in one week and one day...

...i will be here.

yep, my friends are writers, too...

my friend chantel is now a published author. starting in may, her book, Stuck in Downward Dog, will arrive in stores across north america (including amazon.com/borders, amazon.ca, indigo and barnes & noble).

i'm not surprised. chantel, who's always reminded me of Weekend Today co-host campbell brown, is a great writer, a fancy-pants go-getter (she runs a whole magazine!) and a kindred spirit who spent many an afternoon emailing back and forth with me about all things trivial. and now she's an author. very cool.

congrats, chantel!

rocking HotDocs

say, have you swung over to my HotDocs diary yet? that's where i'll be posting for the next while.

and, if you hop over there, you can read all about this pint-sized rocker above, who tears. it. up. in the kick-ass documentary, Girls Rock!.

go green and get rid of junk mail!

today's episode of oprah was all about earth day and going green.

most of the advice they offered was stuff i already do (swap out lightbulbs, use energy strips, recycle, etc.), but they also plugged an organization called GreenDimes. i'd never heard of them, but i've checked out their site and they rawk! for $36 a year, they'll get your name and address removed from a whole whack of admail, junk mail and direct mail lists (and plant a tree in your name every month!) -- thereby saving countless trees and gallons of water. check out the site and sign up -- it's just a dime a day!

we interrupt this blog for another blog...

okay, folks, HotDocs is officially underway, and so is my HotDocs Diary! at the linked page, you'll be able to read my daily entries...or you can hop directly to the Moviepie Musings blog for more immediate news.

this just in...

we have a late, but great, entry for the My Teenage Shame Photo Contest (which, to be fair, wasn't really so much a contest as it was an exhibition)...and, quite frankly, i find this image terrifying. not because of its human subject (who admittedly looks a teeny bit psychotic...and i say that with love and affection), but because of the freakin' scary doll on the cake!

here, then, is laura:


seriously. omg.

veterans' day

Hell House...doesn't look so scary from outside, does it?

today, for the first time since november 28th, 2006, i went back to my old neighbourhood. the neighbourhood where i’d lived for nearly 7 ½ years. the neighbourhood where my old apartment still is. the neighbourhood that i fled as a result of my horrible Houselink-placed neighbours and hadn’t seen in months.

i wasn’t sure how i’d feel going back. i mean, i have a lot of great memories of the area – strolling through withrow park, sitting atop the hill at riverdale park to ponder life, gazing at the toronto skyline as i walked across the viaduct, watching the leaves on the trees in the lush don valley change colours with the seasons, having every imaginable type of ethnic food available just steps away (okay, for everyone who just snickered: just because i didn’t eat it doesn’t mean i didn’t like having it nearby! ;-)) – but i also have a lot of seriously unpleasant memories of the area that tend to overshadow the good times.

as i got off the subway, i wondered if i’d see any familiar faces. would i encounter the lady scam artist, who sits on the corner outside mcdonald’s and pretends to be slightly nuts (even though i saw her at my bank once, all tidy and proper and clearly not nuts or homeless or poor)? would i run into my former super, and would he tell me about the latest crime to take place on his property? what about my former neighbour, who lived two floors down and was just as horrified at the state of affairs in the building...but who still lives there?

i walked less than a block before i ran into a woman i’d come to know in my final months at Hell House. she, too, was a longtime tenant desperate to escape the madness that had engulfed our building. she fled a month before i did, and i hadn’t spoken to her since she moved.

as we talked, it was as though we were both PTSD-suffering survivors of some kind of traumatic experience like a war battle or a bank robbery or a 24-hour Deck the Halls marathon. we talked about how we’d both found much better apartments, and how wonderfully strange it is not to be bombarded by noise 24/7. we compared notes on what it’s like to live with friendly, considerate neighbours who don’t have to be removed by police, and how nice it feels to be able to sleep soundly at night without worrying that someone might set the place on fire or try to break in. both of us revealed that we’d been extremely cautious in selecting new places to live, and that neither of us fully relaxed until being free of Hell House for a good couple of months.

more importantly, we both agreed that, despite our anger at being forced out of our homes, we were living much better lives since our departures. life was pretty good, all around, and we were grateful.

and, however sad we once were at having to leave, neither of us had any interest in popping back over to Hell House to visit.

