Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress // May 18, 2006

Stoppard stops short of anything real or meaningful

As a play about marital infidelity, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing isn’t doing much. As a writer’s drama discussing a writer’s loyalty to the craft, this play impresses a little more.

But it fails to unite the two main themes – infidelity and artist vocation – in any interesting way. It makes no delicious point worth debating over cheesecake.

Stoppard is indeed a prolific playwright and scriptwriter. Who didn’t love Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead or the touching film Empire of the Sun? But when it comes to The Real Thing, Stoppard is all over the place and nowhere at all.

Brought to Ottawa by Toronto’s Soulpepper company and directed by Diana Leblanc, the play tells the story of the unfaithful Annie (Megan Follows) who cheats on her husband Max with a guy named Henry who is married to Charlotte who is also fooling around.

Talk about Fleetwood Mac.

We follow the middle-aged boring British folks through the adultery, and through the plays about adultery they’re rehearsing within the play. This adds a few neat layers to the three-hour production. But while most reviews point out weaknesses like the arbitrary jumps, gaps and irrelevance to real life, they’re still calling it a hit.

It’s a mess. The portrait of Annie, serial adulterer, played by Follows ain’t no thing like the real thing and it is not because I can’t see beyond the virginal Anne of Green Gables. I’m not gagging to see adultery with all its claws and slit wrists, Hilton Hotel bills and Mediterranean get-away sunsets.

Or maybe I am.

That would certainly reveal the realistic repercussions of cheating on one’s partner, which this play glosses over grossly. Maybe the dull treatment is designed to shine the focus upon the Justice for Brodie Committee storyline, which the actors execute cleverly through hilarious repartee and flawless acting.

This storyline is about the young Brodie, jailed for attacking a policeman at an anti-missile demonstration. He writes a play that Annie wants to produce because she believes in its meat and guts. In other words, Brodie symbolizes raw and energetic creation next to Stoppard’s mature critic, Henry, who represents perfunctory writing and upper-crust Brit lit.

Henry draws the difference between his own talent and Brodie’s with an effective analogy an audience can sink their teeth into. The difference, Henry says, is that great writing is like a slick cricket bat made of several kinds of wood (think: words) crafted together expertly to create a useful tool. By contrast, Brodie’s prose is just a rolled-up script that pretends to be a strong bat.

Just as I was getting ready for an explosive examination of punk ideologues and anti-establishment expression versus mainstream, pompous drivel, the show was over…

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, May 11, 2006

The bands are good ’til they make enough cash
To eat food and get a pad
Then they’re sold out and their music is cliché
Because talent’s exclusive to bands without pay
Know it all – did you really listen to that song?
Could you ever write what you call wrong?
~ “Know It All,” Lagwagon

Home ownership and health. Things society checks off when it decides you’re an adult now.

Add to that list a clean-shaven face.

Nothing says “I deserve a promotion” like no sideburns. As if looking like Jesus in a trucker cap is a setback.

I’ve been reaping benefits from looking like a skid myself this month. I didn’t grow a beard, but worn-out Levi’s and a scary Baphomet-like, winged-humanoid-goat skull with curly horns à la ram on my black and white Maximum RNR band T-shirt seem to be doing the trick.

It could be thanks to this outfit that I’m making nice with all sorts of wonderful people. If clothes make the man, then my gear makes me a happy (wo)man, indeed.

First I got the attention of a bandana-clad, longhaired biker dude. He nodded as me and my chest strolled by. Not the hooters, the horns! Did biker dude know the Toronto band on my T-shirt, or was it the logo uniting rockers of the world?

Next, it was the young chap with the spiked mohawk at the Second Cup on Bank and Somerset. He gave me a discount on my steamed milk as Johnny Cash played on the sound system.

Wearing my special T-shirt also got me a free club soda at Zaphod’s and a complimentary cranberry juice at Dominion Tavern.

The moral of the story: Have Maximum RNR T-shirt, will travel.

No?

Okay, well, a better way of putting it is like this. Homosexuals have their rainbows, and others their skull and crossbones. It’s nice when you recognize someone who looks like they’re travelling a similar road. But are we?

Perhaps my eagerness says I’m just a poser looking for validation from the counterculture to justify my existence as a decent-paid public servant sellout – who likes to rock out.

Maybe I need approval from “cool” cats to compensate for my “responsible” lifestyle that I sometimes wish was crusty enough to impress the rough blokes and fit in with the tough chicks who look like they could drop-kick and rock my ass to Camden Town and back in a hand clap.

I’m not saying the biker, the punk and those bartenders are my best friends either. But having a pleasant exchange with them is more rewarding than getting checked out in “grown-up woman attire” by some fuckass in Hugo Boss driving a flashy convertible on his way home to 700 Sussex.

Then again, why is Flashy Fuckass a sellout just because he can afford nice shit?

Let’s channel the spirit of Angus MacLise for this one. Yeah, MacLise: Why’d you quit the Velvet Underground when the group accepted an offer of $75 for their first paying performance in New Jersey back in 1965?

Selling out means compromising your integrity for mass appeal. But let’s say you’re true to your ideals and can sell your skills because they are massively appealing. Well, you invest in your future.

But still, some of us are uncomfortable with success lest it should separate us from the underground, and hell no, don’t say “condo”!

