Archive for April, 2009

29
Apr
09

master cleanse day iv: hanging in there

By shawnster Leave a Comment
Categories: Shawn
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Day no. five, and I know where every last morsel of food is located in my apartment. There’s the miniature, blue-foil-wrapped chocolate egg left over from the Easter lying on the floor in my closet. There’s the bag of dried sugary cantaloupe slices I brought back from Palm Springs in the cupboard, along with dried cranberries and granola. There’s the chocolate bar I bought for the Twister, which she never ate, also sitting in the cupboard. (For those of you paying attention, the Twister has landed safely in Zurich.) There’s the bag of raisins in the fridge, also brought back from Palm Springs. Heck, even the cats’ 95% duck food is starting to look good.

Still, the end is in sight. Day 5 is hump day; after this, it’s just a matter of counting off the days ’til the end of this self-imposed sentence. I must be a glutton for punishment although, as I mentioned on Facebook, I’ve lost 80 pounds. (Not really, but that’s what I tell myself to keep going.)

What’s going to make it doubly hard tonight is that my cousin’s coming over for our weekly Movie Nite, which has been on hold for the last couple of weeks while I’ve been traveling. Traditionally, we order a large pizza with artichoke hearts or chicken and spinach or mushrooms and feta to go with the week’s flick, but tonight I’ll be swigging from my cup of cayenne-and-maple-syrup lemonade.

God. Could I go for a pizza right now.

26
Apr
09

Master cleanse, Day III: olfactory hallucinations

By shawnster Leave a Comment
Categories: Shawn
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The talk of the people I was staying with out in California, the Master Cleanse is a 10-day torture in which you drink nothing but lemonade. Water, freshly squeezed lemon juice, a couple tablespoons of maple syrup and a dash of cayenne pepper, and voila—that’s your menu for the next week-and-a-half. For fun, you can also drink decaf herbal and/or laxative tea.

Day III is supposed to be the hardest, according to Charla, a veteran of this particular procedure. On Thursday, my last day in LA, she came out to lunch at the famous Nate & Al’s Deli, and just drank tea, which seemed particularly tortuous to me, to be in a place like that and denying yourself matzoh ball soup (a favourite since I was a kid) and a big fat corned-beef sandwich. I guess it was a form of food tourism, watching others eat, but I don’t see subjecting myself to watching others eat at fine restaurants over the next week.

Charla, a former Vancouverite now living L.A. with her husband Ed, is already pretty thin. So I don’t know what she’s trying to do—losing weight is probably the last things she needs to be doing, but then, what do I know? Women are funny about their bodies. I know why I’m doing it which is, yes, to lose some extra pounds brought on by too much Belgian beer and that one potato chip I had out in Palm Springs. Well, maybe two.

One thing I’ve noticed on my cleanse, is the smell of food. Maybe it was an olfactory hallucination, but I thought I smelled bacon when I was walking down the hall of my apartment building. Last night, I went to see a play that was, unfortunately, being put on in the back of a restaurant. To get to the theatre, I had to pass by diners consuming some awfully tasty smelling menu items. And then, one of the running themes of the play—it’s called Stop Kiss, and it’s set in New York—is food, since one of the protagonists, Callie (Missy Cross) knows all the good restaurants, and her friend Sara (Joey Bothwell) is new in town. Ouch!

One ironic thing about this whole cleanse is that, with the renos finally complete and the kitchen finally finished, my only “cooking” type activity is squeezing lemons, measuring out maple syrup and adding cayenne.

Fortunately I don’t have too much food around my condo unit to tempt me. This a.m. I found a chocolate bar I’d bought for the Twister, which she’d left. I bought some raisins in Palm Springs, and I have some dried cranberries and granola, but otherwise my figurative pantry isn’t overflowing with temptation. However, the Texas Twister, who is in Portland on her way to continental Europe to start her new job, did leave me with a parting gift:

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26
Apr
09

Age is just a number

By oohlola Leave a Comment
Categories: Lola
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I know that 50 is supposed to be the new 30, but that doesn’t mean I want to start dating across the generation gap. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of 50-something men I meet don’t think this way, and assume that it is me they should be trying to pick-up instead of women of their own age. Last weekend I was in a bar with a good friend, lets call her Angie, who is 53, and after she put a considerable amount of effort in to talking to a good looking guy a few years older than her he turned and asked for my phone number. She was pretty pissed off, especially when it kept happening. And I should state that my friend is a stunning looking woman who is in much better physical shape than I am!

