As I’m about to leave for work, dreading the blustery winter morning ahead of me, I get a text from my boss asking me to wait an hour before turning up.  It’s a Pro-D day, so there’s no actual classes.  The day was to be spent organizing and preparing for tonight’s Christmas concert.  I’m never one to be late, but this is a rather irresistible invitation. The wind has sharp teeth, and the roads look slick and glassy. There is so much white, insistent and imposing, the world a snow-globe shook by an angry and energetic child.  Eventually another text follows, calling the whole morning off. As prepared as I was to brave the weather conditions and have a productive work day, something about not having to leave the house made me feel like a middle-aged divorcee on her fourth banana daiquiri at her first Mexican vacation.  Pretty bloody giddy.  Inside there is a roaring fire, a freshly decorated Christmas tree, and just enough coffee in the pot for a toasty top up.  Maybe I’ll heed the warning and bask in the glorious indoors.

Winter weather has such a magical quality.  A thick blanket of white across roof tops and sidewalks, urging you to stay indoors, to curl up in bed, in front of a fire, a warm beverage enveloped in your hands.  When Benjamin and I lived in Perth, Christmas time was blazing hot, filled with summertime activities.  We once watched “White Christmas” on a large screen in an inner city park on a piping hot day.  To a Canadian, it was a confusing physical experience.  For my husband, born in the Southern Hemisphere, Christmas dinner comes off the BBQ.  Once during our Australian Christmas season evening, we watched “The Holiday“, a personal Christmas cinematic favorite.

Yes, the writing is imperfect.  The concept ludicrous.  The acting a little terrible (ahem, Cameron Diaz I’m looking at you girlfriend).  Jack Black is wildly miscast as Kate Winslet‘s love interest.  He’s perfectly cute and funny, but he is the exact replica of that “nice guy” who single girls go to the movies with but whom they will never go to bed with.  My husband hates they way the characters talk to themselves.  Still, as far as a Christmas-themed romantic comedy goes it’s light, frothy, sexy, silly and ends happily.  I especially love the friendship between Winslet and Arthur Abbott, played by Eli Wallach.

He is as cute as the dickens.  Look at him. Isn’t he precious? I’d love to be on the other side of that table hearing his many stories.  (PS: Did you know that this man is still alive? He is 97 years old y’all, and he knew all of the greats. He was in Marilyn Monroe‘s last completed picture “The Misfits”).

He worked with Audrey Hepburn in “How to Steal a Million“.

With the slew of celebrity deaths this year, someone needs to go check in on him.  Wrap a blanket around his shoulders and check his pulse, and say “I really enjoyed you in “The Holiday”, what was Marilyn Monroe really like?”

Anyway, as for watching “The Holiday” on a hot and lazy evening in Australia, I was overcome with nostalgia for thick cable knit sweaters and a snowy Christmas. I also enjoyed me some Jude Law in this deliciously mindless holiday fare.  Essentially this movie makes me crave snow, sweaters, long lunches with Eli Wallach, and for Jude Law to explain how books, movies and birthday cards make him weep.

Wow, thanks Jude.  I love how last night you weren’t wearing glasses, and today you are.  It really adds to your mystique.  Last night you were a bad boy, but this morning you’re this nice guy.  But not in a Jack Black, you can make me laugh, but you’ll never bring me to orgasm kind of way.  It’s refreshing.

Jeez Jude, way to give it all away in one blog post.  But I don’t have to go to work right away…I’m willing to roll with this.  But the truth is, I’m married, and I’ve already promised my celebrity cheat card to George Clooney.

So…where do we go from here?

Yeah, you’re not the first person to tell me that.  Maybe it’s the winter blues.  Maybe it’s always wanting the opposite of what you have.  In Perth I dreamt of snow kissed landscape, and now I am fantasizing about that hot sun in that beautiful city, where Christmas decorations baked in the heat.  How is it that the things you want always seem to be on the opposite side of the fence?

Well sure…I guess.  I mean you live in a movie in England, and I may die of frost bite and homesickness in Canada.  How could we possibly be together?

None of this makes any sense.  I should of been at work an hour ago and you look so cute in a collared shirt and sweater combo, and this blog shouldn’t even be happening.  But here we are, just a woman and a fictional character falling in love on a miserable winter’s day. Ah well, whatever keeps you off the roads.

Images Courtesy of Google

Basking in a quiet moment at home.  Husband snoozing in the easy chair, fire roaring, and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” playing quietly in the background.

I’m going to lay down a bit of a proclamation here.  This album is the business.  To me, for Christmas music, it doesn’t get better than this.  When going through my Christmas things, I actually came across not one, not two, but three copies of the CD.  I took one copy to the classroom.  As of late, that and the Rod Stewart Christmas album “Merry Christmas Baby” has been on repeat.

Look at him.  What a total babe fest.  He’s so cheeky; sitting in a chair the wrong way and bringing the holiday season a whole new brand of sexy.  Me-ow Rod, you bring new meaning to the phrase “ring ting a ling”. For your money, I don’t think it gets better than Rod belting out “Jingle Bells“, “Silent Night” or if you get him really drunk I hear he does one rousing version of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer“.  But if you have a relatively sane family, and need a dose of holiday crazy, I’d recommend these two kooky kids.

Jesus Christ.  There is enough plastic here to build a fucking spaceship.  What fun they are having.  Bless Olivia and her enormous coffee mug. She’s holding that hot coffee right up against her face and she can’t even feel it.  And who does John think he’s fooling with those eyebrows? That’s Peter Gallagher‘s thing and everybody knows it.

Well hello there, who ordered the smoldering gaze with a side of piercing stare? Has anyone alerted you to John Travolta, his embarrassing Christmas album and his encroaching eyebrows?

You see, there is a rather fine line between good and bad cheese: John Travolta and Olivia Newton John following a 1978 musical classic with this…that is bad cheese.

Now if you want some proper Christmas gouda, you’d spend your Christmas nights with Boney M.

Don’t even get me started on this one.  By the time we get to the “Oh My Lord” verse of “Mary’s Boy Child” I’m clapping my hands, and riding high on the Christmas spirit.  

I think that a healthy dose of cheese makes such classics as “Wonderful Christmas Time” by Paul McCartney and  Wham’s “Last Christmas” possible.

But I’ll stop you right there if you’d think I’d be interested in any version of “Santa Baby”, or Harry Connick Jr’s”Parade of the Wooden Soldiers”.  That song is so agitating, it makes me want to drive my car right into the horn section just to stop all that goddamn racket.  As for “Santa Baby” I don’t like getting flirty with Santa, he’s a giver of gifts, he’s not a Sugar Daddy.

What I like most about Charlie Brown is that it’s festive but mellow.  So while I love holiday cheese, I love the soundtrack because it’s anything but.  It’s mature, slightly melancholic and sincere.  It says “Christmas makes me happy and sad all at the same time, but let’s focus on the positive, shall we?”  Sometimes I feel as though holiday happiness is an uphill battle, and Charlie totally gets that.  And year after year I’m comforted by those jazzy undertones in the backgrounds of all my Christmases.

Images Courtesy of Google

Last Sunday morning, the first of December, was spent doing what I prefer to do best. Cradling a cup of coffee in my fingers, wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa.  We had been dog-sitting from the night before, and I had Harriet nestled upon my lap, curled next to the fire, listening to Micheal Bublé’s Christmas album.

We’re listening to “All I want for Christmas Is you”, another favorite Christmas favorite.  It never falls to choke me up a little at the end of “Love Actually“. Even when Mariah Carey goes there, I can still get behind it.

It’s an ordinarily a fast-paced jingle, (What? Mariah Carey co-wrote it? Huh, who knew?) but Bublé makes it a slow love song.  I am feeling aglow with holiday spirit.  Feeling hopeful for the month ahead.  Benjamin is checking his email and spots a message from Immigration and Citizenship Canada.  He says my name aloud in a stunned tone and reads the email to me.  His permanent residency application had been completed.  We simply had to pay a fee and we would be contacted regarding a time in which to meet an immigration official.  Benjamin joins me on the couch, Harriet still nesting near me.  We kissed and cried as Bublé crooned along.  All we want is to be a normal married couple, free to leave the country, free to make long term decisions, free to make a home. And how lovely that this news comes to us before Christmas.

The December calendar has a lot of writing on it.  Meetings, events, parties, concerts.  It’s all so busy and exciting but unfortunately the temperature is so bone cold that it would normally take dynamite to blast me out of the house. It was -20 yesterday, and I can’t say that I love that.  There’s not even the magic of snow.  It’s that part of the snow cycle where it starts to look like cookie dough, mud and chunks of rock and debris in thick slushy slabs.  The cold is bitter and is mood transferable.  I’ve been so anxious about winter driving conditions.  My tire fell flat the other day.  There was nothing worse than standing by helplessly in the frigid night air as Benjamin set up the air compressor to fill the tire so I could take it to the shop in the morning.  In a moment of sheer anxiety, practically frothing at the mouth my husband took hold of my shoulders.  “Alicia, you have got to accept that shit happens“.  Shit happens?

I know shit happens.  Have you read a newspaper lately?  Across the world and in your very own community lives are being smashed to smithereens.  I’d need both hands to count my major “SH” moments.  Natural disasters, major accidents, violent encounters, broken hearts, I’ve seen my share.  The agony of catastrophe, the inconvenience of tragedy.  Things take forever, and them they come and go too quickly.  Things get broken and need mending.  People make mistakes and need forgiving.  Shit is happening all the time everywhere.  Sure, I could cope better with frustration, I could be gentler with myself, I could go with the flow, but I don’t.  I don’t care for surprises.  Good or bad, I’d prefer ample warning.

From that Sunday on the sofa, feeling blessed, happy and relaxed, and all that shit happens stress in between, came Friday afternoon. I arrive home for my lunch break around 1:30pm and see the light flashing on the answering machine. “Hello this is Immigration and Citizenship Canada, bring your pertinent papers and we’ll see you in Vancouver next Wednesday. I’m not going to give you my name or number so just be there or be square. So…Bye.”  Uh…what? Next Wednesday? I looked at the packed calendar…this was not on the agenda. We have work. It’s so expensive, so close to Christmas. Such a long way to go on such short notice.  We’ve waited forever for news, and now it’s on our door step and the timing is utterly inconvenient.  Not to sound ungrateful; we want nothing more than to resolve this and move forward with our lives.  But it’s a bit like the old librarian in “The Shawshank Redemption“, he had gotten used to imprisonment.  He had a good thing going at the library, had a pet crow, good friends, he was used to the conditions.  When faced with freedom it becomes his undoing.

I called Benjamin, who shared my reaction.  It all seems so sudden.  Not even a week’s notice to make plans.  We speak briefly, and hang up to call our respective employers.  I begin looking up flights, weather reports, all while being on hold with the immigration call center.   I am trying to connect with an actual human on the phone, but an elaborate labyrinth of options always leads to something along the lines of: “We’re super duper busy right now, we urge you to check the website”.  The lunch hour nearly over, and not a single moment spent actually lunching, I try the old trick–to just press zero, but that wily old recording, she’s just not having it. I bellowed…no, shrieked...no raged into the phone. “I JUST WANT TO SPEAK TO A REAL PERSON”.

I was desperate, angry, frustrated.  How foolish were we to think we had any control in this matter.  We did not dream of being called in December, we figured sometime between January and March…maybe in the spring at the latest.  Not next week.  When I finally got on the wait list, I was told there would be at least a thirty minute wait, which was time I did not have.  Okay then…let’s drive to Vancouver in the middle of winter. Why not?

We’ve made lists and arrangements and are warming up to this new development.  I’m nervous about the weather, Ben is nervous about the meeting.  Of course, there’s nothing to fear, our marriage is legitimate and he has every right to be here.  In an immigration office I once saw an beastly, overweight senior citizen with his young Asian bride. She wore a basketball jersey as a dress with striped knee socks and high heels. She complained endlessly about the long wait and he snapped impatiently at her.  Certainly they had more to answer to than my husband and I…but you just never know.  Benjamin has sorted through all the required documents, and already we are discussing what else to bring…just in case.  You could bring every piece of paperwork you ever received, along with your marriage certificate, love letters and photographs and they’d be like “Everything looks great, if we could just get a receipt from the coffee you purchased this morning, that would be great”.   And the color would drain from your face, blanching at the memory of telling the girl at Starbucks to go ahead and keep that golden ticket.

 Fuuuuuck.