Toronto Star writer Melinda Mattos spoke to this in her April 29 article, “Owning a home changes your life,” in the Condo Generation column.

Mattos writes: “I had lunch with an old friend recently and actually heard the following words come out of my mouth: ‘Interest rates were low, so it was a good time to buy.’ We used to talk about punk rock and hair dye; now I sound like a bank commercial.”

I too had lunch with a new “friend” in Toronto recently (three guesses what band) and actually heard the following words come out of my mouth: “I’m no longer sexually frustrated and my mental health is really, really good.”

Uh, what?

Hey, Mattos openly admitted switching to 10-grain hot cereal for breakfast because it’s economical and nutritious even though it “tastes like watery, fruity couscous.” Who’s the loser now?!

Gee whiz, upgrading your nutrition, sanity or lodgings shouldn’t be so embarrassing – it just sounds geeky compared to punk rock, and weirder when the info isn’t solicited.

Growing up shouldn’t mean growing out of all the things you love most, or away from people fundamental Christians call scary. Nor should “cool” be exclusive to a dysfunctional prick with a kick-ass record collection.

In the Googled words of my lunch date, when it comes to life’s road trip, he says, “my personal highway has taught me that if you stick to what you love, you won’t get lost.”

Just be sure what you love loves you back the right way – and doesn’t leave you homeless!

And along the way, may travellers always find the “real” you. Regardless of what T-shirt you’re wearing.

XXX

“Sucking Satan’s cock” is the term comedian Bill Hicks used in the 1990s to describe musical acts who make bland music to maximize sales, or allow their music to be used in advertising.

XXX

Heads (and horns) up: Maximum RNR rawk Doberman Bikes in Aylmer, Quebec, on Canada Day.

XXX

Lagwagon plays Métropolis in Montreal on July 25, 2006.

– Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress // May 4, 2006

One man makes us laugh in the name of love.

Two thousand years after his death, Jesus is still making headlines.

To find out why, Toronto performers Rick Miller (Wyrd Theatre) and Daniel Brooks (Necessary Angel Theatre Company) enlisted the help of a Homer Simpson Pez dispenser and Darth Vader.

In their 75-minute play Bigger Than Jesus, they explore the divinity of Magic Jesus.

The production is in its third year and graces Ottawa for the first time at the Great Canadian Theatre Company this month. It attempts to reinvigorate our relationship with the Big Guy by toying with the traditional portrayal of ominous religious events.

Take the Last Supper, for instance. Here, Jesus Christ Action Hero, a John Lennon doll, and Judy Garland, the figurine, are projected onto a big screen to magnificent proportions.

“It’s puppetry with a camera,” says Brooks, director and co-writer. Its purpose? To challenge us to rethink the Jesus story.

HELL BENT ON HEAVEN HOOPLA

Miller, of MacHomer fame (Macbeth done Simpsons-style), tells XPress: “I’m not a believer in any personal god, but I am intent on examining what it is that drives people to their knees in devout belief – that fascinates me.”

It’s a hot topic, like the media blitz over Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – movie coming soon to a theatre near you. Closer to home, the Church of Indie Rock in the Glebe is connecting youth with God through Sigur Rós, PJ Harvey and Radiohead.

Even Hollywood drew people into the Jesus story through Mel Gibson’s controversial film The Passion of the Christ. Then the Pope died. And there’s always been Nietzsche.

“Every year there’s something,” Miller points out. “But through it all, religion continues to be one of the few means to link to others. New Age or hardcore religion fills a void.”

Miller and Brooks use Jesus’ story to put forth their liberal views about the different facets of Christianity. Cohesive narratives of iconic characters, all acted by Miller, debate the historical and modern viewpoints on Christianity.

There’s the Teacher, who uses his rational mind and demystifies Christianity. The Preacher is a zealot, and the Air Jesus Pilot represents the cosmic mystic Jesus who is there to help guide people in their complicated, messy lives.

“I’m just one in a long line of people who have used Jesus for their own end,” Miller says, Mel Gibson’s contribution being “very much the anti-Bigger Than Jesus.”

“His is designed to make you feel small and sinful for having contributed to this bloody and gory death. It comes from the other side of Catholicism, the truly what-I-find-revolting side.”

Instead, Bigger Than Jesus, with its mix of the spiritual and secular, offers a more palatable way into Jesus.

“We call it a universal, multi-denominational celebration of spirit – that’s our mass,” Miller says. “It’s the celebration of the spirit of connection that develops between the audience and the performer.”

And who doesn’t relate to The Simpsons and Star Wars references? They have much to do with Christianity too. Especially Star Wars, where a central question in the life of Luke Skywalker is why his father is trying to kill him off. It’s a big God-be-damned question that the play addresses through the Last Supper scene.

SINFULLY FUNNY

Jesus calls for some entertainment and Darth Vader takes a stab at it. Vader re-enacts the famous “Luke, I am your father” scene. This recalls Christ’s situation and he wigs out. Disturbed, he orders the Jedis back to the table, then steals the spotlight by belting out a parody of a song from Jesus Christ Superstar.

“It’s my favourite part in the play because I’m singing this really emotive, big power ballad, except I’m doing it with the dolls and the camera and it has a real interesting scale dilemma, and it’s fun!” says Miller.

