blogthecat

Cat wakeup call

My friend Sarah found this on YouTube, and I cannot help but share it despite my post only yesterday about things of a cattish nature. I am still clutching my stomach and broken ribs from laughing.

Attribution for the video: Simon Tofield, whose stuff can be seen at Tandem Films (click "Directors" then "Simon Tofield").

One of my favourite things about the video is the cat's voice: it's not the typical, overused, grating meow, but more of a calm, persistent meow that is quite sure of the outcome.

Thanks for this, Sarah!

The power of the underdog

“There is no excellent beauty that has not some strangeness in the proportion.”

—Francis Bacon

Bacon’s assertion is spare, eloquent, and bang-on. I saw proof of his claim today when I tuned into a summer phenomenon that I somehow missed: Paul Potts on Britain’s Got Talent. My mom told me about Potts last night, explaining that she and her colleagues have been watching his performances on YouTube at the office around a communal box of Kleenex. Now, my mom is not a reality TV person, and neither am I, so I decided her account of Potts’s effect was worth checking out. This is the video I watched on YouTube (Potts’s audition for the show):

I just regained normal breathing functions a minute ago after watching this for the fourth time. As much as I still want to jump on an airplane and hug the unlikely hero Potts for his stunning courage, tenacity, and talent, I am also able now to be a little objective about what reduced me to a pile of blubbering jelly on the carpet below my desk. It’s the way the clip highlights the complete improbability that Potts will be successful, while at the same time hinting that his success is exactly what we’re about to watch.

From the beginning, we’re made aware of Potts’s strangeness through shots of him pacing nervously in the waiting room and delivering a moving but far-from-leading-man introduction of himself to the show’s interviewers. We gulp a little when at the start of his audition, Potts tells the judges that he “wants to sing opera”—this, on a show that regularly rewards Celine Dion-like balladeers and other cheese. We witness his distress as the camera pans among the show’s skeptical judges, who look as though they’ve just smelled something unspeakably foul. And we feel his pain via several segments showcasing his confidence problems, which occur at the same time we know the judges are pondering his fate. Especially effective is the shot of Potts standing on the stage in hell as he awaits the verdict. When Simon Cowell tells Potts to go ahead, the expression on the notoriously callous judge’s face is closed and ungenerous; classic narrative tension is at an apex: all odds are against the underdog.

Now, who doesn’t love an underdog? Who hasn’t felt bullied and trodden on and swallowed by the world? Who doesn’t want Potts to wipe that dour look off Simon’s face and vindicate us all?

Within ten seconds of Potts’s performance, we know we are watching something phenomenal. Through crooked teeth, with eyes ablaze, Potts unleashes a voice powerful and pitch-perfect, a voice strengthened by the humiliations its owner has suffered over the years. It’s a voice everyone in the audience is desperate to hear; it is a salve, proof that there is justice in the world. It is a story of redemption.

The clip’s producers capture the universal, emotional response to this story by alternating between Potts, audience members shaking their heads and wiping their eyes, and the judges, whose skepticism visibly melts into willing submission and gratitude. The YouTube clip masterfully conveys the unexpected ferocity of Potts’s beauty. Potts’s voice is a marvel, but it’s the story that makes us weep.

Writing that sounds like speaking

Last night I went through all my blog posts and replaced hyphens—which are the default dash in so many applications—with my beloved em-dash. The hyphens have been tormenting me since I started writing blogthecat entries, but I wasn’t sure how to change them. A quick hunt for HTML codes yesterday ended my misery, and I can’t tell you how merry—delirious, even—I was as I pasted the long, elegant line over each ill-placed and unsatisfying hyphen.

The em-dash is one of my favourite punctuation marks. I try not to be its slave, since it can certainly be overused, and anything overused is ugly and distracting. Employed sparingly, however, and to proper effect, it can dramatically punch up a piece of writing. It can also add to the sense that the author is speaking her writing right to you. I think there are two reasons for this:

1. Em-dashes can be used to begin and end an interruption or aside in a sentence. Consequently, em-dash-fragmented sentences mirror how most of us actually think. We don’t think in one pure burst of linear thought most of the time. We make room for the odd tangent or revelation brought on by a previous thought. Consider the following along these lines:

“He refused to tell anyone—least of all his wife—about that embarrassing moment during the medical exam.”

Without that em-dashed clarification, the sentence would be less interesting. Even if the clarification were kept, but surrounded with commas instead of em-dashes (as it certainly could be), it would lose power:

“He refused to tell anyone, least of all his wife, about that embarrassing moment during the medical exam.”

2. The ineffectiveness of the comma substitution above attests to the second way the em-dash makes writing feel like it's being spoken: via its visual impact. It provides a nice, long break between thoughts, so the reader’s eye can have a little rest to get ready for the next piece of information. It provides rhythm, and an uneven one at that. Who among us speaks in perfectly spaced-out verbal bursts? When you listen to someone speak, often it’s their pauses, their hesitation, their lingering, etc., as much as what they’re actually saying that’s so compelling. The em-dash may be the best punctuation mark at approximating this unpredictability.

