Life AM: After the Move.

It's a truth Protagitronly acknowledged that moving sucks. It's annoying to pack- where does the bundt pan go? It's both round and bumpy! It's useless. It's annoying to lug things up and down the stairs, particularly armoires silly people blithely purchased from the New Rez furniture sale only to realize they weren't even going to provide a furniture cart. And it's annoying to unpack, when you realize you have to figure out how to hang things on walls when you have a pathological fear of banging things into walls. How would one manage a major drywall malfunction? 

And then there's the Ikea furniture. Allen wrench, my ass. 

Anyway, I've been pretty busy with that and running errands for it, so there's been little knitting or blogging happening lately. Fortunately, I met a woman at my job who also knits, which means a new recruit for the Knitting Club. 

Also in the plus column: seeing Dark Knight for the second time. I don't think it's a perfect movie, but I think it's the best super-hero movie I've seen so far. In spite of taking some liberties with the canon, it stylistically hews closer to the source material, or at least the source post-seventies O'Neill and Adams. What bothers me though is the coverage in the press, which now frequently runs a companion piece all about what the film is saying about the Bush administration. Read the rather unfortunate Klavan piece that started it all here, and then the NY Times follow-up. Now, don't be mislead. I'm a good little cultural studies student, so I know that context matters; that every movie, even the seemingly benign, has an ideological agenda; and that that ideological reading depends on a complex, fluid relationship between the art and the viewer. I read the books. I passed most of the courses. But it's this dogged insistence that every movie be projected through the lens of post-9/11 America that bugs me. Klavan's article was mocked in blogland, but it wasn't a wild connection to make about a blockbuster. I remember when 300 came out, and every review I read saw it as naked (rather, shirtless and oiled) propaganda for the Iraq war. I don't think the current mess hasn't had an effect on cultural consciousness. Rather, there are other factors, and simply focussing on the Iraq War as the only way to read new movies is, well, myopic. 

Department of Canons and Mysteries

Only one class changed my life in second-year university, and it managed to do so while showing me samurais getting skewered in the neck and rent boys getting screwed. I'm sure you've all guessed by now that class was Shakespeare on Film. I thought of it this morning when I woke up at 5:30 with my cat's paw on my back and his breath in my ear, and a line from a Rilke poem running through my head. Blame the lecturer. The first day of class she read Archaic Torso of Apollo to us, whose last bit reads

" and not from every edge explode
like starlight: for there's not one spot
that doesn't see you. You must change your life."

It was the last sentence. And I could hear it in Jenn's voice. "You must change your life." I must change my life? How? Would either my favorite masters student or sickly German poet please tell me? I do not know. This is all a mystery. I hope the change is something more meaningful than doing the dishes more often.

Also, a conversation with my roommate last night reminded me that movies or TV with believable, likable teen girls are rare. So rare, I'm trying to come up with a girl canon. So far, I have Daria, Freaks and Geeks, Ghost World, and both Buffy and Juno to some (very articulate) extent. If anyone has any other suggestions for the Girl Canon, please send them in.

Cram it, Katy Perry

Whenever I'm in Montreal I slide into a music bubble. What's going on in mainstream music? I suddenly have no idea. I'm still not sure who Hannah Montana is, or what she does. Or if she's not just a clever hologram deployed by the Italian leather-booted thugs at Disney. At least in Guelph, I had basic cable and was desperate enough to tune in to the Edge. In Montreal, I just put on podcasts and rent Russian action movies. When I do listen to music, it's either stuff I've scavenged from the superior music collections of my brother and my dad, or synthed-out eighties stuff I've downloaded in shame. I can't imagine how empty my life would be without downloading. I would be too embarrassed to go to the record store to fill the hole in my heart, a hole that can only be filled with synthesizers and fake hand claps.

How out of it am I? Well, when Madonna's Hung Up came out- the one that sampled "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) and I started hearing it everywhere, I just assumed Montreal was in the throes of an ABBA renaissance.

So, it takes a rare song to penetrate the fog of my ignorance. Unfortunately, Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" has done so, helped along by my So You Think You Can Dance addiction. Can she go away now? Not only is the song annoying- her voice sounds tinny and Pro-Tooled, the production's flabby- but her act bothers me. I don't mind when someone like, oh, Madonna plays around with sexuality. And it isn't that a failed Christian-rock singer is capitalizing on fake-lesbian chic that bothers me. Rather, it's her purposefully dim stage presence. I don't have much patience for the kind of little-girl antics that make women pout and stand all knock-kneed. It's not that it makes them look stupid stupid, it's that it makes them look like they want to look dumb. Which is just sad. And then she puts her hand to her mouth when she hopes her boyfriend won't find out about her girl-kissing ways, because she's just too naughty. The whole song reminds me of girls who make out with other girls not because they want to, but because their boyfriends want them to. No one but Focus on the Family's bothered, hetero norms aren't challenged, and only men are getting off. Ten bucks says most of the girls who'll make out in clubs to this song- and to whistles from their guys- will be raising kids in the 'burbs ten years on. Even the ones who think they kind of liked it. And I'll bet another ten that Katy is on some one-hit wonders compilation. Or maybe that's just what I hope.

