why we love barack obama

for reals, y'all.

happy inauguration 

teen creeps

I've tried to hold it back. Cobrasnake, 10/31/08 

top of 2008

Some things that made 2008 for me. Maybe you too? 

• the new Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario. Hometown architect makes good: that wood spiral Baroque Stair alone is enough, but the entire building reminds me of the way the behemoth redwoods appear to physically inhale and exhale on the West Coast. Not to mention Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents or anything else that actually lives inside. 

• MGMT's Oracular Spectacular. "Time to Pretend" was practically inescapable this year, but I recommend listening to "Kids" at high volume at sunset in a sweaty apartment in mid-August. Make pad thai afterwards, and always, always share your beer. 

• The National's "Fake Empire" playing at Obama's victory rally in Chicago. As the world waited for the man himself to appear, news cameras circled the crowd finding tear-jerker shots of Jesse Jackson, Oprah and random white people, this Brooklyn band's 2007 anthem played with a promo video called "Signs of Hope". Perhaps Obama's shout-out to the PBR-drinkers across America who gave him the election? Or maybe America just elected a president who likes good music (he is basically the first presidential candidate to use a Springsteen song when it was actually cool to do so) and some insight into the magic lyrics can carry. "Tiptoe through our shiny city/ with our diamond slippers on/ Do our gay ballet on ice/ bluebirds on our shoulders/ We're half awake in a fake empire." Either way, hearing it on CNN was das unheimliche or whatever. Will.i.am's death rattle was heard by no one. 
  

• Martha Wainwright's I Know You're Married, But I've Got Feelings Too. This album is a heart-stopper and a head-turner. You know this album is bad for you, but you have to be near it because it makes you feel so alive. 

• Maybe it's just me--in fact, I'm quite sure it's just me, but nothing says "Great in '08" like that sexy sumo wrestler ad for the Subaru Forester, with Electric Six's "Danger High Voltage" in the background. 

current pressing concerns

•  social ettiquette for end-of-year lists--and those who insist on referring to them as "listicles"
• whatever got Europe's "Final Countdown" stuck in my head
• discomfort with the appearance of something called "Shanghai Noodles"
• Humphrey Bogart never once says "Play it again, Sam," in the film Casablanca
• a missing pair of yellow polar-fleece mittens. If you've seen them, please post below as they were my warmest pair
• the fact that Chris Lyon always ruins all our fun with his crap-ass music
• a fortune cookie that read "Your tongue is your ambassador"
• the fact that lists of any kind don't count as writing 

i don't want to push it

It's like standing at the end of the dock, I guess.
Standing at the end of the dock for the first time of the season, when you're not sure how warm the water is yet, and you're afraid you'll lose your nerve if you dip a toe in. It's all or nothing, and you don't want to seem like a girl but you're pretty sure there's something moving down there under the water. You don't want to look too closely, so you just do it.
You say you'll count to three, and when your voices get to "two" together, you jump, pulling him in with you. His elbow hits your ear on the way down, and when you surface together, he spits the water out of his mouth, panting, and says "I thought we were going on three!"
And the sound and motion and breath and night time just carries off across the water, and you're in.

just what i needed, that's what i was thinking of

our lady of seven sorrows

I read a book recently in which a character said that love is the greatest of the seven sorrows. So great, in fact, that he had forgotten the other six.

That reminded me of this.

When I was in grade nine I had two wishes.
One was to marry Daniel Johns, who was the lead singer of Silverchair, and with whom I planned to have two children, one named Neon and one named Ballroom.

The other was to be Catholic.
My friend Melissa and I often had sleepovers at her grandmother's house in Peterborough, where we would camp out in the basement and watch the videos for "Anthem for the Year 2000" and Will Smith's "Miami." One weekend while we were there, I got blue streaks dyed into my hair.



Another time, Melissa's grandmother gave me a medal of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, to wear around my neck. My paternal grandfather has been travelling all his life, but he didn't like it -- papism makes him nervous. In 1969, St. Christopher started making the pope nervous. I lost the pendant sometime in 1999.