Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress, November 24, 2005
BOOK REVIEW

Dan Savage’s Commitment (Dutton/Penguin, 304 pp., $35.00) vs Rob Brezsny’s Pronoia (North Atlantic/Frog Ltd., 296 pp., U.S. $25.50).

Savage – ON COMMITMENT AND THE ULTIMATE BENEVOLENCE OF THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE

In his new book, The Commitment, scandalous and sensible syndicated Savage Love columnist Dan Savage thinks about tying the knot with his lover, Terry Miller. But there are a few battles to fight first.

“We’d just gotten D.J. off to bed, and Terry and I were sitting on the sofa, having a beer, and watching South Park – the usual gay lifestyle stuff. We would have gotten around to sodomy too, if I hadn’t brought up the budget.”

Finances, wedding cakes and invitations – the usual wedding concerns. Add to that Dan’s fear of jinxing a good thing.

The fact that their anniversary party/wedding reception planner, Caroline, married her husband in the same banquet room then later divorced him when she discovered he was a coke addict is just one jinx too many for Dan.

But “nothing can fuck you guys up but you guys,” she says.

She’s not the only one who sees it that way. Dan’s loveable mom, family, friends, and Dan and Terry’s six-year-old son are all for the couple celebrating their big gay love, but Dan wonders, Why get married in the first place?

So he reflects on the dangerous state of modern love by comparing it to his grandparents’ day.

Big differences, all except for one – the United States of America still aren’t bending on same-sex unions. Incompatible couples, wife beaters and cheaters can get married though, as long as there’s a man and a woman.

In Commitment, Dan Savage exposes this ridiculous side to legal marriage with intellectual rigour. And his compelling and clever arguments that show up the inconsistency and ludicrous irrationality parading as reason and law in the American system will leave you aghast with disbelief at the behaviours and sad state of our anti-gay-marriage neighbours to the south.

When Savage quotes Prime Minister Paul Martin, you’ll be very proud to be Canadian.

Even more educational is what homosexuals in a positive, healthy, committed relationship reveal to us heterosexuals about the myth of completion, monogamy and other delusions.

“Without the option of making a spectacle out of our commitments… we were forced to simply live our commitments,” writes Savage.

“Our relationships were taken seriously… by virtue of their duration… not by virtue of promises we made before the Solid Gold dancers jumped out of the wedding cake at the reception.”

Brezsny – PICKIN’ UP GOOD VIBRATIONS

When times are tough, and we’re down on our luck, many of us turn to Mom.

She’ll say things like, “As long as you’ve got eyes to see the blue sky, ears to hear the birds sing and legs to walk, life ain’t ever that bad.”

But when you’ve cried eyeballs out of their sockets, your ears are bleeding from your own shrieks, and you fantasize about getting into an accident just to see how many send flowers, you need a stronger dose of mantras.

Enter Rob Brezsny’s Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings. He’ll convince you that the universe is inherently friendly and out to help, not haunt you.

Next to Savage Love, Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology is one of the most widely syndicated columns in North American alternative newsweeklies. And with his new book he offers up a 296-page smorgasbord (i.e., personal thoughts, poems, mottos, news briefs, prayers, oracles, homeopathic medicine spells) designed to make you rejig your outlook on life.

He reminds you that Picasso popped out of the womb blue and was left to die until an uncle puffed cigar smoke up his nose, which revived him.

He’ll order you gently to stop taking things for granted: “In your kitchen, appetizing food in secure packaging is waiting for you. Many people you’ve never met worked hard to grow it, process it, and get it to the store where you bought it,” he writes. “The bounty of tasty nourishment you get to choose from is unprecedented in the history of the world.”

Always lyrical, the stream-of-consciousness and artsy passages flow without ever trivializing deep meanings. Other times, the impeccable and straight-up discussions tackling capitalism and cautioning against selfishness are the welcomed wisdom of a nurturing friend, which is what many consider Brezsny.

But he warns that being positive is a hard job. “If you cultivate an affinity for pronoia,” he writes, “people you respect may wonder if you have lost your way. You may appear to them as naive, eccentric, unrealistic, misguided, or even stupid.”

Time to replace hotel Bibles, and maybe Mom, with a copy of this sucker.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – November 24, 2005

“Devil’s Broom” is the fourth track off Joseph Arthur’s album Our Shadows Will Remain. It’s a memorable song about hopelessness, alcoholism and homelessness.

“Since you’re gone ain’t nobody else gonna save me/ ’cause I can’t trade a bottle for an empty room/ I just pray that the Lord is going to come down and take me/ sweep me off this floor with the devil’s broom/ where are you?/ what did I do?/ why can’t you see/ you mean everything to me?”

It’s about losing the one you love at a time when you can’t get enough to make it. You’ve lost your sense, woken up in the sun face down on the pavement, and everything you own is in a garbage bag.