Of course, it’s hard to get away from conventional wisdom that we should always consider other marks (the comma, the semi-colon, and the period—for different reasons) before using the em-dash. I keep this in mind, and I do change the odd em-dash into another mark. But not often. And with a sigh.

E-E-E-Eva

My niece Eva is a force of nature—unpredictable, unstoppable, constantly changing. One minute she’s a whirling tornado, the next, a gentle breeze tickling the back of your neck. She’s two-and-a-half years old, and we’ve just come back from visiting her (oh, and her parents, my brother, Dylan, and sister-in-law, Nicole) in San Francisco.

With her honey-blond ringlets, proud little potbelly, and soft, rosy skin, Eva looks like an angel. For a moment. Then you look into her eyes, an unusual and intense shade of deep-green bordering on brown, and you quickly understand that she would be contemptuous of being so simplistically characterized. There is a LOT going on behind those eyes—you can see it … you can almost hear it.

I love watching Eva think. On this last visit, I could see her sizing up me and Craig in terms of how we might be useful. It took no time at all: Craig would be her rowdy comrade in mischief, and I would be her quiet-time companion. To know where Craig and Eva might be in the apartment, I'd just follow the shrieks and hysterical laughter. When Eva tired of horsing around, she’d join me for a "read"; me with my book, and she with hers (most often, a novel or non-fiction behemoth—the more pages, the better). She’d be silent, but for the odd comment on her tome: “This is a very good book, you know.” When I noted that mine was not up to snuff, she suggested that Uncle Craig buy me a new one. So wise so young.

She gets very girly with me. When I pointed out that we had the same colour of hair (“yellow,” she called it—not quite the glorious shade I had imagined), this prompted a two-day flurry of hair brushing and floofing and checks in the mirror to look at the awesome results.

Eva’s hair fascination on the visit may have been what compelled her to contemplate Craig’s own crown, which is beautifully bare. She might have been considering her own fulsome locks before pronouncing on his, because her assessment was gently and quietly delivered: “Uncle Craig, you have no hair … just head.” He protested that in fact he did have some hair, it was just very short. She amended “no hair” to “short hair” thereafter, but you could tell it was out of kindness.

When Eva gets mad, she is relentless. This girl knows what she wants, and she won’t be put off course … until it’s clear her theatrics aren’t serving her purpose any more. Again, that’s when you see the wheels turning. After venturing on to the street after being told repeatedly by Nicole not to, Eva found herself with some “quiet time” on her hands behind the closed doors of her room. Before being thus deposited, Eva had also managed to bash Nicole a couple of times with her little fist. Nicole calmly told her that she would come in to talk with her when Eva felt up to saying sorry.

Thirty seconds later, the howl: “Mommy!?”

Nicole ventures in. “Yes Eva?”

“I’m SOR-R-Y!!”

“That’s nice, but what are you sorry for?”

Silence. Then, slowly, “Hitting you?”

“Okay, but why did we have to come in the room in the first place? Did mommy tell you not to do something that you did anyway?”

Silence. Then defiant humming.

“Did mommy tell you not to go on the sidewalk?”

“NO!”

It was too much for Eva—total capitulation is so hard to swallow. She’s a feisty one, is Eva. She took a few more minutes to consider her situation, and then presto! She was back in high spirits, as if nothing had happened.

As taxing as Eva can be in her periodic rages and resistances, she is so strategic and funny that I have to look away and muffle my laughter. I am not the mommy or daddy after all, I am the auntie.

And I love being the auntie.

Loving Lainey

I tune into Lainey Gossip every single day. Or, as Elaine Liu, the real person behind Lainey, would say: Every. Single. Day.

I initially visited the site because I follow celebrity smut à la Us Magazine—I justify this practice by saying it’s equivalent to how guys follow sports. There are probably holes in this rationale, but I’m not going to search for them.

Anyway, Lainey Gossip is a huge blogging success—I am one of thousands who flock to it for a fix on a daily basis. But while Liu been profiled dozens of times in the media, I don’t think much attention has been paid to WHY Lainey Gossip is so popular. It’s the writing.

Elaine Liu is a top-rate humourist and stylist writing in a society that is undeniably obsessed with celebrity culture. She has adapted English perfectly to suit her subject (gossip), writing audaciously, hilariously, and passionately. She both pokes fun at herself (and her audience) for our fixation with celebrities and indulges—even wallows—unapologetically in the fun of it. This is a hard balance to strike, though Liu appears to achieve it effortlessly.

Liu employs a unique sentence structure that draws both on the bitchy cattiness practiced by petty fashionistas and the overwhelmed effusiveness of saucer-eyed, Valley-girl-accented teens reacting to major boy news (e.g., “No WAY,” “SHUT UP!”, “Get OUT!”). Most of her sentences are short, many omit initial subjects in favour of verbs (e.g., “Am sorry. Am pervy”), many use figures of speech never seen before (e.g., “Bet your concrete tits he’ll be there”) and some of the best are one- or two-word wonders “Oh. My. Loins.”).

