I'm addicted to NPR's pop culture blog Monkey See -- largely because it's edited (and mostly written) by Linda Holmes, who was Miss Alli on TWOP for years and years. Today she did a blurb on non-annoying holiday ads, most of which I only know from hearing Americans talk about them.

The Peter one, particularly. MUCH of US culture crosses the border -- but these weird areas (Some TV, pre-2005, everything on MTV) don't make the jump. This got me thinking about how these ads that have haunted my Christmas season my whole life -- even if they are long gone -- are just not experienced outside Canada. No one else but a Canadian associates Bea Arthur with Mrs. Claus (or knows that Mrs. Claus wears feather boas and loves drugstore products). Only Canadians have the words "give like Santa, save like Scrooge" tattooed on the inside of their brains. And that damn Bell Canada ad -- "They say perfume speaks volumes, but have you ever heard a peep out of a bottle of perfume? Has a tie ever asked you how you were? Have a pair of slippers ever told you how much they miss you?"

I generally like my holiday ads to be caustic and feature elves -- like the one for Polariod a few years ago where Santa, defeated by the complexity of the toys children were asking for, was urged to "Horse 'em!" by a VERY hostile elf clutching a wooden rocking horse.

I really hope that one wasn't ours, because it deserves to be seen far and wide. (Polaroid, so its a good chance it was, I figure).

The *worst* holiday ad I've ever seen is very MUCH ours, though -- not just Canadian, but just for Ontario. The LCBO (read: the people who sell us wine and spirits) did an ad a few years ago that only ran in movie theatres, that featured an old man and his wife -- and the old man was all melancholy because none of his kids were around, and he was sighing and looking sad, and then finally tells his wife he's going up to bed (wife: smiles secretly) -- this is intercut with a group of young adults whispering and giggling to each other as they pull their presents out of a car... And it is LATE at night. The street is deserted, the houses are dark. The old man, he climbs his staircase, and then the doorbell rings. He lifts his head, hope in his eyes -- cut to 'Happy Holidays from the LCBO'.

We even had discussions about it after the movie "So his kids are assholes?" "And his wife! What is with the wife?" "What does this have to do with the LCBO? Is he an alcoholic? Who alienated his kids?" "Seriously, I don't get it."

The best I can figure is they were going for some sort of "It's the holidays. Drink heavily" message.

Dreamylyfe

Yay?

Mostly Yay, because, courtesy of ultraviolet , I have seen his first scene!

(They are really promoting this, huh?  No lying back, hoping people just idly drop by for him.  My inner Spencer fan feels slightly smug.  My inner Cassadine fan feels slightly put out). 

Anyway, because I need to make fun of the things I love...

( Cut to make fun of things I love )
So.  In other news... I've been toying around with an idea... that involves my posting fanfic again.  And starting today.  I'm not brave enough (WEIRDLY SELF CONSCIOUS, in fact, which has never happened before.  Err... That I remember.  But then, GH fanfic is dead and all, so... ) to leap in with what I had originally planned, so... Bit of a blast from the past, both here and on SZ. 

( For the love of God, LJ Cut, please work...  )

I have surrendered to my fate and started trying to familiarize myself with PC2009. I admit, it was not easy at first. The first clip I watched was Nikolas & Liz being idiots some time in April. First of all – I know this is unfair and shallow, but it took me some time to once again adjust to the physical appearance of Tyler Christopher. I’m sorry, but that’s just where I’m at. Also, Nik & Liz were being particularly cheesy, so I had to keep pausing and taking deep breaths.

After that admittedly painful entry, however, things got markedly better. In fact, I found myself… entertained.  That said, remember the last time I laid eyes on that characters.

So. Some early impressions.

** I kinda love that Liz is such a lush.  There’s a clip of her whining at Nikolas because he’s not going about the tequila shots correctly (because… he has no short term memory?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I think, much like the rolled-up-pant-leg of days gone by, this is all about having Nikolas watch Liz suck a lime.)

And if Liz is a lush, I don’t know what to call Nikolas because he was drunk or on the way to getting drunk in easily half the scenes I watched.

**  It would figure that Emily, the character I hate more than all others, is the only character in soap history to be well and truly mourned for more than ten minutes.

**  Nikolas is apparently going all Cassadine is just sorta disinterested in it.  People say “you’re acting all cold and Cassadine” and he’s all “Whatever.  Vodka?”

** And by “All Cold and Cassadine”, we do seem to mean a really sarcastic Stefan.   Really sarcastic, drunk Stefan.  I’d add slutty, but Nikolas has always been slutty. 