This doesn’t just happen in real life, online I’d say that 90% of the man that contact me are at least as old as my dad. Some try to hide it, others make a joke out of it, but most don’t think its an issue. One guy lists his age as 48 but in the body of his profile admits he does this because he has such a young soul and simply cannot date women of his own age. Another told me that he was like cheese, and had gotten better with age. Oh please, give me a break! There are so many gorgeous, fantastic women out there who are past 40 and not getting a look-in because these silver foxes think they are too good for them in some way.

There are many reasons why I’m holding out for a man of my own age (32) or at least within ten-years of me, too many to list probably, but the major one is that I want more children. Unfortunately so do some of these men, and they see me as some kind of last chance saloon in which to donate their sperm. I know that May to December romances work for some people, but unless you are Sting, Perry Farrel or Pierce Brosnan there is no way you are getting my number.

* Feel like I should put a disclaimer here. I love Sting for his past achievements, not his recent ones. And if I were to make sweet love to him I would recall his body in the movie Dune or as ‘Aceface/ Bellboy’ in Quadrophenia and pretend not to know about all that awful Elizabethan revival lute crap he put out a few years back.

23
Apr
09

The Standard, downtown LA: life from the rooftop pool

By shawnster 1 Comment
Categories: Shawn
Tags: , , , ,

While my esteemed colleague oohlola writes about the troubles and travails of dating on the East Coast, I’m on the West soaking up the sun (though today, in L.A., is overcast) and pondering life in the city of angels.

Not real life, mind you—not the hard-scrabble existence of the city’s millions of migrant workers, menial day-jobbers, and aspiring actors. But life from a fairly privileged perspective, here on the ninth floor of the Standard Hotel.

Painfully hip, the downtown L.A. Standard (there’s another on Sunset, and more throughout the world) has kind of minimalist decor with splashes of retro design, although I’m sure someone with a better eye than me for this stuff would disagree. The room—I’m bunking with a Master of the Universe, Vancouver division—features several small, cool touches, like a mini-bar stocked with items such as Crackerjack, Mr. Bubble and Tahitian beer, and some not-so-cool touches, like a sticker on the toilet paper roll of an International Symbol Person squatting and excreting. It’s almost as if the makers of American Pie were in here to do some touch-ups. Plus there are a couple of compilation CDs (for purchase, of course) of Standard-endorsed tracks (some interesting choices, including a bunch of stuff I’ve never heard of).

But the hotel’s main feature, at least for me, is the rooftop bar (the hotel is 12 stories). With groovy furniture, astro-turf, lounge chairs, and a pool, it’s a pretty sweet deal. I had a chance to catch some rays for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon: it was a very LA moment when about 20 people in work-clothes (long-sleeved shirts, pants) show up. Turns out they were location scouts.

Last night we hit the town, which consisted of high-proof bourbon at a dark little bar called Seven Grand (for its address, and probably the cost of its most expensive whiskey) and a meal at a place called Wok-ano. Not the best meal in the world, but I’m going to try making the asparagus and prawns in black bean sauce dish when I get home.

The previous night we’d spent at a townhouse in the neighbourhood of Los Feliz, but since the little caged birds belonging to the person in the other unit woke up my traveling companion, we headed for quieter climes. That didn’t stop me from waking up in the middle of the night last night though, with troubled thoughts of the future in mind, and a sour whiskey stomach.

Today, home.

18
Apr
09

Running in to Mr Superlover

By oohlola 7 Comments
Categories: Lola
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The sun is shining in Halifax at last, people are out in their gardens and it seems that spring is actually here. So, I knew it was just a matter of time before I ran in to a mistake I made: the neighbor I was in lust with last summer, Nick. What we shared wasn’t even a fling, he was supposed to be a friend with benefits but the friendship never really happened and the benefits were of questionable quality.

Nick is beyond hot. Tall, muscular, smart and employed (doesn’t live with his mum either, bonus!), the first time I saw him up on scaffolding and bare-chested as he fixed up his house I swooned. He really is an absolutely beautiful specimen of mankind. We’d actually been fixed up by a mutual friend on Facebook when I first moved to Halifax last June, he’d pissed me off with some comment and I’d decided not to pursue him, but then I ran in to him two blocks away from my house, where he lived. Because he was so incredibly gorgeous, I invited him over for a beer.

We hooked up, it was nothing special but I put it down to the fact that it was our first time and thought it might get better. Nick came round and helped me fix some stuff in my house, he was a sweetheart, I looked after his dog one day and he asked if he could come round later. He did, we did, but the second time was pretty bad.  Then I had a date with the guy who called his mother a bitchwhore and I was feeling so crappy I invited Nick round to make it feel better. The hook-up was okay, still not that special but I felt a connection. (There I go again being a girl, of course I’d started to like him, especially compared to the rest of the losers I was meeting.) We got on really well and were talking about doing other stuff together, no way was there any relationship talk but I thought the friendship side was going to happen.

