It's come to my attention...

That some young Canadian musicians took K'naan's Waving Flag song, possibly the most perfect song to play on the radio in a good while, and made a slightly less good version to benefit victims of the earthquake in Haiti. I thought this idea was genius when I first heard about it, because it's such a great song about personal empowerment and strength, but a little hazy on the details so it could conceivably work for lots of things (full disclosure: I don't know what it was originally about). They added some specifics anyway ("out of the darkness / in came the carnage"--oh, dear) and a rap bridge (yikes) but it is kind of cool to hear all those voices rising together at the end. So I recommend you buy the less good version, because it's a good cause and a song that you really can't wreck. It's sort of a superhero song, so maybe it can really do a lot of good for Haiti--look what it did for soccor.

That Rover Arts posted a nice review of the Journey Anthology 21.

That Bonjour Brioche in Leslieville is wonderful. Crowded on the weekends, but seriously, any carb in the place is probably gold. And waitress sometimes talk to each other in French.

RR

Week-ender

Thanks so much to all who chimed in (or even thought chimeful thoughts) on my vocab-rant last post. I don't think anything on Rose-coloured has ever garnered 11 comments. Thanks for letting me know/reminding me that word definitions are whatever most people understand it to be, my last subhead was defeated by its own cleverness, and the rules of grammar do not apply to David Mamet--I'm feeling considerably more chilled out about things now.

Except rhetoric--comments from smart people indicating that they don't understand that word have undermined my own confidence that I understand it! So, coming soon: a post about rhetoric.

But today promises to be the busiest day ever, so not today. Today I'm just enjoying about simple things like: a) it's sufficiently warm in my apartment (example of the simple joys in my life: I got out of the shower and didn't want to die), b) my headache from yesterday went away, c) the video below, and c+) the fact that I may have learned to embed it correctly (we'll see), d) that if I can just make it through the busiest day ever, I get to Skype with far-off friends, and tomorrow, someone is going to make me sweet-potato soup (Rose-coloured philosophy: hooray for sweet potatoes! I recognize as a philosophy that needs work).

I have noted that not everything in the world is good. Accidentally watching the news from Haiti last night on the gym left me near tears on the elliptical trainer, I am so sad about the loss of P.K. Page, and I think certain friends are having some tough times these days.

I'm not saying that this video ameliorates any of that, but I do think it's very funny and it's only 47 seconds long. 47 seconds of distraction is worthwhile, I think. (Thanks, Ben, for the link!)



RR

Human beings: still quirky

So, yeah, Toronto's having a municipal workers' strike, the most visible manifestation of which is that garbage isn't being collected (I feel bad calling it "the garbage strike" when hundreds of other city workers are on the picket lines, too). But really, the garbage thing can take over your mind when you stroll certain parts of the city these days.

The funniest thing is, if you look at the picture at the link above, you see that though we are deprived of workers to collect trash and take it to the dump, citizens are not willing to a) hang on to their own garbage and take it to the dump themselves nor b) fling things on the ground and admit to being litterbugs. No, we carefully carry our half-eaten sandwiches and empty coffee cups to a not-in-use-but-overflowing-anyway garbage bin, and lay the trash on the ground in front of it, as if it were a shrine.

I admit, this was something I was doing too in the early days of the strike--I actually attempted to shove a little ice-cream cup into a bin, picked it up when it fell down and tried again until I suceeded. Then, after a few days and some bold new odours, I realized: putting trash anywhere it's not attended to, even it is someplace where it *used* to be attended to, is still littering. I would never just toss a pop bottle in the road--heaven forfend--but the pop bottle I leave sitting in front of one of those big silver bins is going to blow away and roll right into the road, or maybe someone's flowerbed. Some private business have bins out front that they are attending to, and some mutant very posh neighbourhoods seem to have set up some sort of watch, but in general, you just can't throw things away on the street right now.

It's hard to reprogram (and even harder to carry a used Kleenex across town) but garbage bins aren't garbage bins right now. It's an ontological crisis, but the practical fallout is that I am going to take responsibility for myself and my ice-cream cups.

Sorry for the rant. I had a particularly Oreo-bag and pizza-box intensive walk this morning.

Tears the size of Texas / drying all around her neck
RR

Be nice to cashiers!!

Well, it's another happening night at the Rose-coloured ranch. I've been down on the floor sorting manuscript pages for the last while, and after getting dismayed by the slipshod sweeping job I do, I decided what I needed was write a blog post about the latest upsetting trend at the grocery store.

