|
july 21, 2000. "And all of it
was made for you and me." I spent most of the last hour writing my submission to the Diary History Project. I had no idea this kind of stuff was going on...I've pretty much abandoned ship from the whole diary "community" in the past year. I don't know who the hot new diarists are, I don't know what look I'm supposed to adopt this month, I don't know what I'm supposed to be irate about in media or politics, I don't know what side to take in the innumerable flame wars. It's compounded by the fact that I'm Canadian: a lot of issues diarists get up in arms about are American issues and no one wants to hear a smug Canuck pontificate on Yank dealings. I'm pretty damn smug, you know. Be that as it may, I welcome the chance to spout off about me and what makes me tick. It's the closest I'm ever going to come to a Rolling Stone profile and I'm sucking out everything in the opportunity that I can. More links as they become relevant. (P.S. Javina has a piece up on the topic, which I highly recommend. I had no idea people considered her a fictional character!) * * * The last couple of days have been a blur. Busy little bee, buzz buzz. What's left over in my fried little brain takes the form of memory fragments. We'll call them Memlets. They come in convenient assorted 12 packs. Just like Timbits. Monday: Into the city! Zoom. Dropped off a bunch of stuff I thought I'd be needing at the Last Bachelor Pad & got dressed to go out. The best thing about being canned is that I can return to Retro Mondays at the Dance Cave! Yay! We picked up Dirk on the way to the club & bumped into Tymothi:J while there. The Boy & I buttonholed Shannon (who, incidentally, didn't recognize me at first in my goth finery), and got a whole bunch o' details worked out about the reception. Throughout the night, I intermittently popped up to her booth to make song requests & chat. The night passed in a happy blur of dancing & shouted conversation. At 2:30, Shannon dedicated the last song of the night to me: the Birthday Party's "Release the Bats." I felt sooo cool. Tuesday: Shopping! I hung around the Pad until I could find the courage to shower in a smelly, leaky bathroom, then I hit the road to find Scherezade. We tried on ugly, expensive club clothes (correction: I tried on ugly, expensive club clothes that she picked out), investigated the world of wall mirrors and fiddled with our sunglasses. In the store, out of the store, in another store, out again. Repeat until one party declares her need of a gordita. Consume said gordita as the other girl looks on in mingled disgust & weariness. I swear, we went into every furniture store on Queen St west of Bathurst...and there are a lot of furniture stores on Queen West. Eventually they all started to blend into one creepy mega outlet - leather travelling bags next to banana fiber boxes next to gigantic arc lamps next to swirly 50's kitch chairs next to distressed dress mannequins. Brr. Our goal was to find me a wedding foundation garment, and we accomplished this fairly early in the day, at a cool little store called Secrets From Your Sister. My needs are complicated: white, strapless, lightly boned, mid hip-length, garters. (Another store which I will not name actually recommended Siren when I mentioned the light boning! I mean, Siren. It's just too funny to be sent back to kink on the day I'm looking for normal underwear.) Fortunately, Secrets came through for me right away. It's nice to find a place that's not rattled by requirements that specific...almost as if I was a normal person. What a funny thought. On the way to see Scherezade's new home, we picked up a whole mess of groceries and Run Lola Run. You can pretty much figure out what happened next, right? There's nothing quite like fresh good food, happy conversation, quirky German movies and a non-drippy bathroom to make me feel good about the world. Wednesday: Slow start, but a happy one. It was 5 p.m. before I was finally ready to face the world outside the apartment. That meant that I was just in time for... Sex Pistols! The Filth and the Fury was playing at the Royal, so Stacy, Dirk & I made the pilgrimage. Very interesting movie. I liked seeing how the birth of English punk differed so sharply from that of American punk: essentially, the CBGB punks were middle class kids with a decent education who were interested in personal expression & musical exploration. The England of the mid-seventies shown in the film was a horror show of garbage, poverty, racism and anger. It was like they created punk out of desperation, as the only sane was to deal with their surroundings. The film is both hilarious and terrible. In one scene, Sid nods off continually until the camera is turned off; in another he punctuates a rant about the UK by cleaning out his ears, mumbling, "I have a lot of wax in my ears today." I was very impressed. Though ultimately, not impressed enough to actually buy "Never Mind the Bollocks." * * * "everybody wants
their own fat guy band!"
