blogthecat

Branders, shmanders

Some of the work Craig and I do is what’s called branding and positioning: we help clients identify and communicate their most compelling strengths and stories and make a positive impression in the marketplace. It can be neat work, because part of it involves activating the sincere values and beliefs at the core of a company. It's not just a matter of pretty language and graphics. Good brands tap into the personality—and people—of a company.

When we brainstormed our own company website, we definitely wanted to practice what we preach. We wanted a website that conveyed both our professional offerings and a sense of who we are—since our brand is not just about “strategy, marketing, communications” but also Kiley and Craig. For the most part, we’re happy with the result. But for one glaring problem—which we just discovered.

We plopped a quote we thought was pretty cool and representative of our brand up on our homepage:

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
Thomas Edison

In other words, hire us to help you develop your ideas and turn them into real things—don’t waste them.

So far so good on the branding front. Thank you, Thomas Edison.

Craig broke bad news to me tonight at dinner. He was listening to CBC radio today and it came up that Edison’s brilliance came at a cost. Seems he routinely sent bored schoolchildren into the neighbourhood to gather up cats (and dogs) that he would then electrocute in a public square to prove the deadliness of a competitor’s electrical invention.

As you know, I am close to insane in my adoration of cats. Like, there's-going-to-be-something-on-my-tombstone-about-cats kind of adoration. Okay, not that bad, but really close.

So the cat-electrocuting Edison in the place of honour on our homepage? Ungood. Distinctly ungood.

I would fire us.

Time for a new quote.

p.s. Edison didn't stop at cats, as you'll see from the link above.
p.p.s. Did you know about this? Craig's Uncle Wayne sent us an email about it a few months back, but we thought he was just quipping (he's a witty guy) and we didn't look into it. A mistake.

Oasis in a busy day

Ricocheting between errands yesterday, Craig and I fell into a convenience store on Broadway to grab some sustenance, yammering inanely as we so often do. Our thoughts were on our various missions involving setting up the baby’s room (okay, alcove) in some fashion befitting his infant self. Soon, we would be braving the “soul-destroying” (Craig) IKEA experience, and we were already a little hysterical at the prospect.

I loaded our purchases onto the countertop, hardly looking at the man who was serving us, so distracted was I at the time. Gum, juice, and a Cadbury Thins chocolate bar. I was already beginning to turn toward the exit when the storekeeper spoke. He was East Asian and very calm and poised. He looked me in the eyes, then quietly but clearly said, “I wish you good luck. God bless.” Then he glanced down for the briefest second at my tummy, which is now proudly announcing the imminent being within.

I am not religious, but I felt blessed. The man was reverential, polite, and honest. He halted me in my tracks, both physically and in my mind. I looked up at Craig, whose eyes had gone as soft as mine, and … let’s just say we had a moment.

The kindness of strangers. It can be transformative.

When darkness falls

Most people lucky enough to have spent time in Africa have made their way to one of its most beautiful countries, Kenya. My family used to vacation there when we lived in southern Africa in the 1970s, and though my memories of those trips are now soft around the edges, my heart still feels Kenya.

It feels it in colour (golden, accented by anything bright), music (my brother dancing like a madman to the beat of a local band, The Daffodils, whose The Lion Sleeps Tonight—uyimbuwe, uyimbuwe—was better than any version I’ve ever heard), taste (fresh-caught scampi sizzling in garlic butter), and smell (the Indian Ocean off Malindi, where I nearly touched one of the most dangerous fish in the world, the stonefish, in a shallow coral pool). But it feels it in a less tangible sense as well: I remember Kenya as safe, happy, and warm.

Without much doubt, this deeper imprint of Kenya is at least partly due to these trips being times in which my family felt particularly good to me. I associate Kenya with relaxation and tranquility on a personal level. So in expressing my sadness at the news that a jagged gash of violence and hatred has ripped through Kenya, I won’t say “isn’t that awful—it was so idyllic at one time.” It couldn’t be idyllic, given its post-colonial legacy of roughly 40 ethnic groups and more than half the population in extreme poverty.

And yet … and yet to me and to everyone I’ve ever talked to who has gone to Kenya, the country has steadfastly symbolized hope, despite the odds. It isn’t just me who is shocked by the chaos that has overtaken the country—Kenyans themselves are incredulous.

