Ricky Gervais’ The Invention of Lying – Trailer

Kate Gosselin hair: procrastinating with Photoshop

I have decided to nickname this reverse-mullet haircut the TELLUM. That’s “mullet” backwards, and it is also the sound of a rallying cry that is congruent with how I feel about Kate Gosselin.

As in: YOU TELLUM, KATE GOSSELIN.

And for the record: I kind of like this haircut. In fact I had a curly variation of it in 2000. Yeah, that was nine years ago, but you know what? I like the fact that KG has the ‘nads to do something unconventional with her hair instead of just capitulating to the boob-length wavy extensions clipped to the heads of everybody else on TV. SO THERE.

Vanishing lover

Poor sad bunny.

Measha Brueggergosman sings Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”

Measha Brueggergosman just kills this one. Gorgeous. She’s a soprano when she sings opera, but just listen to the deep rich colour she has on the low range of her chest voice. Mrrow. She just had open-heart surgery so I’m sending good vibes to her sternum- it’s gotta be a task containing those bellows-like lungs.

Tequila Bookworm = NO NO NO

I used to love Tequila Bookworm, a cute little cafe at Queen & Denison. I used to eat there all the time. I went there on Tuesday (new, less cute location at Queen & Ryerson, a few doors away from the old, cuter spot), and after being ignored by the server for 12 minutes or so, eventually ordered an omelette and “rosti” (aka, a greasy ass hashbrown latke). The omelette was fine, but I could only manage two bites of hashbrowns, which were NASTY- chemical tasting and weird. I politely sent them back (the server loved me for that) and had a salad instead, with dressing so vinegary my teeth melted.

24 hours later, so did my gastrointestinal tract, with the worst food poisoning I’ve had in years. I don’t know what the hell was on those potatoes, but it should be bottled and sold as a cleanse. I think I saw my appendix on the floor after I was all done.

I ate no fewer than 8 caplets of pepto bismol and couldn’t look at food all day (which was insane, by the way- a solid day of meetings, show errands, choreography rehearsal, and then TWO show openings, all on an entirely empty stomach that rumbled and screamed all day). But in the end it was a win: both shows totally killed (4 stars for “It’s Just A Phase, and 5 stars for 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls)!

And then I went out to celebrate, fell hilariously up the stairs, and got into an argument at the bar with a bellicose Albanian guy who thought women and visible minorities should stop whining about their rights and suck it up like immigrants always do (that was kind of a fun argument, actually, and as I was leaving that guy’s friend clasped my hand in both of his and said “Thenkyu forr arrguing veeth my eediot frriend. You arre incrredeeble. Vhat a joy to leesten to you arrgue.”)

And then I took a cab home and ate a Flakie in bed.

Pretty good day after all.

Blogging in the bathroom

Do you shiver as you finish peeing? What IS that?

Eye Magazine Cover Story!

Clockwise from top left: Cara Gee, Rebecca Applebaum, Lauren Bride, Donna Maloney, Julia Lederer, Laura McCoy, Liz Peterson, Aurora Stewart de Pena, Nika Mistruzzi, Sochi Fried, Jolene Devoe, Monique Moses

This is the amazing cast of my Fringe show, 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls. They will be seen on the cover of Eye Weekly Magazine tomorrow. Aren’t they all so cute and interesting? Well, they sure are. I heart them lots.

Here’s the article:

Aurora Stewart De Peña’s Fringe play is an existential opus on femininity — without the vagina monologues.

A girl falls asleep in front of City Hall at 5am, only to be awakened by a nosy stranger who finds it hard to compliment her looks. A girl wants to order a cup of coffee but the waitress won’t fetch it until she utters the right, imploring “please.” Two girls watch their cheap rental apartment become infested with millipedes but are too afraid to stomp the bugs. A girl lies down in the middle of a busy Toronto intersection, exhausted from simply existing, as her best friend stands beside her, fighting off traffic with her fists.

Aurora Stewart De Peña’s hopeless girls are everywhere and nowhere. Her work, 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls, receiving its second run at this year’s Fringe festival after a successful stint at the Tranzac Club in 2007 (excerpts were performed at past Hysteria and Summerworks festivals), honours these paralyzed, confused women in the midst of something far more gripping than a quarter-life crisis. A young playwright and director with a production company she co-founded with Nika Mistruzzi, Birdtown And Swanville (named after the avian-laden area of Trinity Bellwoods where she lives), De Peña hits upon the saddest sect of despondent women: losers who don’t know they’re losers.

