Still Lost

Hurley from Lost has a blog! It's like we're the same person!

Oh, and for even more fandom, check out the New York piece on how Lost has bitch-slapped its viewers into totally masochistic adoration.

Lost and Found

Lost is back! Lost is back!

Just when the writers' strike was about to encourage a return of conversation and literacy into your home, the greatest WTF show in television history is back.

Last night ABC aired last season's finale and tonight there is a tutorial for those of you who need to be schooled in the ways of Lost. This will be followed by the launch of the new season.

Between going to the theatre and meditating (damn you writers) I have had to set the PVR for all four hours of promised Lost goodness. Hubby and I have a date for the couch this weekend and I can. Not. Wait.

This is as geeky as I get and I am so not ashamed. Bring on the weirdness!

American Idol Meets ANTM

Thanks to the writers' strike, I have been reduced to reality television and HUGE expectations for the premiere of the new season of Lost.

Excuses aside, I have to admit I've always enjoyed watching the American Idol auditions. This year Simon seems nicer, Paula more sober and Randy more plump (don't gain it all back, dawg!)

Anyway, last night there was a great moment on Idol when a contestant waved her gold ticket to Hollywood in the camera's lens and hooted, "Simon, I'm gonna prove to you I am America's Next Top Model. Oops. I mean, Idol."

Keeping with the theme of blurring two reality show worlds together, the dude in the photo above showed up in Saleisha's hair cut.

Love on an Escalator: Stepping it up When it's Heading Down

Ewwww, girl, Biggest Losers got good last night!

Seems the producers clued in that the whole, working-as-couples thang completely did away with good old Lord of the Flies group scheming so it is back to every big man and woman for him and her self!

The black team is now blue. The blue team is now black. And the rest were allotted according to Bob's first draft picks (he greedily picked up the top three teams without one downward dog of a hesitation).

Highlights include Paul noting his black team of losers is "David versus Goli-lath." (I love adding random letters to names! I'm officially now calling myself Lamber. See? It's like I'm French!)

But the best line of the night? When Maggie sourly notes that Bob had not only taken the best players but that it is obvious he "likes to surround himself with big beefy boys." Um, you think?

Bob is my all-time favourite ambigiously-inclined southern gent. Is he gay or is he just really happy? Who cares? He'd be the greatest pal to work out with on Saturday mornings.

In the end, Jenn, formerly of the purple team, was sent home where she now eats salad and hopes to be trim in time for her summer job at Camp Shane, a fat camp. I am not sure what is more perturbing: that a girl her size was employed at a fat camp, or that a girl her age stills works at a camp.

Nigella Makes a Mean Mom

Nigella Lawson doesn't want her children to inherit any of the fortune shared by her and her husband, advertising baron Charles Saatchi.

In an interview with British magazine My Weekly, Nigella says, "I am determined that my children should have no financial security. It ruins people not having to earn money."

Of course Nigella's statement makes absolutely no sense since her husband is worth more than a hundred million pounds and Nigella still opts to continue putting her name on cookbooks and robin-egg blue mixing bowls.

This all points to what appears to be an increasing divide in the parenting styles of folks heading into retirement. Either your parents hand you a downpayment on your house and wish you luck or they call you from the Mercedes dealership to let you know just how awesome their new wheels are.

Group one takes pleasure from spending their money on their kids. Group two takes pleasure from spending their money on themselves. Whose offspring will make for better humans? Who knows. But I know I'd rather be debating the issue in the warmth of my own home rather than cramped in the backseat of a Roadster.

It's A Man's World

The current debate in my house is over the purpose of towels.

I've always been under the impression towels are used to dry clean things, like washed faces or dishes. My husband believes towels should be used as all-purpose absorbers. Blueberry juice on your face? Use a monogrammed hand towel!

While both of us are right according to Wikipedia ("A towel is a piece of fabric or paper used for drying or wiping.") I think my frustration is born of the fact that blueberry stains are hard to remove and I am the full-time stain remover of our house.

My lament isn't novel. Nor is the new CBC show The Week the Women Went, which is based on a BBC program of the same name. The gist is that the women of Hardisty, Alberta (pop. 760) are sent off to a resort for a week, leaving their husbands to run the households.

If this was an American production, the children would be forced to run the oil fields unsupervised while the dads hung out in a garage drinking beer to a laugh track.

You can watch the first episode online. It's worth checking out the link only to see this dude:
He definitely uses hand towels for something other than his hands.

I said I would write about The Biggest Loser: Couples but first my PVR sabotaged my efforts and then, well, the increasing lameness of the show made recapping it seem more drudgery than fun.