Stephanie Nolen, the Globe and Mail’s insightful and frighteningly brave African correspondent, had a piece in the paper last Saturday (“Into the Valley of Death") in which she described her harrowing road trip through the country to try to discover the root of the madness. On this trip, which included a stop at her driver’s burned-down house complete with the corpses of a mother and baby, Nolen can’t find one person who can tell her why the violence erupted. It seems to be some infernal combination of a contested election, desperation for economic reforms, and latent ethnic tensions. Nolen concludes the piece by asking her travelling companions, both Kenyan, if anything they saw on the trip surprised them. One responded, “with bitter wonderment in his voice.” His answer: “That this is Kenya, and you cannot move from place to place. That there is no control. That people are killing just like anything.”

Of course, one outcome of this tragedy is that it will reiterate the image of Africa as a savage and hopeless continent to the rest of the world. Play a word association game with Africa as the original word—an honest game—and you will get something like drought, AIDS, machetes, famine, and corruption. The words come fast and heavy. I know. But I also know that they must be contested. They must be balanced with other ideas, even when these ideas seem elusive. Because Africa is not just dark. And so I leave you—leave me—with this gorgeous picture of Africa—Malawi to be exact—that my friend Francesca’s husband, Chris, took about a year ago. (Chris is not only a fantastic photographer, he is an AIDS doctor and researcher; he and Francesca are currently living in Malawi). This is Africa, too.

Movie shorthand

One of the most important things when writing a film script, I’ve read, is to show rather than tell. In other words, don’t waste the script on explaining the actors’ feelings or motivations or the development of the narrative—make the actors’ expressions and body language, the setting, and the action express the film’s interior, emotional movement. I’ve been thinking about a scene in the almost universally lauded Juno that does a fantastic job at this. The mechanism? Dogs.

(If you haven't seen Juno yet, stop reading and go see it!)

It’s the end sequence, when Juno’s on her way to play guitar with Bleeker. She passes her step-mom, Bren (played by Allison Janney), who is canoodling ecstatically with two Weimaraner dogs. The beauty of this is that earlier in the film, in one of my favourite exchanges, Bren angrily tells Juno over a copy of Dog Fancy that when Juno moves out, she’s getting two Weimaraners (Bren believes Juno is allergic to dogs’ saliva). This prompts one of Juno’s best zingers: “Whoa! Dream big!” Funny, yes, but at the same time there’s no mistaking the darker truth that at this point in the film, Bren and Juno’s relationship is fragile and sometimes tense. That Bren has the Weimaraners in the last scene tells us in a split second how far she and Juno have come over the course of the pregnancy; so far that Juno has clearly confessed that she never even had an allergy. It’s all done in a campy but sweet way that culminates with Juno and Bleeker singing a corny duet together in front of his house with their guitars—a cute alternative to an earnest kiss or other convenient wrap up.

The Weimaraners at the end make me think of all the things I loved about Juno other than Ellen Page. As indisputably good as Page is, I think there are a lot of other bits of magic about Juno that are getting ignored in the stampede to crown her the next big thing in Hollywood. Ergo, the other superb performances in Juno:

1. Jason Bateman as Mark, the confused man-child who seems cool when we first meet him but whose dangerous weakness gradually surfaces with every subsequent scene. He does funny, creepy, and lost in the span of the film, seemingly effortlessly.
2. Jennifer Garner as Vanessa, Mark’s infertile wife whose clenched-jaw control is so off-putting for the first half of the film. Like Bateman, Garner exhibits remarkable patience in performing her character’s evolution, in this case into a vulnerable and beautiful woman who’s terrified of feeling too much, but desperate to do just that. A daring and excellent choice for Garner, who’s often treacley sweet.
3. Olivia Thilby as Leah, Juno’s best friend. Thilby adds a needed dose of normal teenaged goofiness and immaturity to the film. Juno’s wise-beyond-her-years, sardonic take on things threatens to cross over into the realm of the unbelievable at times; Leah serves as a nice grounder.
4. Micheal Cera as Paulie Bleeker, the knocker-upper. Cera’s mild, restrained performance underlines his confidence as an actor. He’s secure enough to let the story inform him rather than the other way around. Amazing for a guy this young.
5. J. K. Simmons, Juno’s dad, who is both sensitive and oblivious. I won’t soon forget Simmons’s silly smile when he reflects on his (mistaken) assumption that Juno is referring to him when she says she thinks she’s already met someone special (she’s thinking romantically, unbeknownst to him).
6. Finally, the fabulous Allison Janney playing Bren, she of the Weimaraner fixation. Janney keeps up just fine with Page in delivering screenwriter Diablo Cody’s hopped-up dialogue, and adds depth to a character that could have been a caricature in other hands.

