Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress, Shotgun, May 5, 2005

I was in the new Hartman’s grocery store in Centretown the other day and overheard some lady bark, “Check the expiry date!” to her man as he reached for the Heinz value pack of hotdog and hamburger condiments. And it got me thinking about bitchy wives and hamburger patties.

This season, I’m noticing that burger ads in print and on television are increasingly geared toward couples and helping them to reconnect. While a flailing woman screams at her man during a Wendy’s commercial, threatening to leave him, it’s the Value burger on the table that keeps her coming back for more of the food-and the relationship. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just all whip out a Harvey’s Angus burger every time we were about to get dumped?

I’ve got a value combo, ass. You’re not going anywhere.

But kidding aside, there is one commercial between a man and his wife that makes me sad – and very scared to get married. It’s an A&W commercial. The husband is innocently polishing his antique car in the garage when his wife pulls up into the driveway. He says proudly, “All finished.” She retorts, “Wow. That only took you what, three years?”

As she pushes past him, with little expression, he meekly asks her, “Wanna go for a ride?” She barely agrees. When they arrive at the A&W, the husband flashes his lights at the restaurant for a fairytale waitress on roller skates to bring the order. The wife mocks him: “Pwff. They don’t do that anymore.” But the husband must have arranged something, because here comes a waiter.

The wife doesn’t seem impressed at all.

So here’s a husband treating his wife to a 1950s-style drive-in date at the A&W in his vintage Mustang, complete with “Crimson and Clover” playing in the background, and all the thanks she can muster up is, “I still have to be home by 10 you know.” But the joke falls flat.

I don’t like her. The only message I get from that ad is when your wife is about to charbroil your ass because you’ve taken too much time on your hobby car, SUCK IT UP – and add to that a side order of onion rings and root beer floats. As the viewer, I never really know why the guy’s wife is so crusty. Either that script is in need of a rewrite or she needs to get laid. Either way, as Mother’s Day approaches, it makes me wonder how many poor husbands and kids are going to be steamrollered by machines like her when they hand over their cards and gifts. What grief!

In all fairness, maybe the A&W chick is ticked about getting a measly burger instead of the trolley ride and sunset cruise like that restaurant owner lady in the Expedia.ca commercial. Even the latter doesn’t pull as much attitude when her husband, as he’s planning their weekend getaway in San Francisco using the Internet, miscalculates their years of marriage. “Happy 12th anniversary,” he says. “Thirteenth,” she says factually. But at least she’s got a smile on. A little one.

My immediate suspicion is that bitchy wives around the world are dishing it out because their immature husbands are glued to fix-it projects in the garage while they’re left to look after the income, kids, house and bills. But men aren’t vacant tools with no sense of responsibility, are they? Maybe in the ’50s…but in 2005? And women certainly aren’t nags for the hell of it. They are allowed to express distress and communicate unhappiness, albeit with a pout on.

Seriously-is it the boring day-to-day routines and the feeling of being ignored that encourage the A&W and many Expedia.ca husbands to spice it up a bit? Or a gesture to make up for years of mutual laziness? Better to spice it up with Cajun curly fries and a spicy chicken burger than a take-out girl, I say!

During hard times, it was once suggested to me that reverting to our “instinctive selves” would solve many problems in a relationship; men hunt and women gather berries-it’s been a way of life for eons. Women pretty-up the house and themselves in exchange for bison burgers and emu stew. But as women and men become less like their caveman sisters and brothers, maybe women who aspire to be hunters and gatherers have days that can feel like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. Maybe that’s the lady in the A&W commercial.

It seems to me the caveman system of relationships doesn’t keep balance, it just keeps each partner quiet, doesn’t it? But then sometimes, quiet is good. Like with burgers, getting the works is great but sometimes if it’s too stacked and complicated, it’ll fall apart all over your pants. And isn’t life a bitch when that happens.

Without the right combo of roles and shared responsibilities, you got no value pack. I think that is where relationship problems start-and where hiding out in the garage or trips to the drive-thru with depressed wives begins.

As summer approaches, I’m reminded of the vintage car shows that’ll be held in the Byward Market. I wonder if behind every ’69 Dodge or Chevy convertible is a disgruntled wife? Or a wife more than happy to go for a meal deal with her honey?

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – April 28, 2005

Albertans have always had a good laugh at us here in Ottawa, I’m sure of it. When both provinces are freezing their asses off in the dead of winter, it’s not unlikely that our Albertan friends and relatives will ring us boasting about serving up a BBQ, in shorts, in their freaky Chinook weather. But then of course we return the chuckle when we hear about their snowfalls mid-July. But with their gorgeous summers, maybe a little natural air conditioning is more of an enjoyable relief from Mother Nature than a bother. Either way you look at it, Alberta’s got a lot going for it.