“A lot of the people in this play are not going to succeed,” says De Peña, who says some of the characters in 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls are based on her high school classmates from Stratford, Ontario. “Some people are just set up for failure; they’ve tried to fight against their circumstances, where things have been grim, and are determined to rise against whatever situation has befallen them — and it just doesn’t work. Judging from the name, people might think this play’s about suicide. And while some of the characters might end up that way, the work is just about not being able to hack it, about not really being made for this world.”

Comprised of not 36 but 39 one- to two- minute plays, which run over the course of an hour (dramaturge Chris Dupuis says that 36 had a better ring to it), the play has 13 local actresses making up a cast of bartenders, waitresses and negligent mothers with intersecting stories. They’re a Toronto indie-theatre-scene wish list, and include Lauren Bride, a curator for Trampoline Hall, Liz Peterson, who acts enigmatically in Alex Wolfson’s work, Rebecca Applebaum, who sang in the band Europe In Colour and game-show host Nicole Stamp. (“Nicole was nominated for a Genie,” Aurora tells me. “She’s keeping us professional.”)

(Note from Nicole: For the record, I was not nominated for a Genie!!! This is a beautiful rumour that I should probably encourage, but unfortunately it’s just not the truth. I was once nominated for “Person who made the ugliest face in the ugly face contest”, but I only came second.)

With cardboard props and choreographed routines set to MIDI ring tones, 36 Plays is not only a great bang for your buck, but a DIY play inside a DIY festival. It’s the Fringe within the Fringe.

As the cast get ready to work out an ’80s-inspired dance routine during a rehearsal at Rolly’s Garage, I notice there’s never any girl-on-girl-crime in this industrious, all-female cast. Peterson remarks that the rehearsal process has been particularly supportive.

“Right when we started rehearsals we decided to make it a rule that no one could talk negatively about their bodies because it’s such a large cast. And someone was like, ‘Are we still allowed to have our periods?’”

An actress herself, De Peña, as well as her production-company partner Mistruzzi, feels that the only way to escape casting-call hell is to write the parts yourself. Mistruzzi and De Peña, both Stratfordians and alumni of the Randolph Academy (“We’re triple threats,” jokes De Peña), did their own thing upon graduation, like staging short works at Extermination Music Nights and Queen West bars while dancing in The Best, house band for Loving in the Name Of. Last summer’s production of Things I’ve Found at the Tranzac reprised fly-girl culture, the free-wheeling ’60s and a nasty breakup based on treasures found from the Bloor and Lansdowne Value Village.

Their Fringe work has a similarly nihilistic bent. A character played by De Peña in Things I’ve Found could very well be 36 Little Plays’ mascot: Sharla, a wannabe fly girl who swears she’ll break her trashy, bar-fighting ways for a shot at the big time (repping the Wayans Brothers), but who is caught in a throw-down with the biggest bitch in school, sending her to “juvie for life.” The existential dread you feel for the girl, perfectly captured with De Peña’s throaty voice and determined high kicks, is not a common local-theatre experience.

De Peña agrees that carving a niche in Toronto’s theatre scene is a difficult job in and of itself — never mind the “lady playwright” connotations.

“I remember there was a double bill by Hannah Moscovitch at the Tarragon a little while ago, and it was a big, big deal. But I think what would be better is if theatres could just do plays, instead of promoting works as, ‘Oh there’s a new play by this woman!’”

Even the Hysteria festival, Buddies’ annual celebration of works by women which, we concur, is great, can seem tokenistic.

“We should really be beyond that,” says De Peña. “It’s not like we’re all doing the same thing. You can’t condense all of female experience into one night,” she says. “It’s not a genre!”

So, even though De Peña’s work piles on a diversity of perspectives, it does not pretend to be definitive or life-affirming. It’s not about giving birth or repairing your relationship with your mother. In fact, her work shows women fucking up. Like the characters in the short stories of Lorrie Moore, De Peña’s women are sublimely tortured by their own narcissism; dribbles of humanity seep through, rupturing the relationships presented in each vignette.

“It takes five minutes to write a one-minute play,” says De Peña. “To have a story that’s contained in one minute, you just have to make sure that something changes for the characters in that period of time. Everyone in this play has a fatal flaw.”

36 Little Plays emancipates women in a necessary way, allowing them the decency to be just as hopeless as the men they’re supposed to redeem.

