Shhhh, Sleeping Rock Stars

My RRHB was in Windsor and London the last two nights, and now he’s asleep, along with their drummer Nathan Lawr (who is also a wonderful musician in his own right) who is crashed out on my couch.

Normally, if you had a regular house that wasn’t being renovated, there would be other places for you to hang out, like downstairs. But because we’re all crammed upstairs, I’m sort of trapped here on the computer waiting for them to wake up. And considering we’re supposed to leave for the cottage in an hour, I’m getting desperate to jiggle the bed a little and step away from the celebrity gossip. There’s only so much trash I can fill my mind up with before feeling slightly dirty myself.

I’m also pleased to say that two nights of really good sleep have brought me back to rights in terms of the past week. Last night I watched The Good Shepherd and barely made it through before crawling into bed at 10 PM. I also finished reading Claire Cameron’s debut novel, The Line Painter, which is #34 for the year.

What A Week

I can barely believe that it’s Saturday again. The week flew by at light speed and I haven’t even been home long enough (other than sleeping) to update anything. So, because today should be spent writing so I have something to send my mentor by the end of the weekend, I’m updated via a quickie list. Had I had time this week, all of these would have been separate entries, so I apologize for the brevity.

1. This was the week of author events through work. I attended four of them in three days. The first, a forum to launch Michael Chettleburgh’s Young Thugs, was very interesting. I even learned that there were Irish gangs in Toronto in 1850. Another thing for my list to investigate because I think it would make a cool story. Then I went to two different events for Daniel Handler: a Lemony Snicket cocktail party, and an event at the Andy Pool Hall to celebrate his novel Adverbs. But my favourite was the underground club party for Richard Flanagan, author of The Unknown Terrorist, where Russell Smith mildly insulted me before carrying on his way and doing a superb on stage interview with the author, who, by the way, read Chekhov as preparation for writing about the women in his novel. That made me want to take him out for dinner and listen to him wax philosophical for hours.

2. Gilmore Girls is over. I managed to watch the last episode but only after begging my RRHB to remember to tape it before he went off to his second job on Tuesday. I was chatting over email with Kate who pointed out that it’s actually kind of ironic to see every single episode of a show and then forget to tape the very last one. She’s right, but I was just so busy this week that a number of things slipped my mind. I felt very ho-hum about the finale. Even though the show has absolutely gotten off track as of late, I’m still not 100% convinced it should have been over. And how they dealt with both of the relationships, Luke and Logan, was ridiculous. Regardless, it’s one less hour of television I’ll have to keep up with in the fall.

3. I finished reading Chantal Simmons’s Stuck in Downward Dog. I got a little teary at the end, and it was refreshing to read a chicklit novel where ‘getting the boy’ wasn’t the central focus of the story. I liked how the book was more about a journey for the character into herself versus a more stereotypical journey into the right relationship. Anyway, that’s book #33 for the year. I’m also halfway through about a half-dozen other books that I’m hoping to finish this weekend up north while my brother and RRHB are watching Pan’s Labyrinth.

4. Yesterday afternoon, our summer hours started. I had some work to finish up so I didn’t leave right at 1:30 PM, but I did manage to make it to an afternoon show of Away From Her, Sarah Polley’s directorial debut. Based on Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Down the Mountain,” I felt like it was a solid adaptation, if Polley did take some liberties with the story’s point of view and tended to sentimentalize where the author had been tack-sharp. I found some aspects of the film a bit overly dramatic but Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie were just so good that I was willing to overlook the bits of the movie that just felt too forced. Grant reading “The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife” really? Regardless of how much I love that poem, the can lit overtures in the film were a little, well, eye roll inducing. But I don’t want that to deflect from the fact that Away From Her is a film I would highly recommend as counter programming to the glut of American multiplex blockbusters hitting the streets every week or two.