With the Alberta Scene upon our city from April 28 to May 10, it will be impossible not to think about Wild Rose Country. Alberta makes me remember Banff Springs, tepees and the Calgary Zoo. But I also think of my Alberta buddy who gets up to his grandpa’s ranch for archery, long walks and countless evenings strumming his Chet Atkins in solitude. He sends me photographs of the spectacular mountain view from the quiet, isolated paradise, and I get jealous of that piece of nature.

While Ottawa is perfectly connected to both city living in the downtown core and the country experience in places like Perth (or over the border in Chelsea-Wakefield), Alberta has mountains. And what a feeling it is to look around and see these massive rocks jutting right up to the sky. While we’re stuck in the valley, Albertans get treated to majestic ranges perfect for skiing, snowshoeing and snowboarding. Yep, a place where you’ve got a chance of joining the mile-high club without setting foot on a plane.

True enough – Alberta’s in the news now and then for things we wouldn’t quite call PC in the East. Premier Ralph Klein’s very quotable self stumbles into the news from time to time. Drinking will do that. To be fair, who hasn’t stepped in something on their way home one dark and staggery night? Of course, we might not pop into a local men’s shelter and start picking on its occupants as Klein did oh so many years ago… but that’s another story. The point is, that’s the kind of story that makes headlines, right along with things like Alberta having the strongest opposition to gay marriage of all the provinces. Scandal, even Canadian style, is sexy and juicy and sells well – and sometimes the less dramatic things get lost.

For instance, did you know Alberta is a very energy-efficient province? Take the forward-thinking town called Okotoks for example – with a motto like “Historic Past, Sustainable Future,” these are people who know how to work a buzzword. But more than that, these Okotoks folks are making use of solar power to do everything from resurface the ice in their hockey arena to heat the community pool and recycling centre. And pretty soon they’ll be using the sun of the summer to heat an entire community throughout their undeniably frigid winters.

Allow me a technical moment to describe the plan. Using a seasonal solar storage system called borehole storage technology, the sun’s energy, captured from solar collectors installed on 52 houses and detached garage roofs, will heat a fluid that can transfer heat underground. The underground reserve spreads out to the size of a baseball diamond where it will stay until it’s needed to warm up the wool-socked Okotokians in their energy-efficient houses.

Anyone who’s lived through a Canadian winter will have a pretty good idea of what’s been standing in the way of adopting solar-heating technology in Canada. The sun, in the true Canadian snowbird tradition, pisses off to the south for much of the winter. Pretty often it does the absent-parent thing during spring and fall – you eventually learn it’s not going to make it out for your baseball practices and regattas, or even pitch in while you rake the leaves. Canadian weather, most of the year, adds up to nothing more than short days, cloudy skies and snow-covered solar panels – not great stuff if you want to convert sun into heat for your house for an entire season. But the research that comes out of the Okotoks project might just fix that.

And when you take into consideration the fact that Ottawa still won’t let homeowners install solar hot water systems, that little town in Alberta is miles to the left of us in at least one way.

There is a sense of the hearty and the hardy about Albertans. Maybe it’s the stereotype of strong farm boys with weathered hands the size of T-bone steaks, wearing alt-country gear and driving pickups, that turns my crank. Or the rodeo heroes at the Calgary Stampede, the handsome Mounties, all the hockey players, the steaks, the magnificent national parks, rich cultural heritage, low taxes, pierogi, Grandma Hill’s borsch and punk legends SNFU. Whatever it is, it works for me!

So over the next few weekends, take the opportunity to raise a glass of Alberta microbrew, slap on a few guerrilla solar panels, enjoy an old-time Ukrainian breakfast and take in some of the awesome talent in town for Alberta Scene.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – April 28, 2005

The anti-PC from Conservative country: Comedian Andrew Grose warns Ottawans to leave their political correctness at home for the Alberta Beef Comedy Tour

The eastern borders have been reopened and 600 pounds of Alberta comedy is coming our way. As part of the Alberta Scene that runs April 28 to May 10, the Beyond the Scene showcase is presenting the third national run of the Alberta Beef Comedy Tour, which promises to be so funny you’ll pee your saddle!

This year one of Canada’s top acts, Andrew Grose, headlines the event happening at Yuk Yuk’s. Grose has performed three times at Just For Laughs, touring twice with its national road show. He has appeared on Comedy Now, CBC’s Comics, and Comedy at Club 54, at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and the Halifax Comedy Festival, and in his own sitcom on the Comedy Network, The Comedy Stampede Special.

Originally from the Maritimes, Grose says of Alberta: “There’s more Newfies in Fort McMurray than there is in St. John’s.” And of the people: “We’re not all that politically connected out here and not because we don’t understand politics… we just don’t care. We still call our best friends ‘retarded’ without fear of the political correctness police laying a charge and we keep electing a hopeless alcoholic as premier only because we know it baffles you easterners and that amuses us.”