She has developed shorthand for her most reviled (Tom Cruise: GMD for Gay Midget Dwarf, Nicole Kidman: The Freeze, for all that Botox, Shelf-Ass: Jessica Biel, whose ass Liu considers Biel’s only qualification); and most beloved (Kiki: Kirsten Dunst, My Gwyneth: Gwyneth Paltrow, who Lainey defends despite knowing how snotty she is); and lusted-after (most ridiculously, David Beckham: The Hotness, Becks). And on and on. She never stops playing and inventing in her writing.

Consider her Freebie Five list (the Freebie Five was inspired by Friends, and extended by Liu (who by the way, works with her obviously much-loved husband, who she regularly and fondly humiliates in her posts) to be “a list of 5 'unattainables' you’d have permission to tap without consequence from your significant other should the opportunity arise …. Two bit no-names, no matter how hot they are, don’t rank. Because while intelligence is optional, fame never is …. Note also that the Freebie Five is NOT about a relationship. The Freebie Five is all about ONE night. Or two nights. In bed. Conversation optional but not required”). Liu tops her list with David Beckham, which she defends thusly:

“ … don’t question David Beckham. I am aware that he can’t think on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. And I am also well aware of what he sounds like. But he doesn’t have to talk to me when he’s rockin’ me…you know what I mean? …. Becks is the Hotness.  Because Becks is one of the few men on the planet who can get away with almost everything. Hair, clothes, wife, rat lizard voice… all of it a free pass by virtue of the face and body and the football thunder thighs. I like ‘em lanky up top with some steel strength down below. And if you tell me you wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that squeeze… I won’t believe you. Daddy Becks? Unparalleled quiveration.”

While Liu may adopt the persona of a “shallow bitch,” (her words, not mine), she also has a conscience, unlike the vileness that is Perez Hilton. Of what she will and will not cover, she says:

“You have a line, I have a line. As ludicrous as it may sound coming from a dirty gossip—for me, there is fun smut and there is not so fun smut. Fun smut is hoping for Paris Hilton to go to prison and calling Heather Mills a golddigging skank. Not fun smut is death, suicide, overdose, murder allegations, scrapping over DNA, and alleged child molestation. I report on what I’d want to read ….”

Lainey Gossip is a must-explore. Hit it. You know you want to.

My kryptonite

If you ever need to disarm me and reduce me to a pile of putty, here’s how: massage me. Rhythmic pressure to any or all of my temples, scalp, neck, back, or feet transforms me into a blissed-out, drooling mess.

Some days are worse than others. I was waiting to get my hair done in Suki’s last week, and perhaps in anticipation of getting my hair washed (and the massage that comes with the conditioner part of things) I caught myself gently tickling my arm fur in public, mouth hanging open, eyes unfocused. In public. I don’t think anyone saw, but they could have, I was that out of it. Later on, when my hair colorist announced it was time to rinse, I had to concentrate on walking rather than running over to the sink. My two favorite words in the universe have to be “Pressure alright?” uttered at the same time as a rush of warm water streams over my scalp. “Oh yes, thank you, thank you …” Lights out. I am gone, out of the world, conscious only of touch and how completely in love I am with the faceless person kneading my head. When it’s over, I finally make eye contact with this person and babble my gratitude with an intensity that sends her scurrying to her next task in short order.

The healing power of touch is a magical thing. I think my reverence for it—aside from purely hedonistic impulses—stems partly from my mother, who is a great and generous masseuse. When my grandmother, who is 93 and has lived alone for years, goes to visit my parents, my mom goes into her room at night and puts her to sleep with a gentle massage, knowing how wonderful it must feel to be touched again by loving hands. What a beautiful thing to give someone.

And what a beautiful thing to get. My hair feels like it’s growing super-fast … maybe just a little trim …

No flight of fancy

This is our new monster, Monster.

We picked him up in Powell River, a lovely town on the Sunshine Coast that boasts a strong artistic community, including Meghan Hildebrand, who created Monster. Monster is a work of art on his own, but you should see Meghan’s paintings. The one I fell in love with depicts jellyfish and cats, crudely but evocatively sketched, being sucked gently but inexorably up though buildings into the sky, into what I imagined to be a waiting alien space ship. The creatures looked peaceful and happy surrendering to the pull of the neon-green, phosphorescent beam emitting from above. Not trapped at all, they seemed to be meeting a fate they might even be looking forward to.

That painting was $1800. I do not have close to $1800 to spend on a painting. Not now at least. Monster was a bargain at $40. Looking at Monster creates an immediate feeling of joy—joy at seeing a fierce imagination and artistic talent on display, joy that there is a place in the world for Monsters like mine. One day, I will have a Meghan Hildebrand painting, but until then, Monster is enough.