Moot Point

Today this lady I work with said: “Brenda have you lost weight?”

“I don’t know, I don’t have a scale, but I’m feeling good.”

“Yeah, you look, narrower. “

Maybe I was just wearing a more fitted sweater and it created a waist for me, a la What Not To Wear?

I don’t know if I’ve actually lost any pounds, but I’ve been making a concerted effort to eat better. My whole program of making a big meal on Sunday and then eating the leftovers all week has been awesomely successful. (Please note: said program is in Week Three, also known as “The Honeymoon Phase”). I’m trying not to be too repetitive, because as much as I loved eating 2 litres of chili in one week (seriously), I can’t imagine doing that every week.

But I realized at some point last week that even if I wasn’t losing appreciable weight, I did feel…good. Undefineably better: the cold I’d been fighting on and off all winter disappeared; I have more energy, I feel more satisfied.

Seriously, who knew eating whole, balanced meals with things like salad and protein would make you feel so much better?

Of course, now that I’ve written about how awesome it is to plan meals and eat like a sane person instead of the grilled cheese diet, I’m going to come down with scurvy or something.

I think a little piece of my soul died when I heard Peter Mansbridge say “Prime Minister Stephen Harper.”

Alex and I didn’t really have anything to do on Saturday, so we decided to head down to Clafouti for a coffee and croissant, then to go exploring. It was a reasonably nice day, and really, I just wanted coffee.

I was going to take a picture of my chocolate-almond croissant, but it was so good I literally could not stop eating it for long enough to photograph it. Also, I had coffee in my other hand.

We decided to walk east, so we could look at the furniture stores, then went south to King West, where, at least, we wouldn’t be spending money.

King Street West, a.k.a. the Land of Condos, is totally the least-Toronto-feeling neighbourhood that is in walking distance of my house.

It’s so weird.

There’s just this tower, in the middle of nowhere. And all these weird strip malls and condo developments, and no one walking down the street. At all.

We walked to Roncesvalles, which I love. We were getting cold, so we picked up some coffee at the Film Buff, a.k.a. My Dream Business, the Land of Coffee and Ice Cream and Movies arranged by Director. We found another She Said Boom, also.

Then, we walked by the Queen of Tarts. I dragged Alex in with zero hesitation. We came out with this:

We ate them when they were still too cold from outside.

We hit Oasis for dinner, on the theory that we should probably eat some real food, as we had already spent $20 on pastry and coffee; then we settled in to watch the excellent but depressing Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, a tale of the difficulties of interracial romance. In Germany. In 1974. They are both so lonely and sad.

When it ended, luckily, From Justin to Kelly was just starting. It is the kind of movie that you can only watch late at night over beer with your boyfriend, because you don’t want to go to bed after a bleak product of the New German Cinema. The best part is when the Smart Black Friend says to the Bitchy Southern Friend “Why are we even friends with you?” voicing the thoughts of the film’s entire audience.

Then I saw this on my way to the bank machine:

There are only two conservative signs on my block.

In other news, Alex and I saw the Jack Layton Express today, across the street from (my NDP candidate) Gord Perks’ campaign office. We couldn’t actually see Jack Layton, because of the bus and the crowd, but we did see a boom mike which Jack Layton was presumably standing under.

Has everybody caught election fever?! Seriously, who doesn’t vote anymore? Apathy is so over.

Today, Alex carried my laundry to the laundromat, then we made this baked ziti with sausage in my new casserole.

We basically stuck to the recipe, except we used 3 cloves of garlic instead of the powder, and threw in about 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes in the tomato sauce. We also cooked the sauce in the same pan we’d done the sausage in, because, more sausage flavour means everyone wins. Except my arteries, but whatever.

We did have salad with it.

I realized tonight while I was combing through my mp3s for love songs that I actually own the two-CD Fred Astaire and Gingers Rogers at RKO compilation. I’ve had it since high school and I’ll forget about it for months at a time then throw it on and dance to “Top Hat” while I’m getting ready.

Without further ado, here is my best-to-worst list of the Astaire-Rogers films:

1. Swing Time (1936)
2. Shall We Dance (1937)
3. Top Hat (1935)
4. Follow the Fleet (1936)
5. The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
6. The Gay Divorcee (1934)
7. Roberta (1935)
8. Carefree (1938)
9. Flying Down to Rio (1933)
10. The Story of Vernon & Irene Castle (1939)

Some will quibble with my placing Flying Down to Rio ahead of anything, since it has a totally forgettable A-plot, but the Castles was boring, with Fred and Ginger mainly doing a bunch of old-timey, even for the thirties, dances, and it had no redeeming number with girls dancing on the wings of planes.

Others will quibble with the lowness of my placement of The Gay Divorcee, since it was the film that made them famous and has “Night and Day,” but I would direct you to a) her dress during “Night and Day” and b) “The Continental,” the longest, least plot-advancing, Oscar-winning song ever. The song is literally eight minutes long.