“It’s how things transform through the show that people are entertained by,” adds Brooks.

It shows us how Jesus has transformed into more than the guy nailed to the cross and hanging around people’s necks. Think: Jesus action figure.

“Being a child of popular culture, I’m interested in what it represents. To some people, it’s just a toy, to others it’s blasphemous,” Miller says.

But all the farce is more than entertainment. The theatricality in the play reveals the many contradictory ways people come at Jesus.

“So many people access Jesus in so many different ways, whether laughing at a South Park caricature, believing in a cosmic spirituality, or whether it’s a belief in a personal literal Son of God.”

PASSIONATE MISSION

Miller’s is a personal quest and he’s an artist-missionary. “The idea of a person communicating to a communal gathering of people and sharing and giving and sweating, there is something very Christian in the sacrifice of the performer to the show. I literally crucify myself.”

So far, only one reviewer crucified Bigger Than Jesus. The Jesus in Montreal at the Just For Laughs Festival last year was accused by the Montreal Mirror of being too funny.

“Just For Laughs booked it for laughs, but it was more than that,” Miller said. “You get more walkouts in that scenario because you have a comic making a stink and they don’t want that.”

Depending on where they’re touring the show, Miller and Brooks have to either play up or play down the reverent parts. “Good theatre will take you out of yourself. It will transport you somewhere,” he says. But if people have a thorn in their side about Jesus, it can be difficult to convert the cynics.

After Ottawa’s GCTC run, Bigger Than Jesus will have its American premiere at Berkeley, and that’s a good thing.

“If we went to Nashville,” Miller says, “it would be a different story.” Bigger Than Jesus won’t be touring the Bible Belt any time soon, he chuckles.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, April 27, 2006

When Grandpa slipped Grandma the tongue at Easter dinner, little did we know the affectionate display could forever change our own romantic futures.

Senior citizen sex, with all its hardened toenails, is enough to turn anyone off sex. Then again, it shows us there’s sex way beyond 30.

So what are you worried about?

I’m getting that a lot of single folks feel like yogurt: They need to chill and be consumed within a certain time frame lest they rot into curds. There’s a real fear that getting older means Captain Stubing is gonna flip you the bird as the Love Boat passes your sorry ass by.

It’s a bit unreasonable to believe that once you hit the big 3-0, every year you spend away from the turning point – and your tits and ass bond with gravity – represents 365 days away from your best chances at scoring some booty.

I’m sure you have single friends like this in your life right now. You know, the frantic ones who describe an e-mail from their online crush with maniacal acuity that’s so charged, who needs speed? Or how about the ones who live in a fantasy world with a fictitious mate, or endure the reality of a shitty one just ’cause they think their time is running out?

Representations of senior citizen sexuality can help these desperate but admiringly hopeful people by culturing them into the understanding that sex and love don’t depend so much on what you look like, but on who you are. And if we improve with age, doesn’t it follow that we get better at attracting someone nice?

For some women, second adulthood (or menopause) is marked by a new assertiveness, explains Suzanne Braun Levine in her book Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood. Sure, freedom after 55 sounds delightful, but it doesn’t diffuse the reality that my ass will flatten into two small flabby flapjacks, which I’m wondering if Jack will still want to slap.

I always wanted a book of nude photographs of older ladies to help me grow accustomed to what I’ll become. I haven’t found that book, but I have checked out Joan Price’s Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty (Seal Press, 2006). Price is priceless. As an ageless sexuality advocate, professional speaker and fitness expert, she just saved my shrinking ass from a whole lotta bullshit.

For starters, cracking the tomb will loosen the vice grip that keeps your head firmly focused on the past. Instead, as a collection of testimonials about sex from gay, straight, married and single 60-plussers, the book’ll whip your skull over yonder toward the future, and alert you to some sizzling possibilities!

Senior sex encourages sex with love instead of meaningless casual sex, and can instruct married couples on how to keep the flame alive. Senior citizen sex reminds us that more than the body is responsible for great sex.

Take it from Erica Jong, 64, the female writer known as the “patron saint of feminine sexual autonomy.” Jong was famous for her feminist manifesto Fear of Flying, which sold 18 million copies worldwide. She had a way with men. Several, actually. But now that she’s a senior citizen she’s slowing down, and will tell you – according to an April 2 review in the Ottawa Citizen – that open marriage is a crock, age brings experience and “real intimacy,” and “a willing spirit makes up for weak flesh.”

Beyond Jong and Price, who are both married, are the older ladies who go after younger guys.

Lisa Rutherford, a former Carleton University graduate now living in Montreal who has studied the language used to describe women and its connection to meat, explained in a March 7 interview in Concordia University magazine The Link how “most swear words reduce a woman to the status of an animal and reduce her to her biological nature.”

“Cougar,” anyone?

And while websites such as Urbancougar.com invite women to send in photos of themselves, this attempt to celebrate cougarness is pathetic. The fake breasts and tarted-up women represent, to me, a blatant rejection of natural aging that is too unbalanced to be beautiful.

Absorbing images of positive and realistic senior sexuality and appreciating its variants beyond our youthful years should redefine the limited, restricted roles we place upon both sexes.

Think of the Polident commercial with the two grey-hairs on a sleepover date, where the man borrows a denture tablet to freshen up before making out. Believe it – women don’t have an expiry date like denture cleaning tablets, and not all men prefer the perky secretary.