** Liz’s son is named Jake.  After the place where everyone goes to get drunk and fall into bed with random people and then conceive kids … like Jake.  I’m assured he’s not actually named AFTER Jakes, but… That is awesome! 

** I cannot believe that Emily is dead, and yet that actress is still on the show.  That is just so cruel. 

** Lucky, God love him, I just can’t hate someone that dumb.  And, yes, I got the Embrace the Hate award for him that one year, but it was work, because he’s not so much annoying as STUPID.  Of course, the fact that he’s stupid is totally offensive to me, but … that’s an intellectual reaction more than anything else.  My emotional reaction is more like “Oh, Lucky.  Please stop making decisions.  They are always terrible.” 

** Speaking of which, I see that GH is no less contrived, because NO ONE ALIVE pulls their two kids out of a kiddie pool at a BBQ to go pick up something at the store.  “Sure, Dad.  Enough playing and roughhousing with my quai-cousin!  Let’s go sit in the hot car, go to the supermarket, and buy groceries for mom!  Also, I’m sure that will give her the perfect opportunity to start making out with your super-depressed and uber-needy brother.” 

Also, how much do I love the random detail that Nikolas brought his son to a pool party without a suit?  But remembered the chips and salsa?  Oh my God, my stomach.

Alright, I absolutely loved the Nikolas scenes I watched, more than I can possibly describe.  I don’t know if it is because I no longer have any emotional involvement with the show, but … I love super-depressed, uber-needy, watched-too-much-Vertigo, doing-the-kind-of-creepy-ass-things-his-funkle-used-to-do, drinking-way-too-much Nikolas.  He cracks me up.  I was fully expecting to loathe Nik, but he’s just too funny.  He is just turning out to be so bad at being human. 

It is important to note that I never need any character I enjoy to actually be a worthwhile human being.  I often prefer it when they are not.  Also:  No Pirates.  Thank God.  I also appreciate the glimmer of self-awareness.  Like noting, after having a nightmare about Rebecca & Emily, that, having distained the obsessions of the men in his family, he is totally right where they were.  

Eventually I moved on to other non-Spencer/Cassadine characters (ok, sorta – among them were Alexis and Kristina.  Who is … what?  SIXTEEN?  Shut up, GH!), Claudia (Brain cannot handle this.  At all.), Michael (speaking of which, when did Redrum turn a) blonde and b) into a teenager?) and this Olivia chick.  There are a whack of people I do not know, but I’m sure they… totally don’t matter. 


Alright.  So ALL OF THAT SAID -- What works for me about Niz is pretty reliant on the fact that they're not really in love -- just being wildly destructive together.  If that changes -- and let's face it, it probably will, if only on Nikolas's part -- then I will turn on them like the faithless soap hussy that I am.   However... there are worse storylines for JJ to stroll back into.

By far. 

I tried yesterday to post -- I did -- but I could not get my browser to let me post in the little posting box.  

I'm easily defeated.

ANYWAY -- Last night was Nuit Blanche, which might be my absolute favourite event of the year.  (Also, I love that article I linked, because last night I said to my sister "Look!  The tower is celebrating!" and she argued that it always looked that way, but I was pretty sure there were more lights, doing more things.  And apparently, I was right.)  I love Nuit Blanche for a few reasons, but mostly it's this:  You get to wander around your city, sometimes finding things you didn't know existed, and encounter all these experiences on the way.  And the art installations are, largley, experiences.  I mean, sometimes you come across something like that Canadian Tire sign just having a big ass picture on it -- but mostly, these pieces are more deeply engrossing than that.

So!  Highlights!

Best Discovery of New Place:  The Old City Hall Sallyport.  I had no idea that was there -- and the installation was just lighting up an existing stain glass window and playing an evocative soundscape.  Simple, but fascinating

Creepiest Installation:  The "four letter word" installation on the current city hall -- when we went by the first time, the word -- which was hung between the two office towers, over top the infamous "spaceship" centre building, just said "FATE".  There was very creepy "the aliens have landed" music playing, so we moved on.

Strangest Fellow Viewer:  By a mile, the guy at the Ghost Chorus, who was examining the "ghost" standing in front of him as if he was not a real person.  He was commenting, in particular, on how the ghosts "glowed" and pointing long the folds of the sheet the guy was wearing.  All night, my sister and I continued pointing to each other and making random observations. 

Biggest "Who Came Up With This?" Moment:  By far, the blindfolded cage wrestling at the Bus Station.  Made all the more awesome by the fact that there were people there who were honestly just trying to catch a bus.  

