Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Comings, Goings, Doings

Hey muggles...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, huh? Conversely, it's beginning to look a lot like the climate of the earth isn't changing and we're on the receiving end of a good-old-fashioned assachey winter. BAHUMBUG!

Last winter was basically the greatest thing I've ever experienced. Basically. It was the seasonal equivalent of a piece of bocconcini cheese - it was that mild. I think I wore a fucking windbreaker until February or some shit. I can specifically remember New Years Eve - it was downright balmy... I fully could have gone without coat, FULLY. And I can remember thinking... "This is global warming... I'm sorry, but kinda bring it on... shoot..." Anyway. Turns out it was just an abnormally warm winter, and the threat of global warming is still very real... but the fact that it interferes with my enjoyment remains the same.

NEVERTHELESS...

This weekend was fun. FUN. It started on Thursday night when I did a benefit for the Sick Kids Hospital. Now it's pretty common knowledge that I hate kids - ESPECIALLY sick ones - so this was a bit of a stretch. But now whenever I see commercials for sick kids hospital asking 'what I've done this Christmas', I can say "SOMETHING". I'm so into capitals today. I don't know why. I'm sorry.

Anyway - I anticipated a bunch of medical types in attendance and do you know how many there were? 0.00 - yeah, no one. I had this bit that I really wanted to try about Prader-Willi Syndrome... which is right behind Compulsive Hoarding in terms of hilarious diseases and dysfunctions...

Prader-Willi Syndrome is that disease that afflicts children where they're missing that part of the brain that tells them when they're full and to stop eating - which is why you see really obscenely obese toddlers, like the one pictured to the left, to the left (No, it's not Carnie Wilson pre-bypass having breakfast on 'casual Friday'.)

Anyway, I remarked that it's so terrible because these kids have no peer pressure at that age and haven't picked up the harsh body image standards imposed on us by Hollywood etc... which I guess is sort of the cure for Prader-Willi syndrome. Becoming attuned to those and hating your body. So if y'alls kids are born with PW, get them an issue of Seventeen magazine as soon as they can blink. Yeah. That's me trying to work clean. My boss thought it was funny when I tried it out in conversation. But the audience of non-medical types didn't so much. So I shifted gears and talked about Facebook and made dick jokes. A good time was had by all.

Friday night I attended the birthday bash of my dear, dear friend Meredith "Muffy" Shaw - whose pumpkin pie parties have become something of legend. She hosted an elegant sitdown dinner at the Granite Club - which is like the country club in Toronto... it's next door to the Bridal Path (Toronto's version of Bel Air... in which, I'm sure, Toronto's version of the Fresh Prince resides) and where the major athletes train and shit like that. ANYBALLS - the entire thing was lovely from head to toe.

The company was mixed. Well, not exactly. It was a gaggle of girls that Muff knew in high school (Branksome Hall, for those of you in the know), a gay couple that Muff had known for a while, myself and Larissa. The food was spectacular, as it very well should have been. I basically ate like it was last meal - and I had a canker on my tongue to boot, so fuck. Uncomfortable, much? Larissa ate so much she thought she was going to puke. She made a bee line for the bathroom and just as she did, one of Meredith's Branksome-ite childhood friends scampered along beside her... because for girls, going to the bathroom together is a mandatory social activity or something, apparently. I'll never wrap my head around that.

GREATEST STORY I'VE EVER HEARD: Muff and her Branksome co-horts recounted driving around their Rosedale neighborhoods when they were 16 and entering a phase of general teenage angst and unruliness, and deciding that they should buy a house to party in... as their cavernous Rosedale mansions didn't offer enough privacy to stow away and shotgun their parents Dubonnet. I jest, I jest. Anyway - Meredith was like "I can actually remember thinking that. Actually remember thinking, 'yeah. We should just buy a house. Like that one - it looks shitty - let's just buy that one.'" Of course they were talking about another Rosedale home that was no doubt worth well-over a million, but to them - t'was a homely shanty fit for their partying. LOVE IT. I find that so funny... I've been laughing about it for days...

Lariss and I pour out of there around 1 AM and make the last subway. Standing on the Bloor platform, I experienced a first. This unspeakably fugly Mediterranean chick who was CLEARLY stoned out of her mind and being held up by some sketchy dude who CLEARLY facilitated it and was trying to make her look and act as non-conspicuous as possible (read: this was a good-old-fashioned date rape) comes up to me... she eyes me, trying to keep focus and asks me point blank: "Hey... are you gay"? I ironically flutter m'eye lashes and cheerfully reply, "Nope!". She then teeters and says "Oh... .... well you look gay!" and then bursts into laughter.

Larissa and I burst into laughter in turn. Wow. That's the first time anything like that has ever happened - but it's the sort of thing that people in small towns think is common place in Toronto! I swear! Before moving here, like when I was in high school, that's what I thought happened "in the big city". Wow. Hilarious.

Anyway - I could hardly be mad at the bitch... On top of the obvious cruelty imposed by nature on her face, she was about to raped while unconscious and left for dead... - then sure enough, after I get off the subway I get a call from Larissa, who happened to be on the same car of the train that chick got on and gave me the follow up... Apparently out of nowhere, this chick starts screaming and kicking the guy she was with. It was quite a scene, apparently. Ahhhh the less fortunate. What will they get up to next?

Speaking of less-fortunate, I can certainly relate with them after Saturday night.

Saturday night saw me accompany the divine Kitty Ryan and a gaggle of her best gal pals from high school out to The Guverment. Yeah. I'm not a frequenter of The Guverment. But I went because we get special treatment via a promoter named JP that Kitty new from her days as a dancer on Electric Circus (YES!) - like we get to be behind a velvet rope. It's terribly pretentious.

Anyway... if the Guverment ever goes out of business, I'm going to buy it and rename it "Douchebag Olympics". Because that's what it is.

For serious. Every dude up in there looks like the guy pictured to the right. Well not every guy - but they fucking might as well have.

Balls. Anyway, the evening was sweetened slightly by the arrival of television personality Traci Melchor, who joined us in our velvet roped section or whatever. I finally got to re-introduce myself to her - I met her when I was in Rocky Horror in Toronto back in 2002 and she was the host of W Network's "Style VIP". She was doing some segment about how films have affected fashion and I needed to come and hip check her out of the frame as Frank and say "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or something. It was a ball and she was a doll. She gave me her necklace that day and I still have it. Not because I wanted to preserve this item that was graced by Traci Melchor, per se, but because it was a really cool necklace.

Anyballs - she totally remembered and was spoke for a while. She's got twins now, yo. Dayum.

So yeah... That's it... Here's a picture of me, Yerx and Anth as 90's Adult-Contemporary Supergroup/Rock 'N Royalty Wilson Phillips... it's currently my reason to live... I LOVE IT!!!

Hold on... for one more day... things will go your way...

--- Aj