It’s as if we cant possibly imagine our lives without that hanging over our heads.  From the moment we met, we have lived under a bureaucratic umbrella.  Separation was a very real possibility if we didn’t cling to each other fiercely, and fill out the appropriate paperwork for three different countries.  To think that by Christmas morning my husband would be a permanent resident, that we could think seriously about our future seems too good to be true.  I can’t let myself imagine the possibilities it until I know the outcome. If you ask my husband he’d like to acquire a dog, truck and a baby.  Those things sound perfectly lovely, but you know me…I’m also excited about being able to leave the country again.  Maybe we’ll get to Paris after all.  As long as we get there together.

Benjamin: husband, friend and bear…best of luck on Wednesday.  All I want for Christmas is vous.

             Images Courtesy of Google

I call my husband “The Bear” and it’s a nickname that’s started to stick.  As with most nicknames, it spawns spin-off expressions.  He calls me “Goat”, or on occasion “Sheltland Goat”, with many variations.  Once in a silly mood, I called him ‘chunky bear‘ and the sound of it made me giggle. Obviously, he didn’t care for it, as it does imply that he is ‘chunky’.  It was not an often used name, but it does come out now and again.  Truth is; winter has come and so has the carbohydrates; we’re both feeling a little soft around the edges.

Standing in the walk-in closet, attempting to pack for our last minute trip to Vancouver.  I catch an unflattering glimpse of myself.  Well..not like seeing an unflattering glimpse of myself is the equivalent of aurora borealis. It’s not rare to catch a glimpse in the mirror and feel varying degrees of dissatisfaction.  I’m not Victoria’s Secret, I’m not even her dirty little secret.  I’m not really their market audience.  I’ve got itty-bitties up top and then all the action is down below.  As I always say, my thighs are Godzilla and my calves Tokyo.  I lean into the mirror.  Oh crap.  Has my face gotten fat? Am I looking a little puffy?

I implore my husband for some consolation. “Aww…” he says,chuckling a little and pinching my cheeks: “My chunky-goat-wife”.  I took this remark like an absolute champ.

‘Chunky goat wife?’ Scientists couldn’t extract adorability from it and a public relations expert couldn’t spin it into a frothy confection.  At least ‘chunky bear’ sounded a bit like a yummy pastry.  “I’ll have an non fat cappuccino and two chunky bears please”;  at best ‘chunky goat wife’ could be a poorly translated name for a questionable looking hot dish served in the Mongolian mountains.  He really ran with that bit, which is fair I suppose, I did start it. But doesn’t he realize? It’s only funny when I am the one dishing it out. I’d like to keep my plate clean of comebacks thank you.  Needless to say, I spent the next hour pouting, glaring and poking my chin contemptuously.  Then ole Chunky Bear had the nerve to complain that I wasn’t being more helpful with the packing.  Uh, well here’s a tip, if you want your wife’s help, best check yourself before you wreck yourself with the pet names.

I don’t want to be one of those wives that you have to lie to…but I wouldn’t mind being the kind of wife you bend the truth for.  Nod and smile and back away slowly.  That’s how you get it done.  I don’t want to be one of those women who are weight-obsessed.  I am who I am, and my body is shaped as it is.  If it were fifty years ago, my perception of my physical circumstances would be a different story.

Of course, I’d be a fool to say I didn’t wish that I had legs that went on forever.  Truth is, I was curvy even as a little kid.  In my late elementary school days, someone started calling me “Chunky Soup“, saying that like the famous soup line, I too could be eaten with a fork or a spoon.  I didn’t know what that meant…but I was certain it was a nickname Audrey Hepburn never got pegged with.

Chubby knees, stubby legs and dimply thighs are super cute when you’re a naked toddler running around the backyard.  As one gets older, and possibly more modest, such is best kept under leggings, trousers, pantyhose and A-frame skirts.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Lena Dunham is awfully brave.  In her television series “Girls”, she is fearless when it comes to being vulnerable.  Sure, it’s her character Hannah being portrayed in those uncomfortable sex scenes and unflattering rompers, but Dunham is writing herself into these situations. She is deliberately exposing to the cast, crew, professional partners, advertisers and the audience.

It’s brave, bold, revolutionary, but I wouldn’t participate.  If I was director, writer, star and producer of my popular HBO program, I would have an iron clad nudity and romper policy.  The show would still be brilliant; it would be the new “Girls” which was the new “Sex and the City“.

The main theme on my show would focus on a love triangle between myself, Ryan Gosling and George Clooney; Clooney being a wealthy suitor, and Gosling a young man from the wrong side of the tracks.  They fight for my love and affection, (this will go on for years) and as we slip into old age, the winner gets to repeat the story to me over and over about how I dicked everyone around until I got dementia.  It’s a completely original idea, and it’s going to blow minds.  And never in the years of the beloved series ‘Love Sandwich’ would you see me scantily clad.  I would dress like Katherine Hepburn and in all my love scenes I’ll wear a scuba suit.

Sometimes I think to myself…”I could stand to lose a few pounds”.  And I visualize a montage of myself doing sit ups, and jogging in the streets, and punching large slabs of meat.  I would be so fit.

My problem is…I love bread.  I love cheese, red wine and creamy lattes .  And bread.  I love bread so much that if I was on death row my last meal would just be various types of bread with things to spread, dip and place on top of it.

I used to go to this amazing restaurant when I lived in Victoria where they offered an all you could eat soup deal with the greatest bread ever.  Hot, buttery and pelted with chunks of rock salt.  I could have ordered the special and sent the soup back in the same way my friend Robin does with a wings and beer feature at the local pub.  She wants the cheap wings, but tells the waitress to give the beer to someone else cause she doesn’t want that cheap piss anywhere near her face.

Fair enough, life is short, take only the good stuff.  I don’t even know who this Franz character is but I wish that I were that duck so I could eat all his bread.  Alas, this is a world full of limitations, boundaries, rules and limits.  Bread is a dietary no no, and most would recommend cutting out yeast and flour based products.  My love for bread is like the love in Brokeback Mountain. I just don’t know how to quit you, carbohydrates.  I love you, I hate you, I want you inside my mouth.  (…too much?)

I really can’t remember “Brokeback Mountain”…though I did wind up seeing it twice at the cinema.  But I do remember just sobbing my little heart out.  I meant to re-watch it recently, but got distracted on Netflix and watched “Bring it On” instead.  It was just too sad to watch again. Maybe that’s how I can justify comparing the film to carbohydrates and plump thighs.  It was devastating to me that you could just miss your whole life by not being true to yourself; and for Ennis that was Jack Twist, for me it’s twist bread.

Okay, I’m sorry for you situation with the forbidden love and all, but this is my blog and I can say what I want.  I’m comparing your love to my love of bread–deal with it.  In reality, I’m perfectly average. Not Karen Carpenter, not Mama Cass, just somewhere in the middle.  When I look at old photos of myself I balk at how young and slender I looked.   Of course, when that picture was being taken, I had that same voice in my head that compared and criticized.  In a year’s time, I could look at a picture of myself today and think I looked perfectly lovely.  With this in mind, I try to do my future self a favor and look at myself in the present as she would do in hindsight.

Images Courtesy of Google

I completed my last work task on Saturday, and I am currently on Christmas holidays.  The entire weekend was a blur of parties, travel, restaurants and shopping centers, and it didn’t properly register that on Monday, there was a holiday waiting. Then I spent all of Monday morning wandering around the house in my pink bathrobe, looking terribly confused.  The amount of available time lays before me like a vast ocean, seemingly endless and deliciously refreshing.  But the question is, do you dive in, or just dip a toe?

I guess…I could go to a matinee? …Maybe a yoga class? I haven’t used my mat in so long it looks like it was mummified in ancient Egypt.  …Maybe I’ll just sit down and crack on with a blog? Or maybe I’ll just kick back and relax.

Sitting in the office, staring out my window.  Coffee and Baileys.  Classical music on CBC 2.  Watching all the cars on the highway, the packed parking lots down below.   Nothing drains the Christmas spirit more than being in a cramped store, sweating in your puffy winter coat, weighed down with bags, feeling awfully light in the wallet.  My personal version of hell is Walmart on the last weekend before Christmas.  Any big box store really.  The crush of people, the long lines, the incompetent staff.  I recently had an experience with a basic clothing rack on wheels at an Ikea that made me feel like Dante descending into the seven circles of hell.  In a modern world, hell would be a packed Costco, bureaucracy, Honey Boo Boo, last minute holiday shopping and Black Friday/Boxing Day sales.  Listen, I like a good deal just as much as the next person, but my god, I can’t imagine anything worse than combining those stores with last minute gift shopping. The pressure of that finding perfect present forced against the insistently ticking clock.  I mean listen, there are many, many nice things out there in the stores that would dazzle anyone.  Who doesn’t love cashmere? But who can afford it?

Having had the pleasure of being called to Immigration Canada–which was a little too last minute for our tastes; we got the message on Friday to come to Vancouver the following Wednesday.  We organized ourselves rapidly, and left early Tuesday morning.  We thought we’d make it into a little holiday, get a hotel and do some Christmas shopping.  I can’t remember why I used to enjoy shopping so much, it can be anxiety inducing at best.  Standing in a packed Winners trying to get a handle on one inch of personal space to do some browsing, all I wanted to do was walk right out that door.  I don’t want to buy someone’s present in a state of panic.  And so we just walked around this city, holding hands and people watching…discussing what we’d like to give if we had the means.

We eventually made purchases and as we walked with shopping bags in hands, Benjamin and I decided that we weren’t going to buy Christmas presents for one another.  Our birthdays fall in the same week as Christmas, and we had already made a purchase for the house and so decided that would be our present. With the totally unexpected expense of Permanent Resident fee/car rental/hotel/and every other pesky little cent that goes into going away…why fool ourselves and spend additional money on things we don’t really need?

I like to get presents, and I love to give them…but where do you draw the line?  How can you get in the spirit of Christmas giving without sacrificing your savings and not having to pick up a glue gun?  How can you give of yourself?  For me, I like to be a hostess. I like to feed people, offer blankets and cups of tea.

We had a little birthday party, and days before I was going over the menu ideas. When I mention the cheese platter, Ben pipes up: “A cheese platter? What are we Rockerfellers?”  I look up from my list.  “I’m perfectly happy to trim fat, cut corners and make sacrifices, but things are not so bad that we can not afford cheese”.  No cheese? Why not just cancel Christmas? Why not just kick Santa where is counts?

Maybe this picture isn’t accurately expressing my intention.  This Santa is looking super into whatever is about to happen here. So, back to my list.

If all I can give this year is of myself, I’d like to throw a savory platter into the mix.  I’d like to give comfort, hugs, good humor and time. I want to share my home.  I wish I could lavish those I love with pet tigers, cash money, diamonds, trips to Cabo.  I’d like to walk into a store and pay off people’s layaways.  Put an actual bill in a Salvation Army box.  One-up Beyonce’s recent Walmart appearance where she paid the first $50 of everyone’s purchase, and pay everyone’s Christmas shopping. (Though I’d just linger by customer service because as previously mentioned those big box stores are terrifying black holes).

I wish I could help more. To see someone struggling and be able to support them.  To fly families to opposite ends of the world for the holidays.  But it’s not really in the budget. What I can give you is this: my words, my care, the occasional cheese platter, and vintage Ann Margaret in a catsuit, holding an actual cat, surrounded by presents in front of a roaring fire.  Meow.

Merry Christmas my friends, may 2014 be the year of the pet tiger.

Images Courtesy of Google

Happy Christmas Friends,

I’m coming to you live on Christmas afternoon, lounging on my parent’s sofa and watching “The Royal Tenenbaums“.

Historically speaking, by Christmas afternoon, the blues start to creep in a little.  The holidays take so long to get there; the anticipation of the gifts under the tree, the excitement, the magic and then…it’s over. It’s never quite what you built up in your mind.  Although my relationship with the holiday season is a little more complex than the average person.

Well…I hate to break it to you Reverend Swisher, for me, Christmas is my actual birthday.  Listen, I’m not in the business of overshadowing Jesus, but there wasn’t a calendar in my mother’s womb and I really lost track of the days in there.  Although depending on who you ask, Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th.  Once while walking off our Christmas breakfast, we were approached by a power walking, arm pumping, grinning woman, who was full of holiday greetings.  “Many Blessings to you this fine Christmas morning”, she beamed with light and love.  “Do you know who’s birthday we are celebrating today?”