Grose is the founder and head organizer of the annual Laughing for Cancer benefit, which has raised a serious $192,000 with the help of other Alberta comics for the Alberta Cancer Foundation since 2002. “My wife’s father passed away from cancer in 2002 and I just felt helpless to do anything except hold a benefit and get his name put on the wall of donors at the Cross Cancer Institute.”

Sharing the stage with Grose this week is Howie Miller, Paul Myrehaug and Toby Hargrave. “Howie Miller, a native comic, often has to reassure Ontario crowds that it’s okay to listen to native jokes. I, on the other hand, am less subtle,” admits Grose. “I won’t tolerate political correctness for two seconds.” Grose says Ottawans will “have to be deprogrammed not to be politically correct and judgmental early in the show.”

With so much talent wrangled up into one herd, you’re guaranteed to bust a button off your britches when you get a load of this lot.

The Yuk Yuk’s Alberta Beef Comedy Tour, April 28 to May 1, and May 5 to 8, at 8:30 p.m. Thursdays ($15), 9:30 p.m. Fridays ($20), 8 and 10:30 p.m. Saturdays ($20), and 8 p.m. Sundays ($15), 88 Albert Street, 236-5233.

MORE FUNNY STUFF

Andrea Jensen, a must-see who outperformed the headlining Dickwhipped girls last month, will be at the Joan Rivers show on Thursday May 5, 8 p.m., at the Casino Lac Lemay. Tickets: $56 or $66. Jensen’s snide vulgarity and outrageous honesty will have you bent over clutching your belly.

And the Absolute Comedy Club (412 Preston Street, 233-8000) presents Caroline Picard from May 11 to 21. All the way from Houston, Texas, Picard is described on her website as a Louisiana-bred national and international touring comic of 12 years who is fuelled by ice-cold beer, gumbo, BBQ and natural talent. “She has the amazing ability to take a crowd by the ears… and shake them till they are rolling in the aisles,” says Absolute owner, manager and comedian Jason Laurans. That show costs $12 Saturdays, $10 Fridays, $8 Thursdays and $5 Wednesdays.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – April 21, 2005

Pardon me, but when I was flipping through the paper for show times to see the documentary film Inside Deep Throat, all I could think about was the real provocative cock-sucking I was going to get to see on the big screen.

I had heard about the other famous porn flick Beyond the Green Door, and how it was pretty vulgar and raunchy. Could Deep Throat be that delicious? I was so excited to see a penis throbbing five feet tall, being gulped in surround sound.

But that all changed when I read the movie fact sheet Bruce Ward put together for the Ottawa Citizen. There in my Saturday morning paper was a deflating quote from the lead actress, Linda Lovelace, post-Deep Throat: “It was the most degrading and terrifying time of my life,” she said. “Every time somebody sees that movie, they’re watching me being raped.” I second-guessed my enthusiasm.

To go or not to go? Knowing this information, was I a shallow perv? Or am I the curious and open female who wants to learn more about how porn evolved? That Saturday morning, I found myself agreeing with many Shotgun readers in the past who have argued against pornography and I felt a bit embarrassed for being so gung-ho about a silly sex movie. But I went.

And I have to tell ya, I think Lovelace and her claims about rape are a bit of a crock. Here’s why: In the documentary, we see how Lovelace switched from enjoying her stardom and denouncing censorship when the movie was first released to shitting on it when the buzz faded. “Why the 180?” is what Shotgun is taking aim at.

Ward’s fact sheet indicated that the 1972 skin flick “caused a national uproar in the U.S. and went on to become the most profitable movie in history.” High-profile people and celebrities were lining up to see it. Everyone wanted a piece of it. Even the mob was involved and controlled the lucrative profits. And as fast as police were trying to shut it down, it was popping up at cinemas all over the United States. Truckloads of men and women defended it, protesting against censorship that threatened to ban it in every town.

But those sexually expressive supporters and feminists were then replaced by feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin. They were against this portrayal of Lovelace-and I imagine that extended to all women-in dirty movies. In 1983, Dworkin helped draft legislation that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, which wasn’t an entirely bad thing. But the law was inspired by Lovelace’s appearance in Deep Throat and the actress’s whole beef about being coerced into showcasing on film her amazing ability to take a man’s large penis past the gag reflex and all the way down her throat.

Dworkin passed away this month. But when she was alive, in 1986 she looked like Gene Simmons with a bad case of water retention. She was also a lesbian. What the fuck does she know about blowjobs?

Let’s hear what heterosexual guys say about blowjobs. For this to work now we have to try to see men as just normal dudes and not patriarchal devil-spawn who are out to fuck every girl in the ass before they take over the world with sports bars.

