Category: Uncategorized

Well, Tragic Right Hip is one year old. Happy blog day! Here’s the first post that started it all.

I’m so tired today and I’ve got editing work to do. We went to see a Marlies game on Friday night. They lost (eight to two) but the game was fun. There was a crackerjack fellow sitting in the row in front of us who was a super-fan. Screaming at the top of his lungs, yelling sh*t about how the team needed to show some heart even if they were losing. He almost got kicked out of the arena because he was talking smack with some other drunk kids a couple of rows beneath us. It was awesome.

Oh, and the goalie waved at us. Which, of course, set him off all over again. It was almost as much fun as a rock and roll show. Almost.

Then yesterday we had a Valentine’s Day party to go to. As a result, I can barely move today and am anxiously awaiting the barfing that’s sure to arrive seeing as I only got about three hours sleep last night. Today is a bad movie, ain’t gonna move off the couch, gonna do my work on the laptop kind of day.

Aw, Sunday.

Scarbie and Blondie did it—and I don’t want to feel left out. So I’m copying both of them. I hope that’s okay ladies.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Ice cream girl at Baskin Robbins. Here is where I cultivated my love for Daquiri Ice slushies with vodka, rode my skateboard to work, and attempted to glue all of the things I broke back together with the chocolate sauce. Ask Suzi if you don’t believe me.
2. Working at the Gap. God, I loved working at the Gap. I loved folding. I loved doing the cash. I loved the 50% staff discount. I loved the mall. Man, I miss that job.
3. Executive Producer. I ran some web sites. I loved it. I did not love my BFH. And in the end, all the stress caused the disease to come back. Bastards.
4. Writer. My favourite job of all time. Five books and counting, a few poems, and giant ambition. I’ll keep y’all posted on that one…

Four movies I could watch over and over (well, this week):
1. Underworld (I am a deathdealer)
2. Love Actually (Joni Mitchell taught your cold, English wife to love)
3. Bridget Jones’s Diary (Everyone knows that diaries are total crap)
4. Badlands (I run the words on the roof of my mouth with my tongue too)

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Brockville, Toronto, ON
2. Kingston, ON
3. Banff, AB
4. Mississauga, ON

Four TV shows I love (currently):
1. Ellen (I know! It’s cheesy! I love it!)
2. Lost
3. Coronation Street (see note above)
4. Grey’s Anatomy (there’s something satisfying about having crazy-ass medical problems and watching a show about medicine)

Four places I’ve been on vacation:
1. Ireland (my favourite place was Derry)
2. London, England (my favourite thing is having a pint with Elyssa and her mates)
3. Winnipeg, MB (my favourite place to watch the pelicans)
4. My cottage, Havelock, ON (my favourite place to call home)

Four blogs I visit daily…:
1. Hissyfit
2. Martinis for Milk
3. Friends, Romans
4. Blondie’s
5. Ethel Knots
6. And all the others on my list to the right. I don’t want to leave anyone out. I love them all so!

Four Favorite Foods:
1. My RRHB’s Fakon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches
2. Fish and chips at the pub on the corner of College and Dovercourt
3. Fresh grapes
4. Organic spelt gingerbread cookies

Four places I’d rather be:
1. Can I be honest and say that I’m actually liking where I am right at this moment, sitting in front of the computer, finishing off a story and about to watch the tube after a particularly unchallenging day of work.
2. Well, the only thing that would make it better would be the RRHB being home—but he’s working. What a mighty good man!

Four songs I listened to most recently (on the iTunes Party Shuffle):
1. The City, Fembots
2. Wonderwall, Oasis
3. Genuinely Frozen, Greg MacPherson
4. Cain is Rising, Oh Susanna

(hey! It’s iTunes, not me!)

Last three vehicles I’ve owned:
1. My bike. Built by an ex-boyfriend who was far too obsessed with The Smiths and it still works to this day.
2. My 1984 Datsun (aka Nissan Sentra). That was the best baby blue crappy-ass car ever. It ran for years.
3. Our current 2003 Nissa Sentra

Whew. That was fun. Now you try!

Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, a mega-huge bestseller about Chris McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp), a young man who went walking into the Alaskan woods never to be seen alive again, quite simply rocks. I’m a weary nonfiction reader generally. Find nonfiction books to be dry and too historical, too school-like sometimes, but when it’s done well, it’s so fascinating that it’s a real story, that I get sucked in and can’t put the book down.

I’ve been trying to read as much outdoorsy-type nonfiction as I can these days. There’s a character in one of the stories I’m writing about Banff who loves to hike and rock climb, and since I do neither, or rather, haven’t done either in years, I want to make sure what I’m writing rings true.

Krakauer has a gift for weaving different stories into his nonfiction without them necessarily seeming incongruent. Although the book talks mainly about Chris McCandless, it’s also about Krakauer himself, as if understanding a bit more about his own character helped him to get inside the head of the boy who died so tragically. It’s a good lesson to take note of…but not like I’ll be attempting any Frey-like nonfiction memoirs anytime soon.

Leonard Cohen‘s been all over the arts news these days after his induction into the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. I was lucky enough to hear his interview yesterday on the CBC, which was more inspiring than I can possibly put into words. Listening to him (I’m almost about to say changed my life, but I’ve vowed not to be so melodramatic), you can really tell he’s a man so connected with words and with their meaning on one hand, but on the other seems to be at peace too with the absolute poverty of meaning they can convey as well. You can also tell that he’s dedicated himself to thought. He speaks slowly and deliberately, letting silence punctuate so many of his thoughts.

I envy that. I envy dedicating yourself entirely to your art for the greater part of your life. Living in semi-poverty, without the ins and outs of a full-time job or the mind-numbing drones of everyday things: television, meetings, work email, work documents, and on and on. My goal over the next few years is to become self-sufficient in a way. To truly give over to my own creative spirit, as much as humanly possible. Let’s see how far I get. It all depends on my royalty cheques. Come on Little Women! Or Frankenstein! Or Robinson Crusoe! What’s that M.J. Rose thing? Is this blog worth $7.95? If you think so, go on and grab a copy of some Classic Starts from your local book store.

Annnnywaaay. The interview talked about a lot of different things, from the inspiration behind many of his infamous songs to talking about his novels and his poetry. But one thing in particular stuck with me. The interviewer (Shelagh Rogers, I think) asked why he was so fond of form vs. free verse. And Cohen replied that he enjoyed working with form because it forces the poet to look beyond the first thought. I guess he’s kind of anti-first thought equals best-thought school of writing. It forces the writer to move beyond that thought into something deeper, richer and ultimately more interesting.

And it made me want to write a sonnet. Even though I know I would probably suck at it.

So, after a weekend spent throwing up and watching more bad movies because I can’t leave the house, feeling guilty because it was my mother’s birthday and we didn’t go down to the hospital to see her, and not cleaning like I usually do, I managed to accomplish one thing: I read another chicklit book, Party Girl by Sarah Mason. Yes, that Sarah Mason, author of Society Girls. She does like to use the word ‘girl’ in a title, that’s for sure.

The book centres around party planner whose childhood sweetheart was actually an awful bully (with a heart of gold, of course). She ends up having to plan a giant fete for said fellow and his family, which ends up exactly as you’d expect: with the two leads in the closet making out. Ah, British chicklit, you never tax me nor make me frustrated with plot holes and other annoying things about these kinds of novels.

I should really only count these books as .5 and not a full whole.

Whoever thought getting something for free would be such a freaking hassle. So, RRHB got a free phone from his video shoot last weekend. That’s all good; it’s a totally cool phone with lots of gadgets and an MP3 player.

But because it’s with a particular carrier, we had to cancel his current phone and order a new one. Only it doesn’t exist. No one has a record of the phone I have sitting in front of me on the desk.

I was on the phone with customer service for almost ninety minutes trying to figure something out when he said, “Just tell them we’ll go into the store.”

Sigh. Life is never easy, is it?