“Jesus?” we all respond.  “That’s right!”, she smiles, breathing deeply.  “Actually”, my brother Matthew gestures towards me, “It’s also my sister’s birthday”.  Her smile drops and her neck snaps in my direction, steely eyes squinting my way.  “You know it’s not his actually birthday, right? Jesus was born sometime in October, during the harvest”. Which makes sense, the weather does look rather mild in all artist renditions. Riding round on a donkey, being turned away from hotels, giving birth outside surrounded by farm animals…well if you ask me, that’s got summer time written all over it.

Meanwhile, being that this was well before the days of the GPS, three wise men were using a star to guide them to little baby Jesus.  They meet up with the Little Drummer Boy, and they all roll up together victoriously with their gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Poor Mary. After all that wandering through the desert on a donkey and giving birth to the Son of God on a stack of hay, she probably would have liked a morphine drip and an ice pack, but myrrh is good too.

My mother has a ceramic nativity scene.  Growing up, it was my favorite decoration of the Christmas season.  The  Virgin Mary was blonde, beautiful, wrapped in a blue robe, eyes downcast modestly.  Joseph looked looking slightly perplexed, like…”How did I get roped into this?”. There was a shepherd and the wise men, a camel, a cow and some sheep.  For years I used to play out detailed soap opera scenarios with the figurines, the most popular game being “Who was the real father of Jesus?” And for whatever reason, in my head Joseph sounds like Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life“.  “Mary? How did this happen?” My mother finally overheard, and that was the end of my gig at the Wildly Inappropriate Nativity Theatre.  She also gave me a quick history lesson and explained how the Shepherd could not possibly be the actual father of Jesus.

The Christmas pageant at church was always a big event, and I had secretly hoped to be the Virgin Mary.  She was so lovely in every Christmas card.  Olivia Hussey played Mary in my mother’s favorite biblical movie (the one with the “good looking Jesus”), what better role could an eight year old want?  Year after year, I was cast as the narrator. My mother said it was a compliment.  Mary never actually says anything, and it would be a shame to waste me, seeing that I was such an eloquent speaker.  Until I eventually stopped going to church, I was always the narrator, never the virgin. Just once I wanted to stand by silently and serenely, and let someone else do the talking for once.

Regardless, this woman on the street couldn’t have known my weird Freudian holiday hangups, so she was awfully surprised when I attacked her. “What? Next thing you’re going to tell me that Humphrey Bogart wasn’t actually born on Christmas Day but on January 23rd? And that with the invention of new calenders Issac Newton was actually born in early January?  Sheesh–a man loses his birth certificate and people think they can just change your birthday? If it can happen to Jesus, surely it could happen to Bogie.  As Newton always said, “What goes up must come down”.  I don’t know how that applies to this, but it’s my goddamn birthday so I’m going to jam it into context like a fat foot in a Manolo Blahik.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, may this day be lazy and full of love, food, forgiveness and good fortune.

All Images Courtesy of Google

Ah, Boxing Day. Such a glorious date on the calendar.

If you are lucky, this is a day to take holiday loafing to a new level.  When all that merriment turns into cellulite.  I am so well fed and relaxed, so dizzy with blessings that I am feeling somewhere between a new born baby…

…a later-years Elvis.

with a little bit of this guy over here…

Perfectly content, but potentially incoherent. I know some of the greatest writers wrote some pretty famous material while under the influence.  But after a sizable amount of champagne, Strongbow, turkey, stuffing, chocolate, cheese, chips, dip and many Kahula/Baileys/coffee combos…I am extremely unfocused. I blogged yesterday Benjamin took a rather sizable nap, when we got back home he took to a post-holiday snooze, and I thought I’d keep that momentum going. Sadly, my creative intentions were far stronger than my literal ambition.  I pondered the number of half-ideas rattling around in my brain. I picked up the book my best friend Evelyn bought at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, and sent me for Christmas. “Fragments” is a collection of photographs and Marilyn Monroe‘s personally handwritten notes and journal entries.  I flip through it, relishing in the information.

I return to the task of blogging.  In trying to accurately describe my state of full belly and lethargy I considered making an Anna Nicole Smith joke in lieu of a fat Elvis one; that took me down a very dark road that eventually led to my half-watching the Anna Nicole edition of “Final 24” on YouTube.  Not familiar with “Final 24″? These Canadian made programs are badly re-enacted, poorly scripted yet morbidly fascinating pieces detail the last day in the life of ill-fated celebrity…but mostly told by Z-list hangers-on like chauffeurs and hotel staff. And then it all turns out looking a bit like this…

Poor old Anna Nicole.  She was like the Hindenberg only sexier.  Her life and death was so scandalous and so very white-trash-turned-yellow-gold that someone literally wrote an opera about her.  Where exactly had this buxom beauty gone wrong? What exactly was her fatal flaw?

I hear you girlfriend, though I’m pretty sure that mantra didn’t apply on your wedding day.

My god, I’d rather be the person who clears tables and hands out mints at Wendy’s than to make my fortune this way.  If this what his face looks like just imagine what state his nether regions would be in? The mind reels.  But hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girls gotta do.  That man died victoriously, smothered in platinum blonde hair and double D’s.  As for Smith, it led to another downward spiral.  Her husband died about ten minutes after this photo was taken, and his son took Smith all the way to Supreme Court to protect his father’s billions.  Naturally, the only career options left for the former Playboy Playmate and Guess model were reality television, Trimspa endorsements and general PR prostitution.

When Smith arrived on the pop-culture scene, dangerous curves and all, there were obvious comparisons to Marilyn Monroe. Smith happily fueled the fire, and often replicated Monroe’s most famous poses.

Like Norma Jean Mortenson before her, Vickie Lynn Hogan dreamt of money, fame, attention and love.  They both capitalized on their humble beginnings, often exaggerating their struggles to the press.  They both married young, Marilyn at 16 and Anna at 17.  They both struggled with mental illness, prescription drug addiction and an inability to check themselves before they wrecked themselves.  Monroe died at 36, and Smith only had enough time to flip the 6 to a 9.

The few differences was that Monroe could act and that Smith could procreate;  Monroe was an actual movie star, Smith was a casualty of that pre-Kardashian ”famous for being famous’ tabloid world where people were laughing at her, not with her.  Who knows what it must be like to be beautiful and famous and to crack under the pressure of the very things you craved when you were planning your escape from the misery of a hum-drum, small town life?  In the case of “Fragments”, the editors seek out answers in Monroe’s half written coded chicken scratch, written on the stationary of the most exclusive hotels.  She felt alone in a room full of admirers.  She could never sit back and relax, exhale over a job well done.  Success was all a part of the downward spiral, but it makes you wonder if those poor small town girls would have had it any other way.  It seems for some, the worst thing that can happen are for your dreams to come true.

All Images Courtesy of Google

Earlier in December Oscar winning actress Joan Fontaine passed away at the age of 96.

If you are not familiar with Fontaine, perhaps you remember her sister Olivia de Haviland, who is now 97.

de Havilland is best known as stoic and sweet Melanie in “Gone with the Wind”.

Why, you couldn’t ask for a more wholesome, more selfless woman than Miss Melanie in “GWTW“; which is understandably why Scarlett O’Hara wanted to steal her husband and see her destroyed.

Olivia also starred in eight films with Errol Flynn–who was a swashbuckling seducer of the times. (The expression “in like Flynn” originated from the actor’s prowess.  In his later years he tried to write a memoir called “In Like Me”…which was rejected by publishers. A hard drinking gentleman with a penchant for morphine and and heroin, his career crumbled after a pesky statutory rape charge from two women.  The subsequent trial unraveled his heroic on-screen persona, and his popularity diminished. Flynn died at the age of 50 in a West End apartment in Vancouver).

But back when Flynn was in like himself, he and de Haviland were the most successful romantic pairing in the late 1930′s/early 1940′s.

Joan was born one year after Olivia.  Both women were born in Tokyo, Japan, where their father Walter was a university professor.  Their mother Lilian was a stage actress before following her husband to Japan.  After discovering her husband’s infidelity with geishas, their marriage crumbled.  Due to Joan’s ill health, Lilian moved with both sisters to California.  Joan eventually returned to Tokyo to complete her schooling.  Though both began appearing in films in 1935, it was arguably Olivia that was favored…in Hollywood and at home.

In her memoir “No Bed of Roses”, Fontaine claimed that she had no memories of Olivia’s kindness.  She endured bullying, and suffered violent outbursts from her sister, which once led to a broken collarbone.  Her mother was also dismissive, ripping Olivia’s outworn garments for Joan to repair and wear.  Very Cinderella–the early years. Since Olivia had approached an acting career first, and that Joan tried to follow along, was a major upset to the de Havilland clan.  Their mother, who clearly favored Olivia, supported Olivia’s argument that Joan should not be allowed to use the family name for professional purposes.

Undaunted, Fontaine made up a stage name and appeared in a dozen or so pictures.  None of the films were hugely successful, and when her contract with RKO expired in 1939, it was not renewed.  Of course, this is the same year that “Gone with the Wind” premiered. de Havilland was nominated for an Academy Award.

For de Havilland, being nominated for “just” the best supporting actress was a bitter pill to swallow.  She thought her performance was comparable to Vivien Leigh‘s Scarlett O’Hara.

Vivien Leigh won the award.  de Havilland, convinced that she would win in her category, was devastated when Hattie McDaniel won instead.

Bear in mind, this was a historical moment: the first African American to win an Oscar, but McDaniel and her escort were seated at a segregated table for two, far from her cast mates and other industry giants.  While de Havilland’s loss reportedly caused her to doubt God’s existence, at least she got to rub elbows at the A-List table.  One historian remarked: “Ms. McDaniel and her escort were seated alone at a small round table in a sea of long banquet tables end to end. They were in a corner [facing the stairs]“.  That’s just about the saddest effing thing I’ve ever heard.

After McDaniel’s death, her Academy Award (not a statue, but a plaque) was displayed at Howard University in Washington DC.  At a indeterminate date, the award vanished without a trace.  Rumors swirled that it was stolen during the civil rights movement and hurled into the Potomac River by idealistic students who were angered by “Gone with the Wind’s” lamentation of slavery’s end; and McDaniel’s portrayal of a slave.  In 2011 Professor W. B. Carter published her findings after a year and a half of investigation, and basically conclude that it was boxed up sometime between 1971 and 1972, and just got because it was a plaque and not the recognizable golden statue it presumably got lost in the shuffle.   (Oh this picture? Apparently they’re just letting Hattie look at the Oscar, she doesn’t actually get to take one home).

Social injustice aside, I invite you to fast forward ahead one year.  It’s 1941 and Joan Fontaine’s career is on the upswing.  She had the good fortune to be sat next to David O. Selznick at a dinner party, who cast her opposite Laurence Olivier in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca”.

The following year she had been nominated for best actress in Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” and Olivia de Havilland for “Hold Back the Dawn”.  This competition was a major focal point in the media.  In 1942, the moment of truth arrived and Fontaine’s name was called.

“I froze. I stared across the table, where Olivia was sitting. ‘Get up there!’ she whispered commandingly. Now what had I done? All the animosity we’d felt toward each other as children, the hair-pullings, the savage wrestling watches, the time Olivia fractured my collarbone, all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery. My paralysis was total.”

‘Kaleidoscopic imagery?’ ‘My paralysis was total?’ Imagine that kind of pressure, while everyone is smiling and clapping, and you’re quietly having a stroke.

In 1947, after two losses, de Havilland won for “To Each His Own”.  Joan Crawford was meant to present the award, but backed out at the last minute. The Academy replaced her with Fontaine, with the hope of de Havilland winning and a reconciliation of sorts to follow.  That, or someone gets slapped, either way they’d get something for the front page of the newspaper.   de Havilland refused to even shake her sister’s hand.  Backstage, Olivia continued the snub, saying to her agent “I don’t know why she does that when she knows how I feel”.

By 1975, their mother–who had been the true source of their rivalry, had died.  The sisters disagreed with how to care for Lilian (who went by Lillian Fontaine in her later years).  At the time, Joan was touring with a play and Olivia sent a telegram to her next stop, which Joan did not get for two weeks.  (Which was probably for the best as she wasn’t invited to the service anyhow). And from all accounts, never psoke again.  Damn you de Havilland, why’d you have to be so cold?