Follow the Fleet and Barkleys are definitely the most underrated; Fleet is pretty charming, plus it has the ever-adorable sailor-on-leave factor, not the mention the killer “Let’s Face the Music” closer with that fur-trimmed sparkly dress and the baroque set that supposed to be on a boat. Barkleys was their swan song. Ginger’s role was originally supposed to be played by Judy Garland, as a follow-up to Easter Parade, but Judy wasn’t well enough to do it, so Fred allegedly flew down to Ginger’s ranch in Montana or wherever and got her to come out of retirement.* They get a do-over of “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” one of my favourite songs ever, which for some reason they didn’t actually dance to in Shall We Dance. Plus there’s a whole meta-commentary on their careers, in which the Ginger character leaves the Fred character (her partner in dancing and in love) to do more serious dramatic work, just as Ginger broke up the partnership in the thirties.

I love how everything has meta-commentary now.

I’m such a freaking dork.

*I maintain that this in itself would make a wicked movie. I think the story’s exaggerated if not apocryphal. but still, awesome.

For those who didn’t read the comments, after all that drama and my 800 panic attacks, my transcripts were ready in two days.

I had to return a movie and pick out new movies, which took me a typically long time, so I’m watching the Golden Globes as I blog. Anyway, I’m just so depressed — I saw a red carpet with Johnny Depp and he was doing a fake English accent.

I found an awesome stockpot this week. I christened it Western-style, with a big-ol’ batch of chili. You know that thing you keep reading about putting chocolate in it? Do it. I can’t explain why it’s good, but it just is.

It just makes it taste more like chili. Which is what an ingredient should do.

I bought a new memory card thing for my camera. I’d just been using the 8 MB one that came with since I got it a few years ago. Alex and I figured that we could take more photos of our yuppie adventures if I actually could store more than 10 photos in my camera.

I’ve decided that even though I dress like a total prep, I eat in hipster diners, I watch the Food Network way too much, and I like the Arcade Fire, I’m not a yuppie. I’m poor, in a dead-end job, I don’t have an apartment with its own entrance, I’m eating chili all week, etc. etc. etc. I’m pretty ghetto.

I leave you with orders.

Read: Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell — I talk about this on the Books page.

Rent: The Constant Gardener — I’d heard nothing but good things and I loved City of God but I still didn’t really expect to like this that much. It’s very old-school, sort The Third Man-style. The main character’s this ordinary guy, and he finds himself embroiled in this totally insane conspiracy, out of which there is no way. It’s structured really smartly. And Ralph Fiennes is perfectly cast.

Watch: Project Runway — I fell in love with the first season, by which I mean Jay McCarroll, when Life aired it this summer (way after it aired in the States); I belatedly found out they started airing Season 2 last week. Huzzah!

I am currently going through grad school panic attack #854.

This is kind of a for-real panic attack as opposed to all my manufactured ones. The panic attack is because the U of T transcript office, which was closed for the holidays (which means it just re-opened) may take 4-5 business days to get my transcript printed for me. 4-5 business days from today is after my deadline.

They “might” get it done earlier. But there is nothing I can do about it. I’m standing there in the transcript office, saying “But I need it! By the 15th! You don’t seem to understand!” And the overbearing office lady takes over from the other girl to explain to me that there are thousands of requests and it would take so much time to even find mine. “So basically, I maybe can’t get in to grad school because it’s a busy time of year?” Thanks, U of T! I love being a faceless number, my spirit crushed by international bureaucracy!

Seriously, I am getting a little nauseous thinking about what I will do.

How do normal people apply for grad school? Is it supposed to be this terrifying?

I’m so useless. I have Type A stress levels, but without the insane over-planning or actually organization that comes with having an actual Type A personality.

Oh. The. Stress. Grad school applications? Oh man, why didn’t I work on them over Christmas? I am a fool.

Now, for two non-procrastinatory notes.

Note one is Rach tagged me to do this music thing:

Think of 5 songs that remind you of someone. Then post the song, band/singer, who it reminds you of and why. It can be any song and any person. Then tag five people.

1. This Is Everything – Tegan and Sara: will always remind of Dan because his internet nickname is from a misremembered lyric of it: “frosted lemon coward” became “lemon frosted killer.” Also, going to see them with him was my first grownup show — small band, small venue, “indieness,” etc. Plus I listened to a ridiculous amount of T&S right after I moved away to school and Dan went on his mission, in the long mopey phase that marked the end of our relationship.

2. On My Own – (from Les Mis): my best friend from elementary school fancied herself a singer (actually, she kind of is a singer now; last I heard she was going to opera school) and was obsessed with the show and Eponine in particular. I remember hours of her rewinding her soundtrack tape to just that song and singing it over and over as she daydreamed about her intense elementary school crush.