5. I saw yet another specialist this week about some lady problems I’ve been having. Needless to say, a lot of what I’m experiencing is probably a side effect of the methotrexate, which doesn’t make it any easier to take. I’m also getting frustrated because I can’t seem to loose a single pound. Eating better, riding my bike, dance class, pilates, and still over the course of the last few months, I am the same chubby -bloated sick-looking girl I was when I started. I’m very frustrated about all of that but I have to say that if it’s the medicine at least I know that I’ll be off of it in the next six-to-eight months and maybe then the weight will start coming off. I can’t stand looking at pictures of myself though, which is annoying because everyone and their uncle seems to update Facebook with a million different albums. Anyway. I really liked this doctor very much and feel like she’ll be extremely helpful when it comes to this particular problem that won’t seem to go away. I have to say that even now that the disease is in remission technically, I’m dead sick of all the treatments. It’s been three years of different medications, difficult side effects, and I’m just plain tired of it all. And the mood swings with everything else combined has just about caught me by the fray of my last rope.

TRH Movie – Catch and Release

Yet another film I had to review for Chart this weekend, I watched a DVD screener of Catch and Release. Starring Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith and Juliette Lewis, the film meanders and aimlessly moves around in a far too subtle way to be effective over the course of its almost two hour run time.

Set adrift after the death of her fiancé, Gray (yes, that’s her name, yawn) has to learn to live without Grady, who dies off screen and is never seen in the film with the exception of a few photographs. With her perfect life ruined, oh-so subtly symbolized by the beautiful wedding flowers being turned back at the door and the gorgeous cake rotting away in the fridge, Gray doesn’t quite know where to turn. So she bunks down with Grady’s friends, Sammy (played by director Kevin Smith) and Dennis (newcomer Sam Jaeger). Oh, and let’s not forget Fritz (where did Grant come up with such ridiculous names?), the LA-living bad boy who boffs a waitress in the bathroom during the wake at Grady’s mother’s house, and who becomes Gray’s love interest.

The movie feels so predictable, even though you know it’s trying hard not to be—so of course, problems from Grady’s past surface that she had no idea about (really?) in the form of Maureen (Juliette Lewis), a woman from his good time days when he was out in LA visiting Fritz (I can’t type that name without feeling like it’s just so ridiculous). And it’s hard, because you can see the vibe that Grant is going for, sort of akin to the films of the utterly and always brilliant Allison Anders, where it’s more subtle and sensitive than your typical studio picture. But Catch and Release never truly shows the heart of say a film like Things Behind the Sun or Grace of My Heart.

Essentially, the biggest problem with Catch and Release is that none of it really feels organic, and nothing feels more forced in this picture than the setting. And maybe it’s a problem with the writing or maybe with the performances, although elements of both are truly lovely, so I can’t quite put my finger on why it doesn’t work. The film is wistful when it should have been hard hitting, obscure where it should have been obvious, and derivative when it should have gone in another direction.

(Explaining the worst made-for-TV moment would spoil the middle of the film so I won’t go there but just trust me to say that you’d roll your eyes too).

The trouble with the movie, I think, that in order to see the impact of Grady’s death on Gray’s life, there had to be more than little reminders of the way it used to be. There’s not enough there to understand why she’s so lost, there’s nothing of her previous person there to examine the impact of the tragic moments. In fact, there’s little in terms of motivation for many of the main players, which leaves you wanting more, despite how well Grant tries to set up the situations.

I did, however, listen to the entire commentary track between Grant and Kevin Smith, which was, of course, hilarious and insightful. At one point, he talks about how much he hated the ‘outdoorsy’ aspects of the film, stating that he’d rather sit down and watch four films in a day than spent it fly fishing. At that moment, I felt like writing a fan letter to him that started, “even though we’re both happily married, if you were ever looking for that girl to sit down and watch all those movies with…” Heh. Sigh.

Regardless, I read a few reviews that really criticized Smith’s performance, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I thought all the actors, including the normally over-“acting” Jennifer Garner, did a really good job with the material. I just felt like the script would have worked so much better as a novel, where Grant, as a writer, could have had more time to explore the absent back story, and could have filled in some of the missing pieces.

Anyway, I didn’t get much of my own writing done this weekend for the watching of all these films and the writing of the subsequent reviews. And now this week is just so busy that I’m afraid another week will pass before I actually get to send anything to my mentor at Humber. I’m not so happy about that. I’m feeling the pressure actually.

