Walkabout

I love walking around town. Not for transportation - for that, I use my trusty (if slightly rusty) iron horse - but getting outside, especially during these blowsy, sexy fall days, is such a treat. It's almost like we have to save up some of this outdoorsy time for February, when it'll be mostly cabin fever and wet feet.

Anyway, this is one of my favourite times of year. Brisk at night, balmy during the day, with the added enjoyment of not sweating though all my clothes every single day. Jackets! Little chapeaux! Boots! I mean, I've sworn allegiance to the mighty flippy-floppies like a good university student, but since I found a pair of Frye boots on the sidewalk a couple months ago, I've been longing for a season in which to wear them. You can't wear to-the-knee leather boots in August. It's revolting.

So yeah: fall walks. I was in Niagara Falls last weekend, staying at the totally airless Embassy Suites. The only saving grace - aside from the admittedly exceptional bath tub - was the walk down to the Falls themselves. Yeah, the whole areas is schlocky as all hell, but just being outside, in the mist, seeing the raw thunderous power of nature? Pretty sweet. That walk totally saved my ass from being full, bored, desperate for oxygen, and cooped up in a 42-story hotel where the only food came from The Keg or a ridiculously awful T.G.I.Friday's. Barf.

Last night, I got to go for a lengthy walk with a friend. I think we strolled between Bloor and College about four times (bank, music store, bar, etc.), stopped for some playground action, peed in some alleyways, and generally had a good old late-October time of things. This city is fun, yo. Plus, sushi will make you full; what better way to burn through some of that ride than a brisk walk?

In any case, I know that, soon enough, the weather will be deeply unpleasant. I'll spend even more time in bed, rolling around under the covers "reading" (read: sleeping) and trying to stay warm. Thank the Jesus man for duvets. And fall walks. And those gigantic bathtubs last weekend. Those things were off the chain, boy.

To Do: Ta Da!

I love lists. I use them everywhere: to organize my day, to weigh out how I feel, to make goals, to rank shit. Hell, I'm using a list right now, in that very last sentence. Man, I do love lists!

I'm clearly not the only one who adores a little em-dash action: the writing team over at Cracked is hooked on lists, too. As is Columbus, from my current favourite movie, Zombieland. And Craig has a whole list of them. They're everywhere! Run! Run!

Does anyone else suspect that we're all just way too busy these days? I can cop to feeling overscheduled, that's for damn sure. But it's not just me: more and more of us are working two jobs, have multiple homes, volunteer, exercise, and need to track other people's schedules in addition to their own. It's nutty!

I'd harken back to the Good Ole Days, but I'm not entirely sure when those were. The 1930s? Sure, a nickel could get you a steamliner trip to Liverpool and a cup of coffee once you got there, but the whole damned country was unemployed. That's time-consuming. The 1950s? Because I love ironing and ugly houses so much? Even toys that are supposed to make life easier (the cell phone: ooh, so portable!) end up being annoying (like when your phone stops working after you drop it in a toilet). I would argue that the single greatest household, helping-hands style device to come out of the last hundred years is the vibrator.

Which is why I love the list. It's portable. The format is endlessly variable. I like to marry it to the index card (in a small, tasteful ceremony, of course), which is my favourite piece of office stationary. The List + Index Card formula often makes for excellence. I write down people's phone number and head out the door. I write down the title of a book and check it out later. I write down my to-do list and then I do it. I'm not attached to a book. If I'm feeling especially racy, I'll open up that little love match to a third partner - the Bulldog Clip - and create a little booklet. That's pretty advanced, though: don't try that one at home.

The moral of the story: we need lists. We love to organize our thoughts, and listing create priority. There's nothing better than looking at a to-do list at the end of the day, each item with a careful line through it. Well, maybe there's something better...but I'm going to have to utilize one of those handy little devices to get there.

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.