Most of Arthur’s discography can be interpreted as a rich collection of emotional songs about drug addiction, mental illness, street life and seeking redemption. Through this, Ottawans can gain a deeper appreciation for stories that could easily double as those of our city’s marginal folks.

Whenever a panhandler begs me for change, when I see that lady with her placard listing the conspiracies she’s convinced oppress her, saying “Help me: I’m homeless and terrorized,” when I pass the dude on Rideau Street lying in a puddle of his own piss, I wonder to myself, What happened to those people?

And is it any wonder that I might look to Joseph Arthur for an answer or to become more aware of issues facing the broken who live on the fringes of society, given that he, the poet, has accurately portrayed an Ottawa “beggar” as a sick man in his journal entry from Notes From the Road, 51400, back on May 14, 2000:

“Without a voice/ without glue/ falling apart/ in Ottawa/ a burning tulip/ looking behind us/ I saw him take a tomato from a vendor/ pretending to hurl it at a lady selling maple syrup/…he put the whole tomato in his mouth/ chewing like an angry dog/ stumbling into the street/ where he spit it out like a monkey heart/ stopping cars/ as rain began to fall from the sky.”

By listening to songs like “Put My Daddy on Prozac,” I think twice about telling a young panhandler to return home. When I put on “Creation or a Stain,” I intuit how horrible it must be to be demonized by voices in your head. When I hear “You’ve Been Loved,” I think of relapsing addicts. “Leave Us Alone” reminds me of how I get told to fuck off sometimes when I offer food instead of a dollar.

The more I cast these outsiders into imaginary Arthur videos in my head, the more I find myself open to, and understanding of, stories like Ottawa’s Gypsy Jaq, a.k.a. Mr. Michel-Florent Morin. The NCC evicted him from his tent home on the Gatineau shore of the Ottawa River near the Portage Bridge on November 3. “There is no place for us, except in the clouds,” he told an Ottawa Citizen reporter before he was evicted.

Jaq used to be a high school teacher and gave up teaching “because students had to take courses they couldn’t handle.” He suffered for this idealism, then suffered from depression, and I now suspect he’s back to living on the streets.

Then there’s the story of Tom Hogan, a 50-year-old Ojibwa man who has drifted in and out of hospitals and shelters, battled a chronic alcohol addiction, slept on the streets-and painted. His amazing paintings were recently on display at Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro in the market thanks to organizer Jo-Ann Oosterman, who made sure Hogan didn’t sell his valuable works for a bottle of sherry.

I know that just because Arthur’s music helps me relate to homeless people on a deeper level it doesn’t mean his fans can wipe out the problem in Ottawa. But by becoming more compassionate, we’ll be sure to spot ignorant fucks shouting “Get a job!” and steal their brooms before they sweep the disadvantaged and fractured too far from view.

If you like music and are also interested in helping out the homeless in a very real way, then come out to the Second Annual Feed the Homeless Benefit (homelessbenefit.com) at Zaphod’s (27 York Street) on November 25 at 7:30 p.m., featuring Cosmic Juice, Tim’s Myth and DJ Rick “The Plant.”

Tickets are a donation of $5 or more. This benefit pays for an annual Christmas meal for 500 homeless people. Homelessness sucks. “Our event doesn’t change that reality,” says Kevin Nolan, one of the volunteer organizers, “but it calls attention to the issue, and helps in a very small way by paying for a special dinner, on a special day.”

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RAISIN’ CASH BY GROWIN’ ‘STACHES Local garage rockers The Setbacks are nuts, but nice. They’ve just joined the local chapter of Mustaches for Kids (www.m4kottawa.org) and are enlisting members to collect pledges to sponsor “corner-to-corner” moustache growth, with proceeds going to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. The progress of the aspiring Magnum P.I.s are photographed against the dartboard at the Royal Oak on Bank and MacLaren every Friday at 8 p.m. until December 22. Check out the sproutin’ at www.m4kottawa.org/grower.php?week=2. Not sure how much to donate? Forget Jesus-you could always put your question to What Would The Setbacks Do? at thesetbacks.com/advice.php.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – November 17, 2006

A “Best Of” New York City list comes out in the Village Voice every year, like our Best of Ottawa in the XPress. And boy, can you ever tell a lot about a city-as you can with a person-by what they boast are their best features.

New Yorkers have got a best bar at which to fake an orgasm, best bathroom to make you feel like a fat, ugly, uncool loser, and a best club to watch semi-naked transvestites dance to The Cure with taped nipples.

Talk about a city of sexually frustrated, superficial weirdos with good taste in music, eh? Just joking… Well, not about the music part.

But Ottawa’s got a few quirks. Sure, we’re a relatively tame government town compared to NYC, but here’s Shotgun’s list of people, places and things that help keep it interesting so we don’t die of boredom and bad food, furniture and tunes:

PEOPLE

Best Ottawa feminine lesbian sex symbol Suki Lee. If there’s more, write me. I know this chick…

Best overt matchmaker Shotgun.