TRH TV – The End Of An Era

I’ve finally done it. This week I broke up with Grey’s Anatomy. Completely and entirely. I erased the show from the PVR. I made no attempt to watch it first. I read the recaplet but, come on, what’s a girl to do? I’ve decided that there’s only room in my life for one medical drama, and that’s ER, and now that Stanley Tucci’s on the show, well, there’s no question where my viewing eyeballs will be focused.

Tuesday is the last episode of Gilmore Girls. I have a feeling I’ll have a lot more to say about that come next week. This year has been so disappointing for me in terms of that show. But I learned a good writing lesson: imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery, often the characters might look and talk like they used to, but they’re acting nothing like the Rory and Lorelai we came to know over the past few years. There’s a quality and a substance to the writing on that show that seems impossible for the new show-runners to capture.

I’m sad The Sopranos is ending because it means the old-school HBO dramas have all come to a close. Entourage has stood up quite well in place of some, and it’ll be years before we see The Wire again, which is the best show on television. I’m going to miss the quality Sunday night dramas. Somehow, even if Big Love does start up again, am I ever really going to care? Probably not.

Sigh.

How many weeks until Rescue Me comes back? And should we just box up the television until then? Probably.

Wow. I’m really rambling here and not making much of point other than Grey‘s jumped the shark, ER has found its way back, Gilmore Girls is done and I spent far too much time thinking about television.

TBR Stacks


I totally cribbed this from Baby Got Books, but here’s a picture of one portion of my TBR books. The bottom shelf should be books for the 1001 Books / Around the World in 52 Books challenges but they’ve all gotten mixed up with some other novels, ARCs from work, and other job-related titles that I need to read.

The top shelf is a mishmash of books I want to get to some day. These are books I haven’t read so they haven’t been packed away yet. They’re also books that I couldn’t bear to give away when we did the big clean out a few months ago. Some of them I will never read. But the interest is there, regardless.

TRH Movie – Georgia Rule

Well, I went to Georgia Rule for Chart this past week, and my ‘official’ review is here in case you’re a little bit curious. As I hated this film, there might be spoilers in this review, so if you’re going to go and see it, then don’t read this. Okay? That should be sufficient warning, no?

Annnywaaay. While everyone else in the theatre laughed at the ridiculous jokes and silly situations, Tara and I sat there stone-faced and serious. In addition to not finding a single part of the film remotely funny, I also felt disgusted that films like this, films that must obviously hate women, actually still get made in this day and age.

And it’s not like Garry Marshall, the director, or Mark Andrus, the screenwriter, has ever met a woman that lives outside the deep-seeded stereotypes tossed into this picture. Lindsay Lohan, who plays Rachel, the main character, is a mixed up teenager whose been sexually assaulted by her stepfather. So she’s jaded, confused, and forms attachments to men based on the wrong sorts of emotions. Right, but it’s not like the film actually explores any of the more serious implications of Rachel’s abuse to her life, oh no, instead it’s all one big joke—and when she finally confesses the abuse, a ‘did she or didn’t she’ back and forth forms the central “plot” for the film.

The two people caught in the middle of Rachel’s confessions: her grandmother Georgia (Jane Fonda) and mother Lilly (Felicity Huffman) either believe her without a doubt (the former) or think she’s just lying again, like she has all of her life (the latter). There’s multi-generational breakdown happening here because Lilly has rebelled all of her life against Georgia, and has become a serious alcoholic in the years that saw her flee from her mother’s house and into the arms of her successful divorce attorney (natch) of an evil husband, played by Cary Elwes.

As the stereotypes pile up, Rachel finds herself dumped in Hull, Idaho, where Georgia, alongside her infamous “rules” (dinner’s at six, no exceptions; if you live with her you need to work, no exceptions; don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, if so, wash your mouth out with soap, no exceptions). These same rules caused Lilly’s own rebellion but Rachel finds some sort of solace with her grandmother, but not that this is even explored in the film, as anything approaching an emotional connection is glossed over by sitcom-inspired comedy and unfunny one-liners.