I have a soft spot in my cold, black heart for British chicklit. As you know, I’m a fan of chicklit anyway and think that it’s the perfect kind of book to read when you wake up at 4.45 AM, throw up from your meds, have the runs, and can’t get back to sleep.

Ahem. Was that TMI?

Annnnywaaay. I finished Sarah Mason’s Society Girls. Nowhere near the level of sophistication of Gemma Townley, Mason’s book is okay (judging on the chicklit curve, of course). The plot is totally predictable, and there are characters that are mentioned but never discussed so what’s the point of them even being there (two extra brothers who never come home and don’t even seem to have names, so wha?). But the main character, Clemmie, was delightfully free of a job in publishing and/or marketing—hooray!

The title refers to a girl who goes missing just before her wedding, and Clemmie and her sister Holly, a journalist, end up getting in over their heads in terms of the whole situation surrounding this girl Emma. As with most chicklit, the plot is preposterous and all just a rouse to get the wayward lovers together, but this book did a lot to keep my mind off my rotten stomach at 5.30 this morning.

Now how’s that for a book review!

At school on Monday night, someone had written something and I immediately had assumed it was based on a pop tart (like Britney but much younger). Now why would I immediately make the assumption that some smart woman in my class was writing about an American teenager whose famous for having one name, an attitude and not much else?

Hummm. Perhaps because I’ve been watching way, way, way too much television these past few weeks. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had a television hangover on Sunday night, after spending three days at home, feeling super-sick by myself watching movie after movie after movie.

My brain hurts.

I’ve even been too tired to read. So not only is the stupid disease ruining my life, or rather, ensuring that I have no life, it’s limiting the things that I really love to do too.

Say it with me: stupid Wegener’s.

In the grand TRH tradition of creating lists when I’m too tired to write a proper blog post. Here are some things that I’ve learned today:

1. I’m right to oppose my RRHB’s pleas to get rid of our land line and only use cell phones. Not only is that bad for the environment, but it’s annoying too. Oh, and he’s always mocking me for turning the phone off when I’m not using it (it’s a work cell phone so I’ve pretty much only got it on during business hours). This way I only charge it about once a week, thus saving that energy for other good things, like running this damn computer.

2. The world is seriously pissed at James Frey. Now he’s been dumped by his agent and idiotic people in the States are suing him—over ‘misrepresented reading experiences’. Yes, I’m being serious.

3. My RRHB is more famous today for having an article up on the homepage of Sympatico/MSN. It’s here if you want to read it.

4. The world (well, the Oscars) seriously loves the Annie Proulx-inspired Brokeback Mountain. But you’ve got to holla when “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” is nominated for Best Song. And go Terrence Howard.

On Tuesday night, the RRHB and I went to a benefit for a film that our friends are producing independently. It was the first and only time this week I actually left the house for something other than work or school. The whole night was fun until about 10 PM when my stomach started acting up again and the whole am-I-or-aren’t-I going to barf thing started up. Stupid meds.

Bob Wiseman played. The first show I ever crept into when I was underage was a Bob Wiseman show at the Rivoli. I went with my crazy ex-boyfriend from high school who ended up becoming a heroin addict. The RRHB was there too. We were in a car with windshield wipers that didn’t work and it was raining. I wore a Mexican poncho my father had brought back for me from some vacation he was on.

Six months later I was with a different boy and half the school wasn’t talking to me because of said “drama.” Six months after that I was diagnosed with Wegener’s for the first time. I listened a lot to Bob Wiseman that year.

Then, I spent a few years at university going to Bob’s shows, watching him in different bars, learning all of his songs, each time probably with a different boyfriend-of-the-week. Once, after one of his shows, he was packing up and we were introduced, albeit briefly. He said, “You have a very interesting voice.” And then just looked at me strangely.

Ah, the joys of being so young.

“We got, we got, we got, we got, time.”

It’s funny how when you’re young, you think that you actually do have a lot of time. These days, I think I’m already one foot in the ground with all the crap from the disease. But it’s nice to remember how much fun I used to have, even if I can’t have so much of it these days.