We finished the night with a happy root through the new Valhalla on College Street and a round of martinis at Kalendar. Dirk took the opportunity to buy me Jayna, my own little big smiling cloth doll, as a birthday present for last year. (Just last week, he bought me a black t-shirt...for my 21st birthday. Slowly but surely, we're getting up to date.) Jayna is a Groovy Girl, just like Josie, the doll I bought for Dirk in April in lieu of a girlfriend. She's just about the cutest thing ever. Stacy began to moan that now she'd be responsible for Groovy Girl care packages during my sojourn by the sea. I can't wait till the little furniture arrives. In fact, Jayna will probably have more possessions than the Boy & I combined, judging by how the moving plans are going. A very strange and beautiful thing happened on the patio: we were siting around, discussing punk & the like when a sizable band of honest-to-god troubadours settled a bit farther down the patio & struck up a couple of tunes. It's the kind of experience I secretly want to have in Europe, but would never admit it. Somehow, the oddness of Portuguese troubadours wandering downtown Toronto took the touristy self-consciousness out of the experience, and I was in heaven. Or, as we later determined, "it was troubadour-ific!" Thursday: A rather chaotic start to the day for me: a rush out the door to buy underwear on my way back to the suburbs soon became an enthusiastic chat with the owner about why running a lingerie store is a feminist act. It was one of those high-energy chats where you're rushing to say important stuff to a sympathetic stranger because you may never meet again. Back home, a child-sized pool party was in effect. Participants: Nicola, age 13; Chris, age 10; Jimmy, age 9; Michael, age 5; Sydney, age almost-4; Joshua, age one; Kevin, age 8 months; Mackenzie, age 7 months; 5 mothers of varying ages; me. I love these things...they're an important source of strange comedy, plus I get to coo over other people's kids. In the course of the afternoon, I managed to ask Sydney if she'd like to be my flower girl. At first she didn't quite understand, although she was nodding politely - then we busted out the visual aids. "These are all
pictures of me. In one of them, I'm a flower girl." Turns out that she was just as excited to get a pretty dress as we were. In a stroke of luck, the first place we visited had a perfectly-sized dress that even approximates my own dress to some degree. But although it's a pretty dress, it's just the setting. Sydney shines through any outfit - which is the way it should be. * * * At this point, I was utterly exhausted. I wanted nothing more than to wile away the evening in happy sloth. But it was not to be. My mother was strangely insistent on returning library books and running other errands...yet she was putting on make-up, as if she was going somewhere special. Oh no, I thought. Another surprise shower and I look like shit. I don't know why surprising me is such a big deal to people. By now, my graciousness well is running dry. As if to prove the point, I shouted and raged at my mother until she was just about crying...then changed my outfit, blow dried my hair & got into the car. I'm such a jerk. It was a very nice shower, though. A bunch of ladies from the church were there, making me glad that I'd put in so much time in the last year. Their appearance wasn't solely related to my mother, or so I'd like to think. It actually made me feel like part of a community, one not dependent on where I might live for a few months or what kinds of clubs I like to go to. Nice. Especially since so many people there were adults when I was a child. During Junior Choir, it never crossed my mind that the choir director would come to my bridal shower...it's like you think about these things as a child, but you don't quite work them out to all possible details. Unfortunately, none of my bridesmaids could make it, but my new second string bridesmaid Jen was happy to fill in, writing sarcastic comments on the cards and protecting me from stupid shower games. "yet another set of baking pans..." Today: Um. Today I'm looking forward to a whole lot of sitting, a whole lot of writing and a whole lot of puny tasks crossed off the list. I never thought Friday would be the day I wanted to go to bed early...
groovy girl pictures
lifted shamelessly from the webpage of their creator, manhattan
toy. they do good work! |