All of the women in this film make bad decisions with no explanations really for their actions. There are no consequences necessarily either, in fact, very little actually happens in this film. In a vain attempt to get the audience on side, every single situation that should have some sort of emotional impact is maligned by some sort of pale attempt at a joke. Lohan changes skimpy outfits and screams a lot. Huffman falls down drunk a lot. Fonda pinches up her face a lot. In short, it’s embarrassing for all of them.

And I can’t help but think that feminism hasn’t really advanced in any way if multi-million dollar studios are still branding dreck like this as a ‘chick flick’ and expecting women to flock in droves into the theatres. These are not real women. Nothing about them feels authentic. The PG-rating betrays the serious issues in the film; you can’t feel anything for Rachel except exhaustion. She’s tired, the film’s tired, the comedy is tired, the direction is tired, I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point.

I get the feeling that both the director and the screenwriter are out of touch with a modern world. I get the feeling that the actors tried, with the exception of Lohan, to make the most out of the substandard material. But I also feel that if a filmmaker is going to take on serious subjects, like sexual molestation, there should be a level of commitment to the material that goes beyond wanting to create conflict. There’s none of that here, and even when the ending comes around, despite the saccharine nature of the scene, you’re left feeling dirty for sitting through this picture in the first place.

#32 Depths – Henning Mankell

I was halfway through this book before I declared the death of my reading challenges, so maybe all is not lost.

While Depths isn’t a Wallander mystery, it still retains many of the qualities that Mankell displays in his popular detective series, especially in tone and narrative style. Mankell has never been an author to shy away from the bleaker aspects of human nature, and Depths is no exception.

The novel, set during the First World War in Sweden, opens years in advance of the main story, as one its main characters, Kristina Tracker, the wife of naval Commander Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, escapes from the mental hospital that has been her home for many years and stands alone in the forest contemplating one memory: that she once had a husband.

From there, the narrative switches point of view, and the story becomes entirely Lars’s. He’s an exacting kind of man, with a mind that has a unique talent with measurements; a man who is drawn inexorably to the sea, who uses his unique skills to become a hydrographic survey engineer for the Swedish navy.

While on a mission, Lars discovers a young woman named Sara Fredrika living on a Halsskär, a skerry close to where they are measuring the depths of the sea. Soon he becomes obsessed with the woman, and the friction between the life he has in Stockholm with Kristina Tracker, and the one he desires on Halsskär turn Lars into a man even he would not recognize. His longing to escape from both of his two disparate worlds drives him to desperate acts, those of which bring the novel to its tragic conclusions.

Mankell shows with the novel that the ache of humanity that drives the overwhelmingly brooding yet wonderful Wallander series can carry into a more literary, artistic novel. His voice in this book is clear yet abrupt. Depths has short, succinct chapters, barely longer than two or three pages each, yet the story feels rich, flushed out and complete. Mankell’s sea, and how it relates to Tobiasson-Svartman’s consciousness, becomes almost a secondary character in the novel; it’s described beautifully and at length, and it’s easy to understand Lars’s connection to it, both psychologically and physically.

The Swedish entry in my Around the World in 52 Countries challenge, for once I felt a sincere and complex connection to the setting in the novel. Depths is a novel all about landscape, bleak, cold winters, rolling storms, the power of the sea, and the deep impact that war has on the men in its service. It makes me think that I’d love to read anything Mankell writes outside of the Wallander series, not that they aren’t great books, because they are, but Depths satisfies in an entirely different way.

The Death Of My Reading Challenges

I am desperately trying to hang on to my reading challenges these days. But I’ve got so many books to read for work that I might have to call it quits on both: Around the World in 52 Books and 1001 Books until I’ve got more time.

I’ve also finished #31 for the year, Magyk by Angie Sage. It’s a book for kids that I read for our What Would Harry Read? promotion. I love the idea of imagining the reading lives of imaginary characters. It’s a super-cute theme that should get people talking, if only to imagine what other characters would read.