On Monday, a new Toronto law kicked in, requiring stores to charge 5 cents for each single-use bag they distribute. Not, perhaps, the most thrilling news ever to have hit the streets, but I assumed that if even I knew about it, everyone did (being as I spend my evenings on my living room floor, covered in paper and dust, not watching or reading the news).

But apparently, the people of Toronto don't *all* know, and when the cashier at their local grocery/drug/clothing/porn shop informs them of the charge, some don't take it too well. I have witnessed a couple meltdowns in the three short days the law has been in effect; apparently, the most logical interpretation in some people's minds is that cashiers are lying about the nickel charge in order to...steal? Piss customers off? Make their own already hard jobs that much harder? I really don't know what is going on in these furious consumers' minds.

I haven't worked in customer service for nearly two years, but I still remember viscerally the bottom-of-the-belly fear I felt when I realized that the person I was serving was angry with me. As far as I am concerned, unless your customer service personnel has been sexist/racist/homophobic, anger is never an acceptable emotion in that context. Frustration, irritation, desire to speak with a manager; fine. I did, at various points, suck at various jobs, and I can see why many many people were a little snarky with me. But anger is a somewhat crazy thing to bring to the checkout line, and to see people lashing out at squirming teenagers and exhausted ladies in smocks makes me so sad.

So...have you seen the 5-cent meltdown yet? What did you do? I can't imagine it would help for me to raise my paw and say, "It is a real law, you know." Or, like, "That woman make $10 an hour, flat, not commission off her bag sales, therefore she has no reason to lie to you." Or...what? In my days in service, I was always comforted by raised eyebrows and smiles from other customers following a confrontation, so that's all I've offered so far. But if this nickel thing is going to be a major tipping point in stores citywide, perhaps I should formulate a better response.

Thoughts...?

Do you know your enemy?
RR

It's Official: My Hopes are Up

Barack Obama will be President of the United States of America in 1.25 hours.

I am thrilled.

I would like, for a good long while, not to hear another cynical word about getting my hopes up too high, pinning too many hopes on just one guy, or anything along the lines of "bound to be disappointed."

The people of America voted for a guy who believes in the ideal of change, the ideal of transparency and accountability, the ideal of partnership and bi-partisanship, negotiation and respect and diplomacy and discussion.

They voted for the ideals and for the person they thought embodied them, not for the promise of getting all those things by next weekend. Among other things, the American people voted for a President that respects that they make intelligent decisions, that the American people can be reasoned with and informed as adults, and they voted for a President who would present such a vision of America to the world.

Let's do American voters the honour of respecting their informed election of their polical leader. I really don't think anyone is expecting a miracle, but nor do I think those of us who *do* expect rational discourse and thoughtful reform are in any way misled. A little bit, over the long-term, I actually do hope for greatness.

Happy inauguration!
RR

The YouTube Revolution...

is something that I've by and large missed. Mainly, I work on two computers: one on which I can't stream video, and one on which I've gotten accidentally locked into a restrictive bandwidth contract (ah, me and the phone company: good times). So even if I actually remember to forward the cool link someone sent me to the computer that will allow me to watch it, I often forgo it if I'm close to my limit for the month and living in fear of incurring massive evil fines.

Such is my life.

*Anyway*, there a few things I do rely on YouTube for (isn't it funny, by the way, that the name is based on the old picture tube, which is nearly archaic now in televisions, and certainly is in the computer-world). So I do know watching videos on the internet is great, although I only remember ever six months or so. It is great for the following things especially:

1) That thing everyone's talking about! I can't believe you missed it. No conversation will make any sense until you see this.

2) Overanalyzing music videos I saw incompletely at the gym and thought might have some hidden meaning. Also, occasionally, just videos I really like.

3) Kittens falling asleep!!!

4) Happy Slip! A Filipino girl who lives in California who makes little mini-movies about her crazy family. She makes vids about other things too, soap opera parodies that I don't get because I don't watch soaps, and maybe other stuff too. I am content to watch the same three or four thingies over every six months, they're that funny. I actually think she's quite famous now, but I don't know much about that because...I don't really do YouTube. Really.

Take me with you / I start to miss you
RR

In the papers

Well, many great things, obviously, mainly about the American election and how this is the beginning of good things. I feel like many people are experiencing envy of Americans right now, and that is not something we experience very often. There's a great article in yesterday's *Globe* by Karim Bardeesy, though, about how Canadian polictics might experience a similar surge of empowerment. Dare to hope!