Best rock-star barkeeps Mark and Damian, Aloha Room.

Best entrepreneurial, outspoken women with interesting hairdos, or lack thereof, who get shit done Cherry Pie’s Catherine Landry and Westfest’s Elaina Martin.

Best bus route to see hot indie boys #7 and #4.

Best bus route to feel like you’re immature for liking hot indie boys #6.

Best artist-beggar The chap near Goldstein’s on Elgin Street whose detailed pencil sketches interpret his inner demons.

Best Halloween

costume Meterosexual.

SHOPPING

Best place to buy a retro-diner kitchen table set and greeting cards with expressions like “You’re breath stinks when you wake up,” “I don’t care what anybody says, I like your hair,” and “Last night rocked” Blue Oasis, 184 Rideau Street. These Maritimers made their start in New Brunswick and are injecting community spirit right here by resurrecting the decaying building. Time to upgrade that Pier 1 Imports bamboo papasan chair for a groovy blue couch. “All your favourite things under one roof,” promises manager Jamie LeBlanc. Get shopping!

Best lady’s black and pink Sorels Lou’s Boot Corner, Byward Market.

Best big warm fur-like hat with flaps Irving Rivers, Byward Market.

Best lady’s parkas Warren’s House of Britches (three locations).

Best grocery store if you don’t like sex Loeb’s.

Best way to disguise your gratuitous music purchases as part of your salad or entrée Black Tomato.

Best fish market agent Omar at Lapointe’s, Byward Market.

EATING OUT

Best brunch tunes Eggspectations. Expect to hear Joseph Arthur.

Best croque-monsieur Chez Lucien.

BAD HABITS

Best way to get hooked on Coronation Street Flake out on the sofa with a plate of jalapeno poppers and a ginger ale.

OTHER STUFF

Best bus route to get grossed out by someone clipping their fingernails #2.

Best funny name to say three times fast CBC TV’s Ian Hanomansing.

Best time to stop asking why people are lined up outside of a church Chamber Music Festival.

Best metre-high bottle of 50 that lights up like a light saber Aloha Room.

Best way to get beaten up by two cops Late-night coffee and donut.

SEXY STUFF

Best place to re-enact the Henry and June book cover cunnilingus scene in Paris: Rideau underpass between the National Arts Centre and the Bytowne Museum.

Best place to buy reasonably priced garters and stockings The Bay.

Best hotel to pretend you’re a Call Girl Chateau Laurier.

MUSIC & ENTERTAINMENT

Best out-of-town band featuring an Ottawan Bionic, with Jean Belanger (Keener/Bitchin’ Camaros).

Best rock show that makes you want to tattoo the band’s logo or a devil’s horn salute on your forehead and ass Maximum RnR.

Best performance from a guy you thought was too drunk to perform Flecton Big Sky.

Best hot guys dancing on a stage as seen on their website Swizzle’s Bar and Grill, Wednesday and Saturday nights (swizzles.ca/serv02.htm).

Best supply of condoms in the men’s washroom Swizzle’s Bar and Grill.

SPORTS

Best support group when Beckham is carded unjustly during World Cup pre-qualifying matches The late Fergus Inn Pub, now the Georgetown Sports Pub (1159 Bank Street). “We want to cater to every sports fan,” says general manager, John Alves. “We got four receivers, so we can show up to six or seven sports events at any given time. We want to be Ottawa’s Number 1 sports bar.” Game on!

Best reason to come out to Parliament Hill, Saturday November 19 at noon Pro-choice march. Twenty years ago, women won the right to safe, legal abortions, but years later violence against them for expressing that right continues. Join me and women and men of all facets and diversities as we move from the Hill toward Dalhousie then Rideau Street to line up with peaceful placards bearing positive messages in support of women’s right to choose. Help send a message to all women and girls who have had or who may have an abortion, letting them know they’re not to be shamed and are supported by our community.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – November 10, 2006

Now that I’ve quit drinking and smoking, let me tell you, socializing at parties is a whole new ballgame. It’s like walking around with a plastic bathing cap when everyone’s let their hair down.

The good news is I always leave the festivities the way I got there – alone. Never a naked hottie waking up beside me with the same question on his dehydrated lips: “What’s your name again?”

The sad news is I always leave the festivities the way I got there – alone. Never a naked dude…

Getting plastered and smoking cigarettes was always the best way to meet people. And remember the smoker’s corner at school? That’s where you established some of your best buddies.

But being sober and smoke-free means a lot fewer of these instant friends. It also means I’m paying attention to what people are saying. And it’s revealing a lot about myself, other human beings and why being wasted makes you fast friends in the first place.

There’s an honesty in drunk talk, where people’s inhibitions are lowered and they say what they feel and speak what they mean. None of the structured parlance and appropriate table-manners talk I struggled with at a party on Fifth Avenue last weekend.

