The Shining, Mary Poppins And A Cop Dying From A Marijuana Overdose: Three Video Clips

I'm not a big youtubey person (although the third video is not from Youtube, it's actually from LiveLeak. The name LiveLeak means the people who post videos there are taking a leak, live on the web), but I couldn't resist sharing these treasures with you, dear reader.

A literature instructor at my school uses the first two videos as part of his popular literature course, as they are examples of postmodern "genre-twisting."

Whatever, I just think they're da shit!

Trailer for The Shining, re-made into a happy romp for the whole family:



A trailer turning Mary Poppins creepy.



Just a fascinating 911 call from a stoned police occifer:




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My Life in Food Minutiae

Some random food trivia about me, which may, or may not be revealing.


1. I think it is both reasonable and clever to heat your bowl of ice cream in the microwave for eight seconds before consuming. It makes it taste better, quickly.

2. I bought a Cadbury's Fruit and Nut bar the other day, and there were three, three raisins in it. Coveyor belt mishap I can only imagine, or possibly somebody distressed on raisin detail at the factory.

3. In the case of #2, I should have called up Cadbury with my constructive, just-letting-you-know criticism that gets me free stuff all the time (or really, it just gets me what I fuckin' paid for - and sometimes, as in the following instance, even more).

The conversation would go (with a past call to Frito-Lay as example):

F-L: Frito-Lay customer service, my name is so-and-so, how can I help you?

Me: Hi, thanks, I wanted to know who to speak to about a faulty product I purchased today; would that be you by any chance?

F-L: Yes, I think it would, or I can direct your call to the proper extension. What is the problem and which product?

Me: I just bought the large size bag of Smartfood, which I eat all the time, and there was nothing in it except two massive balls of powdered cheese.

F-L: Oh...pardon?

Me: Two huge clumps of cheese? Y'know what I mean? In the bag. Like massive. I guess there's some popcorn in there somewhere, but I don't want to touch this. Anyway...

F-L: Oh that sounds strange...

Me: Ha ha! I know, imagine opening the bag! Just huge clumps...hehe. (long pause) I luuuve my Smartfood, sooo...you can imagine my disappointment.

F-L: Well Miss, it is our policy to send vouchers for a replacement product from our line when there is a "faulty product," as you said. Now, what city are you in?

A few days later I would receive three coupons, two of them for any large Frito-Lay product, and one for a bag of Smartfood.

4. No other food can bring out the kid in me like the combination of mashed potatoes and corn with butter. I make things with them; you can create a whole contryside scene or a face that tastes delicious.

5. Only a grammar lesson here. Singular: potato Plural: potatoes. Yeeess, people, that's where the 'e' comes in. Look it up, if you don't believe me.


Same with tomatoes.
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A Question For Transit Operators

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I finally asked a bus driver a question that's been tickling my back-brain for about a month.

I was pleased at the reaction I got and at the fact that I made his evening. I know how evil and jaded transit drivers can become; I have been on the receiving, though wholly undeserving, end of their bitter barrels of blame and resentment, like a poor shivering doe with a rifle pointed in its little unassuming face, cold tokens crumbling from scrawny fingers, or...hooves, I guess...

So I was satisfied with myself of course, and feeling safe from any misplaced wrath, when I made him smile.

The question is this: do you or your colleagues, after a long shift of humanity-toting, find yourselves in your cars on your way home, pulling over at bus stops out of sheer habit? Alone on the darkened boulevards in your Chryslers, how do you feel about that? Do you laugh at yourself and shake your head? Are you afraid at your own state of post-workday zombification?

He said yes, and how the hell did I know about all this.

We had a gentle laugh about overworking and my sympathetic insight into the transit-operator mind (or mindlessnesses), then he generously dropped me off between stops, practically in front of my door, and it wasn't even after ten o'clock.
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Don't mean to be mean about transit operators. Imagine dealing with the masses of humanity every day in a metropolitan city. The drivers here in T.O. are mainly fine...mainly.

Good Eats

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This is from a series of restaurant reviews I wrote* for Wilko News:

Milestone’s -Toronto
The staff are required to be hotties. Maybe that’s why it’s the only chain restaurant I really like. Milestone’s invented the Bellini, a frosty drink "often copied but never equaled." There are really high ceilings, but there’s no “cafeteria” vibe and the decor is interesting. The menu is varied and adventurous, with fish and vegetarian choices for no-meaters. All the patrons here are gorgeous, and on first dates. Wear your black shiny shoes and stare at others unabashedly.
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Noah’s Natural Foods -Toronto
Unlike the Milestone’s crowd, most people here are pale, unattractive and smell of barley, but it’s my pick for everyday, on-the-run organic healthiness (oh, shut up!). It’s a natural foods market but there’s a tiny café in the back – a hot and cold buffet, breathlessly clean, where you pay for your meal by weight (not your weight; the weight of the food). This ensures good value and less wastefulness.
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Joso’s -Toronto
The best. The sexiest, most original restaurant I’ve seen anywhere. And I have been around just enough to compare.