WHAT?! A-list celebrities reveal their deepest, darkest secrets right here, right now!

no, not really. sorry.

but i thought i would try a little site-traffic experiment by posting random celebrities' names alongside hot-button words or phrases. experience at the ‘pie has taught me that you can instantly increase the number of hits on any given page by including the word “naked.” if, say, you’ve written a review of the film The Temp and mentioned the lead character’s “psychotic, naked ambition,” you will inevitably have people arrive at your website after they’ve typed “lara flynn boyle naked” into some search engine.

so, for what are ‘net surfers searching nowadays? maybe a combination of any of the names here:

tom cruise	jennifer lopez	jessica biel	brad pitt
angelina jolie	justin timberlake	carrie underwood	prince william
ellen degeneres	pink	orlando bloom	sanjaya malakar
jake gyllenhaal	kate winslet	steve carell	bridget moynahan
parker posey	the rock	will ferrell	madonna

with any of the terms here:

naked	nude	sex	gay
lesbian	drugs	breasts	ass
scientology	cult	secret	contract
beard	merkin	smoker	video

let’s see what happens. (note: i will eventually delete this entry, probably in a week or so, because i'm kind of skeeved out by driving traffic here as a result of people searching for, you know, "kate winslet naked breasts" or "tom cruise sex cult" or something.)

james lipton wants to know...

let's pretend you're on Inside the Actors' Studio and i'm a creepy guy with an even creepier dye job who's playing host. as our chat winds down, i move forward in my seat (blue notecards in hand), lean inquisitively across the table that divides us and ask you the following:

1. what is your favourite word?

2. what is your least favourite word?

3. what turns you on?

4. what turns you off?

5. what is your favorite curse word?

6. what sound or noise do you love?

7. what sound or noise do you hate?

8. what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

9. what profession would you not like to do?

10. if heaven exists, what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

what would you say?

please drop your answers in the comments section on your way out. merci!

giving (tax) credit where accreditation is due

two major pieces of news tonight:

1. today, i did my taxes. i will be getting a nice refund. it took me nearly 2 ½ hours to do, on paper with pencil, the old-fashioned way. (somewhere, my friend heather is shaking her fist at her computer screen, wailing, “whyyyyyyyyy?! why will you not convert to e-filing?!?!?!”) it took me that long because, just as i was finishing up my working copy, i realized i’d left out a major deduction...one that, unfortunately, would affect my net income and, therefore, nearly every single calculation in the entire return. it was frustrating, but ohhhhhh did i ever feel accomplished when i signed my return and put it in its envelope to send off the to the government for processing. even better that they’ll be giving me money, instead of the other way around. yay! i hadn't even planned on doing them today, but decided i had no choice after i realized i'd be busy for much of the next two weeks because...


2. when the annual HotDocs film festival kicks off later this week (it starts april 19th and runs to the 29th), i will be attending...as an accredited member of the media. (omg!) :-D most of you are familiar with my annual TIFF diaries for Moviepie, and i’m pleased to announced that 2007 with mark the debut of vickie’s HotDocs diary. same location, new content! all documentaries, all the time! unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your opinion), the diary may be slightly less snarky than its TIFF counterparts, mainly because the fest is being nice enough to let me attend and see whatever movies i want for *F*R*E*E*, and i’d feel like an asshat if i turned around and bit the hand that fed me free films. plus, i find the smaller toronto film fests to be much more user-friendly and accommodating – not to mention MUCH more affordable – so there’s not really much to gripe about. i pick up my official press package, including ID badge and assorted event invitations (!), on friday...one day after the fest starts, which is sort of weird.

misadventures in online billing

rogers cable’s online billing blows.

i have just spent the past 20 minutes trying in vain to view my bill online. it’s already been paid – something i did online with as much hassle and frustration a few weeks ago – but i wanted to take a look at the charges. i’m in the process of prepping my tax materials, and i noticed that my annual bill for cable services somehow went up almost $100 between my old apartment and this one. whaaa...? rogers waived my $75 installation fee because they’d screwed up my initial order, resulting in them inadvertently disconnecting my cable instead of turning it on, so that’s not the reason for the price hike. i’m interested to find out what, exactly, is, since i'd ordered and have been given the exact same package i had before.

so, i accessed my online account and attempted to “view my bill.” that didn’t work. i got a message telling me that, as a mac user, i’d have to select “download my bill” in order to see it. okay, fine, so i hit “download my bill”...and was given a completely blank window. not what i was after. so i tried again. same thing.

suspecting that perhaps my browser was to blame for the viewability problem, i switched to firefox. same deal. click here. blank screen. unviewable bill. i tried a third browser, netscape, which proved equally unsuccessful, so i started over.