A friend threw a Manhattan-in-the-Glebe party where each room was themed after a district in New York City. My group of six was chilling in the posh north-end “lounge” of the apartment when I got the question.

“So … what do you do?”

Maybe it was the pretence of the appropriated British accent that annoyed me. To look at me, you’d
wonder if I hadn’t become instantly constipated. I grew agitated. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t get “agitated” at bars, but maybe parties were different?

I generally hang loose, and it wasn’t too long ago that yours truly was tanked and mooning musician Spooky Ruben, shouting at Danny Michel on stage to take his pants off, or flashing someone on the dance floor at Aloha Room for a fiver.

But there I was, drinking my non-alcoholic beverage and refusing to answer a simple question. The lady compounded my irritability by asking me if I had kids, and whether my male companion was “your husband?”

These questions often come up at social functions after the cordial introductions of names and connection to the host or hostess are made. Most people just provide the answers. What is the big fucking deal, right?

Simply put – I think the stiff “what do you do?” question is ineffective because in its pathetic attempt to bond strangers, it distances and segregates. We instinctively attribute status and repute to a person based on their employment.

I didn’t tell the woman that among us were a doctor, a software engineer, a scriptwriter, a columnist, an engineer-slash-musician and a writer-artist. I believe these titles would make holograms of us unique 3D folks who are more than our paycheques and reputations.

What a mistake to attribute too much value to vocational virtue – or vanity – anyway. If folks are genuinely interested in who you are as a person, why not ask about your passions or do like they do at bars-talk crazy talk.

For instance, I spent my late 20s in a relationship with a graphic designer from a top advertising agency, which really impressed people. But it was the blue-collar postman boyfriend with the non-glamorous career who had time for me, hobbies and friendships. It is frustrating knowing society still fawns over the former, but satisfying to know such quiet humility in the latter.

Talk about whatever.

In Europe, people ask you if you’ve traveled recently on holiday. In the Maritimes, it’s been my experience that they ask you how you are-and they really want to know!

Socializing is hard when you’re trying to make a good impression. There’s something to be said about being three sheets to the wind and not giving a shit. There’s freedom in that.

But I’m learning, and for now prefer ginger ale.

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GRAB A PIECE OF THE PIE Come schmooze and share with Ottawa’s funkiest businesswomen at the Eighth Annual Cherry Pie networking event on November 15 at Metropolitain Brasserie (700 Sussex at Rideau) at 8 p.m. Get friendly tips from the experts on how to turn your passion into a business. Tickets are $8 each, or two for $12. Part of the proceeds go to support Project Chance Africa-raising money for schoolchildren in the Muthare slums in Nairobi, Kenya. For more information, contact catherineknows@videotron.ca.

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POP MY CHERRY Come to Venus Envy (320 Lisgar Street at Bank) on November 18 for a night of smut and dirty talk as the Capital Poetry Collective presents Talented Tongues, a night of erotic writing. Featured readers include Ottawa’s Suki Lee, Nichole McGill, The Split from Toronto et moi, along with Ritallin, Liz Cullen, Amanda Earl, Melanie Spiteri, Danielle Gregoire, Steve Sauvé and Festrell. This will also be the Ottawa launch of the new Arsenal Pulp Press anthology, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn ($21.95 at Venus Envy), and Lee (www.sukilee.com) will be reading from her contributing story, “Through Winter Sun.”

Come and let us give you pleasure with our written words. Doors open at 8:30 p.m., $7. Hosted by Lisa Slater and Mary Alice Elcock.

– Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress – November 3, 2005
BOOK REVIEW

Tracy Quan’s Diary of a Married Call Girl (Three Rivers Press, 318 pages, $17.95)

Love, lust and funds found south of 79th and 2nd

“How much can – or should – one person get away with?”
~Nancy Chan, Call Girl

When it comes to sex, you get what you pay for. But Ottawa-born New York writer and former call girl Tracy Quan always gives that little something extra.

Her latest novel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, is the follow-up to her runaway hit, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, which has been optioned for a movie to be produced by Darren Star, creator of HBO’s Sex and the City. It tells the story of infidelity and topflight hooking that Quan’s fictional alter-ego, Nancy Chan, escapes to during the day.

One hook: Nancy’s got two lives – the first is as respectable wife who runs her husband’s shirts to the dry cleaners and cooks him fancy meals. But outside of cooking in the kitchen, Nancy stirs up something a lot spicier with kinky old men south of Seventy-ninth and Second. And husband, Matt, doesn’t have a clue.

“The journey from hooker to wife doesn’t require a passport or a visa – not if you stay in Manhattan,” says Nancy, boldly. “There are no checkpoints or embassies. It’s supposed to be like moving from Ontario to Quebec. Or California to New York.”

“Supposed to be,” but when Matt wants to have a baby, like a border patrol it threatens Nancy’s freedom to cross boundaries easily.