Also, there's a short article about me in the current issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. It's a good piece, but it's not online, so this information is really of use to you if you are a) in Ottawa, and b) know where to find that paper. But still, I'm pleased it's out there for those who meet both criteria.

Ok, so the title/theme of this post is something of a reach--I just had two disparate things to say and they both happened to be published in newspapers. But it's Friday and I am sooo tired. A few people have asked me today if I have plans for the evening and I do--curling up in the fetal position. Week of November 3, you have defeated me. But in a good way.

You're hot then you're cold
RR

Weekend'o'weird

I mainly resolved to stay in this weekend and do work, but even the briefest of forays into the outside world seemed slightly nuts. The theme started on Thursday, when a seemingly inebriated man heckled Kerry and I as we walked into the subway station. We slowed our pace to let him go by, out of harm's way, we thought, only to arrive in the underground to find him threatening to shoot/be shot by some guy in a red shirt and running around in circles. I saw, for the record, no weapons of any kind. I can only assume that the fellow was crazy, and heckling everyone as he did us, and that he unfortunately found someone as crazy as himself with which to interact. I hopped on my train, eager to get away, only to be motioned off by eagle-eyed Kerry, who had noticed our mad pair boarding my car. The subway had to be briefly halted, and people like me sort of voluntarily evacuated until our friends could be located and, apparently, taken away in handcuffs.

The gunplay theme continued Friday, when a convenience store clerk stared at me in horror when I snapped by gum waiting in line. I thought he just was annoyed with my immature and unladylike behaviour (and, really, good point, why do I do stuff like that? I am almost *30*.) When I got to the head of the line, the guy explained he thought my Bubblemint burst sounded like a gunshot. (No, it didn't.)

I have actually been working this weekend, but I also wandered about in the warm slush (yesterday) and artic wind (today), had my pilates class stealthily switched for Nia, a sort of spiritual dance that, to the *ahem* uninitiated can seem, well, like a cross between dance that's too hard and dance that's too silly.

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to. I *might* get as far as the library and/or the movies this afternoon, but then again, there's that artic wind (see above). I might just hunker here in my cave.

Be well, and warm, and safe.

Talking to your little pets
RR

No particular war

So last night I saw Charlie Wilson's War and liked it very much. This was not a surprise, as it was written by Aaron Sorkin the writer of my most-loved tv shows. And indeed, the film did contain Sorkin's much-beloved banter, walk'n'talks, long-shots and high-flown political wonkery. And, as with much of Sorkin's work, he faltered on the ladies, who were condescendingly drawn on occasion, and also saddled with awkward religious hypocrisy, as if that were just the lot of he fairer sex.

But Julia Roberts fares better than most of Sorkin's recent lady-stars, in part because he downplays his personal issues to give her some of the best lines in the flick, and in part because she's Julia Roberts and, dammit, she can make the best of anything, even having her gorgeous hair bleached and sprayed in a seemingly desperate attempt to make it look like a wig. And she's opposite Tom Hanks, which is such a wonderful pairing of easy charm that I don't know why no one thought of it before. And how great, too, that a movie that concerns events of the twenty years ago would star people so seminal at that time. Big came out in 1988, one of the first films I saw in theatres, and it filled me with joy to see that maturity and the ability to feed and clothe oneself didn't matter one whit if you had honesty and enthusiasm. There was hope for me, apparently, to take on the world, as soon as I could get myself to Manhattan.

Julia's big break, in Pretty Woman didn't come until a few years later, which is just as well, since even my oblivious parents noticed taglines like, "Who knew it was so much fun to be a hooker?" I did eventually see it, and love it. Even then, I knew there was something wrong with the conceit that the way to a man's heart was to sell him your body and hope he noticed your soul, and something wrong with a country where a girl could really find herself forced by financial circumstances to do so. Still, even now, if you were to somehow break into the feminist enclave that is my apartment, fix the DVD player and put on *Pretty Woman*, I'd sit down and watch, and swoon. I'd feel dirty about it at first, but then I'd block out the real circumstances presented and just enjoy the banter.