According to the Hite Report on Male Sexuality, many men really appreciate a good blow job: “Coming in a woman’s mouth and having her swallow it is something special. I don’t associate fellatio with the ‘degrading of woman’ aspects that I have heard about it. A man in love loves his woman’s cunt and a woman in love loves her man’s cock and the oral caresses are just a magnificent way of expressing it.” Good chap. But where did he hear that fellatio is degrading, I wonder?

And then some men don’t care much for it. These guys prefer the “oneness” of holding their partners when they orgasm. Other men fear a woman’s teeth will gash their manhood. And another dude admitted, “I’ve always had this suspicion in the back of my mind that the guy who gets off on fellatio is secretly a classic male chauvinistic pig who likes to see the submissive female down on her knees.” Not again?!

Shotgun is taking aim at two issues here. The first is the assumption that all chicks who do porn were forced into doing it. That’s not very feminist to think it impossible that a woman would want to have sex in front of a camera for money. The second bit is the presumption that deep-throating is filthy. Why does female sexual prowess have to downward-spiral into subjugation?

It’s sad, but while Lovelace was paraded about the television talk show circuit by Gloria Steinem, Deep Throat’s male star, Harry Reems, and his big hairy cock were falling into severe drug and alcohol abuse. Like, really bad. In the documentary, Reems laments how porn filmmakers would pick him up drunk and stoned from some party, drop him off at the set-use him sexually-then cart him back home abandoning him there to rot until the next shoot.

Tell me, who spoke up for Reems? But apparently Lovelace had it worse? Ah, blow me.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – April 14, 2005

Who said Ottawa has no style?

Couldn’t have been the students of cool arts school Canterbury High, who recreated an event in early April “worthy of New York’s Fashion Week,” according to organizer Kristal Felea, a Grade 11 drama student at the school.

“The event was wonderful, with a tremendous turnout, and helped raise $1,500 for the Harmony House Women’s Shelter and CACDA, Canterbury High School’s own charity,” she told Shotgun, who was invited to the show.

The annual student-run fashion show carried the theme “Marilyn: New York,” and featured a look at fashion and glamour along the spectrum of two different Marilyns: classic Marilyn Monroe and the alternative Marilyn Manson. The show was very New York and included a soiree of drinks and pastries, and a screening of a Marilyn Monroe flick. “The show was [also] chaotic up until the last minute,” Felea said. “There was a lot of running backstage, as the show was quickly paced. Everyone had a lot of energy that evening, and we put it to good use.

“The show gives students the opportunity to explore their creativity and gain experience of what it is like to work with deadlines and what sort of commitment the fashion industry demands,” explained Felea. This year also offered the students the chance to sell their designs in a silent auction after the show, accompanied by a string quartet (Canterbury students, of course).

To learn more about next year’s lineup of designers and models, ask Kristal. You can find her on co-op placement with Carleton University’s CKCU-FM radio.

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Canterbury High School churns out a lot of talent indeed. And alongside the brilliant and creative minds are outstanding teachers like Jim McNabb, the recently retired head of drama. An accomplished director (he did The Glass Menagerie for Ottawa Little Theatre and The Women for Act Out Theatre), actor and writer, McNabb is working with first-year theatre students at Algonquin College to help guide them through Ten Lost Years, their first full-length production for the 2005 Algonquin Theatre season.

Could you imagine a society led by an economy that literally has no money? That is the society that is portrayed in Ten Lost Years, a play written by Cedric Smith and Jack Winter. It is an adaptation of Barry Broadfoot’s award-winning book by the same name. Broadfoot took his tape recorder into kitchens, bars and coffee shops to let housewives and farmers and waitresses tell how the Great Depression of the 1930s affected their lives and those around them.

“The stories tell of an extraordinary time,” says McNabb. One tells of how a greedy Maritime landlord who tried to raise a widow’s rent was tarred and gravelled, another how rape by the boss was part of a waitress’s job. Other stories show Saskatchewan families watching their farms turn into deserts and walking away from them; freight trains black with hoboes clinging to them, criss-crossing the country in search of work; and a man stealing a wreath for his own wife’s funeral.

“With this play,” says McNabb, “we experience the human tragedy and moral triumph of some of the hardest of times ever faced by Canadians. In the end, this is an inspiring, uplifting piece of theatre about bravery, fellowship, good humour and, above all, true grit, one you will not forget.”

Catch the show April 20 to 23 at Algonquin’s N Building, Studio N-112, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $8 student/senior, $10 everyone else. For information: Algonquin College Theatre box office, 727-4723, ext. 5784.