My friends and I often stayed till closing, when Joso Spralja would lock the door. He’d bring out two bottles of red wine for the six of us, light a big joint, and strum his guitar. We’d wind down a great night in an intimate, pagan afterglow of sensual delights. I will never forget those days.

Click onto the awesome website: http://www.josos.com/

Joso had an obsession with women’s breasts and has collected mammarian artifacts form his world travels, which are on display. There is a bronzed vagina pinned to a plaque on a wall; it may surprise you how well received this is.

The Spralja family is from Dalmatia; Joso and his wife were a famous folk duo there in the 60’s. It’s a family of artists and musicians; Joso displays his dramatic, almost biblical portraits of the family in various settings such as underwater worlds, and the clouds of Valhalla.

Joso’s son Leo continues the unique and salty legacy of his father.

The seafood is the best in Toronto, and you can choose it from a fresh platter presented to you. I’ve never had the octopus ink (eww) but the risotto, smoked trout and prawns are heaven.
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More gastro-licious wonders:

Fressen, Queen St. West in Toronto

Some fish and chip place in Brampton; I always forget the name.

Any sushi place in Vancouver

Joe’s Stone Crab, Ocean Drive, Miami Beach

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*Obviously this post was not really a review article. It's a meme; I was tagged by EBEZP at Wilko News.*

The word: List your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.

I tagged:
Mark & Sally Salmons, California
Christine, a chef in Arizona
Minijonb, not sure where, but Michigan is a good guess

My Life In Food Minutiae: "Where's The Tzatziki Sauce?" (Or Why You Shouldn't Feed This Blog)

If you're the type of net surfer who likes to zombify online in an organized, efficient manner, don't click that orange feed button in my sidebar. Don't subscribe to this blog. I suck at blog management, as my ONE subscriber finally concluded before flushing my aggregation down a toilet of disdain.

I wasn't surprised when I found my feedburner subscriber display empty. Through the x-ray eye of feed readers, my rickety blog framework is revealed; a bent skeleton barely holding the flesh on the body of a hungry post.

I draw a faint gray line at the top of every post under the title. I hold down the dash key for this. I do it because I hate the way the post text appears too close under the title; it needs some space, I feel. In a feed, this line appears as a naked skewer assaulting the first sentence of every post. Haha. An impotent vegan kebob.

I tweak after the fact. I've edited six goddamn times after publishing the post you're reading right now. I edit post-post, because I like to see my thoughts in the actual blog, in their context, before I lay out my final glimmering product. And yes, it does glimmer, after I, in sneaky inadequation (that isn't a word, is it?) ultimately coat it in a thick epoxy of Jedi poo in order to distract you from the gibberish encased therein.

Yessirree, I "fix" things until I get bored or disgusted enough with them to stop laying on the scotch tape; whereupon I lay on the scotch bottle. Johnny Walker blue is nice.

"Why, why are you so hard on yourself?" my friends plead. It's not like tweaking and skewers help the quality of my scribbling or make it less awkward. It doesn't even make the kebobs more palatable. How unprofessional, they scream. "Where's the tzatziki sauce (they are referring to my pain, the blackness of my soul, the depths of my being etc., etc.)??"

I do it all, I whine, because I am not really a writer, I am a tryer of writing. Or trier? Try-er. See?

I rack my brain to remember at what point I told people I was going to be a professional writer. They are fucking fiends.

I'm only dabbling (and babbling) fer fuck's sake. Leave me alone with Johnny, and one day I may just get these dry bones straight enough to support literary fleshy goodness. I have to be drunk, I think.

If I'm flaky, well, this is a cereal blog. Nutty perhaps? Oh, you must be one of those tiresome Completes or Just Rights I hate. If so, refer your condemning asses to Post #1, then kindly get the hell outta my bowl.

But if you love a bent, scrawny, meatless skewer of a post and think it might be more efficient, even though I am telling you it won't be, by all means, click the orange button. Feed me. Watch me grow...
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Cat Tongues Are Combs

Let's not ask how they isolated the tongue for that pic.

I am sitting at the computer in my bedroom; Emma the cat is on the bed behind me. She is licking a cotton-cased pillow.

Emma has a licking obsession. If you put an object like your finger, a cd case, pencil eraser, anything, in front of her, she will lick it like it’s her newborn awash in afterbirth. She will continue until you remove the object or provide a sufficient distraction.

The sound.

Cat’s tongues are essentially combs and it sounds like it hurts when they lick a thing I presume to be unlickable. I know it would hurt me if I licked a cotton-cased pillow.

