that I'm particularly fond of, I'll wear it for a week and a half straight. If I get my hands on a copy of a magazine that I really like, I'll read the damned thing over and over. Same with books: I've read some books upwards of a dozen times. I'll re-watch episodes of television shows I've seen before.

You've done it, too: how many times did you listen to some album or another, especially in the midst of an emotional time? I think this is why teenagers get so into their music: since high school is basically just one gigantic white-water trip through Hormone Valley, emotions run high. Listening to The Roots thirty-five times a days can be soothing....yeah, even with that "!!!!!!!" song, which is basically noisy noise. Ending relationships is the worst for this kind of obsessive behaviour. I remember walking home from an ex-boyfriend's place in the middle of winter, listening to "Lodestar" by the incomparable Sarah Harmer and bawling like a lunatic. It was not, shall we say, one of my finest moments.

Regardless of whether or not it was a personal victory (nope), it was honest. It's amazing how sometimes people need music/books/poetry/whatever in order to organize their personal craziness into a manageable thought process. I still call bullshit on people who use the aforementioned cultural products as replacements for emotions, or who define themselves as certain types of people because they like certain things ("I like '60s garage bands from the Bronx, so I am esoteric and probably a little nerdy! In a good way! Ladies!"). That's a little too Seymour-from-Ghost World for my taste.

However, I totally see the value of having an emotional shorthand at your disposal, especially when it comes to clothing. Clothing is armor. For example, today I'm sporting a neon-tangerine workout top with a built in sports bra. I am notorious for eschewing colour in favour of shades of black, white and gray, but this top makes me feel lean and fit, and post-Thanksgiving, that is worth its weight in hypercolour. Yesterday, it was military jackets and a sleek hoodie (well, as sleek as hoodies get, really), because I was in the mood to kick some ass. Tomorrow, I bet I feel a little bit more femme, and put on a minidress to show some pre-snow bare leg. I bet I get dressed blasting "Jolene" and feeling very fuck-with-me.

Sometimes, on different days, I'll dress up as a Canadian, a farm girl, a 1920s French prostitute or the Iron Giant (easier than you'd think, by the way). Why? Because occasionally, I will be feeling saucy, and the easiest way to express that is through fabric. It's the reason the Oscars has a category for best costume design, and why little boys dress up like Batman for weeks on end. While musical obsessions let you tap into the unsayable parts of yourself, dressing up allows you to wish-fulfill something fierce. If I am usually boring old Kaitlyn Kochany, why shouldn't I be allowed to become Kaitlyn: Aerobics Warrior? Or incorporate some Kurt Russel into my look? I know I could shoehorn some Miss America in there (mostly because I like sashes and giant fake jewels). And could you blame me, if I chose to wear some of those outfits for a few days? Those outfits are killer.

Zing!

Back in the day, when my ex-boyfriend worked at Starbucks, he used to try to badger me into drinking coffee. "It's the best," he promised, and I would scrunch up my nose and sock him in the arm and say, verbatim: "Ew." He would wax poetic about coffee in the morning, coffee with a cigarette, coffee as poop-enabling device. Apparently, coffee was, like, two weeks away from curing lupus and starting a band.

But I resisted. Lord, I resisted! I avoided coffee in all forms, my most-hated being mocha ice cream. ("Blech," went my highly-involved reasoning.) To me, coffee was the bringer of sour breath, upset stomachs and crazy shakiness. Plus, it made wide-eyed insomniacs out of most of us. And for the longest time after our breakup, any reminder of the ex was enough to send me into a shaky, insomniac state, regardless of my beverage choice. Since he worked at a coffee shop, and loved to tell me about it ("No, seriously, you can taste the difference between the Kenyan and the Guatemalan. You can. Look, if you're not even going to try....just try it!"), it was, understandably, a reminder.

That was then, this is now. The ex is long-past, and coffee has found a new place in my heart. I am, and always have been, a Diet Coke girl. The bubbles! The crispness! The portability (seriously, try throwing a piping-hot mug of coffee into your rucksack and see how things shake out)! But coffee, especially as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, is good things. Plus, while there is no such thing as the Coke Zero shop, there is the coffee shop. Barring a bar, it's a good place to chill. For hours.

True, drink too much and you'll be shaky and cracked-out, plus sweaty and foul-breathed. Delightful! But striking the right balance between sleepy-eyed doyenne and super-charged speedy gonzales transforms a person from so-so to ready for anything. Including, it must be said, multiple trips to the bathroom. Still, coffee makes the world go 'round: it's right up there with tea, beer and, ahem, Coca-Cola as one of the world's favourite drinks. And with recent industry improvements facilitated by Fair Trade, coffee isn't as bad for your conscience as it used to be.