Phew…Let’s just take a breather here, this is emotional for me too.  It’s like going through an old trunk of letters and learning from pretty big truths about life and love.  We’ve covered a lot of ground here.  I didn’t know about Hattie McDaniel either…sitting alone at that little table.  And these two sisters both lived well into their nineties, refusing to settle this vintage grudge match.  Like…wouldn’t you want to call your sister and just marvel at your long, amazing lives?”

Apparently not.  They last attended the 1987 Oscars at the same time, and then never again.  In recent years, they were invited to events such as Bette Davis’s 100th birthday party. And one wouldn’t go if the other was going.  Which is a shame, being that everyone else who knew Bette Davis was dead.  They had decided, and declared in so many words to the press that it was just to late to mend any fences.  Not even Bette Davis could bring them together. All this talk about Bette Davis and sibling rivalry means it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the psychological thriller “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

The Hudson sisters are two old movie stars living in a dilapidated mansion.  As children, Baby Jane (Bette Davis) was a vaudeville star, beloved by her parents. Blanche (Joan Crawford) was constantly overlooked.  As they grew older the roles were reversed.  Blanche was a huge success, while Baby Jane’s career was stalling.  Baby Jane plunges into alcoholism and depression. A mysterious car accident occurs and Blanche is left paralyzed, leaving crazy old Baby Jane to be her deranged caretaker. I’m not going to get into it, but shit goes down in that house, and it is perfectly terrifying.  In the end: the maid is dead, the bird is dead, they’re being hunted by police and Baby Jane has dragged Blanche down to the beach.

Blanche admits that the night of the fateful accident, she had deliberately try to hit her sister with the car.   It was Blanche who tried to run over her drunken sister. Jane, however, moved out of the way in time and Blanche had slammed into the gate and snapped her spine, but managed to drag herself out of the car and up to the wrecked gate. Jane was too drunk to realize what happened, and has long believed that she was responsible for her sister’s condition. Baby Jane says: “You mean all this time we could have been friends?” Communication people, it’s essential.

It was no secret that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford absolutely loathed one another.  Davis had once remarked to the both of them as “old broads”; Crawford rebuked her with an angry telegram.  When the Academy Awards were announced, Davis was nominated, Crawford was not.  Being the classy gal she was, Crawford actively campaigned against Davis and approached all the other nominees, offering to take their places in they were unavailable. And what do you know, Bette Davis was standing in the wings of the theatre when it was announced that Anne Bancroft had won Best Actress for “The Miracle Worker”.  Bancroft was in New York and sent Crawford in her absence.  Passing Davis, she said “Excuse me, I have an Oscar to accept”. Oh snap!

Really, this whole thing boils down to the existential dilemma in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion”. Who’s the Mary and who’s the Rhoda.  Who’s the leading lady and who’s the best friend.

In a dream sequence, they explore the kind of grudge that not even the death bed can cure.

Does it ever get to a point in our lives when it doesn’t really matter who was the Mary or the Rhoda? Who did better, who achieved more? Was more pretty or popular? What does that matter in the end when all you have are your memories?  When does the roar of jealousy quiet down long enough to reach out regardless; to check in, to congratulate each other for surviving, to remember those golden, glamorous days when you were a star and Errol was in like Flynn.

Images Courtesy of Google

This has been the most delicious holiday of my life.  I’m rested, I’m relaxed, I’m at peace. If the time came that I was to supply a “How I spent my Christmas holiday” essay, I could boil it down rather easily.

Eat. Sleep. Family. Gift Giving/Receiving. Drink. Walk. Cuddle. Research. Blog. Tidy. Organize. Putter. Pinterest. 

It started innocently enough. I had a Pinterest account, but with very few pins.  My computer does happen to be teeming to various images. I search, click and save pictures in the hope that one day I might need them.  To this day, I can not find this adorable picture of a young Bill Murray with a scarf, so now I save everything.  Occasionally, I’d cast off an unused image to Pinterest, not yet understanding the wealth of imagery in store.

My husband got a new video game for Christmas.  Once home from my parents place, Benjamin really wanted to clock some hours.  I was happily scouring the internet for the last blog entry, “Vintage Grudge Match”.  Between researching biographies, taking notes, writing and searching for photographs, afternoon passed into evening, which then passed into night, then into the darkest side of the following morning.  This may not sound productive, but it really was. Creating a palatable aesthetic for the blog takes time.  And in this recent period I have hit pay-dirt, finding some pretty exceptional snapshots.

I received some nice compliments about the last post; people were into the rehashing of Old Hollywood feuds and dusty bits of gossip.  That thrills me to no end, because I had the most fun delving into these lives.  There are other lives I’d like to look into. If that suits the reader, that suits me.  After all, I’ve been lounging around in yoga pants, drinking coffee and Baileys and mucking around on Pinterest for the last week, nothing’s happening to me that’s worth mentioning.  Finding these vintage paparazzi shots, those wonderful glimpses into the personal lives of others, have led to endless fascination, too many hours of obsessive reading, which suits my husband just fine, there’s a war going on inside the television, and he’s busy fighting in it.

Nancy Reagan and Mr T? ….what? How have I gone my whole life and not seen this picture? I like how Mr T takes on the Santa Claus look, but brings in his own flavor to the ensemble with the sleevelessness and the gold chains.  Feels perfectly normal for Nancy to cop a squat on your lap as you hand out action figures molded to your likeness.

Jack Nicholson…meet The Monkees.  Got to wonder how this meeting came to be.  Did Jack burst in on The Monkees all like “Here’s Johnny!…but seriously, could you play “Last Train to Clarksville?”

The Monkees look uncomfortable here.  And if you’ve ever seen the opening credits to their television program, you know that the boys could get downright wacky.  Micky gets into a bathtub on wheels for cripes sake! And then Jack Nicholson bursts into their green room for a little jam sesh and all the guys look like they just got caught masturbating by their wives.  It doesn’t get anymore uncomfortable than this…until two hours and approximately thirty years later.

This looks like the waiting room in hell. Sure, Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson, totally conceivable to see them in a room together, the creepy clown entourage…that comes with the territory.  Just kicking back with Jon Stewart over a few beers? How does that even happen?  Speaking of how the hell do things happen…who talked Meryl Streep into this catty one piece?  But that’s the power of the Streep, give her a stool and a broken cigarette and she’ll still get Oscar buzz.

Social activist Martin Luther King having a laugh with Rat Pack entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.  In 1960  Davis married May Britt, a white woman.  Interracial marriages were illegal in 31 states, but it was perfectly legal in the state of New York.  Regardless, Frank Sinatra (a major supporter of Kennedy) was concerned that it would the future presidents chances at the polls; he insisted that Davis hold his wedding after the election took place.  And even afterwards, he was stricken from the list of performers for Kennedy’s inaugural ball. He was also bombarded with hate mail for years to come.  Years later, Davis caught a lot of criticism for hugging President Nixon, startling him during a live television broadcast.  Yes you can, Sammy Davis Jr? No actually you can’t.

I can’t decide what I like most about this picture: that Roy Orbison is being pampered and fed by the Beatles, or the little kid at the bottom of this photo who at that present time is having a stroke from all the awesome going around in his living room.

What I love about this picture in that you just know Cher has told Val Kilmer is to keep his mullet long and his trap shut.   She’s looking so engaged with this unseen individual, and Kilmer looks like he’s just bursting with fruit flavour with something over there.  A carefully constructed comment, an intelligent insight,  but more likely “Cher and I had sex and now we are in love!”

Marilyn and Frank.  While these two never officially dated, they were old-school ‘friends with benefits’.  After Monroe and DiMaggio split, she came to stay with Frank (around the same time Sinatra was breaking up with dancer Juliet Prowse).  According to biographers they were strictly platonic until one morning when Sinatra came into the kitchen where Monroe was standing naked in from of the fridge looking for juice.  She said something along the lines of “Frankie–I didn’t think you’d be up so early”, and he responded by giving her a good rogering up against said refrigerator.  (He doesn’t usually get up that early, but can be easily encouraged).

Frank was a good friend, but he’d never commit to being her full-time partner.  Monroe had wanted him to marry her, in a way to keep her safe, but Sinatra had his limits.  Monroe was not a low-maintenance gal, and famously needy. Just a week before Monroe died, she spent a weekend at the Cal-Neva Lodge, a casino that Frank Sinatra allegedly co-owned with mobster Sam Giancana. Amongst historians, this time is often known as “The Lost Weekend”.

Marilyn was in a bad place. She had been fired from “Something’s Got to Give”, and had been dumped by Bobby Kennedy after being cast aside by John F. Kennedy.  She had sung her infamous “Happy Birthday Mr President”, in May of that year, and it was such a blatant insult to Jackie Kennedy that she refused to attend her husband’s birthday celebration.   (Bonus fun fact: Audrey Hepburn, who dated him briefly in the early 1950′s sang to JFK the following year).  By that weekend in July of 1962, both men had stopped returning Marilyn’s calls.  She had legitimately believed that one of those fine Catholic husbands intended to leave their wives and children for her.  She saw herself as the first lady; as a political wife.

Marilyn had allegedly called Jackie to confess to the affair, and of her intentions. Jackie replied “Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great. And you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibility of the first lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems”.  Only Jackie could be that cool under those circumstances.  Then again, she was more than aware of JFK’s rampant infidelity, and of Marilyn’s reputation. But out of all the President’s lovers, his relationship with this famous sex symbol was nearly too much to bear.  Even though Jackie herself was unimpressed with JFK’s sexual bravado, telling a longtime confidant: “he goes too fast and falls asleep”.  There were rumors that Monroe had fallen pregnant, but didn’t know which brother was responsible.  According to FBI documents, she was encouraged by Bobby to have an abortion, which she did on July 20, 1962.  Monroe was unraveling, and those involved with the Kennedy’s were deeply concerned that a rejected and unhinged Monroe would hold a press conference and reveal all.

On July 28, 1962, Monroe arrived at the Cal-Neva Lodge and Casino, a grand getaway that straddled the state lines of Nevada and California.

She arrived with Peter Lawford, whom she was not speaking to due to his Kennedy affiliations (though ironically, he was one of the last people she ever spoke to, he called to invite her to a party the night she died). They used Sinatra’s private plane but by the end of the weekend she was sent home in the same fashion.  Though she started off in good spirits, Monroe was like a water main fixing to burst, especially as the champagne and prescription cocktail began its toxic tailspin.  She was getting sloppy, making scenes, spilling secrets, she even overdosed in her famed Cabin 3. Apparently Sinatra had given photographers strict instructions to not snap them together;  Marilyn kept trying to…well photo-bomb him, which really ticked off Old Blue Eyes. As the weekend went on, she became increasingly intoxicated, obnoxious and indiscreet. Sinatra had to get rid of her.

Like her death, the details about this weekend is shrouded in mystery.  This was her last public appearance, these are the last pictures of Monroe alive.  Depending on who you ask, Marilyn died at the Cal-Neva, in the famous round bed that was tossed in a dumpster after Sinatra sold the establishment.   Conspiracy theorists think it would have been easy enough.  With the combined forces of Sinatra, the Mafia and the Kennedy’s, moving a body would be easier than a quick game of golf, or a scotch and a cig whilst crooning with Dean and the crew.

The Cal-Neva had once burned down, and all that remained of the previous structure was tunnels that ran under the buildings.  Many secrets passed along those passageways, mistresses, booze…why not a body?  With Sinatra at the helm, with his heli-pad and mafia connections, anything was possible.  His lodge and casino was made to be a secret celebrity playground where the press would never get wind of the kinky hi-jinks.

What the agents couldn’t see was what went on inside the Cal-Neva’s secluded bungalows after the opening night party had ended. Momo Giancana reportedly told his brother that he had been present at a Kennedy brothers slumber party that night at the Cal-Neva Casino. “The men,” he said, “had sex with prostitutes, sometimes two or more at a time, in bath-tubs, hallways, closets, on floors,almost everywhere but the bed.”(Quoted from the FBI Frank Sinatra files).

Wow, you could really count on Sinatra being the best-ever host. Except if Frank gets even a hint that you are going to die on his premises, in his presence, he will have you removed.  And apparently Frank had no tolerance for narcotics, which was a problem for Marilyn as she carried a pharmacy at the bottom of her purse.