Then nothing. I’d run in to him outside his place, which I have to walk past to go ANYWHERE, including to take my kid to daycare, and we’d make small talk but I’d been given the brush off. I invited him over and felt like an idiot when he wasn’t interested. Then he contacted a friend on lavalife with some cheesy message about how big and strong he was and I wanted to gag. I got fed up of notices coming up on my Facebook feed from girls to him about how much they were looking forward to seeing him and so I unfriended him (not because I was jealous so much as I was starting to feel like the least liked member of his Facebook hareem). Nick loved himself, but had every right to I guess, he had so much going for him and obviously no problems attracting girls.

However, like I said, I have to walk past his house at least twice a day and I don’t want awkwardness so I asked for a ride to Home Depot one day (we are both renovating houses, one of the things we had in common) to clear the air and let him know we were cool. We went it was fine, but awkward. That was in September. I was genuinely sad that we couldn’t be friends. On Christmas Eve I emailed to say that I was hoping we could go for a beer sometime, he emailed back the next day to say sure, but he was in Mexico so he would call me when he got back. Of course he didn’t.

So, today as I dragged my daughter to the store in her wagon, wearing track pants and with no make-up on, there he was in his yard. I tried to walk by but he called me over and started making small-talk, I was polite but when he said he hadn’t seen me around I just had to leave. At least the first awkward encounter is over. And, I totally don’t find him as hot as my mind had built him up to be over the past five months. Maybe I’ll just have to cross the street before I get to his place from now on, and remember not to play so close to home next time.

Oh, and for light relief you might want to check out this video, cheesy but too true  http://bit.ly/M9wt6 One of my girlfriends sent it to me because she thought it rang true of some of my experiences!

18
Apr
09

Paige and Rick’s Gallery opening

By shawnster Leave a Comment
Categories: Shawn
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-Indian Wells, CA

The other night, the Royale Gallery had its opening in Indian Wells. Indian Wells isn’t far from Palm Springs, traditionally an enclave for retired, white, gun-toting* Republicans**. Which raised the question: how much of a market is there in this retirement community for contemporary art?

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Run by Paige Moss, an actress with episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 to her credit, has opened the gallery with her partner Rick Royale. Royale himself had a dalliance with show biz: he used to front a rockabilly band in Vancouver, Canada called the Rattled Roosters.

Their previous lives are little in evidence at the gallery, though. Located in a adobe strip mall a few doors down from a day spa specializing in collagen treatments, Botox, and “medically assisted weight loss”, the Royale Projects reflects Rick’s interest in the abstract in sculpture, objects and painting. There was also neon art (the words “Happiness is expensive”), photography, and the winning entry in a competition for interior designers to come up with a dress.

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The art was interesting, some of it arresting (I really loved a bronze abstract, heavy on the paint textures), but I was waaaaaay too tired to properly socialize, having spent the day getting from my Eastside Vancouver abode to Indian Wells (car ride thanks to the Twister, plane to Denver, plane to Ontario CA, motorcycle ride to here, for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival). At one point I poked my head in at the Nest, a notorious bar-restaurant (it’s slogan: “after 5, life begins here”) in the same complex as the Royale Projects. The Nest caters to the after-60 set, and I think I looked a little shell-shocked when I returned to the gallery after seeing all those sextagenarians shaking their whithered moneymakers to bouncy tunes from a piano man. (I was so tired I fell asleep almost immediately back at the condo we’re renting. The room I was “assigned” by the team leader of this mission belongs to the son of the owners, and it’s filled with WW1 aircraft replicas. Even the bedsheets have airplanes on ‘em.)

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But last night I was talking to the owner of another contemporary art gallery in the area, the only other one, according to her. (There’s also a lowbrow gallery, with art by people like cocktail/lounge illustrator Shag.) But the area is starting to see some of the people who were raised here, and who are now in their late 20s and early 30s, coming back “to invest in the community,” according to the gallery owner. I guess they’re the ones buying up the Cheezies-shaped sculptures and expensive happiness.

*For example: there’s a gun counter at a sporting goods store, Big Five. I went in looking for sunglasses, and the sunglasses were near the guns. Go figure. Anyway, a sign on the cash register said, “Due to popular demand, the [some make] 12-gauge shotgun may be unavailable between the dates of…” And I’m thinking, a 12-gauge shotgun? Who’s buying this? That’s like a post-apocalypse, kill-all-the-zombies kind of weapon. Maybe they know something down here we don’t.