It has to be said, however, that I stand my revulsion towards mocha ice cream. That is some gnarly stuff. I can't explain it: chocolate? Good! Coffee? Pretty good, I guess. Ice cream? Yeah, I'll have some! So why is combining the three so gross to me? Perhaps it lies in the sugar + caffeine + sugar^caffeine = OHMYGOD WHY IS MY EYE TWITCHING?! that can sometimes happen. Maybe.

President of Zombieland

Shaun of the Dead, while excellent, lacked a certain something. It was gory, like a good zombie movie should be. It was funny, like a good comedy should be. It featured someone getting hit in the head with a dart, which, like, obviously.

Now, let's turn the class's attention to Zombieland. It had Woody Harrelson, which makes any movie better. Woody Harrelson goes on to say "You got a purty mouth" to a zombiefied redneck, which, like, obviously. And it referenced Babe in one the best non-goodbye scenes I've ever witnessed. Plus! Not to spoiler the central third of the movie, but the cameo that shows up is legendary.

The critics have been generally positive: thankfully, most of them understand that Zombieland is a big rompy road trip through the heart Zomberica. The New York Times tragically elected not to get the joke, instead referencing concentration camps and being a total snooze about the movie. Seriously, if you're going to review movies like Zombieland, don't send a gal who's going to actually take it, you know, seriously.

Because while Zombieland isn't exactly going to top the Oscar nominations this year (although I would love it if it did), it does achieve what it sets out to do: namely, kick ass in the morning and take names in the evening.

First of all, there's there's a lot of gore. Not just blood, either. Ever wonder what your Achilles tendon might look if it was ripped out by way of someone's teeth? Zombieland can tell you. Curious about why you should wear your seatbelt, even as bloodthirsty children try to eat you? Zombieland has your answer. Where Shaun of the Dead was lighter on the blood, Zombieland is basically washing its hair with it.

Secondly, it's funny in an American way. The jokes are broad, referencing pop culture (Titanic, the aforementioned Babe) and a lot of the humor comes from pairing the hyperactive and wild-eyed Harrelson with the slightly (okay, totally) neurotic and used-to-being-lonely Jesse Eisenberg. That doesn't make it bad. Their relationship grows and shifts, which is normal until you remember that you're watching a movie about zombies.

Zombieland succeeds because it remembers that, post-zombocalypse, people aren't just going to turn into ass-kicking supersoldiers with Berettas for hands and grunting standing in for talking. Shy college dudes are just going to be shy college dudes who now tote shotguns, that's all. In Zombieland, people still need families - maybe now more than ever, since their original fam has been most likely devoured by the undead. Trust issues aren't just going to run in these new families; they'll practically gallop. And proficiency with a firearm is non-negotiable, even if it does lead to some particularly post-NRA father-daughter bonding.

It's become clear that the standard to which Zombieland would be held is Shaun of the Dead, but the two can co-exist in relative harmony. In fact, the two are almost opposite in effect: Shaun starts off slow and emotion-driven, and builds to rousing fight sequences. Zombieland starts off the action with a lot of, well, action, and then lets the characters build and flow. It works, even as you marvel at Harrelson's gigantic arms, because Zombieland wants the post-zombie America to be a place where, even if you lose everything, you still get both a family and a chance to crack wise about Caddyshack.

Smart Cookie

Usually, when I write these things, I try to espy some interesting or unusual phenomena out there in the universe: cupcakes, the Olsen twins, Chuck Klosterman, what have you. If, for some reason, I can't do that, I write about myself: how I like to bike, my taste in men, my thoughts on Agyness Deyn (hint: not good). Now, in the hour of my cold symptoms, when I haven't really gotten off the couch since Sunday, I'm finding my brain a wee bit addled.

Oh, sure, I could regale you with tales of my epic trek to Shopper's Drug Mart, where I tamed the wild Cookie magazine and subdued a carton of Tropicana (which is the most delicious of all the -ana drinks. Tundrana? Please. Arcticana? Just go home...leave that cloudberry, though. That sounds tasty). You might be wondering why, as a single-type person with no children, I bought a parenting magazine. The answer? They seriously have the best fashion. I can't afford any of those $950 belts currently being suggested by the clotheshorses down at Glamour, and Anna Wintour freaks me out. Plus, parenting magazines generally accept that people have about five minutes to themselves each day, and this one encourages its readers to be having sex during those five minutes. What's not to love?