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Providing a venue for all kinds of cultural events and arts, The Agora at 145 Besserer Street has worked toward becoming a cultural landmark for the community as a combination general-interest bookstore, café and performance space. Together with local organizers, store director Laurent Rozen-Rechels, bar manager Sean Tassé (who books the shows) and buyer Paul Spendlove have made it a success.

The Agora was created five years ago by the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa to provide students with course materials at the lowest possible prices. While that remains their mission, Tassé has also been booking live events in the bar under the name the Universe City Lounge since the beginning of last summer. “It’s proven to be a great space for everything from music and theatre to art vernissages,” Spendlove says.

The response toward Agora poetry events, including “Capital Slam” and the erotic poetry night “Moans, Groans and Unfinished Sentences,” has been excellent.

Spendlove expects the upcoming readings by Gatineau-based John Lavery (author of You, Kwaznievski, You Piss Me Off!), and Sylvie Hill (that’s me!), on Friday April 22, will be the Agora’s biggest self-promoted literary event so far. An enticing “Moans, Groans” show is also scheduled Tuesday April 26.

Spendlove will gauge the response to the April 22 event to see where to go from there. “It could be more poetry and fiction, but I’d also love to hold forums based on some of the stimulating political and economic books out there,” he says. “We’re a bilingual institution so we’d like to get some francophone authors in as well.”

Unfortunately, the Lounge will be closing down as a full-time bar at the end of April for budgetary reasons, but the space will be devoted to special cultural events.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – April 7, 2005

What was more embarrassing than getting a woody right as the teacher asked you to go up to the blackboard?

Try being initiated into womanhood in grade school and starting your period-in a pair of white slacks. I remember when I was in grade 6, I witnessed a girl’s mad dash to the office in hot pursuit of a feminine product. Accompanied by a female teacher, she was wearing the teacher’s cardigan wrapped around her bum. I’ll never forget that day, because it was the first time that the thing all girls hope will never happen, happened.

The memory of a woman’s first onset of menses can be quite embarrassing if it’s a surprise like that one. But it’s just as disconcerting for even an experienced menstruator who finds herself unprepared because she miscalculated her cycle by a day or two. Unplugged, she’s stuck, baby.

But times have changed and thank God for the tampon dispensers my younger sisters can find in the girls’ washrooms at their Catholic schools now. Actually, forget God – thank Shannon Salisbury. Now a mother of two pursuing a master’s degree in social work, Salisbury’s campaign for tampon dispensers in schools began at St. Matthew’s in 1990. Salisbury, with fellow crusader Jen Vowles (then head girl), was responsible for steering the cause into the public eye. She contacted Shotgun about the ordeal to set the story straight.

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Shotgun What issue did the administration have against tampon dispensers?

Salisbury The principals told me that it was a matter of preparedness. Girls don’t “leave home without remembering to brush their teeth,” after all. For those who were caught unprepared, there were pads in paper bags available in the office. The chaplain also had a grab bag of pads. When asked if she also provided tampons, she replied that there were just too many choices available and that she couldn’t please everyone. Meanwhile, she showed me at least five different brands of pads.

The message I got was to always keep a stash in my locker and make sure that word got around to as many girls as possible… it was up to us to provide for ourselves and each other.

Shotgun How did you feel about getting local media involved?

Salisbury I felt frustrated that it had to go that far. The Ottawa Citizen had started the High Priority page to accommodate student voices at the time, and I submitted an essay to that section. The High Priority editor passed the essay on to a city writer who decided to investigate my claims. She contacted me, as well as Jen Vowles and her mom, the school board trustees, the public school boards, and the principal of St. Matt’s (who refused to comment, if I recall correctly). The trustees (both women) had no idea this was happening, and apparently none of the schools in either separate board had dispensers.

It was downplayed as an architectural oversight in building design.

Shotgun Was there buy-in, interest and support for your activism?

Salisbury I started off seeking student support before making my case to the administration. I circulated a petition during lunch hours, trying to get a good cross-section of the student population, including boys, from grades 9 to OAC. Underground support came from some teachers too.

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In the end, Salisbury told me, dispensers were installed in the summer of 1992 in all schools in the board district.

Doesn’t the whole issue with tampons and Catholics have more to do with preserving the hymen until lawfully wedded intercourse than “preparedness”? I remember my Catholic mother interrogating me about using tampons when I was younger. “How come you use tampons,” she asked, “when you’re a virgin?” Mom came from a generation and religious upbringing where mothers told daughters their period occurred because of excessive bicycle riding. Go figure.

In addition to the tampon issue Salisbury tackled at St. Matthew’s was the Catholic board’s reluctance to discuss homosexuality. Salisbury had co-facilitated a homophobia component for an area student council leadership training day on issues of racism, sexism and homophobia-to which the Catholic school boards refused to send any delegates.