Lots to think about with Juno, some of it not so good (esp. the ultrasound scene with egregious casting of a non-white woman as the insensitive technician and the script’s occasional teetering on the brink of glibness), but so much of it so, so good. Good enough that I’d name it my favourite film of 2007, followed closely by The Lives of Others, Waitress, and Ratatouille.

The real thing

Back in September, I posted about a PETA ad I found distinctly unsexy because of its earnest and clichéd tactics. More recently, I stumbled upon the opposite—dead sexy—only feet away from me.

It was in December, at the height of Christmas shopping madness. Craig and I had nipped into a restaurant around the corner from us for a quick bite. The main dining area was packed, so we had settled for a spot in the lounge. As we munched on calamari, an attractive couple walked in and made their way to the bar just in front of us. The man, who had distinguished salt-and-pepper hair and a fit, lean build, helped his female companion off with her coat, revealing her stunning cream-coloured crochet dress that hung just so—not too tight, not too loose. The woman had a lovely body, yes, but it was how she wore the dress—confidently but without too much thought, without any self-aware movements that would have belied her comfort.

They sat down and ordered drinks. She turned on her stool to face him, so that her legs nestled up against his under the bar. The drinks came. She took a long, indulgent sip, then began telling him a story or some important news, I imagined, because she looked quite serious and kept up a steady monologue. As she spoke, he listened intently, nodding sometimes, with his hand grazing her leg. Sometimes the hand remained still, sometimes it stroked her knee gently—not insistently, not with ulterior motives, but responsively and lovingly. In no way did his hand distract her. If anything, it encouraged her to keep talking. The man seemed unconscious of his gesture. It looked like something he was used to doing, something instinctual summoned by his being with her.

When we were finished our meal and walking toward the door to leave, I was unable to resist pausing briefly at the bar to tell the woman how much I loved her dress, and how great it looked on her. She thanked me happily, but it was her companion who really beamed. Not in a yep-that’s-my-trophy-wife, cock-of-the-walk kind of way, but with an expression of genuine delight that someone else had thought to compliment this beautiful woman.

Now, that’s sexy.

Bringing up baby

A couple of months ago, Craig and I found out that the science experiment currently underway in my belly will eventually be a little boy. Now, despite the fact that it could have gone only one of two ways—girl or boy—I have to say we were slightly surprised. Turns out my idea of “baby” was essentially a caricature: think cuddly, cooing, pink-swaddled, and with soft tufts of hair just aching to be gently combed into adorable ornaments.

Pathetic, yes, but true nonetheless.

Of course, it didn’t take long to adjust my vision. A lot less pink, a little less hair, and a need for me to brush up on my understanding of outer space, superheroes, Star Wars, and (gasp!) trucks and trains. I figure that not every one of these stereotypes will turn up in little dude (aka the LD), but that if I prepare for all of them, I’ll stand a fighting chance of keeping up and not being a drip of a mom.

Plus, I secretly know, just know, that the LD will be a voracious reader and nature-lover, and be uncommonly mellow for one of his gender. He might even let me grow his hair a little long and allow the odd accent of pink into his dapper wee wardrobe. We will sing songs together and play sweetly with Lego, with all his stuffed animals looking on beatifically.

And he will not be beaten black and blue in the schoolyard.

I cling to these things.

So it was with horror that I read Kate Fillion’s January 9 article in Macleans, How to Fix Boys. In it, she interviews child development expert Leonard Sax, who asserts the following:

• The brain of the five-year-old boy—in terms of maturity, particularly in the language area—is at about the same place as the brain of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl.
• There are huge differences in the ability of the average six-year-old girl and boy to sit still and be quiet.
• Boys develop a notion in kindergarten that doing what the teacher wants and being good is unmasculine.
• You should never ask a five-year-old, especially not a boy, to sit down and stay quiet.
• Boys often find school so prohibitive to their natural impulses that they vent by spending hours sitting in front of their video-game consoles, banging away on the game controller.
• Online pornography has displaced the pursuit of real girls for a significant number of boys.