3. Letter of Resignation – The Weakerthans: my younger brother (who is, for the record, 10x cooler and 1,000x more punk rock than me) got me into the Weakerthans at some point in my first year or two of school and Fallow was the only album he had at that point. For some reason, “Letter of Resignation” was the song that grabbed me. It always stuck with me because it was the point that I realized that my dorky younger brother who at one point actually owned a chemistry set and had ambitions to be a comedian of some kind (but in the dorkiest, in retrospect, cutest way possible) had outstripped me in the cool wars.

4. We Both Go Down Together – The Decemberists: I’m not really the kind of girl who tries to change a guy, but I do take credit for turning Alex into a Decemberists fan. He definitely liked them before, but when Picaresque came out, he couldn’t stop talking about how awesome this song was. We saw them twice last year, and the first show was actually awesome enough to outshine the Phoenix’s horrible doors-at-6 show policy. When we left, Alex said “You know, I think the Decemberists are my favourite band,” like, he’d never had a favourite band. It was like that episode of Gilmore Girls where they take Paris to go see the Bangles and she’s never been to a concert before. (Alex had been to a concert before, but not really until I started dragging him to things).

5. Turn a Square – The Shins: my friend M. from second and third years. (We didn’t stop being friends, she just moved away). She just really liked this song.

I’m not tagging anyone, because it’s against my religion. But anyone who sees this on my blog and thinks “I want to do that” can say I tagged them and I won’t deny it.

Note two is I’ve started a reading list with an annual numbered goal. The idea is that if I keep a list, I will actually read more. And that will be good.

(This means: I want book recommendations. I like fiction of almost all varieties, memoirs of the David Sedaris-Augusten Burroughs variety, graphic novels of the hipster variety, and non-fiction of the interesting variety. I dislike epic fantasy, and really, most fantasy in general.)

This was a pretty good New Year’s, despite my emerging inability to hold my liquor. I seriously don’t think I drank that much, but I guess drinking champagne from a tumbler is a bad move. I’m only 22 and I already can’t throw down like I could in my college years.

Other than that, I had a killer New Year’s weekend.

Friday night was my last night at home; we went out for a family dinner. The Italian place that we were going to hit didn’t bother to mention that they were closed that night on their machine, so we wound up going to Divino. I had braised shortribs with brown butter potato puree and vanilla braised salsify. Dessert was creme brulee duo – one white chocolate mint, one lemon, and a scoop of blueberry sorbet in the middle. I don’t get to eat like that very often — my idea of a good night out is a Mexitaco platter and a bottle of Sol — but it was pretty amazing.

My flight home was less than amazing, unless you consider two guys behind you talking about beer while the rest of the plan is obviously asleep and constantly bumping into your seat amazing. When they ran out of exciting tales of how much beer they drank in various locales, they sort of fizzled:

“You’re from Edmonton, eh? Did you go to that mall?” “It’s overrated.”

Uuuugh.

New Year’s Eve was pretty great. We went to this random Annex party where I didn’t really know anyone, even though even Rachel — who was stopping off on her way back to Vancouver — ran into someone she knew and I lived on the U of T campus for four years. But I got to meet Sara, who immediately gave me a giant hug and had a tiara. At midnight, we all went outside and opened champagne and hugged and then there were sparklers in the kitchen and then it’s basically a blur.

Because of the large quantity of champagne consumed, Alex and Rach and I pretty much spent the day on the couch, watching Veronica Mars DVDs and hydrating. Then we went for curing-of-all-ails Indian food and then we thought we’d pick up a movie at the Rogers up the street. However, the prospects were slim. This was the Yonge and Wellesley Rogers, which has a surfeit of gay softcore and, like, three movies released before 1960. All we were looking for was something that would divert us for a couple hours. Nothing heavy. Rach hates art movies, and Alex and I weren’t exactly in the mood for Jia Zhang Ke or anything, so we would have been happy with Wedding Crashers.

So how did we end up with It’s All About Love? I saw Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes on the cover and then I read the kooky ice skater/future plot, which made it sound like it would at least be different. Plus, Thomas Vinterburg! Alex and I saw Dear Wendy at TIFF last fall and really liked it. It was funny and quirky and didn’t take itself too seriously.

So of course, It’s All About Love turned out to be awful. It was long, slow-moving, full of heavy-handed symbolism, and bad Polish accents. And then everyone just gets covered in snow at the end. Because they’re cold, from lack of love. Sean Penn is Joaquin’s brother, who was scared to be on planes, but they gave him a shot and now he can only fly. He obviously shot the whole thing in a day.

I felt bad for Rachel; I was also worried she’d think Alex and I liked this sort of thing.

But the weekend was saved by Gay Cowboys. Which was so sad and good it totally made me forget that I would have loved entirely based on the Gay Cowboy theme.

I’m calling it: Best Picture Oscar. Epic. Love story. Sad. Somewhat progressive theme. It’s totally happening.