I toss a sock across the bed in her direction. The pillow-frenching ends, for the moment.
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But Who Will I Tag?? Pre-Memestrual Symptoms For This Newbie

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My very first meme.

If you hate doing memes and I tagged you, just float lightly on the milky surface of the bowl of graciousness, and help a fellow Cranky-O out, wouldja?

I was tagged out-of-the-blue by a gorgeous blond, Kuanyin at Blog-Blond, who was originally tagged by Kilroy 60 at Fear and Loathing - The Gonzo Papers. I was visiting Kuanyin's site the other day (it really is helpful) and she replied to a comment I made there.
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Here it is: The Education Meme

What was the name of the teacher that was most influential in your life from grades K through 6?

I went to a total of nine schools by the time grade six arrived, so I choose Mr. Kungel from, not grade six, but grade 7; a time when my nomadic family stayed in town long enough for me to actually develop a memory of any teachers. Well, there ya go, the meme's barely begun and already I'm coloring outside the lines with my purple crayon.

Mr. Kungel was my homeroom teacher and track & field coach. I would run around the track after smoking a coupla cigarettes, wheezing and huffing. He would chant “you got it C, you can do it, you got it in you, you can do anything.” Stuff like that. He never knew I smoked; but he suspected I had a hard-ass life. He put some extra faith in humanity inside my li'l, blackening heart. I’d like to tell him that now.

What subject did you favor in high school?

English (and sometimes Science; especially if we got assigned to develop photos in a bag or went out for field trips...just as long as it wasn’t Mr Enda’s class. He sat like Jabba the Hutt in the back of the room and just expelled a series of text book passages in monotone drones at our heads. The boys called him Mr. Enda-my-knob. He had a bushy, scraggly, anti-Santa beard full of nodules; he had uncaring eyes).

Did you attend a university and if so, did you attain a degree?

I went to high school for a total of 7 mishandled months and during that time somehow made the cheerleading squad. English was even more my favorite subject then, because my English teacher Mr. Sharpe always had tiny burnholes down the front of his ties and shirts and he would write me little notes asking me if I was okay and was there anything wrong. Other than those notes, he didn’t approach me about anything personal and he wrote endless words across three blackboards, then erased the first two boards and wrote some more, which the class had to write down in our notebooks till our fingers were like beaten weiners.

I am just now attending University, hoping to find the stick-to-it-iveness to complete the degree I so desire.

Do you learn best through books, by watching, or hands-on?

Hands-on, books, and watching, in that order. The same applies when I try to join in on group sex in motel rooms, only it’s usually in a scrambled order. I’ll catch on soon, I just know it.

Has education been an ongoing process for you? How do you feel about that?

Education should be a lifelong pursuit for all, shouldn’t it?

I've been told I can be quite the annoying know-it-all, with the added vulgarity of being vocal about it. I like being that way. I wish more people would be loudmouth know-it-alls and keep me company in my knowing. Believe what you hear, reader: it really is lonely at the top.

For variety and for less intimidating displays of my brain power (which I otherwise cannot prevent), I purposely leave gaps in my learning; this makes me endearing to others as I seem to end up appearing tragically confident.

What seven people are you tagging to do this?

Hmmm, let’s see if I even know seven bloggers…

Okay, here goes:

Cathy (she has to teach her newbie bloggers what memes are)
Rosie O'Donnell
Star Jones
Pamela Anderson
David Caruso
Condoleezza Rice
Rupaul
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On Cereal Names (Using The Despised Nouns Rumination, Reflection and Meandering)

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In your meanderings through my blog, you encounter alot of cereal names and might wonder if they are real or invented by me. What's that you say? You don't even have time to read a full post of mine, let alone meander?

Well, try sticking a spoon in it, Sugar Jets. By "it" I mean the thick gruel of learning. Slow down long enough for some ruminations on the subject at hand.

Sticky Dipped Snitches

Corn Crackos. Puffa Puffa Rice. Sugar Sparkled Flakes - I like to chant these imagistic phrases, as I'm alive to the magical, crystally sugar-shiny visions they invoke; they are mind-expanding in a direction only corniness can facilitate. Names that sound like they are hatched in Oz. No, not the HBO TV show - but could you imagine? Sticky Dipped Snitches. Crusted Shank-O's.

While the cereal names around here might sound phony, ninety-nine percent are not. Even the titles in my sidebar are actual names of cereals that exist, or vintage cereals discontinued as irrelevant to new generational attitudes and usages. Look 'em up, if you don't believe me.

Yes indeed, gone and useless are the days of Post Toasties and the awkward, homey Corn-Fetti. And just what would humankind do at the lurching dawn of this dark millenium with Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs (circa 1970's)? Could we relate to such unfettered, if not creepy, glee?

What's more, what could our children do with a cereal named that?? Let us reflect on this.