“let’s try accessing my payment history...” i thought, hoping i could somehow backdoor my way into my bill. fat chance. when i tried that option i was given a brand-new message: sorry, payment history is unavailable for this account. PARDON?

by this point, i was wondering why anyone in their right mind would bother with rogers’ online billing option since it was so very clearly very poorly designed. it is not user-friendly. at all. (just TRY finding the answer(s) you need in their FAQ. i guarantee you won't.)

then i tried “account balance,” once again hoping that there might be some roundabout way to get to what i needed. this time, i did get my account balance -- $0.00 – with an option to...yes, that’s right...view my bill! i clicked on the appropriate button and presto!

nothing.

blank screen.

a small stream of expletives.

fed up, i began looking for the “unsubscribe from online billing” section which was, not surprisingly, very easy to find. i’d be willing to bet that just about everyone who’s registered for this seemingly idyllic service has promptly abandoned it out of sheer frustration. sure, it saves paper, but what’s the point if you have absolutely no access to anything useful having to do with your account, except the page that allows you to flee the service entirely????

i hate that rogers has the monopoly on TV in canada. i hate that their online “self-help” service is completely pointless and not at all helpful. and i hate that i’m paying a big chunk more per year for the pleasure of the same channels and a big heap of frustration.

[update: it's sunday night, and i just thought i should add that the mystery of the curious price increase has been solved. it seems that previous annual billing went for exactly 12 months, but the dates on my new annual bill indicate that the amount is for 12 months and three weeks. so, almost 13 months. so, an extra $60, plus taxes. of course, i only discovered this when i went to my parents' house and viewed my bill online (AT LAST!) on their PC. seems rogers hates mac users.]

hot water and Hot Fuzz

today, the water in my apartment building was shut off for six hours in order to allow for "plumbing repairs." unfortunately, those repairs did not include the removal of a decades-old water filter that has been attached to the cold-water faucet in my kitchen since, oh, the late 1980s at least. according to the super, a previous tenant had it installed (my unit is the only one in the entire building with this added "perk") and then left it. the filter inside the water tank (about 1L in size) has never been changed, and the water that comes out of the tap when i turn the cold-water faucet tastes like the basement of an old house. mineral-y and mouldy. needless to say, i don't drink that water, and have been filling my Brita jugs with water from the bathroom tap since i moved in. that water tastes perfectly fine, which only serves to emphasize the distinct ickiness of the kitchen water. nevermind the fact that it's kind of a pain in the ass to have to haul water from the bathroom sink for drinking and cooking.

anyway...

i spent the day out of the apartment and came home to see the filter still there. dammit. then i noticed the distinct smell of floor varnish...which seems to be magically wafting into my apartment from lord knows where. the apartment four floors under mine had its floors refinished, so i'm guessing that's the source of the chemical-y odor, but i'll be damned if i can figure out how it's making its way up four floors through concrete. i suspect the gaps around piping are to blame.

oh, and i have no hot water. i suspect neither does anyone else in the building, but it's a bit of a drag when you want to do things like take a shower. i'm hoping it's back on by morning.


in other news...Hot Fuzz ROCKS! i went to a screening this morning, and it was beyond delightful -- i want simon pegg and nick frost to be my new best friends. my review will be posted at the 'Pie on opening day, but let me just say that first 10 minutes alone are worth the price of admission.

and now i must watch ANTM.

please applaud the following individuals!

for they have cast aside vanity in the name of solidarity! here then, are the submissions for the "my teenage shame" photo contest:

here we have biker, who decided to embrace her high-school principal's declaration that students could wear whatever they wanted for the last day of classes. the pants, btw, are apparently purple!



















jennifer would like you all to take a good, long look at the high-waisted mom jeans. belted and everything!




















thanks to an asshat photographer's equally asshatty idea, matt became the only person in his senior-kindergarten class not looking at the camera. (still, VERY cute!)









again, thank you to the courageous folks who handed over their pictures. :-D

dear ABC: you SUCK!

in what can only be described as a move i saw coming a mile away but nonetheless desperately hoped wouldn’t happen, ABC has cancelled my favourite new show, Six Degrees.


“huh? what’s Six Degrees?” i hear you ask and, really, it’s not surprising you don’t know what it is since ABC dropped the exquisite drama like a hot potato shortly after its launch last fall. for the uninitiated:

Six Degrees was an hour-long serial examining the intersecting lives of a half-dozen new yorkers. in its cast? no less than FIVE highly enjoyable big-screen talents (campbell scott, hope davis, bridget moynahan, erika christensen and jay hernandez). in its crew? how about executive producer j.j. abrams – that’s right, the guy who brought us Lost and, even better, Felicity. the drama moved slowly, gingerly and intriguingly...perhaps too much for the average viewer, since ratings were often dismal.

but where was the promotion? where was ABC trumpeting the series or shoving its stars on talk shows to help publicize what wound up being a fascinating program that, apparently, no one was watching? nowhere, that’s where. as if that weren’t bad enough, ABC unceremoniously yanked the show off the air indefinitely last october and then just sat on it. new episodes were shot, but no one knew when they might ever see the light of primetime day. when the alphabet network finally decided to give the series a second shot, it came nearly five months after the last episode aired, without any kind of collection of reruns to help new viewers catch up, and the show’s return had zero fanfare. it was only by accident that i even found out it was coming back on.