Now, to get that taste out of your mouth, how about a fun dude-on-dude song?
High School Confidential- Carole Pope

Leaping Lemurs!

This capybara went on record as saying "Baroo?"

The Biodome is pretty much my favourite place in Montreal. Not even Schwartz's or Basha comes close, lacking as they do in puffins and capybaras. Want to know how much I like the Biodome? You see, like many a kinda-hetero woman, I have my wedding already planned. Instead of having a Vera Wang dress or tea roses every which way though, I only have two kind of odd desires. The first is that it must be at the Biodome. And the second is that the sloth will be our ring bearer.

Penguins already come with tuxedos, perfect for any wedding or formal event.

Yeah, so the ceremony might take hours, but it's going to kick ass. I still haven't decided whether the reception will be sorbet in the penguin area, or canapés in the Laurentian habitat.

Hyacinth macaws

So, every year I make a pilgrimage to the Biodome, where I check in with my old friends. This time I dragged a human friend, Frances, along. She got to hear me wonder the same questions I always do, like "What happens when one of the animals die?" "Do they feed it to the other animals?" "What would traumatize little children more- seeing a lynx eat Bucky Beaver or a caiman eat Zoboo?" Sadly, these questions were again not answered in the twenty-minute presentation "Les Secrets du Biodome" Frances and I attended to improve our French. My french must be getting better, because I understood most of it. Then again it's pretty easy to translate from the French "The capybara eats the placenta" when you're actually seeing capybaras. Eating. Placenta. The movie was more interesting on a fasion note than an educational one. The lovely Geneviève, our presenter, had those great cargo pants that zip off into shorts. The ones that always seem sexy on women... but only women in certain professions. Biologists, archaeologists, can all rock them and look like the fiery love interest of some adventurer. I, a lazy English student, always look like a comfy but sturdy turnip. Not to self: go all Single White Female on Gen-Gen's lifestyle. It will probably lead to face time with tamarind monkeys.

Porcupine up a tree.

The big draw for me this year were the lemurs, also known as John Cleese's favourite animal. I almost wrote Chevy Chase there, which is weird. One's American, one's British, one's funny, one... not so much. Plus, I'm quite sure Chevy Chase's favourite animal is his own ego. Cleese, at least, has better taste in movie projects and animals, as I found out yesterday. Lemurs are very keen-looking creatures, even when they're not jumping around the trees and just hanging out. Their big yellow eyes always look a little overwhelmed. Or maybe over-stressed, kind of like a student in the middle of exams. I sympathize. Since they're only visiting, their habitat is just a big shack in the middle of one of the hallways, done up to look like a Madagascan home, and you shuffle past the lemurs and then out into the gift shop. They seem to like to hang out together, and will clean each other like cats. Speaking of cats, don't tell the big guy, but I kind of want two lemurs of my own now. One for cuddling at each end of the sofa.

My lemur buddies. I've named the one on the left Margo and the one on the right Captain Franks.

A Few Things About My Brother

This is my brother.
I think he's pretty cool.
He's got a bitching tattoo and he can play guitar real well.
But he's got a very cute girlfriend, so don't get too excited.
Sometimes he drives me crazy, but he has a good heart.
He's back in Canada after a brief foray into South Korea.
It was horrifying for him, but his stories provided me with much amusement.
Apparently his Korean apartment was much nicer after the Russian prostitutes moved out.
He made it out of the country without the Korean police turning him into bulgogi.
I really like bulgogi, so I would have been torn between sadness and hunger.
I'm glad he's back.

The Death of Resolutions

My resolution to worry less lasted exactly one hour and forty-three minutes, or until some complete stranger wrote down his contact information and told me I should get in touch if I was interested. I stuffed his e-mail in my pocket and made swift exit from the computer lab, before my brain kicked in again and I reflected on the situation. Now, this is a rare enough occurrence in my life, since my default expression is less “flirty” and more “twitchy,” but I still have a protocol for such situations:

• 1. Assess the situation: Does the dude look creepy or unhinged? If so, make swift exit or else camouflage self as metro seat or post-office box. If not, assess the dude.
• 2. Control for likely scenarios:
• Dude senses my weaknesses, assumes he can use me
• Response: glare
• Dude is probably playing a joke on me
• Likely situation in high school
• Response: glare to the corner
• Dude is delusional
• Response: grimace, nod in kindly fashion
• Dude is trying to lure me into cult/weird club
• Response: 1. Smile kindly
• 2. Think of potential horrors (Scientology, Neo-Nazis, Lithuanian folk dance)
• 3. Glare
• 3. If neither scenario seems likely, initiate contact from a pay phone using a voice scrambler; run background and credit check

Unsurprisingly, I’ve never made it to step three. This specimen seemed to be within my age range, which can only mean things are looking up. Until then, I had been huge with the “Old Man Buying Oka Cheese at the Grocery Store” and the “Random Middle-Aged Arabic Guy on the Street” demographics. I still pegged him as a one and chose not to get in touch with him. My kindly neighbour Athena says that I passed up the chance for some perfectly good casual sex, and that the only reason I chickened out was because I’m too comfortable complaining. I don’t know about the latter, but I still think I only passed up the chance to be the floating elbow and skull in some stew pot. I do wish that I could have the normal person response to this, which would be to be flattered but uninterested. My crimelibrary.com addiction keeps on getting in the way though.