Most Engrossing Piece:  C. and I got completely sucked in by a piece of tape that showed an early morning in Toronto -- starting out with a plastic cup lying next to a pool of stagnant water, panning up to a back alley, and then over to a guy reading in his car as a Go Train flies by.  The whole thing was being run in reverse, but you don't realize it until a cloud of dust suddenly comes together and reveals a pick up truck.  We watched it at least three times, and then started showing other people all the little things to see in it.  "Look, down there are the bugs... and then the wind starts here, because the little plant starts to move... and then... Look!  Look how slowly the car is moving.  That's because it's actually going backwards." -- EVERYONE loved the dust cloud thing.  We all got ridiculously excited about it.

That was actually just one of many video pieces at Hart House.  I loved them deeply, mostly because they all contained narratives, but you really had to pay attention to pick out all the details.  Very rewarding stuff.

Most random perk:  The crowded streets.  There are not this many people out at noon on a weekday -- and while the crowds WILL get you down (particularly after midnight, when much of the crowd is drunk college students) after awhile, they also make it feel pretty safe to explore the corners of your city at night, which is cool.  Also, when we were on the double-decker shuttle between City Hall and The Distillery District, the insane antics of the people on the roof of the bus made watching the pedestrian reactions into a show in and of itself.  They were INSANELY excited, as if you can't see these buses every single day in the city during the summer.  

Best Life Imitates Art Moment:  About five minutes from my house, at around 2 am, C. and I sat down and watched the antics of some random people on Gould Street.  It started with a manhole that was spewing steam into the cool night air.  (person walking by on cell phone:  "There's a man hole -- not like a gay porno, but like a man hole, in the street, and it's spewing SMOKE, just like in a movie about New York!")   A whole series of Ryerson students went and stood over the grate, while their friends took their pictures.  C. and I were very distracted by how much they must smell after that.  Finally, a guy in a long wool coat came by, took a picture of the grate itself, and then, as he passed us, said "Standing over steaming sulphur.  Brilliant idea."  

C. and I found this hysterically funny.  It was partly the fact that we'd been saying something similar, partly his tone, but mostly?  It was the way he swept by in his long wool coat, tossing his scarf over his shoulder.

While all this was going on across the street, someone on our side of the street had picked up a large road pylon, and put it over her entire upper body.  She danced around for awhile, very excited about this turn of events.  After awhile, though, her revelry seemed to fade, and right about that time, two guys walked past us singing/chanting The Ting Tings "That's Not My Name".  As they reached Pylon Girl, one carefully moved around her, but the other Ting Ting Guy walked right up to her, wrapped his arms around the pylon, and gave her a hug.  They chatted for at least 15 minutes, new friends, and then he helped her take the pylon off her head. 
 

No word as to how.  It's not even registered in Bella's memory.  

Because what Bruce Willis gets up to in Die Hard?  Totally for real.  You could do that, as long as you have the testosterone.

Anyway, that stuff -- that whining? -- it's really fallen by the wayside in a lot of ways, and we truly do live in the post-Buffy universe now...  but Kara Thrace?  

 

Anyway, being sick, I'm both listless and bored -- so I've been doing a lot of lying around consuming questionable entertainment. 

(Ok, and watching the news.  People are seriously making a big deal out of the word-flip at the inauguration?  Seriously? )

However, there's something about my current mindset that has rendered me incapable of sitting through Oprah, and I've long since lost my ability to watch daytime soaps, so when Gowdie told me about this nature documentary called "Swarm!" that was narrated by David Tennant, I thought "Hey, why not".

I'll tell you why not:  when you are sick, and having those weird fever dreams, you do not need images of bugs swarming in your head -- let alone mice.  The mice!  The mice were unbelievable.  They were like the elevator-of-blood scene in The Shining, only... They're mice.

Do not want. 

This, probably more than anything else, led to my devoting some serious downtime to The Sims today, and I finally got River & River going again.  (I'd veered off into Caprica territory, and even brought Trick out of the sim bin and let him start a family, and let me tell you -- River and River's children are not only plentiful, but gorgeous, and the rest of the Whedons?  Horsey.  All of 'em.  I blame Xander.)

So, after a bit of time growing up some teens, and moving them out, I just got River & River to their hoped for "Ten Kids" tonight.  Thus, I give you:  

( Kids! Kids everywhere! )

Oh my GOD, I get to ten kids, and finally that want spins off of River and he gets... a want for TWENTY FREAKING GRANDCHILDREN.