A bit daft considering that a young man was thrown to his death off Alexandria Bridge for being presumed gay. Salisbury recalled, “Not one word was said by the administration of the school to condemn the act of homophobic violence.”

Like homophobia, silence on important issues may leave you cold, or in a pool of your own blood.

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 31, 2005

You’re being so tough to me
like a leather jacket
I know you’ll have no sissies
No baby you just wouldn’t hack it
gotta be a strong man
to carry the beautiful burden of your love
no sissies get your love
no slackers get your love
no weaklings get your love
no suckers for your love
no actors for your love
no gangsters for your love
– Hawksley Workman, “No Sissies”

If no sissies for a tough woman’s love, then who? Spanning the spectrum of sissies, slackers and weaklings, to suckers, actors and gangsters, sexy and sissy-free Canadian rockeur sensible Hawksley Workman does a great job of identifying all that a smart and sassy-ass woman does not want.

But outside of his descriptions of the rejected, who’s left? I mean, what criteria should intelligent Ottawa girls use to define a real catch and the right match?

Who you’ll find attractive depends entirely on who you are. We’ve all seen the weak chick go for the asshole guy, looking to be validated. The nice guy who pays her attention? She doesn’t want him because he already thinks she’s great – there’s no way to hunt for validation when your worth has already been proven. Where’s the challenge in that? Instead, she puts all her energy into the one who snubs her, striving madly for his thumbs up – as if that will make her complete.

The result: She ends up doing all the work while the dude sits back for the ride. Why the hell should he budge when the ego-stroking comes to him so effortlessly?

A sassy-ass girl with her self-esteem intact will see right away that this guy is a vampire creep and move on. I read somewhere that “a person without energy is naturally ego-centric because he needs to take. He is naturally defensive, because he feels he needs to protect himself. He does not feel safe.” Since when did a couch potato become so popular with the ladies? Or, maybe we’re talking about his close cousin – the mysterious laid-back type who, with his dramatic drags on cigarettes and nonchalance, seems way cooler than the chipper dudes who, tragically, listen to Top 40 radio.

But in defence of the energy-suckers, maybe they’re aloof because they just ain’t into the girl. You might have heard of the book, He’s Just Not That In To You, created by the people behind the television series, Sex and the City. A tonne of women are being freed of their tumultuous relationships by coming to terms with the idea that their man just doesn’t care for them that much. Way better to know this than to stick around, deluding yourself.

“Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen,” I heard someone say, suggesting that if you treat a person like shit, they’ll stick around. Psychologists say this kind of fucked-up scenario generates high chemistry between individuals. The follower is apparently recreating some childhood situation where they were rejected and ignored and they have hopes of repairing it, and for once alleviating the damage and pain experienced long ago.

But in addition to a psychosocial prognosis for why some women flock to blokes who don’t treat them well, is the popular cultural appeal of the tough guy. The tough guy is impenetrable. For some reason, this insularity attracts women who believe they can “get inside.” Eager to please, we’ve seen these women flutter about paying too much attention to how he feels and what he needs. But the sassy-ass girl will long ago have told him to get a grip.

We’ve heard it time and time again: women love assholes. Not all women, but there is undeniably a contingent of women out there who self-identify as such. Maybe they don’t even know they’re going for assholes. They’ll probably tell you that he has an artistic temperament or that years of football have given him a lot of confidence and courage. But what her friends see is a moody narcissist or a thrill-seeking jock who uses women.

Both types exude a toughness that in my experience is misconstrued as strength. The sassy-ass girl sees that a truly strong guy doesn’t need to play mind games or bust heads to be a turn on.

That said, shitdamn, the conventional badass is SO attractive. But this is a girl’s problem, not the guy’s. If a girl desires a life of happiness, joy and laughter, it’s smart to go for the nice guy who gives a shit about those things, too. But why is it SO easy to equate nice with sissy? The nice guy appears too clean-cut, clumsy or nerdy compared to the weathered, worn and wise renegade. The former takes on a girly man character while the latter seems a man’s man.

But like Hawksley Workman, who’s got some girly to his manliness, sassy-ass girls who are tough like leather jackets have a bit of manliness in their girly. These women have got bite and they shouldn’t compromise that beauty by dating a beast. Next to a defiant, contrary and critical man, the nice guy-attentive, open and flexible-works well with this type of girl. He’s a lover not a fighter. He ain’t threatened or jealous. Simply impressed.

What’s so sissy about that?

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 24, 2005

I heard on CBC television the other day about a new experimental therapy for people suffering from severe depression.

It involves embedding a chip in the C25 region of the brain. The chip interacts with electrodes and a pacemaker implanted under the collarbone somehow. With this therapy, a reported four patients out of six noted significant improvements in their mental outlook, a blessing that went on beyond six months. But critics are wondering if this was just a fluke.