OH MY GOD! I don’t know how else to put it. Anyone know of a good home schooling link?

Love affair

Time and again, I find it’s the tiniest things that make life worth living. I’ve just torn myself away from a mid-day love fix from Franny, my deeply weird and wonderful cat.

Franny and I found each other seven years ago in Brooklyn. Walking home along a busy main street, I came across a man with a rickety cardboard box at his feet. Three little grey cats hunkered down inside; two were just-born babies, and one was a delicate, shivering mother, stunted in her growth from having gotten pregnant when she was just a kitten herself. I picked the mother up. She buried her head in my shoulder, hiding in my hair. Knowing her babies would find homes more easily than she would, I brought Franny home. She was basically feral.

Even now, Franny is not an easy ticket. Skittish would be a kind description. She flirts with Craig when he has food in his hands, but otherwise, Franny’s limited her sights to me. Even with me, she’s got rules: I can approach her only under certain conditions; she can be brushed only on a certain rug; and though herding me to bed to snuggle is her day’s central pursuit, she will lie only on my left side with her back to me in a tight spoon.

In this position, I stroke her and whisper nonsense into the fur between her ears, all for the reward of her tilting her head back to look at me adoringly through half-closed eyes. Occasionally she’ll push that little head up to my mouth for a kiss, and when I’m incredibly good she will bestow a few licks to my fingers for positive reinforcement. And she will purr … the most relaxing, contented purr, a purr that resonates through me and soothes my every nerve.

This is enough. This is more than enough. But today, I got more. For whatever reason, when I lay down today for a quick rest and read, Fran hopped up on the bed and walked onto me. She looked directly and meaningfully into my eyes (a very rare thing for her to do, face-to-face) and then nudged herself into the crack between my arm and my body. And turned into me. The reverse-spoon! She propped her downy paws up on my chest, and purred herself to the point of sleep. Groggily, she sighed and lowered her head onto my neck. Little snores rumbled out soon after, and I put my book down, too thrilled to concentrate.

For seven years, Fran has been opening up to me, bit by bit. Her trust is hard won, but when she gives it, I feel like the luckiest person on earth.

December pep talk

It can be a bugger to get much work done at this time of year. Christmas, in our society, is not one day but a month, when you take into account all the travel arrangements, gift choosing and buying, parties, cooking, and general chaos and mayhem. If you’re self-employed, as I am, December can paradoxically be the month in which we spend the most money and make the least.

Which is why I’m turning to a book I got a few months ago on the recommendation of my friend, Kathy: The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. I’m generally suspicious of self-help books, but this one defies my cynicism and really delivers when you’re having trouble jumpstarting your creative or productive forces—when you’re giving in to procrastination and self-defeating sluggishness. Esquire calls it “a vital gem … a kick in the ass.”

In case you feel like a kick in the ass is precisely what you need on this Monday two mere weeks before the 25th, as I do, I am sharing with you an excerpt from the book espousing the benefits of self-discipline. This excerpt, like many in The War of Art, underlines the truth that our best work doesn’t get done until some work gets done, a lesson I need pounded into my noggin on a regular basis.

“Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. ‘I write only when inspiration strikes,’ he replied. ‘Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.’

That’s a pro.

In terms of Resistance [the self-sabotaging force Pressfield says must be beaten down at every turn to accomplish anything], Maugham was saying “I despise Resistance; I will not let it faze me; I will sit down and do my work.’

Maugham reckoned another, deeper truth: that by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his.

He knew if he built it, she would come.”

It’s so easy to get impatient with slow, menial tasks, yet they are the very ones that set the stage for something greater. So off I go to stare down Monday and imagine there’s glue on my desk chair.

An end to the dominion of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?

It was with great delight that I read a few weeks ago of a group that's started to defend the rights of "owls"—people who can't string two thoughts together before noon but who ramp right up when "larks" are petering out for the day. Larks, aka early risers, have always enjoyed the general social consensus that "early bird gets the worm," while owls get tarred with the notion that we are lazy and maladjusted. But now we have B-Society, which is agitating for our equal rights with those annoying crack-of-dawn keeners.