But how is thinking about your mom and dad screwing going to help you now in your dry spell? Easy: Don’t let it turn your stomach. Instead, accept that your pathetic sex life, or lack thereof, is an uphill adventure, not a downward spiral.

Yeah, I’ll go ponder that as I work off my blue balls.

XXX

STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT SEX AFTER 60 Come explore the challenges and celebrate the joys of older-age sexuality in an upbeat, interactive workshop with Joan Price at Venus Envy (320 Lisgar Street) on May 6 and 7, 6:30 p.m. Take home new tools, techniques and attitudes that help women over 60 experience hot, joyful sex. For more information, visit www.joanprice.com or www.venusenvy.ca. Tickets: $15-$25.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – April 20, 2006

When I think about how easy it would be for me to squat cowgirl on my man, on command, in the front seat of a ’69 Dodge Charger, or compact myself low down to blow him in the cramped space of a dirty bar bathroom, I thank the heavens I don’t have mobility issues.

Can’t say the same spontaneity or unhindered movement is common among the disabled. Yeah, I got a soft spot in my heart for folks who sex and sport it, on wheels.

With this appreciation for agile sex moves, I’m reminded of one of my favourite French films called Nationale 7. It’s a sex-advocacy documentary about a group of health care professionals who round up a troop of prostitutes in roadside trailers to service the needs of horny, disabled men. It’s happening in Holland, Australia and the U.K. Even Toronto has shown more leg than O-Town.

Toronto has 26-year-old Alessia di Virgilio talking about the ins and outs of sex among the disabled in her zine Sex on Wheels, and her short film The 411 on Sex and Disability. I first read about her in Toronto’s Eye Magazine, and she just won a community service volunteer award for her work at SexAbility.

From what I can tell, the City of Ottawa doesn’t seem to provide sexual aid services for the disabled, but it’s nice to see the super spring and summer lineup of its city-wide integration and recreation programs (yoga, arts, sports, etc.) for youth, adults and seniors with special needs (www.ottawa.ca).

And while Ottawa is doing a great job promoting sports for disabled people, on a national level, Canada failed big time. The 2006 Paralympic Games in Turin came and went as fast as the electric wheelchair I drove into the side of a fish tank once during my brief stint as a home care worker. (I had to park and charge the chair, but what can I say, I’m hooked on TT racing.)

While the Olympic Games shut down my British soap opera for weeks on end last month, CBC, for example, gave minimal coverage to the Paralympic Games. I guess network and television viewers don’t give a shit about wheelchair marathoners or amputee sprinters. Let’s find out why this weekend (April 21-23) as the RBC 2010 Flag Tour makes its cross-country stop at the Rideau Centre (east side). The visit’s purpose is to join Canadians together in welcoming the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010.

Did you know the first Olympic Games of the modern era opened in Athens 110 years ago this month? It took over a century for the Paralympic movement, which represents the vast majority of athletes with a disability, to come about. And when it was created in 1989 its mandate was to offer a vision of inspiration and empowerment.

So it’s 2006 – is it inspiring and empowering?

In the article called “Are all Paralympians elite athletes?” author Daniel Bell questions whether Paralympic sports are really “elite”, despite the fact that the disabled sports movement has worked tirelessly to have their games recognized as such. Maybe they shouldn’t get the same funding and media attention as Olympians?

“The issue is really a quality of competition,” Bell writes, observing the many more medals the Paralympians receive over Olympians. Sounds like the difference between veggie burgers and bison burgers. They’re both burgers, but would you really enter them in the same cook-off?

But it’s not only the swift passing of the Paralympic Games, or disabled-sex activism in our neighbouring city, that makes me ask if Ottawa is doing all we can do for the disabled community here. Just the other weekend, I got in from a great night out in Wakefield – holy delicious bison burgers from Chez Eric – with friends, only to find my neighbour “stuck” in the elevator.

He was hanging out with the door ajar, and leaning over his wheelchair talking into the elevator wall with what sounded like a Dalek from Dr. Who. What ensued was a natural misunderstanding about being “stuck.” Yes we could get out, but we were stuck too because dude can’t get upstairs otherwise. He’s in wheels.

If I hadn’t come along, my neighbour would have been stuck with two options: sleep in the lobby with his coat over his head or hang out at Tim Hortons at the corner of Bank Street and Dodgeville. His bladder had 20 minutes. The Ottawa Fire Department arrived in five and got him upstairs for the night.

He’s a lucky neighbour. The power outage back in August 2003 saw the wheelchair folks of my building lined up in front of the building like drag racers at Highway 7’s Ottodrome, but with only the Lockmaster Tavern toilets to piss in and the front lawn to spend the night.

And yet it’s not the people in wheelchairs who depress me – it’s the ones outta them that often make me sad. I mean, why do able-bodied folks who can fuck or frolic so conveniently destroy their bodies with unhealthy habits? So never mind wheels, what the fuck is up with women and their high heels?

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – April 13, 2006

When I hear the term “doggy style,” I think Snoop Dogg. But I also think of a preferred sexual position which invites cupping or bucking so tender your lover’s hands are free to wander like spiders over soft flesh while you’re poised to push into your man’s hard thrusts.