Crossing over to prostitution is classic Quan. She’s very comfortable with sex work and she credits Ottawa, which is mentioned in the book, for her positive view of the career. She told XPress in a recent interview

that she grew up in the Glebe but she would see prostitutes downtown: “Knowing prostitution existed in the city in places that were appropriate was healthy and it was good for me, and I didn’t internalize hang ups about prostitution the way some people in the suburbs do.”

Quan first introduced Nancy Chan’s hooking through weekly installments on Salon.com. She kept it a secret from her own partner because, she said, “I didn’t want the energy from our relationship to interfere with my creativity.

“A lot of people would say there is a big difference between writing and prostitution. But I don’t know that there really is,” Quan said. “It’s about work and self-expression and whether this is more important to you than catering to a certain image that you have in a relationship.”

Extra-marital sex helps contain Nancy, who fears she is losing her “self” by being married to Matt: “Could I have become, in less than a year of marriage, the total embodiment of everything that causes a man to see hookers in the first place?” she worries. The deep notion of the “true self” is also explored through Nancy’s exchanges with the other hookers in the novel, characters who Quan said represent different parts of her.

Having a secret life may be reprehensible to some, but by sexualizing the theme of independence Quan seduces the most principled reader into understanding how the search to – using Quan’s words – retain your independence and focus on your work, and be a shrewd survivor, is often at odds with love.

Here, Quan delivers fluid, easy-to-read airport novel prose; suspense and Prada-big city backdrops typical of a popular television series; and hot sex scenes of quality porn. Like any successful writer, or hooker, Quan has staying power and her book deserves a place in everyone’s bedroom-and bookshelf.

For a good time, read Tracy Quan.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – October 27, 2005

Once upon a time, The Rolling Stones made a video called “The Streets of Love” in Ottawa (rollingstones.com/abiggerbang). But it was a fairy-tale make-believe Ottawa, and all the little Ottawans got silly with glee!

A downtown Ottawa nightclub owner, a head honcho at an Ottawa-Gatineau film office, and local actors and fans went crazy as they kissed the wrinkled arses of the rock legends, and played sycophant while the band’s new video premiered on the daytime American soap opera Days of Our Lives.

Eugene Haslam, the owner of Zaphod Beeblebrox, told the Ottawa Citizen’s Lynn Saxberg that he was thrilled with the depiction of the club he’s been operating on York Street for almost 14 years, and that he believes Stones fans from around the world, who do their research, will hear about the club and want to come and visit it.

In the same article, Ken Korral, director of the Ottawa-Gatineau Film and Television Office, said he was impressed with the video’s perspective of the city. He credits the “right lighting [and] a little bit of rain” which makes Ottawa appear as any place, anywhere. “Now we’re showing Ottawa as a real city,” he said.

Actress Maxine Brown, who plays a prostitute in the video, told Saxberg she “squealed” when she spotted herself in the video that “shows a dark, gritty side to the nation’s capital.”

Then there were the fans. Daisy Szabo told the CBC, “A lot of stuff got cut. A lot of my parts got cut. A lot of my friends got cut. But it’s still an awesome video.”

Cut the bullshit already. “Awesome video”?

I tried to approach the vid with a mind as open as my legs were for a hottie over Thanksgiving weekend, and yet I got no satisfaction.

The syphilitic pain endured watching bad acting on Days in the lead-up to the video premiere may have seriously compromised my video appreciation abilities.

“I heard the concert footage from this video is supposed to be amazing,” says Days airhead Mimi to her boyfriend before it comes on.

Then it starts. A camera sways over a faceless crowd (sorry to all you extras) to Jagger upon the unmarked stage in an unidentified club (sorry Eugene), singing, “You’re awful bright/ you’re awful smart/ I must admit/ you broke my heart/ the awful truth/ is really sad/ I must admit/ I was awful bad.”

Step aside Leonard Cohen.

So… a dude is crying as we’re flashed the image of a woman. Then buddy walks the streets alone, “and they’re full of tears” and fears.

He walks by a bar (Zaphod’s): “A couple watch me from a bar/ a band just played a wedding march.” He goes to the corner store (Domestic Foods on Gladstone) to buy booze: “the corner store mends broken hearts.” He sees a prostitute (Brown) exit a phone booth, fighting with a cop: “a woman pays for her debts.” Then out of the blue, some people street-fight him, a taxi hits him, he’s on the ground, then comes back to life as the girl looks on, listless.

You know, a typical Friday night in Ottawa.

Come on. Passing an Ottawa corner shop off as a dingy dépanneur? That’s an insult to our Gatineau friends.

Passing an actress off as a hooker? The Stones can afford to pay for a real one.

If the Stones – whose musical integrity has shrivelled up to the size of a gnat’s scrotal sack – require the dingy and dodgy to create their marketable cityscape background for the video, at least get it right and support local industry.