“So much theatre is written by women about men. Which is fine at first, and I certainly understand that. But we don’t have to treat them like the answers to everything and it should seem more obvious now to us that they aren’t.”

“I know that I am probably never going to save a man,” De Peña continues. “Instead, I’m interested in writing about the girls who will never save anyone.”

Good article, huh? If you want to come see this play (which, by the way, I think is dynamite- (as is the other Fringe show I’m in, the funny gay musical “It’s Just A Phase)- you can check out the showtimes and stuff here!

Kate Beaton is funny

Click to view full-size.

Kate Beaton draws the funniest facial expressions, maybe ever.

How to get a free drink on a flight.

In real life I don’t drink tomato juice or tomato-based cocktails, but on airplanes for some reason the idea of a technicolour and salty drink in a tiny cup is enticing. Here’s how to score a free tomato-based cocktail on a flight, as I did on my way home from LA.

1. First, forget what your drink of choice is called. This helps erase any doubt in the flight attendant’s mind that you might not be a total idiot. You are, and you can prove it when you ask for a Tomato Screwdriver, a Bleeding Maria, or a Clamaitor.

2. The flight attendant will be confused but eventually prompt, “Perhaps you’d like a Bloody Mary, miss?” Your enthusiastic nodding will be met with his mental note to keep an eye on you, and followed by his slightly reluctant offer of a can of tomato juice and a gnome-sized bottle of vodka. (Skyy vodka, because we’re midair! HA HA!)

3. Accept these offerings with good-natured and self-depricating laughter. “BLOODY MAAARY!!! HA HA YES THAT IS WHAT I MEANT!!”

4. Turn back to your laptop.

5. Put your earplug back in. Ignore everybody.

6. After an uncomfortable pause, the flight attendant will helplessly gesture to the nice lady beside you who will poke you so you remove your earplug again, all innocent confusion.

7. “Six dollars, ma’am,” the flight attendant will say.

8. “OH! A TRANSACTION! HA HA HA!! YES, I DO!!” will be your inexplicable reply, and then you should lean down, trying to wedge your huge head with its attendant cloud of unkempt curls under your table tray, the better to rummage around for your wallet.

9. Now this next step is the key to the whole operation: blithely knock your cup of ice onto your (thankfully closed) laptop, where it will slide around merrily like butter on a skillet before raining into your lap.

10. Dribble out a little more of your trademark good-natured and self-depricating laughter, (”HA HA! I HAVE SPILLED THE ICE ONTO MY LAPTOP AND LAP!!! OH NO!!! SO COLD!!!! ALSO WET!!! HA HA HAHA!!”, etc.) Intersperse this clever commentary with assorted yelping as the ice manouvres itself into the small hole you tore in the crotch of your jeans earlier today in a different but equally-amusing travel mishap.

11. Use the now-empty tiny cup to scoop the ice out of your crotchtal region (NB: the ice will certainly not fit back into the cup, although it was all neatly contained by the cup mere seconds before), then move to place the ice cup it on your laptop again.

12. The nice lady beside you will predict the repeating element of this particular pattern and offer to hold the cup to keep it off your laptop, or maybe to hold the laptop away from the carnage that is your obvious lack of coordination and good sense.

13. Let her hold the cup while you rummage for four minutes in your wallet and emerge with some crumpled ones and a fistful of quarters.

14. The flight attendant will by this point be praying for early retirement while handing you a fresh cup of ice because he and the nice lady coordinated the disposal of the old cup of ice, like kindly attendants in a home of some type.

15. He will also hand you a plushily folded bundle of ginormous absorbent pads that would not look out of place in the bed of a senior citizen, toddler, or travelling sea mammal, while delicately suggesting, “Ma’am, these should help you clean up a little.”

16. The flight attendant will also look at your dripping little paw clutched around its pathetic wad of dampened cash- cash that has clearly done its time in the seedier garters of Los Angeles and emerged the worse for wear and now wet to boot, and mildly remark, “Ma’am, you’ve obviously had a rough day. The drink’s on me.”

17. Loudly exclaim “REALLY? OMIGOD THANKS THAT’S SO NICE MISTER THANK YOU, WOW HA HA HAHA HA, GEE MAYBE I SHOULD DUMP ICE IN MY CROTCH ON AN AIRPLANE MORE OFTEN!! HA HA HA HA HAHAHA LOL !!!!111!!!!”

18. Make a mental note to do just that as the other passengers subtly edge away from you.

Post-it Animation

Yay!

Via Jessperson.