In another sense, “doggy style” calls up the derogatory image of a porno actress on all fours with ass propped up toward ceiling mirrors, orifices stretched so wide from ritual poolside gang bangs that her privates could double as a state-of-the-art golf ball dispenser at the driving range.

Pardon the vulgarity but there’s no delicate way of stating the obvious. The image is plastered across a zillion porn DVD covers. Which is why I’m really digging the new Daniel Edwards statue of a naked and pregnant Britney Spears crouched seductively on a bearskin rug, ass angled up to the heavens with her infant boy’s head popping out.

Finally, a contemporary and digestible image of womanhood we can appreciate.

Edwards’ life-size statue, called Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston, features Britney’s lactiferous breasts and protruding navel with a posterior view that depicts widened hips for the birthing. The sculpture, which pays homage to the pop icon, is showing to April 23 at Capla Kesting Fine Art gallery in the hip New York district of Williamsburg. Road trip: no sleep till Brooklyn.

It’s getting people talking. CBC News articles point to the abortion issues it raises, while Maclean’s magazine suggested it’s a “publicity masterpiece.” ITV News online warns us Tom Cruise may be next, and the College Times writer Art Martori half-jokingly complains that Monument is taking away masturbatory fantasies from half the men in the world because her “most desirable aspect is blocked by the antithesis of casual sex.”

Martori compares Britney’s back view to an open sore which effeminates men. (Guys like Martori should buy Tim Ward’s book, Savage Breast, about men’s fear of women and the feminine principle. See Ward at the Writers Fest on Wednesday April 19 @ 7 p.m.)

And while Monument has pissed off pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike, at least they’re agreeing for once. Both groups hate it: The former are against sultry Britney as their poster woman; the latter denounce this loud celebration of pregnancy. But it’s a refreshing change from the bloody placards of anti-abortion messaging. And the statue’s seductiveness reclaims woman’s sexuality and agency. Not a bad deal at all for both sides, really.

But an April 7 article at Maclean’s online called “Read and learn, philistines” by Scott Feschuk dissects Monument to Life, saying it’s perhaps no more than “a monument to getting me on Entertainment Tonight, baby.” About Britney’s serene countenance, he writes: “A woman obviously didn’t make this statue or else the facial features would reflect the goddamn torture that is childbirth, you clueless male bastard.” Regardless of that inaccuracy, its beauty and artistic merit are undeniable.

But I like how NC Times questions the rules “where private moments can be simulated in sculpture or on a computer.” In Grade 2 art class, we moulded our handprint in plaster. But what was cute then changes now if your new crush fails to appreciate your clay mould penis collection circa 1995-2001.

Another ugly angle, which The Globe and Mail revealed, is whether the hunk of clay is even a serious artwork. Edwards is already known for his oddball celebrity works (Ted Williams Memorial Display With Death Mask From the Ben Affleck 2004 World Series Collection).

There is also the “who gives a shit” contingent that refuses to see the social or political value of a male head popping out of the birth canal of some celebrity. Personally, I think there’s value in an international sex symbol delivering a helpless male into the world.

Shotgun is all for the respectful sexualizing of motherhood. It’s necessary in a culture where the virgin/whore tension still exists. Like, I can’t handle another jackass who digs me dirty in bed but shuts me up in public. Naked and pregnant Britney embodies both extremes all at the same time and brings new meaning to the expression “sexy mother fucker.”

In the same way the documentary Super Size Me cultured a nation to dry heave at the sight or smell of Big Macs, so too can Edwards’ art rebrand a cultural icon and perhaps encourage former dissenters to share in the similarity of their baby-making abilities, rather than focusing on differences like the sexual incompetence that superstars often make us feel.

To date, we don’t know what Britney thinks about the sculpture. But since Edwards is reported to have looked to Canada’s tradition of the bearskin rug baby picture, let’s hope the bare-skinned Britney doesn’t pull a celebrity and freak out against our bear hunt now…

XXX

BELLA YOU GO SEE a high-octane combo of vampires and rockers from the crypt at Café Dekcuf, Saturday April 15, and you’ll be an extra in the new Brett Kelly film Kingdom of the Vampire. Kelly will be filming while the Bella Bombs, A Plot Against Me, and Sick, Sick, Sicks kick the shit out of your year drums. Doors at 8 p.m., $7.

– Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress | April 13, 2006

Festival fluke puts femmes first this spring

Every event tends to have its show-stealers, and the all-women Writing Life series at this year’s Ottawa International Writers Festival is looking like a serious contender. The series consists of three interactive evenings with authors in conversation about their craft and their books.

“It was not a conscious curatorial decision,” says Sean Wilson, organizer of the Writers Fest, about the all-female lineup. “There was great stuff by men, but what really grabbed our interest and imagination was many of the books by women. It was a pleasant surprise.”

Also interesting is that seven of the nine women in the series are first-time novelists. “They all emerged at the top of their game,” says Wilson. “These are highly accomplished and readable books.”

The Writing Life series kicks off with Madeleine Thien, Anar Ali and Ami McKay on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.

“We come alive when we share our opinions,” says Thien, author of the short story collection Simple Recipes, which throws the reader into the wild winds of changing relationships and gut-wrenching, love-drenched worlds. “It’s exhilarating to meet people who have read the book. Sharing mental landscape is magical.”