Sometimes I like to think I too can dig deep into my brain with a sharp object and help alleviate some depression. Ideally, my invention would involve a stainless steel turkey baster that I would jam through my skull to suck out a part of my grey matter.

Sounds like a lobotomy, but with my technique, upon removing the gouging tool, I would have the extra bonus of a mini tunnel, or portal if you will, from scalp surface to brain into which I could pour some fine Rosemount Shiraz or Barq’s. Sort of like mainlining but my liquid happiness will instead be channelled into the brain rather than the vein.

A far cry from legitimate medical practice, my solution probably won’t take off. But I wouldn’t doubt if in some faraway land during a faraway time something similar to my head-gouging-with-baster idea was the in thing. You’ll have to write in and let me know. The latest deep brain treatment described on CBC, though, dates back to the late 1990s when it was used to treat tremors in people with Parkinson’s disease. It sounds a lot
safer than my version.

But there are a few other things I know for a fact that can help with foul moods and an overwhelming feeling of sadness. I was forced to investigate them when an on-line reader, months back, told me to go take some Prozac. And with another reader telling me recently to “Take a pill and chill, Hill” – which in itself had a therapeutic effect of making me laugh uncontrollably, thank you.

A lot of Shotgun articles have been about some serious issues. So, in case I’ve depressed you all, I’ve come up with a quick-pick list of things to make us all feel a little lighter as we move into our Easter long weekend.

1. The Bee Gees’ Greatest Hits. Whenever I need a really good laugh about heartache I put on this CD. The Bee Gees’ high-pitched voices are a laugh and the ways it inspires you to move your body will be far more embarrassing than the one-night-stand you just had. And if you find yourself obsessing about the girl the week after, toss your worries to the air and laugh at your frivolousness through classic Bee Gees songs like “Jive Talkin’,” “I Started a Joke,” or “Tragedy.” Ah, love. It can suck ass.

2. Plato Not Prozac, by Dr. Lou Marinoff. Salon.com describes Dr. Marinoff as a guitar-playing City College of New York philosophy professor-cum-therapist. His book makes philosophy accessible and shows you how to use it to solve everyday problems. Plato Not Prozac is self-healing therapy that uses a 2,500-year-old tradition in philosophy to solve work, relationship and family issues. Instead of looking at getting fired from a psychoanalytic perspective-i.e., Reg fired me because deep down I wanted to sleep with my mother-step back and reflect on the concept of “change.” This book will help you re-jig your focus and encourage you to deflect some of the heat off yourself and onto the cosmos instead.

3. The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. Here’s another great book. You can get it on tape. It looks at universal archetypes and Greek mythology to explain what it is we’re enduring day-to-day. Campbell describes the journey of the Hero relative to our own life’s stages-growing up, independence, maturity, marriage and kids, retirement, then old age. Hearing about how the Hero has to journey without food or water and suffer incredible odds, beasts and diseases to reach his/her goal should make you feel a little better about having to tackle that term paper.

4. Reinventing Your Life, by Jeffrey E. Young, PhD., and Janet S. Klosko, PhD. This book is about “lifetraps”-shitty little patterns you espoused as a kid to survive the shrapnel that hit as part of growing up. Whether you’re suffering now from an emotional deprivation cycle, dependence or entitlement lifetrap, this book will show you how to extract all that crap from your head and sort it into neat piles. Screw Dr. Phil, Young and Klosko will teach you how to, for once, obliterate the negative forces that are tampering with your happiness today. No crock.

5. Three’s Company. Whether it’s a sexually frustrated Mrs. Roper or the penniless roommate trio of Jack Tripper, Janet and Chrissy you relate to, this feel-good television series that debuted in 1977 will bring you back to a simpler time of brown bellbottom corduroys

– Sylvie Hill

The Ottawa XPress – March 24, 2005

Laurie Elliott (left) and Kristeen von Hagen: the Dickwhipped duo

Whip it real good: Ballsy tales from the woman’s side

Dating and relationships can be hellish-hellishly funny if you live to laugh about it. Digging up scandalous tales from their own dating pasts, Toronto female comics Kristeen von Hagen and Laurie Elliott are getting ready to whip us real good in the nation’s capital. They’ll be bringing their Dickwhipped to Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club, March 31 to April 2.

Expect a gut-wrenching stroll down memory lane about desperate incidents and personal embarrassments that revolve around dating, dumping and all the stuff in between. Far from being a guy-bashing show, “it sort of goes from the angle of ‘guys are stupid and so are women,'” says von Hagen over the phone from Toronto. “We can blame guys, but look at what we’ve done.”

The hour-long comedy feature starts with stories of awkward pick-ups and weird people at bars through to the big relationship. Dickwhipped is about, as Elliott puts it, “the whole pursuit of happiness in a relationship.