Some More Simple Math

Being thrust out into the world without Internet showed me how scarily attached I've become to it. Life is livable without the Internet, you just watch a lot more Dr. Phil and hope the restaurant you're going to won't kill you with a food poisoning sandwich.

The last one actually led to revelation: If I don't dial back on the anxiety, I'll probably stroke out before I'm thirty. I was meeting my pal Frances for dinner at this little basement snack bar I always wanted to go to- Moe's, on Maisonneuve and Lambert-Closse- and was convinced that she would hate it, I would hate it, I would hurl on some kid trying to watch Wall-E at the theater... Then I realized that in the past twenty-four hours I had worried about losing my job, failing an exam, failing a class, having to find another job, when I was going to get to do laundry again, whether Gibby the Degu was feeling neglected, and probably a few other things I've forgotten to write down. And then I realized that was kind of sad, and pointless. I didn't lose my job, I did fine on the exam, I probably won't fail that class, I did laundry yesterday, and Gibby has the memory span of a gnat and is probably doing just fine.

I met Frances for dinner, and there was no food poisoning chez Moe's. Damn tasty grilled cheese and milkshakes, though, and they have a small, fuzzy TV on, so you know it's a Protagitron kind of place. We shared a side of fries, drenched in ketchup, and talked about whether assholery is an inherited or acquired trait. The outdated poster of Patrick Roy as a Habs goalie hanging on the wall reminded us that his family is proof of the former. Then we talked about impossibilities of Jewish families (her) and of Ukrainian ones, and of dealing with any kind of Montreal construction. I have resolved, however, to somehow skip age and religious boundaries to become an old Jewish woman kvetching at a funeral. I think it's my calling.

Be it also further resolved not to worry quite so much.

Confession: I Have a Batman Returns "Thing"

Sad confession time: In high school, when things got rough, I would buy a half-pound of wine gums and rent this movie. I'm sure I could have bought a spanking new DVD with the number of times I rented the fuzzy VHS, and two scoops of wine gums with the change. I'm aware that this, er, "episode" in my past has probably coloured my view of the movie, and that now I'll find it impossible to look at it with any kind of critical remove, but you know what? Everyone needs their thing, a movie or band without either critical or popular acclaim that they still love. Common guilty pleasures do not count, because everyone either loves Dirty Dancing or they are lying- lying!- to themselves. I had a friend who was convinced that U-571 was underrated, another that thought that Ronin was the best action movie, and some weirdo who thought that Troy had a certain charm. That last person might also be me. I'll never tell. You know that your thing is futile, that you'll die knowing it will forever be in the 6.99$ bin at Wal-Mart, and no artistic revival will be staged. But you don't stop.

When I have to justify my love for this movie, I put on my cultural studies hat and say one of the following things. It's the kinkiest mainstream movie ever released. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman is an interesting character of the post-feminist backlash. I like the gothic aesthetic.

Now, most of these things, I would argue, are true. Whatever it is between Batman and Catwoman is decidedly queer, queerer even than Batman and Robin in the Schumacher films- and the latter had goddamn leather nipples. Burton understands that S&M relationships aren't about the clothes, they're about the head games. And Batman and Catwoman are trying on both roles, screwing with each other's heads on the rundown, nightmarish rooftops of Gotham City. It's a good thing too, since they never get around to having sex, and all of this mental fucking is the only thing that keeps the movie from being a two-hour long tease.

I could say all this, and more, but I just like the way the movie feels. It's a nasty little movie, but it's fun. It's a fantasy about how freakish, and yet sickly beautiful the city can be. I share Catwoman's opinion on when it comes to movies, if not to men- "Sickos never scare me. At least they're committed."

Precious, Precious Internet

The wireless I had been, er, "enjoying without financial remuneration" finally decided to pooch out a few days ago, and so between that and my grandmother not having any Internet, there was very little blogging to be done. Which is probably for the best. Since it would have been a non-stop roller coaster of "Life is awesome!" alternated with "Why, sweet Jeebus, why?" Like my grandfather's death, I'm going to file this time away somewhere in the things that are too exhausting to blog about. Most of the past week or so has been too tiring even to talk about with my friends. I may or may not be employed next week. I may or may not be a passing student. I likely won't be loved, but it's nice to know that there are many people who will still like me.
Still, universe, if you can't throw me a cookie, please be so kind as to throw me a bone once in a while.

Anyway, I'm going to enjoy some Facebook stalking before I have to return to the Internetless hinterlands of my apartment. I'm probably watching you RIGHT NOW. Or at least reading your status.