There's something so soothing about reading non-applicable magazines when you're sick. Cookie is especially great for me, since I don't have kids but do think babies are adorable. It's sort of like reading muscle magazines when you're a 97-pound weakling: escapism! Delightful. Plus, it treats adult relationships like they matter: sex doesn't have to go the way of the buffalo, and just because a woman has gestated doesn't mean she's lost all her braincells.

It's nice to be party to a periodical that celebrates family without condemning parenthood as a slavish devotion to All Things Child. Magazines like Fit Pregnancy are okay, I guess, but they seem to fetishize all the trappings of motherhood without recalling that, generally speaking, mothers are women, and women have other interests beyond Astrovans and the spanking debate. They appreciate a good sweater. They enjoy a sexy boot. They will occasionally attempt to feed their families curried apple (whereupon confusion will ensue).

Not only that, but families are hard work: sometimes, moms want to chuck their kids out the window. Or their husbands. Or both, using the husbands to cushion the children. There are crying jags, low libidos, not a ton of cash, and spit-up.

So, the thing I like about Cookie is that is focuses on the whole package: the reviews of the various toys/books/educational media always mention how wigged-out having the item on repeat (forever!) is going to make a parent. They encourage families to be brave: why not book a surfing camp for your nine year old? Or try osso buco? They celebrate working moms
(granted, yes, those moms are impossibly glam, but at least they're interesting beyond having given birth) and do the whole organic-baby thing without being dopey.

Plus, seriously, the clothes are tres chic. I'm not going to lie: I take style cues from both the pint- and pitcher-sized spreads. They both seem to work. Let me put this in perspective: you know how Vogue has that laughable annual "Shape" issue? It's almost impossible to tell one shape from the next. The "athlete" is about four pounds heavier than the "boyish" model, and everyone looks the same: undernourished and bored. If you happen to weigh more than 97 pounds, you're s.o.l.. Cookie, on the other hand, has managed to wrangle up looks that work from ages 4 to 44, and from sizes infant to large (okay, medium: there aren't many plus-sized moms in this mag's pages). That's a fashion grand slam! That's a fair accompli! That's damned smart styling. That's worth five bucks, and a long and involved explanations of why single women should read Cookie.

Sicked and Mired In My Own Dirt

Well, it's that time of year again. The trees are rustling, the air is brisk, and I've come down with a cold.

Oh, sure, I've been pushing myself at, like, DEFCON 1 for about two months now: going out late, getting up early, meetings day and night. True to form, I've been neglecting the homestead something fierce, and have been rewarded with the most disgusting colony of fruit flies I've ever seen. So now that I'm sick, I get to hang out in a totally assy apartment, with nothing but fruit flies to keep me company. Sigh.

I get sick all the time. I have a feeling it's something do with poor nutrition, seeing as how much of what I consume consists of rice and beer. (Sometimes both at once, cutting out that pesky middleman of "chewing.") Okay, that's an exaggeration: I eat tons of vegetables, which is why it's so frustrating when getting sick is such a regular occasion. It's probably also tied to living alone, since everyone knows getting sick and being alone is a total drag when you're feeling under the weather, and it seems to take twice as long to feel better when your only companions are The Simpsons. Plus, dragging yourself to your neighbourhood corner store to load up on crackers, soup, juice and trashy magazines is exhausting when you can barely muster the energy to run a bath.

Two years ago, I had one of the worst sicks ever. You think you've been ill? First, I gave myself food poisoning - because I am a true champion, and because I believed for (no good reason) that pasta sauce is like ketchup, and ketchup doesn't seem to ever go bad. (Assumption? False. Prognosis? Negative.) Then I got the flu - complete with fever! - which quickly blossomed into a bronchial infection. All this happened in the span of, like, three weeks. In January. Which, as you can imagine, sucked. I eventually took a cab to the local walk-in clinic, where they pronounced me "sick" and sent me home to "rest." Helpful! The codeine in the cough syrup made up for a little, but it was still brutal.

In any case, I have zero interest in being sick right now. I have too much to do: people to see, articles to research, nuits to blanche. All I feel like doing is napping and hunting those dad-blasted fruit flies with tiny guns, but I'll man up, gird my loins, and put on clothes that aren't sweatpants. Thus prepared, I'll face the day. Will there be complaining? Oh, yes. Will there eventually be triumph? Possibly. Now leave me alone - I'm tuckered out and need a nap.