In her new novel, Certainty (launching April 22 during the festival), Thien uses history to tell of two memorable love stories. “I approached writing short stories by centring around dramatic moments that were charged and intense,” she says from her home in Quebec City. The difference with the new format is “there’s now greater room for nuance and to develop characters.”

On the all-woman Writing Life series, Thien suggests that shoptalk can be universal in its appeal. “This is because the process of shaping a story asks the writer to go beyond gender and step across boundaries for characters.” What you have then are “blurred lines, so it’s not clear where gender fits into that.”

Writing Life continues on Thursday April 20 with Linda Holeman, Susan Glickman and Martha Baillie, then Alayna Munce, Alison Pick and Leah McLaren take over Sunday April 23.

If anything, the spring edition is proof we’re seeing a whole new generation of women writers on the Canadian scene. “It points to the fact that perhaps women are able to recognize fiction as necessary where men tend to pick up more non-fiction,” Wilson says.

Author Tim Ward, who on April 18 asks “Is God a man?” during the first Big Idea event with Anne Hines and The Pagan Christ author Tom Harpur, will pick up the woman theme Wednesday evening when he reads from his non-fiction novel Savage Breast.

Ward writes a daring and frank interpretation of the goddess movement and offers a thoughtful and personal account of one man’s guess as to why some men are afraid of the feminine divine. Ward describes the new book as a “real-life Da Vinci Code type quest,” claiming it’s the first exploration of the feminine face of God from an explicitly male point of view, and of how goddess archetypes affect men’s relationships with women.

In addition to all the first fictions, many of the authors will be featuring releases so new the ink will hardly have had time to dry. “The dual festival format (in spring and fall) is really paying off,” Wilson says, because it responds to a trend in the publishing industry where the book world is launching books year-round instead of waiting until the fall. “We’re getting authors whose books are a bit older, but also the ones that are hot off the press.”

All readings at the Library and Archives of Canada, 395 Wellington Street, $15, $12 student or senior, $8 festival member or $60/$40 for passes, www.writersfest.com.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 30, 2006

Bardot the babykiller? (Photo: Aaron McKenzie Fraser)

Celebrities from far and wide are being tortured in Canada. That’s right, last week media and pundits abused and ridiculed the McCartneys and Brigitte Bardot for speaking out against Canada’s seal hunt, or “massacres,” which they call horrific.

Being the polite, reciprocating Canadians we are, we paid them back – in unkindness.

On Larry King Live, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, was this shy of telling the McCartneys to stuff it because they didn’t know what the heck they were talking about (transcripts.cnn.com/transcripts/0603/03/lkl.01.html).

In an opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen on St. Paddy’s Day, Williams again discredited the ex-Beatle and his wife, warning readers that the McCartneys’ “misleading photo ops accompanied by false information should not sway people.” As in, don’t believe the hype.

Over at the Marriott about a week later, ex-sex symbol Bardot received a beating – or at least looked like she had. Most media (except compassionate XPress photographer Aaron McKenzie Fraser) made a farce of the 71-year-old on crutches by snapping her ludicrously posing in fits of tears. Even Stephen Harper turned her down, presumably for reasons other than being held up at Good Life with his recent (we hope) preoccupation with saving his whale of a belly.

I thought Bono had sent out a clear message about the arrogance of celebrities intersecting with politics.

One could say celebrities are no different than politicians – full of hot air, and no one believes them. But in saying Canada’s seal hunt is “inhumane” and “brutal” and “barbaric,” the impact of all the inaccurate information, publicity and highly charged rhetoric from the overpaid starlets is great.

Already because of these loudmouths, StatsCan has reported figures showing that Canadian snow crab exports to the U.S. have dropped by more than $150-million, or 36 per cent, since the anti-seal hunt campaign began last year.

They’re screwing with our economy, jeopardizing the livelihood of rural Canadians, and they’re also plain ol’ hurting our feelings.

The Ottawa Sun reported that Bardot insulted Harper by writing in a note that “only idiots refuse to change their minds.” And she called industry supporter Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette a “damn idiot.” (This coming from Bardot who, in her book called Un cri dans le silence, attacked Islam, homosexuals and immigrants.)

So Hervieux-Payette responded with the cryptic retort that if the anti-seal hunt campaign continues and hurts the future of certain populations, “we could see what we could do.” In other words, ve have vays to make you shut up.

But while anyone, including celebrities, should be encouraged to stand up for a good cause, it’s largely suspected that when celebs do it, it’s more about an orchestrated public relations stunt, right?

Sean Lennon placed an ad in the New York Post looking for a girlfriend. A Google search shows he got a date with Lindsay Lohan, who just happens to be working on a new film about John Lennon. Coincidence? And I hear Stella McCartney’s fashion biz needs a boost.

If not for the publicity, then it’s that stars have nothing better to do. Or maybe they are researching a new role?

Perhaps a better explanation comes from another Ottawa Citizen article last week, titled “Stars evoke emotion more than debate.” Celebrities make us think with our hearts, the local news source explained, calling Bardot’s appearance a “performance” that was “a mixture of noble intentions and showbiz.”

And the graphic poster Bardot displayed of a baby seal pounding a human baby to death with a bloody club, which read, “Do not do to others that which you would not want to suffer yourself,” was extreme.