According to an article in the Daily Mail:

The list of drugs she was using by 1961 was staggering. She was taking the antipsychotic Thorazine for the borderline paranoid schizophrenia diagnosed by Dr Greenson, as well as the narcotic painkiller Demerol and barbiturates Phenobarbital, HMC and Amytal, along with large quantities of Nembutal, to which she was addicted, to help her sleep.  There were 15 bottles of pills on Marilyn’s night table when she died. She’d also developed the alarming habit of giving herself injections. A source who was very close to her recalls the concoction was of Phenobarbital, Nembutal and Seconal. ‘Marilyn referred to it as a vitamin shot,’ said the source. ‘Afterwards she would be gone, no longer able to function.’

It was these ‘vitamin shots’ that drove Sinatra over the edge.  The President taking on two prostitutes at a time in the hall closet, that’s one thing…to stick a pin in your pills so it will get into your blood stream faster–that’s worth firing up the chopper over.  But in fairness, Sinatra had his allies to protect, and at the end of her life Marilyn was a danger to herself and those around her.

Of course, there’s many theories about Monroe’s death, the many powerhouse players: The Kennedy’s, the Mafia, Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, right down to her housekeeper Eunice, her publicist Pat Newcomb, (who went on to work for the Kennedy’s), and Dr Ralph Greenson, her psychiatrist.  Eunice called Greenson before she called the police. Another detail to fuel the conspiracy fire; Eunice had been fired once by Monroe, and Dr Greenson told her to rehire her.  Eunice had asked for holiday time for that August, and Monroe paid her for her time and asked her not to return after that holiday.  Marilyn paid her for her time, and Eunice’s  last day of employment was the last day of Monroe’s life.  Eunice tried to cash this cheque, written the day of Monroe’s passing, days after the death, but to no avail.

Greenson, arguably one of the last people to see Monroe alive, claimed to have broken a bedroom window in her Brentwood Hacienda because he saw her body through the glass.   Apparently Marilyn’s bedroom had  heavy curtains that were closed, and that the doctor couldn’t have possibly seen her past the thick fabric.  There were rumors that she died in hospital, but was brought back home by ambulance.  A former Monroe lover claimed to have spoken with her on the phone; but she put the phone down to check on a disturbance, and never came back.  This was around 9pm, and coroner’s reports claim that she died somewhere between 9 and 11pm.  On that night, there was a significant buzz of concern around Monroe; someone had called her lawyer, who then called Monroe’s house. He spoke with Eunice who claimed that Marilyn was fine without actually checking on her.

Eunice was the keeper of information who couldn’t keep a story straight if her life depended on it.  She said the door was locked, and then later said there was no lock on the door, she said she saw a light on in the middle of the night, which was also impossible as the carpeting was thick and imposing.  She first said no one was there, then later said Bobby Kennedy arrived on the scene with two mysterious men.  Then when police did show up, Marilyn was face-down in the pillow, her body straight as an arrow, as if she had been placed there. And there’s Eunice, doing a load of laundry in the middle of the night, which is the queerest thing: (Hey lady, your boss is dead, you don’t have to clean anymore).  Over the years, she changed her story a number of times, wrote a book, was interviewed for a documentary and was overheard making a remark about ‘still having to cover things up’.  Nobody followed up on that, and she died in 1994, taking the truth to her grave.

There are holes in stories, dangerous affiliates, an incorrectly done autopsy, sloppy police work…there’s reason to believe that Marilyn was murdered, or that there was a cover up.  Then again, this was a woman with a history of overdoses and suicide attempts who gave herself barbiturate enemas based on advice from Mae West.  Not to say she was suicidal either.  She had just signed a multi-million dollar contract, and was rehired to complete “Something’s Got to Give”–which was a rather appropriate title, given her condition.

Joe DiMaggio claimed her body and took great pains to exclude Sinatra and the rest of Hollywood from the funeral services.  While Sinatra took equal measures to distance himself from Monroe, he arrived at the Westwood Village Mortuary Chapel on August 8 in an $800 black suit, but was turned away by security.  In the years that followed, Sinatra was heavily criticized, that he had the means to save her life but he turned her away, as had everyone else. But the thing about Marilyn is that girlfriend couldn’t even help herself. And you can’t help someone who can’t help themselves. She was doomed long before the Lost Weekend.  Said George Jacobs, valet at Cal-Neva:

“Frank Sinatra didn’t know what to think about any of it. He was upset, though. He loved Marilyn, yes. But for her to maybe die at Cal-Neva while he was there? That would have been terrible. So he said: ‘Get her out of here and get her out of here now.’ And that was it. We had to do what he said. I mean, the woman was sick. But as compassionate as Sinatra was, he had a line and she crossed it.”

Happy New Year dear friends! Wishing you health, wealth, happiness and good humor in 2014.

May you have someone to kiss & cuddle at midnight; and people who truly love you. 

All the best,

Alicia

Though the limitations of our immigration process was no longer looming overhead, we struggled to wrap our brains around the idea of freedom. Now that a new year is upon us, it felt necessary to take an hour to treat our personal lives like a business and write out a five-year plan.

*What are your projections for this year?

*What do you wish to achieve in the next five years?

*What do you wish to achieve in January…what will you have hoped to achieve by June…by this time next year? 

*What are your goals and what responsibilities in making such achievements?

It’s a really interesting task in one’s marriage to touch base like that.  How are we doing? Could we be better? How can we improve? How are we spending our money? Where are we going? How are we getting there? Are we going there together? Personally, I love a list for even the most mundane of things.  I need a list if I’m going to get it all done.  Writing it down is like a commitment, a contract of sorts. And there’s nothing better than crossing something off your list.

When I was engaged, and the wedding was on the brink of cancellation, I used my love of lists to try to find an equal ground.  I said “Let’s write separate five-year plans and see how they match up”.

Ideas flowed from my pen; my future flowing like black ink, making my mark all over the page.  First, I’d graduate university, and then I’d get married, and then I’d go to grad school, which would ultimately satisfy the need to move to a different city.  Travel to Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, East Coast Canada.  I added a baby last…just as an after thought really…just because I thought it said something about me if I didn’t.  When we compared notes, my paper was brimming and his paper was non-existent because he didn’t participate in the exercise. You could cut the symbolism with a knife. All unraveled shortly thereafter, and we went our separate ways.

I used that list as a guideline, what I loved before I loved you. What was the most important thing to me? Travel.  Seeing the world was all I ever wanted.  Come to think of it, I actually wrote that list five years ago now.  I crossed quite a few things off that list. I moved to New Zealand, where I met my husband.  We moved to Australia, and saw Sydney, and the entire west coast of the continent.  We went to Indonesia for our wedding anniversary (which satisfies my Asia requirement if necessary).  When we came to Canada we started in Ontario with my best friend Evelyn and her husband and we drove to Prince Edward Island, stopping in every province along the way.  Really all that remains is grad school, Europe and a baby.

Naturally, when one has been married over three years, is over the age of thirty and looking at a five-year life plan, it’s not unreasonable to question where procreation comes into the equation.

My husband asks me outright, jutting his chin towards my papers and handwritten notes. “Where do babies fit in to this plan?”

I respond by shuffling the papers and muttering under my breath.  Where do babies land on this list…in five years I’ll be (gulp) 37.  And from what I’ve gathered, the fallopian factory gets a bit more semen selective after the age of 35.

“Don’t you want to have a baby?”

Goodness yes…later on.  I welcome it.

Benjamin, very gentle, presses on step further.  “I mean…you’re 32 now, and if 35 is the cut-off…um…”

Welcome to my window, and it is closing.

Alec Baldwin can become a father again at 55, but for the ladies out there, there’s only so much time before you have to look into renting uterus’ or become a science experiment in golden years gestation.  There’s a fine time line to walk in these few years of fertility.

After the mumbling and paper shuffling, Benjamin smiles.  “You didn’t really answer my question”.  I look down at my writing.  My husband tries a new angle “What would you need to do before you want a baby?”.  There’s about twenty different countries that come to mind.  I look out the window now, watching the cars pass along on the highway.

“So we need to go to Europe this year then”, he says, because I haven’t.

My lips quiver into a smile.

That would be nice.

Sometimes I feel genuinely anxious about never seeing the world. That Benjamin couldn’t leave the country made me feel terribly claustrophobic. Now that we could hit the international terminal with ease, now it brings up the issue of cost.  As we crunched the numbers over our new year budget, (yes we did the math), we realized that we could afford it, at the expense of…oh I don’t know a down payment of a house?

Lucky bastards.  Back in the day when men wore suits, women wore hats, houses were cheap and smoking was good for you. “It’s your goal. Write it down” Benjamin says.  But how does one afford that? Get a second job waiting tables three nights a week and save all of the tips for a holiday? Not bad.   Get discovered by some media mogul who pays me to travel and make witty observations? Better.  Wherever you are, generous benefactor, now would be a good time to show your face and dollah bills.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’d love to have a little baby bear with my big Benjamin Bear.

I love the idea of this little buddy lying between us in bed kicking chubby little legs, smiling, slobbering, giggling.  Sitting on Benjamin’s shoulders, resting comfortably on my hip while snoozing into my chest. Hearing their little voices, their opinions and thoughts. The intimacy of making a family, raising a child.  I even have baby names picked out.  Hey, I work with children, I 100% get the appeal.

But when my husband wants to put a finger on the calendar to estimate my readiness, I can’t offer that to him.  Yesterday, I visited with my good friend Trish and her baby Melody, who is heart-meltingly adorable.  Trish asked about our family planning future, and I articulated my best possible answer. She, like all the other mothers out there gives me a general answer.  Babies are amazing, but are all-consuming. After you’ve had a baby, you are never not a parent ever again.  So… A) There’s never a ‘good time’ to start a family B) But take your time if it’s possible.

‘

I don’t know why I feel like having babies is something that other people do.  Like for myself, it still seems way too early.  But I’m 32 now, I’m not a kid.  I’m happily married, my husband and I are gainfully employed, mentally stable and caring individuals. I’d be a perfectly loving mother, and I have that love to give. Still there’s something generally panic inducing about cranking out a little one.

Firstly…as a rather petite woman with a nearly seven-foot tall husband, I do fear the size of the offspring.  My mother has on more than one occasion confessed a similar fear…on my behalf.  Which is unnerving, seeing as she gave birth three times without so much as an aspirin, because “cave-women didn’t have painkillers and they did just fine without them”. Therefore she could paint a rather clear portrait on the realities of childbirth, therefore I’d like to go the opposite route as cave-women didn’t have painkillers…but “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, is what I always say.

I mean, you can dress it up all you want, but there’s no easy, attractive or painless way to get that baby out.  I wish it were as easy as it was in my Barbie Doll era…this bitch even gets a flat stomach immediately after the baby is removed.

I think my fear of childbirth can be directly linked to Melanie’s experience in “Gone With the Wind”.  We used to watch this movie on a yearly basis in my childhood, and that bit was always perfectly terrifying.

If a baby is stuck…how do you get it out anyhow?  If someone told you they know everything about giving birth, but then at the last-minute said that they didn’t “know nothing”, and the only person that can help you secretly hates you and openly loves your husband, and the civil war is laying waste to all fine young men, keeping every capable doctor occupied.  Wouldn’t you be nervous?

Granted…my situation is not anywhere near “GWTW” territory.  The fear and doubts would subside.  Maybe what I hadn’t achieved beforehand didn’t matter.  It’s not like I’d give birth and immediately fall off a cliff.  I’d still be me, just plus one. I would love this baby.  If we had a baby we’d be perfectly happy.

But I’d like to explore the options, gamble with the numbers.  How late could I push this time back?  33, 34, 35…Gwen Stefani?  She’s 44 and fabulous and doing motherhood her own way.

Halle Berry had a baby at 47, Kate Winslet, 38.  Then again these women are also richer than God, so who knows the amount of money poured into the enterprise.  It’s like Angelina Jolie; only when you are that wealthy can you start collecting children from other countries the way I do scarves and knickknacks in far off marketplaces. And keeping them well-educated and well fed ain’t cheap either.

So if the issue is not if–but when.   How can I take my goals by the horns and get myself where I need to go?

How can I get to the point that I am pushing out this twenty-five pound baby and saying–”I did what I wanted while I wanted and I have no regrets!…also I love morphine!”

And then a new adventure could begin with our new little buddy…and we’ll take them everywhere.

Listen, if I don’t have an answer for my husband or myself…then I really can’t even dream of making something up to finish this blog with a nice conclusive ribbon wrapped around in.  I think as far as all dreams go, it is pretty rare that someone knocks on your door and hands that dream to you.  You need to go out and get what you want.  With the help of carefully drawn plans, we can now set our sights on the future, have some control over our lives.  And this whole baby dilemma will feel a little less like a nightmare.