In fact, this season is so lame even the producers have taken to mocking the contestants. This week the yellow team (and word to the white fat folks-don't ever wear yellow. It makes you look like a cartoon character) was pitted against the rest of the teams. Paul, the ex on the yellow team, put on his shaolin monk jacket and got all kung-fu (as kung-fu as one can get wearing a silk jacket about to split at the seams). From there on, every time Paul was on camera, Chinese bongs resonated as if at any moment he was going to fly like a crouching tiger.

The only interesting revelation this week (beyond Paul's karate delusions) was that Paul has a girlfriend. I sort of wiped my eyes for a second, like, huh? Dude, you've been romancing your ex-wife since the second you got on this show! That girlfriend of yours is going to be losing 250 pounds of her own when you get back, if you hear what I'm saying.

In the end, the pink team went home. It seems like no one on the show really likes anyone else, and most of the girls don't seem to be trying that hard (with the exception of the two that got booted off).

What can I say? Couples don't work. Working in pairs eliminates the team spirit and keeps people trapped in unhealthy dynamics.

Um, that didn't quite come out right.

ANTM Will Save us From Writer Strike Blues!

Check out the new promo for Cycle 10 of ANTM!

It's so dark. So underfed. So top-hatty. So New York!

Oh, and the pic is a spread from US Weekly. The girls sort of look like Liza Minnelli if she was a pilgrim who did meth and hooked.

Let us all count down to February 20th!

Heath Ledger Dead at 28

I try to avoid posting celebrity news but I feel compelled to note the death of Heath Ledger, if only to consider for a moment why the news of his untimely end actually upset me.

I found out yesterday when a friend was dropping off a diorama of a murder scene for me. "I thought for sure you would have heard by now," he said. And my immediate reaction was, how could I not know? Followed by, how could this happen? Followed by, why do I care?

In this epoch of appearance over substance, awareness has trumped knowledge. For instance, I am aware of Heath Ledger the actor, and Heath Ledger the photographed dad trotting around Brooklyn with child and ex-fiance Michelle Williams (she was the interesting one on Dawson's Creek). Maybe I've come to rely so heavily on visual recognition as a mediator of information that seeing is the new believing. Hence the more I see a person in photographs or film or magazines, the greater my sense of personal connection.

A perfect example is the current American Democratic leadership race. It's two forerunners have been reduced to their visual signifiers: black man versus white woman. An actual knowledge of their different platforms (and when it comes to energy and health care, the candidates do indeed have fundamentally different approaches) has become moot because we feel like we already know what differentiates the candidates because we can see it.

Uh, this is sort of getting heavy for what was supposed to be a brief celeb obit. I guess I just wanted to point out that: one, the news bummed me out and two, it's a complicated sense of loss that highlights that strange nature of our current obsession with familiar faces.

As for the gossip: Naomi Watts, who dated Heath for 16 months five years ago, has cancelled all promo for her movie at Sundance in order to grieve. Michelle Williams and their two-year old Matilda are flying home from Europe.

It appears Heath mixed Ambien sleeping pills with anti-depressants. What is not yet clear is whether or not the death was accidental.

Oh, and Heath was found dead by his housekeeper in his undecorated apartment that rented for $23,000 a month.

The Hypochondriac's Guide to Future Ailments: Alice In Wonderland Syndrome

In my second installment of Diseases it is Possible I Might One Day Suffer From (if I Don't Already) I present to you, Alice In Wonderland Syndrome.

It's likely I have always suffered a mild form of this syndrome, which affects one's visual perception by making things appear smaller or larger than they really are.

For most of my adult life the following have appeared disproportionately tiny to me: bottles of red wine, plates of rogan josh, my boobs; while other things (read: my ass) have seemed unfairly big. Perhaps my it's not my butt that's big but my awesomely named syndrome that's making me think it's big.

I also tend to see concrete barriers and guardrails as smaller than they are (hence the current bruise on my knee and the wicked black and blue I got during a famous shopping trip to Buffalo four years ago).

See, it's not that I'm clumsy. I'm afflicted.

Oscars Heading North

The Oscar nominations were announced today and it's official:
In the prison yard of entertainment, Americans are our bitches.

Canadians dominate with Sarah Polley getting a nod for adapting the screenplay Away From Her. Polley's directorial debut also gets props with a Best Actress nom for Julie Christie. Jason Reitman (director) and Ellen Page (actress) are tapped for Juno (which also featured Canadian it-boy Michael Cera). Croneberg's film Eastern Promises got acknowledged with a Best Actor nom for Viggo Mortensen (whose penis should win for best stunt fighter).

