I stopped in Montreal in between just to get blasted with cold air and snow, reminding me to get the hell out again for more…

Will be spending the week churning out some pages from my temporary office…

Because it’s not like I’m on vacation or anything

Spoiled. Rotten.

Happy new year everyone xox

Happy birthday to my un-ni (sister in Korean)! Happy birthday Marg! xoxoxoxoxox

While she recovers from birthday celebrations (she is, after all, living in the future — 13 hours ahead), I struggle and puzzle and exasperate myself over this mystery of how-the-eff-do-I-fit-all-this-shit-into-my-suitcase?!

Needing the help of a magician-slash-architect. A right-brained male (I tend to be overstocked on the left-brained variety). Or, perhaps…

In any case, while I’ll be working a bit over my vacation, I might say don’t expect very much blogging. But you never know. I might be feeling verbose! We’ll see!  In any case, to the rest of you, do bundle up and stay warm and I’ll send caribbean vibes in your direction!

And if you don’t hear from me before then… A safe and happy new year to you all!

2012: Bring it on!

Arrived home from the country where I’ve been celebrating the holidays with my family.  I was on the verge of tears (no, not really) watching them gorge on tourtiere and stuffing and shortbreads and cherry pound cake while I drank too much coffee (black) on Christmas Eve, but I was feeling rather smug on Christmas Day with my reheated turnips and slice of gluten-free bread while they all tried to recover from their food comas… only to be faced with mounds of ultra-rich leftovers — a thick and creamy vol-au-vent over puff pastry. Ouf! #yayceliacdisease

The smug faded pretty quickly, though, when I got back to the city and inhaled like 5 gluten-free chocolate chip cookies from Mi & Stu. So now I have to slap on those sneakers and go for a run in the chill and the snow. Who’s laughing now? Or…what if I stay in and write tonight and just, like, not eat at all tomorrow? Or, you know, ever again?

Who am I kidding. There are like 5 of those cookies left. And some fudge Moom snuck into my grocery bag before the trip home. And a brand new bottle of Ardbeg bought for me by Len and MC. So I better get running! Because I’m on the beach as of Friday and I only own bikinis, y’all!

Apart from the relatively new diet restrictions, this Christmas didn’t feel altogether Christmassy. First I suppose it was the weather, and Marg being so far away (though she was in Korea last Christmas, too). I suppose the work-rush at the end of this year has tuckered me out. In fact, each night up north I ended up in bed before my Nana! Not like half an hour before my Nana. HOURS before my Nana! I’ve been looking forward to my vacation time beginning at the end of this week, but it’s looking as though I’ve got to be packing up the Macbook and iPad to bring along to make it a working vacation. Which I suppose isn’t so bad. A little iPad never hurt a little pool-lounging, am I right? (I’m probably wrong, but whatevs.)

Speaking of tuckered out, it’s 9:14 p.m. so it’s like way past my bedtime. Better get that run in and hit the sack. I have a whirlwind of a week before I escape on Friday morning.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope it was joyful and full of love to bask in!

PS-  We watched Little Women together last night (as I killed time to hit the sack at 9:30 p.m.) and I cannot believe what a sucker I am for that movie. Also, I could have predicted the future just by my childhood crush on Gabriel Byrne as Professor Friedrich Bhaer. I mean, who knew a middle-aged man who tells you your writing sucks could be so delicious? (Apparently I did, when I was like 10… and 16… and 27…)

Mmmmmm. On that thought…

Remember when I said I felt my year gently winding down? What I really meant was OMG I’M SO BUSY.

Christmas gifts purchased: 2 (of 12). Gaah! Not to mention it takes me like 3 hours to wrap a gift. Why did my brother get all the dexterity and perfect handwriting? (Apologies to everyone who received a chicken-scratch Christmas card from me this year… all two of you.)

Today I was on the phone while doing a quick xmas gift run between errands, and I wandered into Style Exchange because I saw some cute accessories which might make for some adorable stocking stuffers, and — while I was clearly on the phone — a sales girl walks up to me. I make a gesture to make it extra-clear that I’m on the phone, and she just starts yapping away and telling me about the promos, and it took every ounce of kindness in me to not say “What the f*ck is wrong with you, I’m on the f*cking phone.” Must be the fatigue and the stress and the bah-humbug in me.

But I resisted! Because I’m a nice girl! But my kindness tank is now empty, so the remainder of my day will be spent with me immersed in work, basically in a bath of green tea (did you know you can absorb caffeine through your skin? — yes, yes you can!) for a prolonged kick in the pants.

So I’m feeling rather grinch-like at the moment. Look out. She’s a mean one.