“And once you’re in one,” Elliott adds, “women have been very, very dickwhipped and never made fun of for it.”

While men continue to be laughed at for being “pussywhipped,” or domesticated by their girlfriends, von Hagen and Elliott’s show turns the spotlight upon the sisters who are getting sucked in by the whole dating game too.

Von Hagen was already on her journey to being tamed by a boyfriend when friends dubbed her “dickwhipped.” The women appropriated the term and turned the phenomenon into a successful act.

For the show, they “look clean, talk dirty,” as von Hagen puts it. “We look so innocent and cute in our ’50s dresses,” von Hagen says, “and then we just lay it on the line.”

The two actresses hope to make everyone a little looser in the lips by showing it’s OK to be laughing about sex and relationships in public. “Up until this last while, women have not thrown their raw stories of dating and dumping and awkward moments in the bedroom out in the open,” von Hagen says. That becomes a main reason to keep the show moving forward to Dickwhipped Chronicles II sometime over the next year.

Dickwhipped received the Patron’s Pick award when it played to sold-out crowds in July at the 2004 Fringe Festival in Toronto. Von Hagen and Elliott took it to the Vancouver Comedy Festival in October 2004 and are keen to perform to an Ottawa crowd.

“Ottawa’s for comics. It’s one of the best cities to [perform in],” von Hagen says. She compliments the “smarter crowds” in Ottawa, who she hopes will shout out their embarrassing stories for a prize.

DICKWHIPPED
MARCH 31 TO APRIL 2
TICKETS: $6 TO $18
YUK YUK’S, 88 ALBERT STREET
WWW.DICKWHIPPED.COM

– Sylvie Hill

Ottawa XPress – Shotgun – March 17, 2005

I was checking my messages the other day, and I had one new message. It was from the Motorsports Centre in Gatineau saying we have to talk about a broken part on my Ski-Doo. What a relief!
Hey wait … I don’t have a Ski-Doo.

Do you ever get voicemail messages like that? What do you do? Do you call back to let them know that they left their message at the wrong number and now some poor Jean-Guy will be without his recreational vehicle? I usually play Good Samaritan and call them back to tell them they’ve made a dialing error. But now that I’ve got my own column, why not multi-task and kill two birds with one stone? So, Mr. St-Amour, if you’re somewhere out there reading this, call Chris about the Ski-Doo.

When you have one of those Identify-a-Caller functions on your telephone and don’t recognize the name or digits, then it’s likely that a wrong number person is calling. Or worse-telemarketers. Because telemarketing calls usually have a long-distance ring, the number often shows up as “Unknown name, unknown number.” And there begins the dilemma: to pick up or not to pick up. The phone could be ringing with news from a long-lost friend overseas, or just the credit card centre looking to suck in another victim.

It frustrates me to all hell to be jolted awake or pulled away prematurely from la toilette by a long-distance ring knowing it could be a sales call but running to answer it anyway. When I hear the ring, I always fear it’s bad news about my grandmother in Toronto. She’s showing signs of Alzheimer’s and is quite frail at 92 years old. Of course, like Grandma – who is going deaf and doesn’t respond immediately when you say “hello” as you pick up the receiver-with telemarketers there’s often a lag between your greeting and any sign of life on the other end.

Ordinarily, this gap signals a telemarketing call, thanks to their automatic dial technology and voice-activated call set-up. When I hear the silence, it’s my cue to hang up because a computer somewhere out there now knows that someone in Ottawa has picked up and is now telling a sales agent it’s time to sell. But I’m often wrong, and end up hanging up on Gran when I don’t glance at the caller-ID box first.

Come to think of it, telemarketers have a lot in common with Gran. They just don’t hear you, no matter how many times you tell a salesperson “NO,” you’re not interested in buying tickets to this thing, or “NO,” you don’t want a subscription to that newspaper. I’ve heard the easiest solution is to actually interact with the person and request that your name be taken off the list. Easy enough.

Still, I get a bit pissed that telemarketers will call my home not knowing simple things like if there even is a Mr. Hill when they ask to speak to him. This would be quite depressing if one existed but had just left me for another woman. If that were true, I wouldn’t be shy to tell them so, and give them his phone number, too. I used to say, “Mr. Hill got hit by a truck.” I guess I was the only one in my house who thought that was pretty funny.

But telemarketers or people who call your place accidentally aren’t all evil. Bell Canada, for example, does a good job of reminding me it’s time to switch from dial-up to high-speed Internet. When their call interrupts me as I’m enjoying my Coronation Street on TV, knowing they’re persistent, I make no bones about telling them to call me back, and they do!

All in all, if you’re a lonely sod, getting calls from even the wrong people can make your day – or column.

– Sylvie Hill