Celebs exude authority because of their star-status popularity, no doubt. I’ll trust Lakota capsules even though I can’t recall what the hell the medicine is for. The guy seems convincing enough, so why not, eh?

But contrary to everything the glamorous “experts” are saying, the fact is that the seal hunt is licensed. Killing white-coat seals was outlawed in 1987, and since then hunters must wait until they turn grey. By then the animals are weaned, not torn from their mothers as depicted in scandalous activist videos. In fact, a report in the Canadian Veterinary Journal concluded 98 per cent of the hunt is conducted humanely.

False optics, people.

Get the real facts on Canada’s seal hunt and watch My Ancestors Were Rogues and Murderers on CBC Newsworld’s The Lens, Tuesday April 4 at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) with a repeat on Saturday April 8 at 10 p.m. (ET/PT). The film is produced by Kent Martin for the National Film Board’s Atlantic Centre.

See, the McCartneys and Bardot aren’t getting the right information because living a privileged life from afar compromises their ability to absorb an issue they are not intimately connected with.

Sort of like Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who just started up a heavy metal band called Wicked Wisdom. As if she “gets” metal. See Jada rock: Comes complete with her own tour van and vaporizer. Put the time in, Miss Smith, is all I’m saying. You’re not legit, so quit.

Celebrities fighting for poverty, baby seals, a love life or talent. The question is not what they’re going to save, but who’s going to save them.

You interested? To quote Bardot’s lyrics, “Tu veux ou tu veux pas?”

Moi – j’veux pas.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, March 23, 2006

I can’t have a baby now, my outfit is all wrong!

According to 99 percent of the television commercials featuring wives and mothers and laundry detergent or minivans, without high-waisted beige chinos, I’m nothing.

Add to that the absence of matching pastel knit co-ordinates and a delicate gold necklace to go with my precious diamond wedding band and what we’ve got here is a failure to assimilate.

I don’t look like the women Pledge-ing the oak dining room table, nor the one picking her husband’s clothes off the floor in the Tide commercial. And fuck if I aspire to being them. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with doing my share of the housekeeping or helping my honey with his laundry. I just don’t want to feel – and look – like a fucking cliché while doing it, thanks.

Neither do you, apparently, and that’s why you’re still here. But if you happen to fit in with what conservative folks would call “proper” or “presentable” then read on, ’cause I’ll need your help understanding why our society upholds lame-ass, cookie-cutter women as role model wives and mothers.

There is an entire demographic of mothers-to-be out there who can’t relate to these commercials. Show me a tattooed mother adjusting junior’s car seat in the back of a ’62 Plymouth Fury and I’ll bet you a fiver they’re a family that wouldn’t call Kentucky Fried Chicken a “treat,” or would rather a trip to southern France than Disneyland.

Oh, there’s my answer I guess, because from McDonald’s to Chef Boyardee, industry and our economy thrive on certain other mothers feeling insecure. Insecure about not feeding their kid the right thing. Or driving the right TrailBlazer. In one minivan commercial, mothers worldwide are warned that unless little Joey can play video games in the back seat, he’s going to abandon you for the mother next door who can give him that luxury.

There are enough things about motherhood that freak us out beyond an eight-pound greasy creature with eyeballs busting out of a vagina after nine months. Do we have to increase women’s worries by pummelling them with sanitized adverts of motherhood that they can’t live up to? that seem to limit their shopping experience to Zellers and their brain space to conformity?

Hands- and mops-down, the portrayal of vanilla moms with their business-casual attire, uniformity and listlessness packages motherhood into something marketable, and we’re buying it. How many of you are questioning it?

Any commercial you see nowadays is playing into stereotypes. Mothers & More (www.mothersandmore.org), an American non-profit membership organization that “cares for the caregiver,” compiled a good list of them. They are: Bonbon-Eating Mom (lazy TV watchers), Career-Crazed Mom (selfish careerist), Supermom (do-it-all), 24/7 Bliss Mom (always smiling), Martyr Mom (there for everyone), Glam Mom (always looks good) and Domestic Goddess Mom (loves housework). Have you been labelled one of these?

What also scares me, in addition to the message stereotypes send back to ourselves about how we’re falling short of some ideal, is the one they put across to eligible bachelors. I fear the clinical version of wife and motherhood brainwashes gents into believing polished Gap girls are superior. The misconception that plain equals stable is not far behind.

The danger is serious. Far from me to link Swiffer commercials to postpartum depression and infanticide, especially when those ads promote how easy your life will be if you used these products, right? But, what happens when life doesn’t get any easier for moms?

Well, Mom ends up fucking your boyfriend, like in Roger Michell’s depressing British film The Mother, that’s what happens. I rented the flick over the weekend, and what a warning to all wives and mothers about the consequences of settling and losing your identity to a prescribed role.

Prescribed roles are safe. Like vanilla ice cream. It’s plain and predictable until someone gives you a taste of the rocky road with nougat and marshmallows and all hell breaks loose.

Colouring the vanilla image of motherhood is not only the subject of many classics like Kramer vs. Kramer or The Hours, but a way to open up women right here in our own backyard to more choice.

A girlfriend of mine would have gone nuts if she hadn’t thought independently of commonplace notions of what it means to be a parent. Suburbs? Screw it. She recently took her eight-month-old daughter to Australia for a month. Next it’s Peru for a couple of weeks. Another took her tot to Japan and taught English.