not surprisingly, no one watched. again. so, after a piddly two weeks back on the air, ABC has axed the show for good. gone. done. no more. five episodes remain unaired. as such, countless mysteries have been left unsolved – what happened to laura’s husband and what was the big secret no one wanted her know? from what (or whom) is/was mae running, and what’s in that mysterious box she’s been guarding with her life? (personally, i think she was holding it for Felicity’s meghan.) who was josh charles gonna play? would laura and caseman ever finally hook up? or would the rampant HoYay! between whitney and laura ever turn into something more? and so on.

you’d think i would have learned my ABC lesson by now, because they’ve done this to me several times in the past and each time the news stings a little more than the last. cancelling terrific, critically acclaimed dramas before their time is something ABC has turned into an art. they did it with My So-Called Life, one of the best teen dramas ever on network TV yet one plagued by a limited (though passionate) viewership. they did it again a couple of years later with Relativity (that's the only show clip on YouTube, folks!), another character-driven but low-rated hour-long series from the MSCL producers, marshall herskovitz and ed zwick. most recently, they yanked herskovitz and zwick’s Once and Again -- featuring the sublime work of susanna thompson and her gifted co-stars -- off the air after shuttling all over its schedule to such an extent that many viewers simply couldn’t keep track of when it would be on. despite emmy nominations, critical raves and a valiant fan campaign to give it another shot, ABC said buh-bye. i still miss that show.

i swear, if ABC had also been responsible for the demise of the brilliantly nuanced American Dreams, we would be SO over. (note: AD’s death was due to the twits at its home network, NBC.)

so what amazing programming will fill the gaping hole of great left by Six Degrees? reruns of Wife Swap. i’m not kidding. Wife-freakin’-Swap! yet ABC still thinks that gem and shows like What About Brian (does ANYONE watch this?), According to Jim (ditto) and In Case of Emergency (what the hell?) deserve airtime. WTF? and they’re still squeezing every last drop of blood out of the stone that is The Bachelor, the most irrelevant one-time pop-culture hit currently still polluting the airwaves...but SD is toast. that’s just wrong. and mean.

for all these things, ABC, you suck. and don’t think that throwing me a bone with last night’s kick-ass, girl-centric episode of Lost absolves you of your programming sins. it doesn’t.

you blow.

announcing the "My Teenage* Shame" photo contest!

do you have an embarrassing/horrifying/hilarious photo of yourself as a teenager (*or child)? if so, i wanna see it! bad hair? bad glasses? bad clothes? all of the above? perfect! add a little description/explanation if you'd like. photos will be reposted here, and you will only be identified by first name...not even that, if you'd prefer. anonymity is totally fine.

so, join the mayhem, dig through your yearbooks or photo albums and play along! (please resize photos down to 400K or smaller before sending. thx.)

looking forward to your submissions. :-)

remember high school?

happy birthday, lorraine!
remember yesterday's short post on bad photos and the people who love them? this is one such photo. this is my friend lorraine. she and i have known each other since the above photo -- my second-favourite in the world -- was taken. that was back in 1985 (!), and we were both in grade nine. this means that we've known each other for 22 years. 22 years! 22 birthdays.

today's another one, and i wish her only the best! (plus a giant cake, of course. :-)) when i'm done posting, i'm going to call her to make sure she surfs past here today. and, just to make sure she doesn't think i'm being cruel...

to ensure that she doesn't feel alone...

or singled-out...

or picked-on...

or publicly shamed on her own...

i'm embracing the concept of...

misery loves company...

and am thus posting...

my very own...

photo...

from grade nine...

which is horrifying...HORRIFYING...to me...

but which my mother...

thinks is absolutely adorable...

i'd like to introduce myself...

aged 14...

IN COLOUR...

apparently, the upper part of my head grew MUCH faster than the lower half, as evidenced by my lack of a chin and MASSIVE dome. look at that HAIR! omg. enjoy.

photo contest details later this afternoon! (hint: you, too, will be shown in your teenage glory. :-D)

you say tomato, i say...OMG, great photo!

perspective is subjective.

especially when it comes to photos.

the above shot is, quite possibly, my favourite picture ever. i love it. if i could, i would make it into a T-shirt. it's a photo of my friend's grandchildren, and i couldn't treasure it more. that picture -- of a single, fleeting, entertaining moment in time -- speaks volumes...in fact, it SCREAMS them. just look at it. so much going on! there's anguish and joy and mischief and manipulation and matching turtlenecks and subtext for days.

and yet, i bet to the little guy on the right, this photo blows. i'm sure if you asked him, he wouldn't say it's a great shot.

but i think it's FABULOUS.

one man's horrible picture is another man's treasure.

to that end, we're going to have a little photo contest, you and me. details will be announced tomorrow.

get ready.