Images Courtesy of Google

I haven’t always been a “Christmas person”.  Only when I got married did I really relish in the ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire’ romantic element.  Growing up, there was something about Christmas that made me feel rather melancholy.  Christmas joy is a bit like chasing the dragon. There’s extraordinary highs and lows.  It comes and then just as quickly it goes.  As a child I anticipated Santa and dreamt about new toys, Barbie dolls, mostly.  When I became too old for dolls, there was a certain Christmas magic that passed away.

I loved the decorations, Nat King Cole singing “The Christmas Song” that warm holiday feeling…but mostly I just loved the Christmas tree.  I loved turning off all the lights and how it glowed in the dark.  I loved lying under the tree and staring up through ornaments, tinsel and colored balls.

To me, dismantling the tree is one of the saddest events of the calendar year.

Straight and ready, tall and steady. That’s how I like my trees and my men.  And similarly so, I don’t want to get my holly jolly’s out of them for a month or so and toss them away carelessly. Not unless you count an old Spanish lover I had…Rodrigo.  I used to wrap him in lights, cover him in tinsel and stare up at his balls.

But that was another time altogether.

On the last day of my Christmas holiday, I was feeling jazzed.  Moving forward. Looking ahead.  I’ve had a nice break, and now it’s time to go back to work.  I’m telling this to my husband, speaking in an upbeat voice “I’ve had a nice rest, I’m ready…” and then I’m crying like a baby.  And not because I’m not totally in love with my job, it’s like a friend once said to me: “When given the option, time off is preferable”.

We had intended on taking the tree down that Sunday.  We were doing laundry, making lunches, organizing rooms; really taking on the new year and the upcoming work week.  But there was a general sense of the blues, that last day of summer camp feeling.  That tree was like our glittering mascot, the wing-man for the fireplace…we’ve grown accustomed to it.  Taking the tree down is the last straw, the Yuletide death rattle.  We decided to just leave it be and enjoy the rest of our Sunday, enjoy what was left of Christmas.

Though I was organized and prepared, the first day of work was like waking up from a gorgeous sleep, but realized you overslept and missed your flight.

It was busy, that phone wouldn’t stop ringing, people kept asking me questions.  I felt very tongue-tied, responding with phrases like: “I like the Christmas because of the lights and the balls”.

I’m suddenly not used to not wearing a bathrobe at noon. Pants have become a real problem for me.

That Monday I cringed at the taste of my coffee. The lack of Irish Cream had the same effect as thinking you are about to sip coke through a straw, but it’s actually ice tea.  It’s startling…and depending on how must you anticipated that carbonated sip…deeply upsetting.

Now, the week has passed.  It was filled with meetings and late work days, and a first aid course.  My husband was struck down by a dreadful flu.  It’s now Saturday, January 11th and our Christmas tree is still up.

And I’m actually wearing a similar outfit as this gal overhead.  I often mince around the house in sheer pants and a mink stole.  They frown on that code of dress at work, fur and partial nudity…and that’s just another thing I have to deal with post-holiday.

Benjamin is the sickest I’ve ever seen him. Fevered and delusional, the last few days have been a blur of work and getting my Florence Nightingale on.

The outfit does feel extreme, but I’m one to dress for the occasion.  If you must get profoundly ill during the first week of work, causing you to act like a wounded animal caught in a fence, rendering us unable to attend a much anticipated mini-break this weekend….then I get to wear this.

I made mention to Benjamin that I would take down the tree on Saturday.  He kindly offered to watch me do so.  Once home from a meeting, and after a few hours of work. The tree was staring at me…expectantly.  Like it knows that it’s stayed at the party for far too long.  It is the morning of the holiday season, and this is the tree’s walk of shame.

Truth is…Christmas tree, (and I know I’ve said this about carbs) I just can’t quit you.

It makes me sad…what happens to a tree in January.  Last year we chopped a tree down in the woods, this year we bought a tree at a lovely market.  Both seasons we discussed the idea of an artificial tree.  This seems so frightfully inauthentic to me.

Then, once you’ve enjoyed that pine smell of an authentic tree, you have the authentic task of removing it as though it were a dead stripper after an ill-fated bachelor party.  Last winter, we intended to recycle it, and ultimately my husband tossed it in the dumpster.  Ugh, there was nothing sadder than the errant string of silver tinsel poking out of mouth of the yellow metal dumpster.

Perish the thought of dumping the once living tree.  Driving away with the greenery shrinking in the rear view window.  “I’m sorry little tree, you deserved better.  I should have done right by you”.

Tomorrow we will face the task of packing the rest of Christmas into a box.  And I will miss the sparkle of the little white lights.

Images Courtesy of Google

My husband’s illness has been of epic proportion.  The symptoms are ever-evolving, rotating inside of him like a Ferris wheel (and not one of those awesome ones that Ryan Gosling jumps on to ask you out on a date).

“I’m hot. I’m cold. I’m clammy.  I’m burning up. I need a blanket.  Take this blanket off of me.  I need to eat. I can’t eat that. I need a hot drink. I need a cold drink”.  This is not man flu, this is Bear Flu.

Not to confuse it with ‘bear sick’, which is apparently slang for “expressing when something is awesome however when the word awesome is not quite enough”.  Can you use it in a negative context? “This is bear awful”…I don’t know, Urban Dictionary didn’t say.  Then again, you can’t always trust the internet. Which is what I tell my husband when he wants me to Google his ailments and  health concerns.  We have a rather strict policy about such things.  It’s never a good idea because it’s always the worst case scenario. If I have a tumor, I don’t want to be told by the internet.

When he first became ill, I’ll admit I was annoyed.  It was the day of my first aid course; my work van was picked up by a co-worker for the after-school pick up.  Ben agreed to pick me up.  Shortly before the examination, near the end of the day, I receive a text that he is too sick to pick me up.  It’s a bit of a schmozzle, getting back to my van.  I decide to swing past a Booster Juice to get a wheat grass shot for myself, and a smoothie for Ben.  Before I go into the shop, I text Ben. “Do you need anything?” I was close to a grocery store, and could pick up any supplies without making an extra trip.  Ten minutes later, I come back to the van, and there’s no text message.  I go home with the smoothie.  I’m home long enough to settle, shoes off, and wandering around the kitchen.  Ben comes round the corner.  Since I last saw him, he has developed a limp, a pout and speaks with a quivering voice  “Did you get me any ice cream?” “Ice cream? I didn’t hear anything about ice cream”.  His face sinks in disappointment.  “Oh…I just thought it would be good…for my throat”. He coughs weakly. “I texted you…I asked for ice cream”.  “But…I brought you a smoothie”.  He gives me a look that says a smoothie is good, but not great.

I grab my purse, my shoes, the car keys and storm out the door.  I resent my sick husband, and resent his need for ice cream.  That smoothie should have been perfectly adequate.  I go round to the 7-11, and face the chiller filled with wildly overpriced products.  I spot a brand on sale two for $9.99.  I grab two and head to the till.  Of course, there is a complication, the price isn’t registering, and they want to charge me $16.  I’d like to pay $9.99, take the ice cream and get back to my regularly scheduled life.  It took ten minutes, the fluster of two sales clerks, a call to the manager and to get what was clearly labelled in the cooler.  Part of me wants to pay whatever they want so I can leave, but my husband has already missed one day of work, I’ve got to save what I can.  This further fuels the marital resentment.

I come home, cram the containers in the freezer and check on Ben, who is pale and clammy on the couch. Alright, get the poor bastard some ice cream.

As the flu ravages his body, Benjamin keeps obsessing over the notion that it’s anything other than the flu.  I try to soothe him “You just have the flu Bear, that’s why you feel so bad”.  My words don’t matter, as he lumbers around the house, following me around like a giant shadow.  He breaks my heart, his big sad blue eyes and his feet hanging off the edge of the couch.  Despite the giant beard he looks just like a child.  He’s weak and emotional, and I want to scoop him up in my arms as though he were a baby.

Then in the ‘very special Spanish Flu” episode, it really hit a nerve with us.  Even though we can’t research our own medical concerns, there are no rules about researching diseases from yore.

This pandemic has been described as “the greatest medical holocaust in history” and may have killed more people than the Black Death. It is said that this flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.

Images Courtesy of Google

With Ben’s sickness spilling over into another week, we have been hitting the Netflix pretty hard.  Without “Downton Abbey” to lean on, we are back in the sometimes murky waters of movie selections. We start watching “Finding Neverland”, and then Ben starts to doze.  I’d seen this film before…and admittedly had one of those big ‘caught without a tissue and wiping your face on your sweater’ kind of cries. I figured if he was going to sleep, I might check another program out.  I select “Beautiful Darling”, a documentary of Andy Warhol Super Star, Candy Darling.

Looks like my kind of movie right? Ummmmm. I don’t know, I love me some pop culture education…but it was creepy and morbid.  Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for it, cause creepy and morbid is usually something I can’t resist.  The thing about Ms Candy Darling is that…she’s a terrible actress with a breathy voice, and watching her huff and puff her way through monologues feels like hot breath on your neck while standing in an elevator.

In a nutshell: James Lawrence Slattery, born 1944 in Forest Hills, Queens was a future transvestite with a dream. (S)he inspired Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”, made movies with Andy Warhol, added her own lashing of avante-garde, disco-glam style on the cultural landscape before dying of lymphoma at 29. 

It was uncomfortable to watch.  Darling is like your boozy aunt, only your boozy aunt has a penis and wears far too much rouge to compensate.

Furthermore, the Bear didn’t actually sleep. There’s that relationship osmosis when you know your partner is uncomfortable, and by virtue it makes you extremely cognizant of all the potentially uncomfortable aspects of your shared experience.  A girlfriend of mine once took her husband to “Brokeback Mountain”–and he didn’t know what it was about. That story never gets old to me, it cracks me up.  If my relationship osmosis theory was rooted in any actual science–that moment would have been a record breaker.  Still, he says nothing.  We sit in silence, I’m tapping away on the computer, reading about Andy Warhol and another Factory favorite Edie Sedgwick.

“Are you watching this?” Ben asks.  I’m aware of it’s existence.  I’m listening to it and occasionally looking at the colors and light.  It’s inspiring a new thread of nerdy internet research…but I’m not married to it.  There’s also this element of not wanting to admit that I think it’s weird.  I don’t want to be creeped out.  And perhaps Ben is also trying to ride it out as well.  It’s like a game of chicken…only it’s a new fangled visual, media aged ‘strange chicken’, circa sitting through “Two Girls, One Cup” and trying not to barf. Of course, the closest I’ve ever been to that vile piece of scatological nonsense was having it explained to me one long-ago Christmas morning while walking with my two brothers and my fiance.  I of course, had many questions. Who were these women? Did the their mothers know where they were? How much would one get paid to shit in a cup and have someone vomit on your face? What made the director select “Lovers Theme” by Hervé Roy as the soundtrack?” “Did they look unhappy?” The more the boys explained, the more the urge to retch at the memory seized them.  My god, why watch that? Why do that to yourself? More importantly why  would you do that to Questlove?

http://http://www.maniacworld.com/roots-watch-2-girls-1-cup.html

Of course, if uncomfortable moments were salsa, “Brokeback Mountain” is medium, “2 Girls, 1 Cup” is hot, making Candy Darling a mild concoction.  Nonetheless, if you aren’t in the mood for salsa, even mellow Old El Paso is simply the wrong flavor.  If you want to throw a game of chicken to me, give me the tractor race in “Footloose”.

I’m sorry, by the time Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out for a Hero” starts to peak, I’m holding my breath.

By the time Lori Singer is running through somebody’s daddy’s field, and Bonnie Tyler is full steam ahead, and I am running strictly on goosebumps and exhilaration.

(I couldn’t find a picture of her mid-sprint , but I can do you one better. I can post the link to the scene and offer you this bonus image: this amazing t-shirt and arm-length jean zipper is too good to pass up.  You can just image the photographer here “Yes darling, love it, love it…now point at the t-shirt…perfect! We got the shot!)