Like what would Elizabeth Bennett read if she were alive today and reading in this century? What would Dean Moriarty have in the back pocket of his jeans? If Trip Fontaine were real, would he read? If you had a favourite fictional character: what do you think would be on their bookshelves?

Anyway, I’m going to try to keep on top of my ‘for me’ reading but I have a feeling it’ll get buried well beneath all of the books that now teeter on the top of my TBR pile from work. It’s an embarrassment of riches, that’s for sure.

Trouble, I Say, Trouble

The older I get, the thinner my skin seems to grow. I always thought that as the years racked themselves up as lines appearing above your lip, beside your eyes, that little things would stop bothering you. Hearing about things, being teased, people making fun of you, but for some reason, all of this affects me more today than it ever did in the past.

I’ve never been one to take criticism well. It soaks into me, like liquid into a paper towel, and I feel it all, each painful word. Nothing rolls off me, it all sticks like glue, and I realize I’m using a lot of metaphorical language, but hey, at least I’m not pulling a Candace Bushnell.

Years ago, I could recognize the moments when I was feeling particularly immoblized by the outside world as times when I was probably entering into a phase of depression. But I haven’t been depressed (unless it’s drug-related from the prednisone) for years. And that got me thinking: maybe the meds have permanently altered how my brain functions. Maybe they’ve made me a dour girl who can’t take a joke and whose feelings get hurt at the slightest touch, especially by people I hold the closest to me.

Most days I can get by without wanting to hide away from the world. Most days I can get dressed and get outside and walk with my head up and feel confident that I am good person and that people like me. Most days. But then it’ll all come crashing down without any notice, and I’ll be stuttering and stalling, refusing to leave the house, wearing my dirty pajamas, crying for no reason, feeling sorry for myself—all kinds of days pass like that, in almost-depression limbo.

It takes me a long time to feel comfortable. It takes me a long time to overcome my frustrating shyness and actually feel confident in social situations. I know a lot of people who know me would say that’s not true, but it’s how I feel on the inside, sick to my stomach and held so tight that there’s nothing for me to do except swallow all those feelings and wait for them to resurface as the disease.

Today is not one of the good days. But tomorrow, well, like Annie says, it’ll certainly be sunny, and if I could just learn to roll with it a bit better, maybe it would all come just that little bit easier. Who knows?

I know one thing that’ll cheer me up: watching Georgia Rule, the train wreck of a movie I have to see tonight for Chart. Heh.

TRH Event – Stuck In Downward Dog

After work yesterday I went to the Toronto launch of Chantal Simmons’s Stuck in Downward Dog. Held at Kultura, a swank restaurant on King Street East, it was one of the more inventive launches I’ve been too in a while (nothing can hold a candle to the Raw Shark launch, but you know it’s hard to beat a art-installation shark boat).

In addition to the fab venue, the entire party was full of swag. And really awesome girlie swag too, from OPI nail polish to Cake nail files, from eye cream to lip gloss to these cute little flower broaches, it was incredible. Essentially, they handed you a beautiful bag and you just filled it up with what you wanted, as much as you could carry.

I’ve been looking for a sweet little chicklit book to sort of soothe my manic work-related reading, and although I didn’t pick up a copy of the book at the launch, I am still going to add it to my TBR pile for sure (Scarbie said she’d loan me her copy). And it was delightful to see some friends too, which is always the best thing about a book launch.

I also got a chance to briefly say hello to Chantal Simmons on my way out, and she looked just so lovely: she was wearing a gorgeous strapless pink dress with these wonderful silver shoes. If I was any bit of a fashionista, I could explain it in more detail, except I will add that she was as lovely to meet as she was to look at. Does that sound corny?

I felt like quite the frumpy grandmother among all the lovely ladies in my Lululemon biking pants and my oxford shirt. Note to self: always bring along extra clothes in the summer in case there’s an event you need to go to after work and your biking clothes just won’t cut it. Sigh. What can you do, really.

On the whole, I think it was the right way to launch a chicklit title, with a martini named after the main character, lots of great girlie swag, a room full of lovely book people and an author who seemed happy and excited about it all.