**I’m sitting outside in a courtyard surrounded by ranch-style bungalows, and an old dude ambles past. He’s wearing a T-shirt with the U.S. flag on it. Love it or leave it!

14
Apr
09

On the online dating road to nowhere

By oohlola Leave a Comment
Categories: Lola
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Last week I took a chance and smiled at a cute guy on lavalife.  He smiled back, and we had a few emails back and forth that looked really promising. He gave me his MSN name and I gave him mine, then twenty minutes later we were chatting. It was cool. We talked about music, agreed on bands, emailed each other links to our favourite music videos and had a great chat for almost an hour. By the end of this typed conversation we were talking about chatting some more and going out to get poutine sometime. I signed off, because I could sense that the chat was winding down, but left it thinking that he was an interesting guy that I wanted to find out more about.

Two days later I log on to Messenger again and he’s there. I initiate a chat and its going okay but he is obviously distracted (when this happens paranoid old me always imagines that they guy must be chatting with ten women at once) and there are long pauses before he answers my questions. The quality of conversations dwindles until I realize that this person is rather dull and this is going nowhere. I wasted an hour of my life chatting with this sucker!

Anyways, that was that little blip of ‘almost was’ in this weeks exciting dating schedule. I nearly crossed paths with the 26 year old from last weekend. I went out for dinner with a couple of friends, they were taking me somewhere new and as we pulled in to the parking lot I saw my weekend snogging partner in the window of the restaurant (he had told me he managed one, but I’d forgotten until that moment where it was). I just could not bear the thought of having to pretend I’d been busy or whatever other bullshit excuse I’d have to come up with so I stayed in the car and made my friends get us take-out. Besides, I had my toddler with me and she was coming down from the most epic melt-down of her life so far, so I was not in the mood for any further spending of emotion.

On a more positive note, I may have to go to NY for business, so emailed the Brooklyn Boy Toy to see if I could crash at his place. He said yes, but I already think I may be making a mistake by continuing this dalliance. We have had two flings, where he has flown out to be with me and we’ve had a wonderful time but then total weirdness afterward where I end up getting my feelings hurt. I need to think it over, work out if I really am over him enough to just spend two hot days in NYC then fly home and forget him again. He’s pretty damn gorgeous, so as long I can stop myself from falling too hard when I’m in his company , I would like to go to there again. There being the inside of his pants, where believe me, there is quite a party! But, I am a girl and making that disconnect from sex and love is tricky, especially as the boy pretty much told me he loved me once. But love became lust, the distance between us too far and it fizzled away.Maybe I should go, take a chance, at least have some of the fun I’m missing here in Halifax.

14
Apr
09

Blog love: “I hate you”

By shawnster 1 Comment
Categories: Shawn
Tags: , , , , ,

So I was reading in yesterday’s New York Times a story (“Commoner Captures Princes, Blog Version”) about Ann Althouse, a blogger who has found love with one of her commenters.

My initial reaction—after, “This warrants a story in the New York Times?!!!”—was, have there been any overtures (or undertures) in the comments I’ve received for this blog? (Rest assured, I am quite happily ensconced in domestic bliss with the Texas Twister. Just curious.)

A quick glance at the comments I’ve received leaves me with a resounding, “Not even close.” Dismissing comments from friends, acquaintances and my real estate agent, I’m left with correspondents like Optimusprime (“Hi any girls who are single?”), Jimmy (“Did either of you actually get laid?”—ouch!), and Nicole (“I hate you”). Hardly the stuff of Internet come-ons, n’est-ce pas?

Not that I’m writing this blog for any reason other than to entertain and, perhaps, enlighten while getting the odd free night at a hotel. But every writer hopes, I think on some level, that his or her prose will seduce as well. And you’d think a blog on an online personals site would have brought me at least one proposal by now, even if from someone doing time at a federal penitentiary.

Oh well. Perhaps it’s time try my hand at poetry…

10
Apr
09

Celebrity cooking class # 6: Age of arousal

By shawnster Leave a Comment
Categories: Shawn
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Now here’s a concept I can get behind. The Arts Club Theatre Company, a Vancouver non-profit, has been raising funds through what it calls Celebrity Cooking Classes. The idea is this: a chef from a high-profile and/or respected culinary institute or restaurant conducts a cooking class at a private residence. There are 20 chefs in 20 nights in 20 homes, which range from houses to lofts. Guests, who number from 12 to 20 depending on the size of the home, pay $125 a ticket—this includes interacting with the chef (and often helping make the meals), the three-course dinner itself, copious amounts of wine, and good company.