Let’s see more examples of women like this, who follow the beat of a different drummer and who have Youth Brigade’s anthem “Punk Rock Mom” playing in the same CD changer as a little Kindermusik.

Yes, it takes courage to express yourself independently from a world where J. Crew Mom next to you looks at you funny. For those of us sensitive-to-criticism types, we sometimes can’t shake the need for society’s validation since we kinda live in it and all. But if Daddy wears a chain wallet, why the hell can’t Mom?

And if all this talk of clothing doesn’t matter, then I dare Pampers to throw Bif Naked into their next diaper commercial.

To me, fuddy-duddy telemummies of TV land scream “white Christian married woman with affluent background.” And while the whole fashion victim thing might be forgivable, there’s no excuse for mistaking a capitalist theocrat for the perfect mother.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 16, 2006

Being in a relationship is a lot like gambling. You play your cards, hedge or make your bets and hope you don’t get fucked up the ass. Unless, of course, you’re into that.

But let’s say you get royally screwed. How long do we have to listen to you babbling on about it?

I call these people the Exphiles – bastards who talk incessantly about how fabulous their ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend was, despite everyone knowing the relationship was first-class crap.

Is it an addiction? A joke?

I’m convinced the truth is out there. It’s got to be so I can make sense of what I overheard at sushi last week: “He said he was sorry but that he couldn’t go out with me ’cause he wasn’t over his ex-girlfriend even though she treated him like shit and cheated on him twice. Like, what’s up with that?”

The key to partially understanding this obsession with the Ex came to me one warm summer’s evening on a train bound for Kitchener, when I met up with a young male University of Guelph student; we were both too tired to sleep. And so we wrote in our journals, then we took turns staring out the window at the darkness, ’til boredom overtook us, and I began to speak.

I said, “Son, I’ve made a life out of readin’ people’s faces, and knowin’ what their hearts are by the way they hold their eyes. So if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of pages and for a look at the Josh Rouse article in your Spin magazine, I’ll give you some advice.”

He said to me: “I’m writing a ‘goodbye forever’ letter. There’s this girl…” and she was making his life miserable ’cause he loved her so much but she wasn’t “ready” to be in a relationship with him even though she was “ready” for the whole football team, and this and that, and si puis ça, cue Cutting Crew’s “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight” and drop the needle on the Air Supply…

So I says: “Dude, you’re being taken for more than a ride to Waterloo station.”

I told him to iron out his kinks fast because a great girl might suddenly appear but he’ll be all depressed and miss the most amazing ride of his life! No shit he wasn’t playing his cards right nor dealing well with the hand he’d been dealt.

So why the persistent suffering? Love. And I think in some sick way, we like suffering. It makes us feel A-L-I-V-E.

Breaking up with someone – or saying goodbye – impacts people really strangely no matter how irrational, illogical, idiotic and unreasonable the relationship, or non-relationship, was. Your soul aches. You get diarrhea. And some people relish in that misery. The forlorn’s defence against the fed-up? “The disappointment was electric, but you don’t know it because you’ve never been in love,” laments Luke Doucet in his song “Wallow.” Maybe, but to rehabilitated survivors of love gone wrong, all’s they hear is, “You don’t have a clue okay, Mom, I really loved Pierrette even though she slept with my best friend… and Uncle Ted.”

Ah, love. A bitch in many disguises. She comes dressed as desperation, rebound, an attempt to repair childhood problems, surrogate parent, craving for acceptance, or fear of becoming the Cat Lady. Gosh, that ain’t love, honey – that’s a $140 bill for a shrink. Now how did I know it was $140?

I feel bad for these fuckers who define their existence – or their choice of grocery stores and fitness clubs – according to or against the Ex.

Maybe it’s an excuse to reject undesirable suitors gracefully? Yeah, “I can’t go on another date with you because I’m thinking of the time my Ex got so loaded he nearly hit me.” Ah, isn’t that cute? Forget about Him already!

Haven’t you noticed every time you say you’ll never find anyone like the Ex again, you turn the corner, and poof! Someone really cool walks right into you? But maybe this only happens to those who want to see it.

My buddy, Jeff, labels me “Starfucker” for that reason alone – I find a lot of folks amazing. Nothing wrong with seeing potential in everyone, just watch you don’t lift them so high they’re looking down on you, right?

The other side of this is that if there’s always someone cooler, how do we choose to settle down with one person? And if we have stayed put already with someone like our Ex for such a long time, how do we let go of that investment? Ah, piss. Vicious circle, my ass. Here’s how you break it.

What you had, you didn’t want or it didn’t want you. Deal with it. Write out a wish list and stick it on your fridge. That’s your message to the universe. Memorize it. Don’t look back.

Next, build you and they will come.

Third, accumulate friends like the one who bought me Bittergirl: Getting Over Getting Dumped by Annabel Griffiths, Alison Lawrence and Mary Francis Moore. Even though I was the dumper, it’s easy to feel dumped on. But there you go. The cutesy guide helped me see that “yesterday’s heartache is tomorrow’s one-liner.”

My favourite being New York City columnist Cynthia Heimel’s.

When your phone doesn’t ring, it’ll be me.

File the Ex, already.

– Sylvie Hill