As I did in *Charlie Wilson's War.* With the office hijinx and even fairly serious arguments, the movie could've been about almost anything, because the conversations focused on strategic alliances, media, and money--the necessities of war, of course, but also the necessities of anything. Perhaps because of Sorkin's history on the small-screen, coupled director Mike Nichols' reputation as a "poet of the living room (I read that somewhere, possibly The New Yorker), they seemed to want to prove something with the battle scenes. I think they could've done the whole thing with radar-screen blips and intense conversations, as Sorkin did on West Wing, as I've seen in several deeply unsettling low-budget *Hamlet*s, but they had to show the guns, and that was pretty wretched, half video game, half propaganda film.

It was one thing to show refugee camps, and mangled children's bodies--eliciting pity, showing the evil that must be stopped (who were those child actors, I wonder). But it could've been almost any war, or an informercial with Sally Struthers: the only political message of those scenes was: children good, people who hurt children bad. Then there was a scene, and I still don't know what I was meant to feel during it, that showed young Russian soldiers piloting planes and strafing villages, killing women and children while talking in Russian over their walkie-talkies about their girlfriends. This is late in the movie, when the Afghan villagers had finally been given shoulder-mounted missile launchers. They are able to destroy the planes before they can do as much damage as they meant to. We get to see the panic on the Russian soldiers' faces before they are engulfed in flames.

Of course, the villagers had no choice, if in fact it happened that way. I wasn't rooting for the kids on the ground to die, but I wasn't particularly rooting for the kids in the air to die, either. Is that a happy moment? Nichols and Sorkin play it as wild celebration for all the good guys.

The only militaristic footage that looked real was actually real--taken from news reports of the time period. And here's where we get the third star of the period, and the first one of my youth. Before Julia, before Tom, pretty much concurrent with The Muppets, I loved Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News. Every evening at 6:30, since long before I was born, my parents watched "Rather", and then they had dinner and talked about what they had seen. When I was small, and eagerly awaiting my spaghetti, I watched too, or at least sat around and listened to words I didn't understand. Years later than excusable, I actually thought Dan Rather was President of the United States, and that every evening they wheeled the cameras into the Oval Office so he could bring anyone who was interested up to date.

Dan's is one of the first faces we see in this film, and it set me right at ease. I probably haven't heard his voice since I moved out of my folks' place, and it was tremendously soothing. I probably actually sat through some of the news reports from the film, though I remembered nothing. And the movie didn't explain much--the news was for exposition, but precious little of it. I had to come home and google to find out what was going on with the Russians in Afghanistan. Sorkin wasn't going to explain, make the war weird and particular and complicated, and not just a generic Good v. Evil, with all that stuff. Not that the Russians were so far off the mark of evil in that war, as far as I can tell, but they had some motives, they weren't just psycotic baby-bombers. For the purposes of the picture though, they could've been just any bad dudes in history, or James Bond films.

And it's funny, because for a movie that so ignores and generalizes the history here, at the end there is an alarming about-face, as the final scenes set the movie up as the history of our present tense, showing the Americans as over-confident in victory and setting in motion the terrible events that are even now occuring in Afghanistan. This takes place a while after the worst of the battle scenes, after a lot more joyful triumph and Roberts-Hanks banter and silly smooches. I was enjoying myself again, I'd been lulled by the semi-facts, that good things had happened in some war somewhere, and that everything was now fine. The end of the film was astounding in that it pointed out the lie of it's own Hollywood-ishness, and yet I wasn't sure as I left the theatre that I had really wanted that. I was sort of happy, for a while, to go back to the days when the News wasn't news of any particular war, it was just the noise in the background before you sat down to supper with the people you loved best.

The body says no
RR

What to Hate

As the "1000 Things We Like" project winds up, I have been planning a silly little "10 Things I Hate" post, mainly about grammatical errors, bad behaviour on TTC and at potlucks, etc. It was going to be a pretty funny post, but now it seems in poor taste, since the death of John O'Keefe by a stray bullet last Friday night. That's such a weird sentence for a Torontonian that I can only really process it by thinking of it like a meteor strike or a tsumami--totally random and unpreventable. But it's not, because apparently people sometimes have guns in their pockets as they stroll around Yonge and Bloor, which is not something I knew before, and is certainly not unpreventable.

So that's what I hate. I'll bitch about comma splices some other time.

RR

Blindsided by Celebrity Gossip

So last week I was all abuzz about how good the film Michael Clayton was, and how very talented (ok, ok, and dreamy) George Clooney is. I thought I would like to see some other films with him in them, and happily the internet obliged with the above-linked filmography...which I found staggeringly bereft of any film I particularly wanted to see. I'm sure lots of those are quite good, he won an Oscar after all, and maybe I'll get round to seeing something eventually, but not as exciting as I hoped.