We attended class # 6, at a house in Shaughnessy, a well-off neighbourhood that would probably be a gated community if it was south of the border. But it’s not, so we were able to get past security without too much trouble.

Once there, we were met at the door by the affable Scott and Lisa, emissaries from the Arts Club. We had glasses of bubbly in our hands practically before we even had a chance to even take our coats off. The homeowners, who are in Palm Springs for three months, have an impressive collection of art, and—no surprise here—a very nice home (though it was distressingly cat-free) with a spacious kitchen. Tousle-haired Mario Armitano, co-owner of the Granville Island bakery La Baguette et L’Echalote, was hard at work, assisted by his smiling, spikey-haired sous-chef, Lynn.

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The appetizers were creamy, parmesan-filled pastries, and ratatouille in tiny buns. Seared scallops in a creamy red pepper sauce followed, and we were all invited to touch the scallop to see how a properly seared scallop should feel. The main course was duck, but as Mario described the process I lost track after about the third step (I think it was marinated, sauteed, cryo-vac’d, and baked—everything but buried underground overnight). The duck was sliced and served a top a cheesy spinach-tomato delight. The whole affair was capped by a plate of four cheeses and baked apple slices with a caramel sauce.

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Besides Scott and myself (and Mario, of course) the only other male in attendance was Stan, who (I believe) said he sits on the board of the Arts Club. Ironically, or maybe coincidentally, the company’s upcoming production, Age of Arousal, written by Linda Griffiths and directed by Katrina Dunn, is about a woman who runs a secretary school in post-World War I England, when women outnumber the men by a good 500,000, her lesbian lover, three spinsters and one guy; the ratio wasn’t much different at the dinner. Anyway, everyone was already hooked up. Single guys and gals, get on it! This is a great way to learn about food, meet people, and explore strangers’ medicine cabinets.

There are 13 Celebrity Cooking Classes left in Vancouver. For more information, go here.

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09
Apr
09

He looked good on the dancefloor, but….

By oohlola 3 Comments
Categories: Lola
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I ventured out on Saturday night to go to a club here in Halifax for the first time, the Paragon (which used to be the Marquee) where Skratch Bastid was playing. It was a fun night, Skratch Bastid played an incredible set and I danced for hours. There were lots of hot boys, and one in particular kept dancing near me and eventually we locked lips and made out. Thrilling! He was super cute, but it turned out he was only 26. He thought it was no big deal, and we kept hanging out together. I had an overwhelming urge to drop the ‘I have a kid’ bomb to save wasting my time, or his, and when I did he responded with interested questions. I liked him.

So, he and his roomie were having a little party after the club closed and my posse of six decided we’d go. More beer? For sure! I fully took advantage of the fact that my neighbor who was babysitting said to stay out a late as I wanted, although I was feeling a little guilty every time I saw a clock. I held hands with the boy in the cab on the way home and everything was going well, until we got to his place.

We walked in to his sparsely furnished bachelor pit and I realized that his lifestyle was so far from mine that nothing was ever going to happen between us. We’re talking a framed picture of dogs playing poker (I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be ironic, but maybe not) above a thrift-store sofa, and very little else in the room. The floor was bare tiles. There were four garbage bags full of empty beer-cans on the balcony. It was like student digs, but he wasn’t a student. It wasn’t just his place that was shocking; once in the cold harsh light of his apartment, the appeal of him had worn off.

I sat there for half an hour, but I just wanted to get home to bed. Suddenly I felt too wasted to even pretend to be interested in the drunken conversations going on, and I was feeling REALLY guilty about my neighbor there waiting for me to get home (who I assumed was asleep, but it was 3am now, what if she wasn’t?)

I made for the door. The boy got up and asked if we could exchange numbers. I said with as much sincerity as I could muster, “Sure, give me your number and I’ll call you,” and he asked if we could go out next Saturday. I said yes, then I felt really guilty, but there was no way I could cope with seeing him again (but being in Halifax I believe the likelihood of this happening is pretty much 90% going to happen). I wrote his number on my hand and went downstairs to wait for a cab in the lobby. Horror of horrors, I was waiting an hour for a cab, and didn’t make it home until 4.30 am. It was the latest I’ve been up in years and years.

Once home, I had a bath and sat there scrubbing his number off the back of my hand. In my drunken state I started thinking that I missed my ex-husband. But then I remembered seeing him recently and that ridiculous “Dumb and Dumber” haircut he has now, and it made me smile, and I realized that no matter how lonely I feel, or how much I want a man in my life, I don’t want my ex-husband any more than I want the interior design challenged 26 year-old. Better off alone than in another crummy relationship.

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