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwGQDtC-h18

Good ole what’s her name.  Apparently Madonna wanted to play Kevin Bacon’s love interest Ariel, the promiscuous preacher’s daughter with her sassy red boots, but some casting agent was like “That Madonna  girl is a nobody, it’s Lori Singer who’s going to be a star”.  Now, I’ve seen “Footloose” a time or ten, and every time I do…well first of all,  I have a really good fucking time. Secondly, I cringe at Singer’s skeletal frame; I want someone to feed Lori Singer a little less cock, and a little more casserole.  My god, by the end of the movie when she’s fussing with her dress–”do I want it on my shoulder/off my shoulder”, expressing her self-consciousness with the majesty of fabric fiddling…I’m like, I’m sorry did we run out of money? Can we not cover these shoulders? How is Ren McCormack going to fit her in his yellow Beetle? Does she have to turn sideways to get through the door?

We all know what happened to Kevin Bacon, he’s six degrees away from Christ himself, but whatever happened to Lori Singer?

“Sunset Grill”? Now there’s a restaurant I won’t be eating at.  I’d rather watch ’2 Girls, 1 Cup’ than this cheesy train wreck.  They even airbrushed out her god-damned shoulders.  And who the fuck is Peter Weller? Peter Weller hasn’t even heard of Peter Weller.  From the look of the cover, the mustache, the dirty band-aid, that ‘held at gunpoint date-rapist intensity’…what appears to be a tie-die shirt, you gotta know that he is going to bad-act the shit out of it.  He’s the male Candy Darling…he’s Randy Darling, which would be an improvement from stupid ole ‘Pete Weller’, poor man’s Tom Selleck.  Poor ole Lori, probably thought she had properly broken into the biz with “Footloose”.  Singer’s probably clutching a highball glass slumping her expansive shoulders, glaring at a recent photo of Madonna–”that should have been me, those Gollum arms and immortal skin”, damn you “Footloose”!”

Yikers, she’s someone you wouldn’t want to bump into in prison.  I don’t really know who she’s fooling.  She’s older than the dinosaurs, but more muscular than Arnold Schwarzenegger before he married a Kennedy and made a love child with his maid, when she was supposed to be making the beds.  Of course, plastic surgery is a real point of contention.  Not that I’d deny you the right to just put whatever knives and needles and injectable toxic swill into your face if you think it buys you more time.  It really doesn’t, you’ll still die and you’ll look like Mickey Rourke in the meantime.  Do you want to look like Mickey Rourke? Will that help you feel alive?

Huge improvement right? And it only cost $100,000. Good call Mickey.  And the thing is…I came across some post-surgery Mickey Rourke photos just now…and let me tell you, I wouldn’t want to see Mickey Rourke on his best day, fresh from a bubble bath and tucked up in fresh jam-jams, much less post-surgery.  With these procedures, there is ample recovery time…which is great because you look like a wax museum after an arsonist attack, and no one wants to hire you because you’d frighten a feral dog looking the way you do. The more you tweaked, the more you had to recover.  Folks like Joan Rivers would live their lives in constant cycles of metamorphosis and healing; and surgery is no joke, to me, that’s a horror movie, it’s not a solution to self-consciousness.  Which brings us to tonight, when I picked a Joan River’s “Don’t Start With Me”, a comedy special.

Joan Rivers is someone I’d like at my dinner table, but not on the stage.  I think she is ruthless and fearless, and a true comedy icon.  I would love to sit through a bad movie with her (Sunset Grill, perhaps?), wander through a crowded mall and people watch…or maybe an afternoon at the zoo? I bet Joan Rivers would have a lot of opinions about all of God’s creatures. As long as I don’t have to stare directly at the blaring sun that is her face.  Mostly, when looking at the screen, I just focused on her fabulous coat.  After twenty or so minutes of her routine, which included a Oprah/Gayle/”sisters going downtown” bit, I was rubbed raw.  Forty minutes more I could not take, (yes, sometimes I do write like Yoda talks).  I guess that’s her schtick, aggressively bitchy and wildly offensive.  People were lapping it up, but again, it’s not really where I’m at.  It’s more a blueprint of my golden years, as opposed to the evening’s entertainment.  Oh, I like to get a little bitchy, maybe dip my toe and make a little splash, but I’m not ready for a big cannonball.  I don’t have nearly enough money to be that brand of bitchy.  The day I can pull off rainbow stripes, fifteen pounds of medical grade plastic, and that coat, I’ll throw out some real zingers.  They’ll just love me at the nursing home.

Images Courtesy of Google/YouTube

Everybody stay calm.

The inevitable has happened. I’ve hit my winter weather wall.

It was snowing the other morning. It hadn’t snowed in a while.  The sight of the fat flakes falling and settling over the hard and crusty slabs of December snow was not welcomed in the least. A huge sigh leaked from my lips, a huff, which worked in conjunction with a massive shoulder slump.  You could practically hear the theme from “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.

Leaning on the kitchen counter with my coffee, flipping through Facebook on my phone. There were slew of photographs of beautiful friends in New Zealand and Australia, looking tanned and relaxed, smiling  in sun filled rooms and on luscious beaches with blue skies and green seas.  They look happy. They look warm.  It makes me remember a time when Benjamin and I used to ride our bicycles on deliciously warm nights, cruising along the dolphin filled Swan River under endless palm trees in Perth.  There was this sudden ache–like a shot through the heart, and not in a Bon Jovi, ‘you give love a bad name a bad name’ kind of way.  Genuine homesickness for the other side of the world.  A physical craving, a hunger pang–the same instinct that Dr Richard Kimble from”The Fugitive”, gets when he knows that the cops were right behind him, and the one-armed man is only one step ahead. Time to move on to the next town.

Blame it on Blue Monday; and the rat tail days of January when the snow is no longer magical but a muddy slush speckled with dog feces, litter and the sediment flakes from the decay of time.  What’s Blue Monday you asked? Oh you didn’t? Well this is my god-damned blog and you’re going to listen to every word I say. Sorry that I spilled my drink of you, it’s just that I am practically dripping with diamonds.  I could literally kill a man with the rock on my hand, so I can barely hold the glass.

Firstly, I’ll let Wikipedia take the reigns with laying down this explanation:

Blue Monday: “where weather=W, debt=d, time since Christmas=T, time since failing our new year’s resolutions=Q, low motivational levels=M and the feeling of a need to take action=N_a. ‘D’ is not defined in the release, nor are units”.

In short, that scientifically measurable moment when the Christmas train runs out of steam.  When those credit card bills start to roll in, and the true cost of Christmas rears its ugly head.  When you combine what you spent, and what your earned often clash together like the Titanic and that darn iceberg.   Although most scientists reckon the theory is a real load of bullocks, but there’s got to be something said for it.  The famine following the feast.  Feeling fat, cold and so very very poor.

Ordinarily Blue Monday is the third Monday of January;  this year it was decided that the 6th, the first Monday after the holiday, was the official date.  That’s not depression, that’s the last day of summer camp.    For me, it came late–Monday 27th, I felt the beginning of a funk in the same way you feel a cold coming on.  And then it overstayed for a solid week.   Perhaps Blue Monday has expanded to become the depression equivalent of Boxing Week–when one day just isn’t enough.  I can’t put my finger on the issue I just felt…bothered.  Emotionally itchy.  Like my soul was wearing wool sweater with a large tag scratching the back of its neck.  I thought that perhaps I need to work out my issues through the majesty of blogging, but once seated in front of the computer I am greeted with a whole lot of nothingness.

I jot a few pages of notes–shorthand scribbles, as if I’m too annoyed to bother with full sentences. After a measly handful of half-written phrases, I abandon the work for Pinterest. I don’t write for the rest of the week…letting the serial killer chicken scratch marinate in my battered journal.  Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.  Truth is I don’t want to open that box inside my heart.  I don’t have the energy to break the anxiety down, find its source and record my findings in a humorous and pop-culture laden essay.  Obviously, that’s the low-grade depression talking as work usually comes before the reward.  It’s a bit like wanting to lose weight by staring in the mirror and wishing you looked different.

You have to sweat a little bit, I suppose, pay your dues, bide your time. Then again, I have been pursing my lips at the whole blogging front.  I don’t know if I am quietly blowing minds or if people are just blowing chunks.   Elsewhere, someone writes benign pieces about movies, books, or celebrities; or angry tirades about customers, lovers, jobs and children, and readers…and the internet community as a whole are hitting that like button as if it would add years to their life.  Someone posts a picture of a snow-covered tree accompanied by a Robert Frost poem, and it gets 38 likes and 52 comments.  Nobody likes Robert Frost that much.  I mean come on, who do you have to blow to get that kind of response?

(Okay,time out.  I won’t actually blow anyone for better ratings, but I would make a fine cup of tea and allow access to my fine record collection.  I hope you like Barbra.)

You know, I wore something very similar to work the other day…and it was not well received.  Yet Babs shows up at a fashion shoot and lets the photographer snap one picture (as long as her nails and pinkie ring got to photo-bomb the shot). Ah Barbra, now there’s a lady who does what she wants, when she wants, and could claw your fucking eyes out if necessary.

For me, there are few “likes”, and the only comments I get are from “use Rocket Spanish” who writes

“I think the admin of this web site is genuinely working hard for his web page, for the reason that here every stuff is quality based stuff”.

Now there’s a sentence that makes sense.  Regardless, I’m glad that someone appreciates that the admin of this web site is genuinely working hard.  So good for me.  Thanks spam!  I shake it off, I think to myself, that it’s just ego–that wanting to be liked that interferes with artistic honesty.  But–if there is no response at all–it’s like…well, sure why not? Let’s go there–blowing someone…if they make absolutely no noise, you’d think you were doing a bad job.  Maybe you’ve taken him to pleasure town and he’s left his own body and is floating above himself admiring the work of a great genius…or maybe he’s kind of bored and lost interest half way through.  To borrow a line from a Kevin Smith film: (which admittedly I thought came from “Mallrats, but was actually from “Chasing Amy”–who knew?)

“Chicks never help you out. They never tell you what to do…. Most of them sit there frozen like a deer in headlights. When a chick goes down on me, I let her know where to go- and what the status is. You gotta handle it like CNN and The Weather Channel–constant updates.”

Blogging and blow jobs…it’s an awful lot of work and you’re really doing it for the other person.  Feedback is also essential. So it’s pretty much the same thing.  How’s that for a math equation?  That’s why they call me the songbird of my generation. When it all comes down to it, I like what I write. I like that each blog goes where it wants…I never know where I’ll end up.  Did I think I was going to mention blowjobs when I started this piece a week ago? No.  Did I have any idea what I would find when I searched Google Images for “Blow Job, vintage”?  Did I think long and hard…(he he, long and hard) about posting one or two of them? Yes.  That’s the journey, and I’m happy to follow the thread where it leads.  But the occasional spoonful of validation never hurt anyone. A sip of water on the long road to the slimmest shred of creative success.  I’m bratty like that…like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka’s factory, wanting everything right away.  Not trusting that everything will fall into place as things ordinarily tend to do.

Let’s be honest. Veruca Salt was a dick, and I’m pretty sure she dies in this movie.  Her impatience was her fatal flaw, and I share that with the late Ms Salt.  I’m trying to do as the bumper sticker tells me and just “let go and let god”, which I do, for increments not longer than it takes to finish a Tic-Tac.  I’m of two very distinct minds: more than anything, I want to pay off my student loan debt. It’s a sum that collected over eight years of schooling.  I suppose I’ve always been aware of it in the same way that one imagines their own demise–it’s too far down the track to imagine the inevitable day when the Grim Reaper…or in my case the Government of Canada, arrives and says “pay up sucker”.  On the other hand, I am giving hungry eyes to every map I see.  I want to walk on foreign soil, I want to zig-zag cross the globe, I want to see so many places. And yet, it all seems impossibly out of reach.  There’s only so much money to go around, and the persistent adult living inside of me is saying that now is the time to scrimp and save.  I’m 32…and it feels like that sand is burning it’s way through my hourglass.  I am reliable at work, pay my bills on time, obey road rules. I am a functioning member of society…but my soul is a gypsy wanderer that sometimes wants to disappear into a crowd.

Benjamin is working overtime to lift my spirits.  Like a tap-dancing bear, rattling off the many blessings in our life while I sob and snivel in the shower. He’s right of course.  He’s a permanent resident.  We’ve finally settled. We both have excellent jobs, a nice home, solid marriage.  While I love my career, my home, my husband…there’s still an extremely large part of me that wants to be in-transit,  heading towards the next destination.  And I’m at war with myself about it.  The idea of properly settling down makes me want to hang on pretty tight to the door frame of adolescence and only pass through only if pushed.   When we look at our future, where anything is possible, there is a blight on the plan.  My student loan debt is the genital herpes of my finances.  I fear I will have carry that around forever; that it will be the obstacle to my most cherished plans. The way I am feeling right now is the very reason Peter Pan refused to grow up.