I know there's a big love-fest going on for Juno, what with the hipsters embracing the geeko soundtrack and Cera's short-shorts and right-wingers loving what they've perceived to be a pro-life message. And I did find it charming, what with its mix of ballsy adolescent vernacular and nuanced performances. But I fear for the inevitable Hollywood influx of clunky cussing teen scripts that wield irony like a spiked club and introduce Belle and Sebastian to a whole new generation of sulking sexually-active teens.

It's Not You, It's Me

I have had more grief and debate over dumping my therapist than I had over ending any of my romantic relationships.

Maybe that's because I was usually the one who got dumped. But besides that, on the rare occassion I did need to shake loose a hang-male, it was sort of easy. Because I didn't care if I appeared insane and, in fact, that often made it easier.

The exact opposite holds true with my therapist. I want to appear so sane to her, so reasonable, that I don't need her anymore. The evidence has to be so blatant that the dialogue would go something like this:

Me: Um, I was thinking that maybe I don't need to come to therapy anymore.
Therapist: You're so right.
Me: I know.

Unfortunately, every time I suggest that I would like to reduce my visits to bi-weekly, my therapist nods slowly and settles deeper into her chair.

Therapist: You know that when a patient resists therapy it means that we are starting to touch on the issues that are the core of your problems.
Me: My problems?
Therapist: Yes, let's talk about what is creating your resistance. How did you handle stress when you were a child?

Next thing I know it's the end of the session and I have been convinced that not only do I need therapy, but the reason I need it is because I have so many issues with it.

I laughed at this week's New Yorker ditty on dumping your therapist but it also stressed me out. Maybe I need another therapist to talk to about my therapist.

Tom Cruise Scares Me

I know I'm like a week late on the whole Tom-Cruise-is-fucking-crazy train. I just assumed Tom and his humanoid league of lawyers would have erased all existing online proof of his madness by now and the world would return its focus to more pressing matters, like where Suri is parting her hair these days.

But the Scientology promo video remains up and running and if you haven't seen it you need to. Right now. Seriously.

If you have ever doubted your own grasp on reality, this video is the equivalent of ten years of therapy. Prepare to be mortified.

It Takes Balls to Take on Balls

During a recent jaunt to the quaint town of Stratford, my hubby and I were both distracted by what appeared to be a giant pair of balls hanging from the back of a pick-up truck.

On closer inspection it turned out that it was indeed a big pair of white nuts dragging below the trailer hitch. After a pregnant pause we burst out laughing and continued on our way.

Turns out vehicular testes are not such a laughing matter. An American state delegate is looking to get the rubber cojones banned and a $250 fine imposed on drivers who can keep their dicks, but not their balls, in their pants.

And right before the big launch of the minivan vag.

If It's Yellow Let it Mellow, If It's Brown Flush it Down

So The Biggest Losers are not such big losers this week...

The episode begins with the Hall of Truth, which is actually three screens of shame. Each team gets to watch their previously filmed fat selves speak lightheartedly about how many fried chickens and steaks they'd typically eat in a week while horrifying sums of their yearly fat intake are displayed and narrated by a robot woman. If Hal had a girlfriend, she would sound like this voice-over.

The brown team (which is comprised of the only brown couple on the show) get me balling early on in this episode as they watch themselves on the screens of shame. Both husband and wife sob and hold each other, as they keep repeating, "We're killing ourselves with food." Oh, the horrible irony!

During workouts, Neil on the white team is picked on by the others for his laziness and whining, while I think he should be picked on for his totally lame-ass tattoos which are not even fat motorcycle dude tats but lame skinny white boy arm bands. Yeck.

Fortunately Gillian, who is both terrifying and gorgeous, screams at Neil, berates him and then sneaks him outside for some sly psychotherapy. She tells him she knows he's been hiding behind the fat and that he's scared to come out. And in seconds she breaks him and he's in tears and you just suddenly know Neil is going to start kicking butt. At least this is what I hoped as I wiped away my tears for the second time this episode.

There's a see-saw challenge that infantilizes the teams, which isn't hard because sometimes obese people look like little kids but instead of being starfishes bundled in snowsuits they're starfishes bundled in fat. And I sort of felt bad for everyone involved because the teeter-totter landings looked ass-crippling. In fact due to butt injuries, the grey team footballers give up early on and the black team brothers win.

The prize is calling cards which the black team get to share with three other teams. The brothers choose the folks with young kids which makes no sense to me since when the kids get on the phone they're all like, heeeey, googoo, sploink, byyyyye. At least give it to the girl on the blue team who is stuck with a total stranger and would call her BFF to dish about all the people on the show.