Which is... actually totally doable.  But I can't help but think... "SWARM".  

I'm going to have to get those other families breeding or this town will be more insanely interconnected than Salem. 
 

Here's hoping I'm still fever-free (it appears to have broken) and not hallucinating by the time 11:30 rolls around.
 

Nevertheless -- don't they make train switches that don't fail every time the temperature drops?  Yet another reason to avoid moving to the 'burbs -- never having to rely on the Go Train.

Dave mews.  I bend down and blow lightly in his face.  He mews again.  I make kissing sounds.  He -- I swear to God -- smacks me across the face with his left paw.

I let out a gasp, draw back, and bring my hand up -- which he also bats with his hand, so I indulge him in a couple of seconds of cat-on-human boxing.  Then I walk away.
 

When I come back -- with my collection of gift bags -- Dave has gotten down off the table, and ventured into the BIG gift bag, where he has set up camp and will not be moved.  For anything.  

Except, possibly, dinner.  Which I am going to try now.

(BTW, Being Erica was also good, this week -- but I am weirded out that she a) lives on my old street and b) went to UofT, and spent half the episode wandering along the path behind the law school)
 

Corner Gas, which I have caught here and there, is MILES funnier than pretty much every sitcom we've ever produced -- but that show is a) over and b) not totally my kind of sit-com in the first place.  I've thought, a few times over the past few years, how I don't really watch *any* Canadian TV these days.  There was a time when Traders was my favourite TV show, period -- and in high school, I adored The Kids in the Hall -- but it's been years now since I've had a TV appointment with TV we've actually made here.

And now, I have found Being Erica.  This is a CBC show about a woman in her 30s who feels like a complete failure, and meets (after losing her job, getting dumped and ending up in the hospital all in one day) a guy who claims to be a therapist who will help her change her life.  Turns out his unique brand of therapy is to have her make a list of things she's done that she regrets, and then sending her back in time to relive those experiences.

Yeah.  

I'ts... um... free on iTunes right now (the premiere, at least), and... I kinda love it.  In the first episode she goes back to 1992 (which, yes, is when I was in high school, too), and it's pretty well done.  Not only the emotional points, her shock, all that stuff -- but also the very subtle things (like a radio announcer saying "Good morning, Blue Jays fans" -- which you would totally say in 1992), the clothes (she's dressed like Brenda from 90210) and the music (Jesus Jones!  Toad the Wet Sprocket!  The Fully Completely poster on her wall!) -- and she owns an epilady. 
 

Do they still make epilady? 

It also makes Toronto look both gorgeous and ... totally like Toronto.  They somehow found a way to make Yonge & Dundas square look cool. 

Aaaand it's on tonight at 9.  Right after How I Met Your Mother.  So, if you are Canadian, and you have -- like me -- given up on Heroes, I recommend it.
 

If you think your heart can take it -- because *man*, it's a little bit TOO relatable for me right now.

I went to see J.C.V.D with my Dad tonight.  This, if you haven't heard about it, is the film where Jean-Claude Van Damme plays himself as a washed-up action star, in the midst of sizable personal problems, who ... 

Yeah, that's about all I want to say about the plot.  I also want to say that I loved it, loved him in it, and continually could not wrap my mind around the fact that this was that guy from the mid-90s who was somewhere between Segal and Schwarzenegger -- a guy I tend not to recall the extistence of unless his Friends episode (the Friends episode I most abhor) turns up in reruns.

(Which, incidentally,  it does all the time.  My apartment has free satellite.  Friends is on, somewhere, at least 12 of the 24 hours of programmable TV.  The chances that one of these episodes is either the Van Damme episode or the one where Ross cheats on Rachel is incredibly high).  

I went and checked IMDB when I got home, and found that, actually, that lone Friends episode is the only Van Damme I've ever seen, apart from the second half of Time Cop, when it was on TV a decade or so ago. 

So, yeah.  If you're looking to see a movie about being a washed up muscle-guy and you have a low tolerance for blood -- go for J.C.V.D. over The Wrestler.  They're not totally dealing with the same thing, but they sure have a hell of a lot in common, and J.C.V.D is way less stomach-churning, and ... actually, for six becoming-infamous minutes, way more touching.  There are a lot of moments in The Wrestler that made me ache, but it's hard to touch the to-the-camera monologue that Jean-Claude performs in the middle of the movie.  

Also, way more slags on John Woo, which is strangely fun, if only for the line "he's still be in Hong Kong shooting pigeons without him!".

I'm enough of a film geek to find that absolutely hilarious.