Not Quite Christmas, Not Quite New Years

As a contrast to my last post, let me just say that I'm back home, which is to say, back East. 'Tis the season of family togetherness, and so since Christmas Eve I have been at the homestead soaking up Smitty love, watching movies, and having food pressed upon me at every turn.

I would have blogged more, but thanks to all the stuffing, my pudgy fingers can barely reach the keyboard.

Anyway, I have to spend a few days in Toronto and Montreal starting now, so don't expect the pace of posting to pick up any. However, once I return, you can look forward to a truly terrifying trip down Memory Nightmare Alley, as I have discovered the diary of my misspent youth. And by misspent I meant whiny. Very, very whiny.

West Coast Living

When I'm at work, I work hard... at living up to the stereotype of the disgruntled Easterner. In short, I celebrate the following:

1. Smoking (although I haven't since that brief flirtation with tobacco in aught-eight)
2. Grease-laden foods
3. Toronto
4. the Montreal Canadiens
5. Concrete

While disparaging the following:

1. Camping
2. Sunflower seeds in everything
3. The Sunshine Coast
4. the Vancouver Canucks
5. Crab traps

Secretly, however, there's a sugary nougat centre beneath my prickly exterior. I like Victoria. I like taking the ferry back when it's not dark and raining, so I can watch from the deck as the postcard-pretty islands pass by. There are purple starfish, used bookstores and Eccles cakes as far as the eye can see.

Or at least until your eyes get to Saaanich, at which point things get pretty residential and unexciting, but still. Lots of fun to see before then.

These are all lovely little comforts, but I'm also fond of making rent and keeping things in the pantry besides lentils. I'll need to find a job after my internship is over, and the word on Fort an Douglas streets is that's not the simplest of tasks. So I'm cruel to Victoria and it's many delights because I don't want to fall in love with the city, and then regret moving back to Toronto.

However, every mean word about the sunflower thing was in earnest. That's just whack.

Burlesque: Approach With Caution, Glitter

This still is more exciting than 99.999999% of the movie.

I love Cher. I would follow that crazy dancing, singing, walking, talking Real Doll to the ends of the Earth and beyond. She's half-Armenian, half-Sleestak and all love.

And I'm opening on this note of Cherophilia because I feel the need to justify my purchase of tickets - at full price (10$) to Burlesque (a film worth 0.01$, if anything.)

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Singing, dancing, costumes, Alan Cumming, Cher, Cher, Cher - but I was cruelly mistaken. I forgot to reckon on the presence of Christina Aguilera, Aguilera, Aguilera.

There's no denying the girl can sing, except that like Celine Dion, she uses her great power for great evil. Aguilera seems to have never met a note she wouldn't turn into an octave, complete with growling "uh-hrrrrrrrrr" intro. The only raft in the ocean of terrifying yell-singing was a Cher ballad. Seriously, Cher isn't the most dramatic thing on screen. The Pro Tooled notes soothed my frayed nerves for a few minutes, but then it was time for Aguilera to slather on the melisma again. And for me to slouch further down in my seat.

Have you ever seen Coyote Ugly? Well, make the acting even worse and you'll have this movie. Listen to Aguilera speak the line "I'm only taking what's owed me, not a penny more" and hear someone who might have learned her lines phonetically. However, even the real actors don't get much in the way of assistance from the script. Poor, pretty, perpetually shirtless Cam Gigandet gets the worst of it. In a wedding scene, he gets in a phone argument with his fiancée and has to say "Yeah, we should talk about our future. In fact, I think I'm looking at my future right now."

Now, by rights, he should have been staring meaningfully at the buffet table while saying this. Instead, of course, he's got to gaze longingly at Christina Aguilera. I don't want to slut shame anyone, but I remember her "Dirrty/Xtina" period. That's a future full of new and exciting STI's Gigandet is staring down, my friends.

Any movie reflections should end with at least one positive comment, and here's one for Burlesque: It kept the sequin stitchers of America employed during this trying economic downturn.

Don't see it, no matter how much you've had to drink.