The second challenge of the week is a Temptation Challenge. Tables of ribs, wings, chips and sweets are laid out and folks are told that whoever consumes the most calories wins $5000. However, the teams are split up so they can't know what their partner will choose to do.

Chubbs on the yellow team stupidly announces that he's gonna eat 900 calories so dude on the black team is like, hm, (temple scratch) I think I'm gonna eat 901. Which is basically what goes down and they're the only two that eat for money whereas brown momma scarfs 250 kj worth of plain M & Ms. Actually, watching her pop them in her mouth after seeing her cry about how she hates how much she eats made me feel really sad for her. She didn't even look that happy to taste chocolate.

Overall, everyone sucked at weigh-in but the yellow team and brown team sucked the most. And chubbs on the yellow team gave a sob story about how he's going to die in 2 years if he doesn't lose weight whereas the brown team takes the noble route of hoping their efforts speak for themselves.

As usual, style wins over substance, and the self-serving divorced yellowers stay while my favourite team gets booted. Boo.

Now, for my own loser status, I just got back from Weight Watchers and I am down 0.8 pounds, which was pretty much the women's average at Biggest Loser campus and all I did was an hour-long belly dancing class before weigh-in. Oh yeah, and I didn't drink water and dropped a deuce. Whatever works.

Saleisha's Seventeen Cover

I begrudgingly confess this looks pretty good.

Writers Also Get B.O!

I am not sure why an article on authors with tattoos annoys me.

Is it because I don't have tattoos or because I don't have a sweet ass book deal?

Maybe it's because the underlying assumption that writers having tattoos is novel (hehe) just continues to perpetuate this wholly outdated mythology of writers being this breed separate and beyond the barely literate masses.

Or perhaps it makes me sad because it is such an innocent and tentative nudging at the mind/body disconnect inherent in written and visual arts. The work, removed from the self, reduced to type on the page, circulates independently from one imagination to the next, with little regard for the flesh from which it came.

Oh god, am I equating books to orphans?! This is seriously the worst period I've had in years.

Late Nights on Air Will Keep You Up

Thanks to cramps and hormonal despair, I spent the weekend in bed alternating between listless staring into space and polishing off Elizabeth Hay's Giller award-winning novel Late Nights on Air.

I was surprised at how the novel's setting and characters entrenched themselves in my imagination. It's a serious book, reflective and ambling like a bearded academic who wears socks with his sandals.

I should not have liked this book, what with its nostalgic Canadiana (it is set in a Yellowknife CBC radio station in 1975, its characters are compelled by native causes and stirred by tales of early Arctic voyages) and yet I found myself yearning to return to its pages to discover the fate of its characters.

Hay deftly manages a rather large cast of characters, although I did occasionally find myself having to turn back pages to remind myself whose tract I was following. And while a canoe voyage reads more like a footnote than the climax, within that voyage are descriptions of northern land that I am glad to have absorbed.

After a week with this book I feel haunted not only by its striking images of the harshness and beauty of Yellowknife but occupied by its characters. They are a sad and complicated lot and Hay is able to succinctly relate their complexities without resorting to cliches.

Late Nights on Air is an affecting read for those willing to be absorbed its tales.

Gene Simmons: Master Mind of Street Meat Marketing

How awesome was the premier of The Apprentice: Celebrity last night?

On the men's team Gene Simmons rocked it out with his understated and slow-speaking genuis, Stephen Baldwin proved himself the most enthusiastic Baldwin, and that British guy that tries to be like that other British guy by judging a talent show similiar to that other talent show is a perfect villain.

On the women's team, the size of one's rack appeared to determine eligibility. I can't really tell you what most of them did before this show, although I did recognize Marilu Henner, Omarosa (a former Apprentice contestant and crazy woman) and Carol Alt, all of whom proved to be fiercely competitive.

Sort of. The women got spanked in the first competition, which was to raise as much money for charity as possible by selling hot dogs.

As a former hot dog vendor (Wilson's Weiners, circa 1998) I was shocked that Omarosa believed quality product would be more marketable than the vendors' celebrity status. Um, when a guy buys a hot dog he is fully committing to eating lips and assholes. Is there really such a thing as a discerning tube steak consumer?

In the end the passive Playboy centrefold was devoured. Looking forward to the carnage next week.

The Hypochondriac's Guide to Future Ailments: Cushing's Syndrome

In the spirit of the dark paranoid days of winter, I am going to start a new series called Diseases it is Possible I Might One Day Suffer From (if I Don't Already).

This week's disease is Cushing's Syndrome.