*Anyway*, my Googling led me not only to lists of professional accomplishments but to crazed fan sites (man, a lot of people loved ER a lot) and to news stories concerning the Googlage subject. As a matter of fact, just moments before my search (I love how they rank recently posted stories, usually pointless given what I'm searching for, but I imagine useful if you read the actual news), there was an real, seemingly true news story that Clooney got into a fight with Fabio in a restaurant over, conservative estimate, nothing, but it was so funny I kept searching.

I think I need to be banned from the internet, because I now know a *lot* about George Clooney, and none of it is information that I need...or, I've discovered , information that anybody wants to be told (cue you to close the page!) But wait, because George seems to be sort of a decent guy, with a good sense of humour (but not about Fabio) and lots of right-headed political opinions. Also, and this is the point in the search when I got upset, he has a lot of problems that you can feel really bad about: he did a torture scene for a movie and fell and hit his head, tore the envelope thingy of his spinal cord and wound up with spinal fluid *dripping out his nose*. Is that not the worst thing you ever heard? He said the pain was so bad he considered killing himself--even if it wasn't, gosh, it would still seem possible. Poor guy.

So I was horrorstruck and fascinated, and on I foraged, hoping to find the "George Clooney Regains Will to Live, Control of Nostrils" *Us Weekly* story or something. Such a story is not to be found, but eventually as the years pass (this was in 2005) you find the focus in interview shifts away from brain damage and on towards swearing off marriage, Oscar speeches, Darfur, etc. Which is nice to see.

I thought I had it licked. George Clooney is all right, I don't need to see any of his movies, I'm moving on. Only there I was in the grocery store lineup, and I turned my head to be confronted my Owen Wilson and *his* woes. Outside the store, I demanded of my friend P--"Why is Jessica Simpson trying to help Owen Wilson get over his woes?"

"I don't know, Becky."

"Are they friends? I didn't know they were friends."

"Um, I don't know, Becky."

"Because if she's just some chick, I don't think that will help much. Do you think she knows him?"

"Um, I have a job."

I might very well get into this, possibly after I finish this post. I have never before known the joys of famous people and what they might be doing, thinking and feeling. I have never thought it might be fun to know, and now I do. Why? I've been theorizing, trying to feel less like salon lady with lips full of Botox and a fist full of tabloids. Here's what I've got: I love a good story, and I really don't like endings. If I like anything--a book, a movie, a relationship, a sandwich--I don't see why it can't go on forever. I hate having to give up on characters i've grown attached to, having to admit that once the credits role they aren't my friends anymore. That they were never my friends in the first place doesn't enter the picture--I related, we got involved.

Michael Clayton, the fictional character, is not coming back--the movie is over, my DVD player is broken, and there's unlikely to be a sequel (although--I could sorta see it). George Clooney, on the other hand, is likely to be back next week, making fun of Bush, doing something complicated with a motorcycle and that girl who ate a scorpion on tv. And thank goodness, because narrative arc be damned, I just like the story to keep going. Maybe this is why people get so histrionic when famous people die...?

My love she throws me like a rubber ball

Mid-year review and world report

I usually take the opportunity of my approximately mid-year birthday to look over my new year's resolutions and see which are proceeding apace, which I'm falling down on, and which were actually stupid ideas. I'll spare you the itemized list, but it seems I'm basically doing ok, except for the fact that I resolved to spend an hour a week (not much!) on current events. Anybody seen me do that? Um, no.

This is pathetic, obviously. There's such a thing as a daily newspaper, and it's not just for fish. I'll read a six-hundred page novel, but if it's real, something in my brain just quiets down. This is not an attractive quality, I know.

You, Rose-coloured readers, are encouraged to encourage me, but I am going to take responsibility for this irresponsibility as a global citizen. I'm off to CBC.ca after this report, I swear.

In other news, my weekend was made up of the sort frivolity that regularly distracts me from the serious issues of the day. In other words, it was a really nice weekend. Hanging out in my new (rose-coloured) swimsuit with the gang at a summer bbq, seeing the inner workings and sanctums of Coachhouse Books at Doors Open Toronto, eating Italian food, encouraging my thriving students (those little whippersnappers are *so smart*) and having good conversations near and far. Needless to say, I got little work done, which is bad, but when the sun is shining and life is so entertaining, it's hard to care.

It's the pause that refreshes / in the corridors of power
RR