My poor husband is hovering along the outer perimeter of the house.  Walking along the walls, giving his wife plenty of breathing room.  He’s sensed for sometime that I am a panther ready to strike…or a wounded orangutan who would swap at you weakly…(it’s been a real low energy week).  I’m crying, and I feel like I can’t stop, he rubs my back and says: “You’re crying for no reason…this confuses me”.  Poor bugger.  Finally, he drops the gauntlet…”Alicia, do you think maybe this is PMS?”.

The Bear gets a multitude of bonus points for the endless love and support.  The glass half full, cheer-leading approach is truly uplifting.  But everyone knows that suggesting being ‘tired’, ‘hungry’ or ‘premenstrual’ to a depressed and slightly irrational woman is like putting a loaded gun in your carry-on at the airport.  The end result is not going to be in your favor.

It very well could be PMS, it’s usually hard to tell because of my IUD, I really only experience symptoms every four months. Whenever I dip into an existential funk, I can often console myself that it is simply hormones making a fool of me.

Meanwhile, my sandpaper sentiment rages on.  I can’t write it out, and so it brews inside of me like a toxic tea.  Why can’t I see the positive?  Why does everything feel like the worst case scenario?  When Ben was listing our lengthy tally of blessings–I could appreciate every one.  We do have a good life.  Maybe it’s my own scientific quota: debt/dreams x age ÷ fleeting years of fertility.  This hit the nail on the head when I’m crying in the shower; Benjamin said that there were no ‘deadlines’, that there was room in our life for everything, that there was ‘lots of time’.  The thought of a pre-baby time crunch made me cry even harder.  Fuuuuuck, where is the time going? Why does 32 feel so old?

As I finish the blog, I’ve come a little closer to accepting that I am right where I need to be.  That everywhere I’ve been was where I was meant to go.  I haven’t reached all my goals because I’m just not there yet.  It’s not my time, I guess.  I’ll just keep walking this path, keep writing, and not hate on Robert Frost so much. (He actually suffered immensely in his life, lost a lot of love, and wrote the line– “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world” which was later engraved on his tombstone.  Now I feel kind of annoyed with him all over again. I feel the same way about life and wish I had written it first).  But that’s just my ego talking.  A new season will come around.  Moods will lift, PMS will pass; the days longer, the sun shinier.  The snow has to melt sometime.

Images Courtesy of Google

Glorious Sunday.  We woke up early.  Six in the morning.  Curled up under the blankets, chatting quietly in the dark, we eventually fell asleep, waking up sometime round 10:30am.

The intention was to enjoy the great outdoors.  Go sledding. Perhaps go to a Super Bowl party.  Attend a yoga class.  Visit friends.  Instead I am lying on the bed, wrapped up like a blanket burrito, drinking earl grey tea with heaps of honey and baking vanilla, and watching “Sex and the City”.

Our only public appearance this Groundhog Day was a triumvirate of errands: going out to a thrift store to look for a teapot.  We skimmed the shelves, found nothing of interest, then got a latte at Starbucks as a consolation prize.  Before heading home we stopped by someone’s house. Benjamin occasionally buys tools on an online trading site; he had met this woman before, so he stepped inside the house and closed the door.  I didn’t think much of it, in reality he could have been carrying on a torrid affair with a spicy middle aged woman, and he could have used my utter disinterest in tools to cover his tracks.  He eventually was gone for long enough that I thought that maybe…just maybe that he had been murdered.  Or maybe they’re just lost in the endlessly fascinating topic of carpentry.  I figured I’d give it another minute, and continued to scroll through my phone, reading news about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sudden death.

Philip Seymour Hoffman dies on Super Bowl Sunday by overdosing on heroin in the Year of the Horse.  That can’t be a good omen on Groundhog Day.

What do you think that means? Going beyond six more weeks of winter, and entering into a new arctic Armageddon.

Here’s a lesson in word origin history.  Heroin got the nickname ‘horse’ due to the unlikely relationship between the two (As explored in Dorothy Ours’ “Man O’ War”).

In the wild, pursued by predators, a horse runs as fast as he can or dies. Given narcotics, a horse feels unnatural sleepiness creeping into his nervous system–sleepiness like the shock caused by the fatal bite of a carnivore. So the hopped up horse runs without reserve. If kept in his stall, he trots in circles until the dose finally ebbs. Let loose on a racetrack, he outruns any normal inhibition. In the United States, cocaine, heroin and morphine were legal for anyone with a doctor’s prescription to buy from a drugstore, until prohibited by the Harrison Act of 1914, and could be bribed from pharmacists long after that. But using those mixtures was a fine art. Prudent trainers experimented during morning workouts, discovering the right dope and dose for each horse.

Imagine a time when there was so much legal heroin just lying around that people were like…”It’s just going to go bad if we don’t use it, lets just give it to the horses!”

Ugh, it makes me sad, the waste of human life. That addiction overshadows talent, status, fortune and prestige.  The tragic detail about Hoffman being found in his New York City bathroom with a needle in his arm will take precedence over a proud legacy.  I think about all the things I want in this life, things that other people already have…and for a some that sum still doesn’t fill this eternal gap inside of their soul.   I wonder how melancholia breeds madness, when everything went wrong because everything had gone right.  There are wars inside of ourselves that are often losing battles.

The night before, I caught the open letter Dylan Farrow wrote to the New York Post rehashing her sexual abuse allegations towards Woody Allen.  This too bummed me out.  The letter started with “What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?”, then describing the molestation in disturbing detail, pleading to Diane Keaton and other actors known for working with Allen to acknowledge the crime…and then concluding with “So what was your favorite Woody Allen again?” Man. Way to take the fun out of Annie Hall.

When Benjamin and I finally crawled out of the bed, we curled up the living room with our coffees.  I told him all about the ballad of Woody and Mia.

Around 1980, Allen began a relationship with actress Mia Farrow, who had leading roles in most of his movies from 1982 to 1992. Farrow and Allen never married and kept separate homes^..  They jointly adopted two children, Dylan Farrow (who changed her name to Eliza and later to Malone) and Moshe Farrow (known as Moses); they also had one biological child, Satchel Farrow (known as Ronan Seamus Farrow).

However, in a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair, Farrow stated that Ronan could “possibly” be the biological child of her first husband Frank Sinatra, whom she married at 21 in 1966, and with whom she claims to have “never really split up.” Who can blame her.  You can take the girl out of Sinatra, but you can never take Sinatra out of the girl.

In 1968, Frank Sinatra had blindsided Farrow by having divorce papers delivered to the set of “Rosemary’s Baby”. The film was going over-schedule, and she had to back out of her next acting commitment–in Sinatra’s upcoming feature.   In that same year, André Previn, married film composer and symphony conductor, met a newly single, 23-year-old Farrow in London. They began an affair, and she was was pregnant within a year.  Previn divorced Dory, his wife of eleven years, and married Farrow.

Poor old Dory Previn. The humiliation and betrayal caused Previn to snap like a twig. She was subsequently institutionalized and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy.  According to sources, it led to more introspective songwriting…and did wonders for her hair.

She subsequently expressed her feelings toward Farrow and the end of her marriage in the song “Beware of Young Girls” on her 1970 album.  ‘Beware/ Of young girls/Who come to the door/Wistful and pale/Of twenty and four/Delivering daisies/With delicate hands…taking my own sweet man’.  The lyrics are thinly veiled,  basically calls Farrow out for rolling up to the Previn compound with flowers and silver.  She could have just called it “”Fuck You Mia Farrow” and called it a day.   A dainty little china Trojan horse; admiring her home, her ring, her unmade bed, and meanwhile is infiltrating her marital home.

Dory Previn really laid the blueprint for Jennifer Aniston, trumped by younger and newer. Mia Farrow, humanitarian and mother of thirteen children is the OG Angelina Jolie.

Previn was clearly the Brad Pitt of this time–this gorgeous hunk of scarf and side swept bangs has been married five times. Who can blame the ladies for fighting over this prime piece of real estate.

The fact that there were ever two women quarreling over Woody Allen…I find slightly more difficult to imagine.

Long story short–(this is the bit you’ve probably already heard), one of the children adopted by Previn and Farrow was Soon-Yi Farrow Previn. About twelve years into Woody and Mia’s relationship–Farrow was in Allen’s apartment (with the famous view of Farrow’s home across the park), and discovered nude photographs of a twenty-year-old Soon-Yi just lying around, waiting to be discovered.  Beware of young girls indeed.  Hurts don’t it? If this proves anything though–you certainly can’t help who you’re attracted to.

Around twenty years ago–in the same neighborhood as the Soon-Yi scandal, Allen was accused of molesting one of their adopted children.  He was never tried and convicted, but that stain was never properly washed away.  Now that this accusation has been given new life, it feels as though Allen is a hard man to defend.  When you write it all down on paper it looks rather…hinky.  As for their “biological” son Ronan–though who are we kidding here? I’m no doctor, but even Helen Keller could be able to see that Ronan is a Sinatra. My god, look at that bone structure. Regardless, neither are fans of dear old Woody, and they are not ashamed to say it.

• Following Allen and Soon-Yi’s wedding, Allen’s biological son Ronan Farrow said: “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression… I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent.”
• Ronan, who has been disparaging about Allen, tweeted on Father’s Day 2012: “Happy Father’s day – or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.”
• The night of the Golden Globes he tweeted: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute–did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?
  

Not cool Ronan.  If you weren’t so cute, smart and dreamy; and if your tweets weren’t so funny I would really hate you.  As for Woody Allen, I don’t want for that to have happened.  I love Woody Allen, I love his films, his sense of humor. The image of him molesting a child while she focuses numbly on an electric toy choo-choo train really hurts my heart.  Yes, he is a little creepy and yes, his past behavior is questionable.  The letter describes some pretty horrific things, and if I were to let it into my psyche, it really would taint “Annie Hall” forever. I’ve been through enough in my life.  I just can’t get creeped out by “I lurve, you I loave you, I luff you”.

On the other hand, I feel for Dylan Farrow.  Those are tough things to live with.  Whether it happened, or it was a scenario that was fabricated; over time the fact and fiction has blended together.   And let me state: not wanting it to be true, is not accusing her to lying.  Still, one must wonder the motivation of such a public spectacle.  What is Dylan Farrow seeking–absolution, revenge, forgiveness, attention? Does she want to destroy him? Does she want to spoil his chances at an Oscar? Or is this her way to heal?  Either way, there are no winners in this scenario, just an awful lot of broken people.

It does makes you wonder…what lurks inside of people.  How someone could molest a child or rape a woman, commit a violent crime and then just get right back to the business of living as per usual.  How we masquerade addictions, and convince others of our health and sanity.  Waltzing into the City of Troy with enemies inside the Trojan Horse.  La de da.  The question is–is it  possible to separate the art from the actions?  Then you wonder…has this whole time he’s been charming audiences with neurotic intellectual comedies and dramas, he’s harbored these terribly dark secrets. What is driving Dylan Farrow mad two decades later is the continued success of a talented filmmaker.  I wonder how those justify their actions and move forward in their lives. As Philip Seymour Hoffman was once quoted:

I think that’s pretty much the human condition, you know, waking up and trying to live your  day in a way that you can go to sleep and feel OK about yourself”.

And here we are, back again to Philip Seymour Hoffman. Good ole Lester Bangs from “Almost Famous”. Dead at 46 from a perfectly preventable death. Another one bites the dust.

We could talk about this all night, until our voices were raw and hoarse.  Death cannot be undone, tragedies cannot be unlaced like a Christmas ribbon.  Feeling chilled to the bone, exhausted and feeling perfectly existential, that was when I crawled back into bed to watch some classic “SATC”.  Season three–when Carrie had big hair, and before she broke Aidan with her affair with Big.  Poor Sarah Jessica Parker, she catches so much grief about the shape of her face.  I don’t mean to drag her into my horse motif, but things have gotten entirely too serious and I’ve really got to lighten things up around here.

With all the additions and accusations, wars inward and outward, the world seems to be teeming with misery. The internet brings all that to your door if you let it. Once in a while, you’ve just got to laugh–despite the odds against us.  That’s all we have really, that fleeting moment when you are free to horse around.

Images Courtesy of Google