Bridesmaids Movie Trailer Official (HD)

Can this start today, please? Thanks.

Globe Piece

Here's a piece I wrote about the cottage that appeared in today's Globe and Mail. Enjoy!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/the-essay/i-never-thought-id-own-a-cottage/article1990131/

The Persistent Myth of "Women Aren't Funny"

In 1985, cartoonist Alison Bechdel and her friend Liz Wallace decided to come up with a way of examining movies for gender bias. No small feat. The test they came up with posed three questions: Does a movie contain two or more characters who have names? Do those characters talk to each other? And, if so, do they discuss something other than a man? Most movie-goers - of both genders - would not expect movies like "The Expendables" or "The Fast and the Furious" to pass this exam. They don't. But would it surprise you to hear that the majority of comedies you love, also fail? 'Cause the list is long: The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Hangover, The Princess Bride, The Big Lebowski, anything with Adam Sandler. So, why are female roles in comedies lacking when there are so many funny women working in Hollywood?

According to most studio heads it's largely due to date night. Not the mediocre studio comedy of last year starring Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, but actual dates. Here is how it was laid out in The New Yorker:

Studios believe that making comedies for women flout the almighty laws of Date Night, which hold as follows - Men rule. Men decide which movie a couple will see on a given weekend, and any hint that a film involves fashion, pedicures, or female troubles is "man poison"

Both men and women can relate to Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop.....if that character is played by Tina Fey, it wouldn't work, for the same reason that men can't relate to Rene Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary. Men just don't understand the nuances of female dynamics. "Often, the woman in the picture is in a movie just to make sure the audience knows the guy is not gay," says actress Catherine O'Hara.

Breathe, Laura. Breathe.

Why does this myth of women not being funny still persist? Is that women are just "fundamentally not funny", as the late John Belushi once said of his female counterparts (What a peach, huh?) or that those who make the movies have simply decided to see it as a cash issue and not a laughs issue? The last ten years or so have brought about some very positive changes in the narrative of women in comedy. Have these studios peeps ever watched an episode of 30 Rock? Seen Kirsten Wiig on SNL? Lifted their knuckles off of the ground long enough to hear the hundreds of female comedians that are out there pounding the pavement in comedy clubs nightly? I thought we were past the days when we let one gender decide what was funny for another.

Comedy has always been a man's world, but there were some bad-ass, ballsy (for lack of a better term) ladies who clawed their way in, who refused to believe the popular assumption that dismissed an entire gender as incapable of making people laugh. Mae West's first movie was in 1932 but before that, she went to prison on morals charges for writing, directing, and starring in a play called “Sex.” You want a bad boy, that's a bad boy. Funny women have always been around — we were just much less willing to see them.

And the great part is, once we realize that we must open our minds, there are twice as many people to laugh at.

N.B. An essay I wrote about buying my cottage will appear in the Fact and Arguments section of The Globe and Mail next Tuesday. I'll be sure to link or repost it here once it appears.

In Dreams

Dream, a photo by Vjekoslav1 on Flickr.

This week, on three separate occasions, friends or acquaintances made mention that I had occasion to appear in their dreams. When someone is brave enough to confess my role in their night life, I, like a needy actor, almost always find myself curiously inquiring into the status of my role: cameo, supporting or starring? This week, I am pleased to say, I received top billing in all three. You could do worse. Remind me to send my dream agent flowers.

I enjoy appearing in dreams. If, however, if they are not slightly weird or disorienting in the telling, I fight the urge not to show my disappointment. Like the one in which I appeared this week that was dreamt by the lady who runs our local dry cleaning establishment. I've felt a slight chill of late with her and now I know why. It turns out I snubbed her for drinks in a dream and when she awoke it left a bad taste in her mouth that she carried around for the better part of a week. Now that she's confessed, we are on better terms. I've apologized for my un-dream-like dream-behaviour and she no longer unnecessarily scorches my husband's shirts. Everybody wins. Secretly, though, I hoped that she'd tell me that we drank from giant martini glasses filled with Kool Aid while wearing squirrel pelts. She couldn't even remember the outfits we were wearing. Very disappointing.

That said, I try never to dismiss my night dreams or the dreams of others because -without sounding like a total kook -I have always believed that on some level, our dreams are an extension of who we are and how we view the world. And I don't mean this in a pat, over-wrought, I-Believe-The-Children-Are-Our-Future kind of way. I truly believe that dreams are our subconcious' way of sending us a message about the world around us. The fact that it's written in code is just nature's way of having a laugh.

I know my theory is true because I've kept a dream journal for several years and it never, never fails to inform me about how messed up and hilarious I find the world around me. Here's a particular favourite entry from last year (N.B. Please bear in mind that most of the entries are written while half-asleep. It explains alot, trust me....):

In my dream last night, I was back working on Special Events. This time, the preparations were taking place in a barracks-type of building that reminded me of guest's quarters at a cheesy resort in the Poconos. Or a leper colony. We were surrounded, for some reason, by mechanics who were also doing their jobs but, for some reason, this was not bizarre or unusual in any way. I drove my bike everywhere and, occasionally, the mechanics would stop their work to fix my bike or give it a wash. This appeared routine for them and, for some reason, was not considered an inconvenience or break in their day.

I worked for designer, Vivienne Westwood but it was a young Vivienne Westwood with long hair and slightly boring clothes and not the funky older lady with the tremendous fashion sense and automatic sense of humour. Young Vivienne was slightly humourless.