I think it is likely I will one day get this disease because after reading the symptoms I suspect my paternal grandmother likely has it, albeit undiagnosed.

Cushing's Syndrome is complicated. Signs of Cushing's include central obesity, thinning stretched skin, big boobs and "psychological disturbances, ranging from euphoria to psychosis."

I have a natural predilection for weight gain and unmotivated episodes of rage, but my boobs are more tennis than tether balls. With this in mind, I give myself a 50:50 chance of contracting Cushing's.

Don't Judge a Baby by its Name Unless it was Named by a Celebrity

I had to link to this great post about baby name regret.

Seems that 10% of American parents have misgivings about the name they chose for their child.

As an Amber who was supposed to be an Autumn who is sibling to a Tiffany who was supposed to be a Crystal, I gotta say, sometimes having a name that evokes immediate comments on stripper poles makes you a better person.

Besides, it's not like our names rhymed with fart or douche. The best I got was Amber Pamper, which not only didn't make sense, but was just plain stupid.

Hence the beginning of a lifelong conviction that I am actually smarter than any eight year old on the planet. How many Suzies can claim the same? Hm?

Stand Like Two Trees Apart, But Together, Except When a Hotter Tree is Watching and Then Definitely Apart

According to this New Yorker piece, Shakespeare is considered the best-selling poet of all time. Which sort of blows, because I once read that Ethan Hawke was the best-selling poet of all time and I have often cited this fact when trying to underscore my argument for the death of American intellect.

However, my poet-enemy number three (EH is first, Jewel is second) is Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, the most over-quoted sentimental pseudo-spiritualist script ever published.

If you have only been to one wedding in your life, chances are you got to watch the weepy single BFF of the bride earnestly read from its yellowed pages while an entire reception hall of heads nodded drunkenly along.

I also blame Gibran for encouraging generations of women to date dipshits with drugs habits and no jobs, thanks to his brilliant quote: "To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to."

Yeah, I dated a lot of guys with big aspirations. They bummed my smokes, drank my booze and didn't give me back my change when I sent them in to buy condoms.

So, thanks to Joan Acocella's essay, it is with measured delight, and not a lot of surprise, I find out the Propheter was an egotistical a-hole who led women on so that they'd foot his bills. Oh, and he dreamt that he ate watercress with Jesus.

Which is almost as good as the guy I dated who looked like Jesus...

Abstinence Teacher Will Convert You

I have a fast fun read for all of you during these bitterly cold and snowy days.

Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher is one of those books where you catch yourself thinking of the characters as if they were people you actually knew.

Perrotta is the author of Little Children (another highly readable novel which is much better than the movie) and an American writer who has earned a reputation for tackling the hypocrisy and internal conflicts of suburban dwellers.

In The Abstinence Teacher we follow the collision course of Ruth Ramsey, a liberal sex-ed teacher who is forced to teach abstinence to her students, and Tom Mason, a born-again recovered addict who coaches Ruth's daughter's soccer team. As Tom becomes increasingly less sure of his faith and his fellowship, Ruth's own strict adherence to her liberal principles leaves her feeling disconnected from her daughters. Their mutual alienation quietly bridges the two, as the schism between their political camps widens.

The novel is quick, wry and humane. A perfect excuse not to leave bed next weekend.

Writing This Post Made Me Hungry

Happy New Year, folks.

Chances are you are still nursing a distended gut and swollen cranium thanks to an evening spent with friends, brisket and $8 bottles of prosecco. Nope? Just me?

Anyhoo, to nurse my self-loathing I decided to watch really fat people grunt and cry.

That's right-- last night was the premier of Biggest Loser: Couples, which will hereby be known as Biggest Losers. Teams include an 800-pound pair of former footballers, 23-year old girls who can't outrun an obese 60-year old man, and a divorced couple.

Now, I couldn't imagine the vulnerability you'd feel being dropped off at fat camp (only Girl Guide camp, which is sort of the same except everyone is wearing blue). And I cannot possibly comprehend how horrific it would feel being dropped off at fat camp with your ex and having it all televised.

I would totally have to scarf a burger just to push the pain deeper.

The premiere was promising. Lots of sagging man boobs, sobbing women, and animalistic groans and wails during Last Chance Workouts. Kim, trainer for the red team last season is gone, but ball-buster Gillian and smiling Buddha Bob were onhand to dole out high impact expectations. There was even a chronic puker with an undiagnosed ailment (hey, he lost 17 pounds without even working out!).

As I watch every week, I will keep you posted on my own loser status. For instance, today I have lost zero pounds. However, since I will no longer be subsisting on a diet of shortbread cookies and Bailey's I have high expectations for the coming week.