But fine – roll with the Stones’ manufactured image of Ottawa as a big city like Vancouver or Toronto. Just remember while you’re parading the coolness banner that the dark issues that come with urban ghettos and sex, drugs and rock’n’roll-like prostitution and STIs, methadone clinics, Alcoholics Anonymous, safe injection sites and complimentary crack pipes remain very real even after the band’s skipped town.

In this, we are a city divided. For some, it’s the best of the Stones’ videos, and for others, the worst.

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Beautifully done See Toronto’s Lindy nail the dark city/lost love theme in his video “Beautifully Undone” at www.lindymusic.com (Look/Listen).

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Still Our Bodies, Still Our Choice One dark, real side to Ottawa is that a lot of women are still not being supported in their choice to have an abortion here. Outaouais residents will be rallying on November 19 in support of women’s right to choose. Organizers are in great need of support from local businesses, organizations and individuals to help plan this event. Attend the planning meeting on November 4 at 5:30 p.m. at Second Cup (Elgin and Lisgar). For more information, contact madey@riseup.net.

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Heroine Addicts Two of Ottawa’s highly accomplished women are Helen Levine (she received the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, for advancing the equality of women in Canada) and Oonagh Berry (she was a teacher of handicapped children for many years, then became a counsellor in addictions, working for 30 years at the Rideauwood Institute and at the Amethyst Women’s Addiction Centre in Ottawa). Addicted to writing to one another, they’ve published their two-year letter exchanges on feminism, politics, family, friendships, joys and sorrows, and the laughable trivialities of daily life, and will share that correspondence on October 27 at the National Archives of Canada at 7 p.m. Free. (ISBN: 1-897187-01-7, 280 pages, $14.95)

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – October 20, 2005

Taking the bus is already a pain in the ass-must OC Transpo rub our faces in it too?

OC Transpo raises fares to the extortionate rate of $2.75 a trip while it is needlessly replacing some of the city’s bus stop shelter huts with newer ones. Now there’s some responsible budget action.

I’m no bus stop shelter hut expert but from what I see, they’re upgrading from four black poles, glass panes and a roof to … wait for it … four GREY poles, glass panes and an ANGLED roof.

Gang, what we have here is a failure to communicate. Somewhere in a boardroom some people huddled to talk about huts and we weren’t there.

It must have started with some geezers saying it would be a good idea to upgrade the shelters and raise fares to pay for it. No matter, said the Mercedes-driving bigwig as he or she agreed to fuck the public up our collective ass.

Is this supposed to be better for the company’s bottom line? Safeguard its integrity and the city’s “look” through the preservation of aesthetic quality?

Meanwhile, see the resentment build among bus riders who believe we’re financing our environmental choice, but then are getting screwed because we don’t have a flippin’ say about where our money goes.

Don’t tell me the angled roofs are better for our Ottawa winters because they discourage snow build-up and therefore prevent long-term damage. First, there are plenty of flat roofs on Ottawa buildings that are doing just fine-so that’s a no-go to the enhanced structural integrity argument.

Plus, a bus stop shelter hut is not housing families or some company’s headquarters. They are simply places for riders to stand in and be safe from the elements while they wait for public transit.

If OC Transpo really gave a shit about our comfort, they’d stick a couple of leather recliners in there with a fireplace. And, they wouldn’t be taking so long to replace the huts like they are along Carling Avenue where many people have stood in rainy weather the past couple of weeks in a wall-less, shelter-in-transition.

The old shelters worked just fine, so is this a modernization? Well, I suppose everything from your handbag to your bedspread needs upgrading at some point to avoid flashbacks to the ’70s. That said, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Are you with me here or what?

Think pubic hair. In the new Tracy Quan novel I’m reading, the one girl discourages another from removing all her pubic hair permanently through laser treatments: “Aren’t you worried that your pussy will have 2001 written all over it in 2010?” the chick asks her mate. “I hate to say this, but certain things can really date a bitch.”

But does upgrading a look – whether for your private or public parts – necessarily enhance performance? The assumption it does can harm the rider. It’s like assuming just ’cause something looks good, everything about it by extension is good.

But the reality is nice hut, shit bus. OC Transpo should redirect its attention to the fundamental issues, not solely the superficial, aesthetic ones.

For starters, fix the brakes. The screeching makes my ears bleed. And get a real bus designer next time. While it’s admirable the current models are wheelchair accessible, they are making invalids of the rest of us. Couldn’t the designer have balanced the needs of both? Sideway seats up front mean there are no seat backs to grab when the bus takes off. Grabbing a strap hanging from the top rails can dislocate your shoulder.

The “modern” Star Trek doors appeal only to the few who know how to open them. The bus wall next to many doors has had to be defaced with black marker telling riders how to work them.

How about the passageway at the back of some buses wide enough only for a skinny person? This bottleneck creates panic for riders who can’t make the exit in time. Add to that the emotional strain of getting sausaged in the goddamned door because it closes too quickly!