Cereal Killaz

Perhaps disappointingly, I only think I know what they're capable of doing: pulling a replica .38 out of their sock or their baggy jeans-crotch and putting a cap in the middle of the fool box at breakfast, before school, in a backyard or alleyway; videophoning it all and posting it on YouTube. They could write a hiphop ditty about it all, produce the track in their cousin's basement studio, get a grant hookup and make a music video replete with junk-ass ho's.

Perhaps their track would be the called Scowl & Screwface & Mocking & Mirth, and the band name, of course Cereal Killaz.

I mean kids these days are scarily resourceful, and many annoyingly aud.acio.us

At any rate, they wouldn't be the first to coin a cereal-themed hiphop cut; I remember one from the nineties by LL Cool J, called Milky Cereal.

Kids' cereal names should be all about effective branding; and in our era of youth-worship, they will endow their speakers with an urban illness, if they're smart. Apple Jacks, Cap'n Crunch, and expecially Cocoa Puffs; those are names a 'tween can utter with a measure of assurance that they won't sound like a muthafuckin' bakeshift (that means "uncool one," for us bakeshift muthafuckas).

I've had enough of this discussion, reader. I hope you got some food for thought in you (you can take the spoon out now), and I hope your day is g-r-r-r-r-reat!

(Yeah yeah, I used one of my Despised Nouns as a verb. Whatever.)

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Useless Fact: Cap'n Crunch's real name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch. It is only now being brought to light that he was promoted to the rank of Commodore in 2004.

10 Things Katz Taught Me

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Katz
Katz was the first cat in my family that I really studied when I was a kid. In a way, she was my first acting training (it is said that students of acting should study cats). One day when I was about eight, I came home from school and Katz was not there. My parents were all hush-hush, and our dog Gitter was looking sheepish. I was told that Katz was living with Nana in the country now, but that I could go and visit her there in the summer months. I cried, and immediately wanted to go to Nana's.

I didn't learn the real truth about Katz (and Gitter) till I was grown. Needless to say, the shame in our family ran deep for many years:

Why Katz was sent to Nana's

Well, of course I eventually got over it, and I've had a few cats since Katz. They've all taught me alot about the feline approach to life, and about society's behavior towards them.

Emma
Last year, I shared a house with a crazy opera-singer lady who owned my current cat, Emma. When she had to move to Germany to teach, she had problems finding Emma a home. "She's too grouchy and fat!" she would shrill. Well, I admit, I'm a softie for animals in peril. I took the hints and offered to babysit Emma for three months until a decent home was found.

Needless to say, Emma suckered me in to keeping her around!

Thanks to Katz, Emma and all of the feline buggers, here's what I've basically gathered on them:

1.
They can be vindictive needies who will piss in your shoes.

2.
If you bring your face close to a cat’s face and then wait, eventually it will lick your eye.

3.
If you want your humongously overweight cat to play, and those vet bills to stay down, store-bought cat toys will never do. You must get all ghetto with everyday household items, stringing them in fanciful combinations to catch your darling's eye. From your fat cat's point of view, it is not the creative appeal of your arts-and-crafts creation that (slightly) moves them; they simply demand it, as it confirms their theory that extra effort is, indeed, your department.

4.
Cats are as self-conscious as any human. In fact, they kick humans' ass in the "just look good doin' it" category. Ever see one get clumsy and fall off of something? They act like it never happened, quickly cleaning their paw all cool 'n shit, like doing a triple-lutz off the bookshelf is just part of a special mystic cleaning routine.

5. Cats are very photogenic.

6.
When the room is silent, but for the gentle hushed clackings of your computer keyboard, that is the time your cat will begin to loudly clean its crotch or paws. Be certain of this. It's prudent to have iTunes ready to play during every writing session, as the endless lusty slurping and wet mouthy noises of your crotch-smacking cat two feet away will make you want to hurl a solid object at the furface's head; though you know you can't, cuz there's a 50/50 chance they'll piss in your most prized wedges.

7.
Cats can barely move their eyeballs horizontally. It's half the fun of playing with them.

8.
My theory as to why we own cats is that we are appeasing some evolutioary guilt complex. I mean really, why choose cats as our most common pet? They puke, shed, spray, shred, need litter, need us to change the litter, they get hairballs, they are hairballs, and they are finicky. Why not goldfish?

Some people need to be punished for their spoiled lives and deeply unresolved guilt, and go to dominatrixes. The rest of us own cats.

9.
Cats should never be forced to wear hats. It is an affront to their dignity as our fellow creatures on earth...

10.
In the end, I'm very glad I've had cats (and of course Katz), for all their inconveniences in my tiresome life. They're so cute and furry and can make their bodies go all twisty. Well, Emma is a little too large for that, but...I must say, she's great company!

Now let me just turn up the iTunes here...

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