She and I would occasionally take trips around town to look @retirement residences. Not sure why. On these trips, Young Vivienne would take her time to point out the interesting architectural features we drove past. We never took hills and when we reached one would dismount and walk our bikes up, a ritual that was clearly established at some point in the past but which we now stuck to for reasons unknown. When Vivienne was not around I gunned up the hills because I could.

There was a looming deadline that was to be met but no one seems to be worried about it, except for me. It was unspoken: the deadline would be met and we were so good at what we did that it is almost pointless to even throw our worries into this thought. What was more important was keeping our bikes in good, clean and running order and taking full advantage of the facilities around us.

Nice, huh? What does this mean? I wouldn't know where to begin.....

Here's one last one, chosen at random.

In my dream last night I was a child sitting by a river bank with a girl I' ve never seen before. We are shooting rocks into the water when a Canada goose floats by. We stop shooting rocks to let it pass.

You're like a Canada goose, my companion tells me.

How so? I ask.

A little bit white but mostly black.

I shrug my shoulders and we continue shooting rocks into the river. A river made of chocolate.

This one is clear, actually. Totally clear.

March Break- Literally

Forgive me, blogosphere, for I have sinned. It's been three long weeks since my last submission. The culprit? My computer crashed. And to add insult to injury, I had not backed up many of my applications before closing. The result: utter loss of most of the stuff on my computer that is of any significance to me personally or professionally. So, no big. (N.B. So, if your therapist ever tells you that you should never move forward without first backing up everything you've said, done or committed to over the long term, they aren't lying. The consequences can be devastating.)

The results can also be strangely freeing. The day that all of this went down was, ironically, National Computer Off Day. Sponsored by the site Digg, it was their way a way to get those connected virtually to make a more concerted effort to connect with others one on one. As in face to face. In the same room. And by that I think they meant not texting the person who is standing beside you (which I've seen, by the way). Or e-mailing them (again, which I've also witnessed). They called the results, "wildly satisfying". I call them "any year before 1997". Their line is catchier.

Though, I hadn't meant to take on the day in a permanent fashion, I did manage to take on the spirit of the occasion the week before and connect with my family on the March Break. My long standing joke is that the week is aptly named because, inevitably, someone breaks. This year's break was spent in Washington and, thankfully, the only thing that broke was my funny bone. Oh, and the wind in our hotel room at night by He Who Shall Remain Nameless. Here are a few reasons why:

As a wise friend once said, "Sometimes you just have to find the courage to turn the damn thing off". Indeed, my friend. Indeed.

Breaking up is Hard to Do

This week I did something that I never thought I would do: I stopped reading a book that I started. The book was called World and Town by Gish Jen and had been recommended to me by a friend who never leads me astray where books are concerned. She'd warned me that the book would take a bit longer to take hold but that once it hit, the pages would fly by and I'd be immersed in the action. Kinda like a hit of acid. But this book was like a bad batch mixed in a dirty bathtub: it just nver got off the ground. So I did the unthinkable: I took myself out of my misery and put the old dog down. For good(insert "Old Yeller" reference here).

Actually, to be fair, it wasn't the first time I've put a book down and not picked it up. In fact, my book shelf is lousy with half- or part-way read books. Here is just a random shout out to the ones I can find within grabbing distance:

The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle

(Started reading it in Paris. Brought it back over to the other side of the Atlantic where it's been gathering dust ever since.)

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

(Has anybody gotten all the way through this thing?!)

Colours Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson

(Three times started. Three times put down.)

Anything by Richard Powers, Don DeLillo and Jodi Picoult.

(No excuse, here. And, yes, I do own a Jodi Picoult book.)

Sad, huh? The difference between now and then, though, is that I always closed each book with the half-baked promise that one day, some time in the deep, dark, unknown future, I would pick it up and read it again. But no more. I've broken up with World and Town for good, y'all. Do I feel guilty? A little. Do I have regret? Some. Do you know how I'll get over it? I'll pick up another book and start reading it.

My inspiration for my new rule was a little book that I read while I waited for my son to pick out his book as the bookstore. Book Lust and was written by my new hero, Nancy Pearl. Nancy is a librarian /book barbarian who came up what is now famously known as "The 50 PageRule". The idea behind this rule is that if you are 50 years or younger, you should read 50 pages of a book before you decide whether or not you are going finish a book. It's not an entirely new idea but it's reasonable and -Damn! - if it isn't freeing beyond belief. Thanks, Nancy!

Now can you come up with a rule for unused kitchen appliances? Thanks.

(N.B. It should be noted that the exception to this rule for me will be book club books because if I've learned anything from book club it's that the duds bring on the best conversation. Just sayin'.)

Snap Out of It! - the Game

The celebrities are losing their minds, people. And they really need our help. They need a good dose of "Snap Out of It! - The Game".

How do you play this fascinating game, you may be asking yourself? Well, the rules are simple: you pretend to tap a celebrity- in -need-of- a- good-talking-to on the shoulder and tell them, in two sentences or less, what they really need to hear.

Why is this game even necessary, is the next question? Well, it's because even the most self-absorbed celebrities with all the resources and high-priced advice at their disposal seem incapable of getting it together. Let's help them, shall we? Here we go.

Hey You......

Stop. Talking.

Excuse me, Mr. Gaddafi?

Ssshhhhhh. That's enough for now.

Dude!

Stay home and read a book.

No.

I won't just go with it, madam. Nor should you.

Enough!

It's time to put on some pants, Martin, K? Thanks.

Here's hoping they heard that.