Windows often don’t open and ventilation hatches leak. And on some buses, the passenger’s view out the window is obstructed at eye-level by bad seat height and the window frame.

To say that OC Transpo accordion buses sound like a 747 taking off is an understatement. Add to such noise the hazard of toxic exhaust blasting out the sides of the monster powerfully enough to blow-dry your hair, covering you in a thin veil of gaseous slime. To say we’ve got ourselves a tragedy on wheels wouldn’t be a lie.

It might be petty to complain about public transit in a city like Ottawa where the system runs relatively smoothly in spite of the deficiencies of its fleet.

But that sounds like settling for bad sex in a lukewarm relationship. And I would like to think if it were happening to you – or your friend – you’d have the shaved balls to speak up about it.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – October 6, 2005

Would it be for health or hygiene that you’d cut your period out of your life? And do you think you’d be more independent and self-assured? The makers of Seasonale® (www.seasonale.com) think so.

I learned about Seasonale® through a documentary called Menstruation Suppression that aired a while back on CBC. At last count, Seasonale® is approved by the American Food and Drug Administration after fewer than 500 clinical trials and is selling 13,000 prescriptions a week in the U.S.

The drug works like the birth control pill, except its extended regime limits a woman’s periods to four a year. Already, with any regular pack of birth control pills, a woman can choose to skip her period by continuing on to a new pack instead of taking the placebo or sugar pills, which allow her to bleed. This is common in Europe, with instructions on the package for such an arrangement. So, what’s the big deal, right?

Well, the CBC doc tried to expose the motivation – whether medicine or the marketplace – that is behind “helping” women in this area. While some people argued that taking this new pill medicalizes a woman’s life, many saw it as a “modern solution to a modern problem.”

Think about it: no more panic attacks up at a cottage party when you hear the dreaded words: “The toilet doesn’t flush all that well.” No more wondering if that iron smell is you. Or, if your boyfriend’s housemates will awaken to the crinkly unwrapping of a tampon or sanitary napkin packaging in the dead of night.

Or maybe you don’t give a shit about these petty embarrassments? But what about the times you or a woman you know had to miss a road trip, an important meeting, or did poorly on an exam on account of feeling sickly?

It’s obvious that quality of life would be greatly improved by getting rid of what is for most women a nuisance. But what message is putting a period to our periods saying about this natural function of a woman’s body? Then again – is it even “normal” to bleed every single month?

Historical context shows that women are having more periods now than ever, different from the olden days where they had fewer because they were giving birth and breast-feeding earlier and for longer. Also, women didn’t live as long then as they do now. So, curbing periods today would simply be restoring women to their historical norm, safely.

Joan Jacob Blumberg, a social historian from Cornell University, said in the documentary that young girls’ attitudes about periods have changed over 200 years. “It’s not loaded with meaning about fertility,” Blumberg said. And unlike their older sisters who believe it grounds a woman in her body, now a woman’s period is more medicalized than ever before and it’s an issue of hygiene, Blumberg said. “It’s about whether or not it shows or stains – and that is an interaction with the marketplace.”

It’s not something to be celebrated anymore; it is portrayed as a royal pain in the uterus. So if drug companies like the makers of Seasonale® are going with the flow by going against Aunt Flo, where’s the harm?

But should we look to the drug companies for a solution? I read recently how the industry creates ailments such as “female sexual dysfunction” so they can market drugs to “cure” the problem.

Would you give these freaks carte-blanche to fuck with your ovaries?

XXX

Boobie Bust Following parliamentary hearings in Ottawa last Thursday on the safety of silicone gel breast implants, a number of presenters gathered at a press conference the morning of September 30 to insist Health Canada look at the impartial data on the device’s safety record, not just that which has been provided by the manufacturers to paint a rosy portrait in Canadian media.

XXX

Murphy’s Law Ottawa writer and social policy consultant Barbara Murphy launches her latest book, Eating the Wedding Gifts: Lean Years after Marriage Break-up, at Mother Tongue Books (1067 Bank Street) on October 13 at 7:30 p.m. Her book explores how most single parents are raising children in poverty and that as divorce and poverty figures show, the most risky choice is marriage before higher education. Look to Murphy to uncover the realities behind social issues affecting Canadians.

XXX

Love Those Letters The Letters… Rediscovering the Art of Courtship is the Ottawa-based dating reality TV show Shotgun featured back in June. Catch the world premiere on October 6 at 10:30 p.m. on (CLT) Canadian Learning Television and October 8. Using the art of writing love letters, eight young men competed for the affections of one woman. Find out what happened!