I guess it’s apparent that I’m a hard-core owl—have been since I was a child. The most common way for me to fall asleep at night is with my reading light blazing in my face. I get fidgety when Craig casts us into darkness when he’s ready to drop off (which usually takes him two maddening seconds, even when I’m yammering into his ear with all my finally fully formed ideas). When the sun comes streaming through our skylight and side window in the morning, I hit my optimum sleep zone—that delicious, groggy period where everything is slow and dulled, muscles are heavy and seemingly resistant to anything but sinking into an even more comfortable position, and waking life seems like a TV show I can watch later on at my leisure.

So I am thrilled to see B-Society working so hard for my cause. The group bases its argument on science (it claims owls have a different circadian rhythm than larks) and the idea that it’s dumb to organize entire populations according to a schedule designed for the Industrial Revolution given we’re now in a fluid, globalized, many-time-zoned economic order.

• Do you love quiet mornings and active evenings?
• Do you feel life is too short for traffic jams?
• Are you at your most productive after 10 a.m.?

Then according to the website, you might be a B-Person (the group claims 10–15% of the population is).

There may be hope for us yet!

Stimulating the senses

In my early twenties, I was a waitress at a fabulous bistro called Café Mika in Ottawa. I learned so many things at Mika: how to drag toothpicks through sugary glazes to make hearts; how to savour a bottle of high-end fumé blanc on which you’ve spent an entire night’s tips; how to harmonize Asian and western flavours into a fusion masterpiece; and how to make customers feel so special they won't only come back, they''ll tell a half-dozen other people about their experience.

Perhaps my favourite lesson at Mika was the art of writing food. Specifically, I was often charged with writing out the daily specials in cursive, as quickly as I could but not so fast that my script would lose form or elegance. Jude, Mika’s owner and chef extraordinaire, taught me how to compose mouth-watering menu descriptions. You knew you had hit it right when your stomach would grumble before you were finished writing.

There was no sitting around for the ingredients we listed: they had jobs to do, albeit pleasant ones. Tiger shrimp “nestled” into a heavenly sauce; filet mignon “basked” in an exotic reduction; and cilantro “mingled” with carrots and ginger. Just as important were adjectives: “crisped,” “smoked,” “seared,” ‘spiced,” “chipped,” “glazed” … The descriptions were specific and visual, with gorgeous syntax that foreshadowed how seriously the kitchen took the food they were about to prepare for you. At the same time, Jude taught me not to be pretentious—to let the words play with each other, just as the food would in the dishes she conjured up.

I’ve never come across a better menu writer than Jude, but the other night, I ate at a cute restaurant, Nyala (African), whose menu reminded me of how much fun I used to have writing food at Mika. Nyala’s menu—which is very silly—made me and my companions giggle, and had the effect of warming us up to the experience from the get-go. The staff kindly gave me a menu to take home when we left, so I’m going to excerpt a couple of the most charming entries.

Yeshimbera asa
Chickpea flour cakes awaken in a berbere sauce flavoured with onion, garlic and ginger leaving you breathless maybe, speechless possible, satisfied for certain.

Pinch me—PRAWNS?
Okay, you twisted our arms, let us now take this dish to the absolute limits of the universe bound only by the heavens and the size of your plate … piri-piri sauce will sing and tender prawns will dance to create this hypnotic moment in time.

Tofu stew
Tender morsels of tofu dress up in costumes of red pepper sauce, ginger, cardamom and garlic before coming to life on the stage we call your table.

You can't be in a bad mood after you've read Nyala's menu. By contrast, I'm often left unmoved and undecided when I read so many other restaurants' menus that rely to boring effect on the word “with” (e.g., salmon with red pepper vinaigrette, curry with lentils and cheese, etc., etc.). Why shortchange your kitchen with dreary writing? Menus can be powerful teasers that put your customers in the right frame of mind to enjoy your restaurant.

We had a wonderful time at Nyala: the food is great and our server was incredible … warm, attentive, happy to help us choose, and knowledgeable.

Nyala also provided me with memories of Mika, a place—or rather an experience—that will resonate with me my whole life. There’s just no telling where magic will turn up, but when it does, you know it’s there. Mika was magic.