XXX

Shotgun Wedding? Speaking of filming movies and love letters in Ottawa, a friend recently back from L.A. who is working with a film crew in Ottawa has spotted a special girl. If you’re the pretty girl with short-cropped hair who smiled, talked, waved and “made a long day feel short by her fleeting presence” (his words) before stepping into a red jeep, he was the tall, awesome haired (my words) and T-shirt wearing, walkie-talkie-using film crewman shooting a movie beside Dunton Tower at Carleton University on a sunny Sunday September 11. You made an impression.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, Shotgun, September 29, 2005

I’m not Sean Penn. But I’ll try to be kind like him. OK, so I didn’t help Katrina victims, but I tried to save Ottawans from boredom and disappointment at shitty sex-stores.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many Hollywood celebrities offered their services, like John Travolta who flew five tonnes of food and 400 tetanus vaccines to Baton Rouge in his private jet.

Others like Céline Dion paid $1.2 million to disaster relief, which also afforded her the opportunity to do that thing where she flutters her hand upon her chest while talking passionately. This time it wasn’t about her kid but about her political opinions, on Larry King Live. Many admired this.

But a photo of Penn in a friend’s rickety old boat filled with ragged refugees ran with news ridiculing his supposed attempts at saving victims stranded in their homes. The scenario was mocked in detail in an Ottawa Citizen column, “A Message to the Stars: Stick to What You Do Best,” by Mark Anderson:

“Sean Penn is not a hero, but he plays one in the movies. Which, presumably, qualified him to launch his own rescue operation in New Orleans earlier this week, cruising the flooded streets in a small boat, plucking stranded citizens from rooftops and whisking them to safety.

“That, anyway, was the plan, before his tub sprung a leak, his motor wouldn’t start and, according to the Daily Telegraph, he was last seen ‘frantically bailing water from the boat with a red plastic cup.'”

“To what can we attribute Mr. Penn’s journey to the absurd?” asked Anderson. By Zeus! He was just trying to help out! But there’s the media laughing at Penn – a trend popularized perhaps because of Penn’s vocal anti-Bush stance. Rather than crediting him as a do-gooder, his critics focused on the holes in his boat, not the tiny dent he made in the rescue mission effort.

Sort of like my critics as of late who were calling me on the holes – or omissions – in my “Sexy Fun and Games” Shotgun (September 15), which concentrated on Venus Envy to the exclusion of the competition.

Thank you to online reader, Jenn Farr, who supported my choice: “Most other xxx stores seem to perpetuate the assumption that women are just as much sex toys as the plastic and silicone paraphernalia stocked on their shelves.” And Jan Hobbs who wrote: “The one nice advantage of Venus Envy over other adult toy stores is that they also offer workshops on various interesting subjects.”

But I also got pelted with a few abusive e-mails and last week’s Letter to the Editor from the owner of Classixxx accusing my column of being an infomercial, an excuse to promote my book and CD, and a public butt-kissing for some mysterious nonexistent “freebies.”

Dear reader, I know you’re here because you were expecting to read a follow-up Shotgun to last week’s “Bleeding Barbies” on menstruation suppression and I’m promising it to you next week. But this week, we’ve got a few too many critics on deck.

About my personal opinion of where to shop in Ottawa for sexy toys and aids – let’s put the record straight.

When given the choice of buying a dildo from a shop designed to make women feel comfortable (whether heterosexual, bi-sexual, lesbian or trans-gendered), versus a shop that supports videos of, I’m assuming, the typical pornographic sort where some pussy-shaven, submissive minor is faking enjoyment of two throbbing cocks ripping her anus to fissures while other sad-sack sickos gizum in her eyeballs and share a laugh, well jeez – I’m with the many women who prefer the more discerning joint that presumably promotes sexuality beyond that flavour.

As for the reader who accused me of being narrow-minded because I labelled the sales associate of 11 years ago at “the upstairs sex place right beside Zaphod’s on York Street” as “gross,” get real, honey-not everyone’s pretty. And recall that the column depicts the experience of a then-undergraduate virgin. Show me an innocent 19-year-old girl today who doesn’t use the word “gross” to describe a dude in a “classic” sex shop, and I’ll buy you some wantons and a Coke at Northern 2.

But there I go again promoting some businesses and not others.

You know, if I get kick-ass service-like I did from Joe at Sleepers on St. Laurent Boulevard-then I don’t want my ass kicked for spreading the good word.

And it got kicked, alright, so don’t I know how Sean Penn must feel.

What a fine leap of logic to link Mr. Penn and me in any other way beyond the do-gooder thing. Ah, but such leaps of logic I’ve been accused of making before by one critic in particular who wrote in to say how he and his girlfriend sat there reading Shotgun, laughing at my Olympic-style acrobatic leaps.

But, I wonder how Mr. Penn will respond to his critics. As for me, one thing’s for sure: The pen is mightier than swarthy pricks who use agro to try to intimidate me. Them’s fighting words, mate.

You’ll get more bees with honey. You’ll touch more hearts with a helping hand. When you put yourself out there, you’re swimming with the sharks. It’s sink or swim, baby.

I’ve got my paddle.

– Sylvie Hill