Well alright. First week of December and I’m beginning to feel my year starting to gently wind down. Finishing off a couple of work assignments, trying to get some notes and proposals out, and then I’m heading for Toronto, and then down south. In the meantime the slowing pace means coffee with Mom and Dad, benefit concerts with Len and MC, tipsy lunches with my agent, spa Saturdays and chic bites with Myr, friendly tea with a cute boy, and soon three weeks of sun and relaxation.

The trick to not putting on weight at this time of year, and over the holidays, is to book that beach-time in the weeks immediately following all the Christmas feasting. The beach body is a-ready, my friends. Putting in the extra effort on the calorie-burning front, as well as on the brownie-declining front. Need more advice on how to avoid putting on those winter pounds? Get Celiac’s disease and stop being able to eat many of the things that make you wobbly and dimply. Poof! Easy!

Still on a big Florence and the Machine binge (picked up Lungs and Ceremonials on vinyl). I tell ya, that woman is giving me some kind of awakening. Getting the blood moving, you know? Much needed after several months with my head buried in a pile of work. Listening to Lover to Lover over the last few days and I tell ya it makes me wanna put on some bold red lipstick and shave my legs while smoking a cigarette. It also makes me wanna repeatedly say things like “I tell ya.”

Except I’m not taking up smoking.

But I picked up some YSL bold red lips today and (wait, checking….)… yup, I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to shave my legs.

Swung by my agent’s office today between whirlwinds, and while he was on the phone I stood and eyed the collection of Genie and Jutra awards (etc.) lining the wall. And suddenly I felt this jolt of alarm.

Are you afraid of heights? Ever been on a plane and, even when everything is running smoothly — in fact you’re having the most pleasant flight of your life — suddenly you realize where you are? Up in the air? And even though you know a scientific person could explain to you using math and physics and reason why you’re able to glide through the air at 30 000 feet, it all seems like magic; strange and impossible. That any moment you’ll take a nosedive and meet your fate? Your stomach leaps. That occasionally happens to me mid-flight, and it happened to me today at the agency. Except I’m not soaring at 30 000 feet. I’ve only just taken off. You know what they say about take-off. If you don’t, watch the last scene of Say Anything.

I wanted to find a Youtube Clip of this scene but I can’t. So I’ll share this one instead. It has nothing at all to do with what I’m trying to say, but it’s classic.

Anyway. So my stomach leapt. I went and comforted myself with a poached egg on a bed of baby spinach and pancetta and some urgent proofreading.

Magic? Strange and impossible? Probably not. And even if so, that’s ok too because…

the newest addition to my kitchen

Speaking of strange and impossible, anyone want to guess where I’m headed back to tomorrow night? The year 2010. I’m time-traveling. I got skillz.

On an unrelated note, I’m dying to get this moustache off my profile pics. So imagine all the mo’ bros actually sporting them all month? Last day to donate. There’s still time. Do it!

And here’s another gem.

A cab ride home from a story meeting stuck me in a taxi with a very friendly very old driver who’s a month away from his retirement. At 70 years of age (ouf!). Turns out he used to be a railroad man. I hoped he knew my grandfather. But he didn’t. He did, however, wax elaborately about mortality. By the time I got out of the cab my heart was racing like mad. The two cups of coffee and can of Diet Coke over lunch with Myr might have contributed to this. But he went on and on — “time flies.” “When you’re my age…” “Life is short.” Cliche, yes, absolutely. And yet the fact that it caused my heart to race so much is a testament to its truth (or at least to my belief in its truth). This is what Myr and I kept saying this weekend. Me throwing my hands up in the air.

Speaking of hands up in the air…

Myr and Celeste: dream (creative) team. Sending pitch and development documents back and forth, working in sync, minds fully engaged, her with her David’s Tea and Nicorette, me with my Diet Coke and avocados with lemon juice and sea salt. Clock a-ticking. No smoke-filled room but this is how we roll. A Madison Marcus hanging in the hallway, Bajada’s new album blasting (including a song MJ would have entitled “Don’t Feed the Shit Wolf”) and my faux-fireplace faux-roaring. The faint scent of Dior Addict on the collar of my sweater. The perfume I was told wasn’t “me” — but I aspire to be it, so I wear it till I make it. Deadlines getting met. Breaks spent working on other material. Translating, reading, enjoying. The rest of the week continues to be arduous, but time has been made for Florence and the Machine. Delight!

Keeping my eye on the ball.

the ball.

Enjoy this brilliant tune…

Guess who’s going to be on Q next Friday?

Swoon! I really think Ceremonials is one of the sexiest albums I’ve heard in ages. Very primal. Very, very mmm.

Oh, and look what Rafael bought me!:

J’adooooooore!

And Pat came by and brought me my early Christmas present — my turntable! Hurrah! I am going to have the coolest dining room in Outremont/Mile End!

I will never get tired of receiving gifts. Srsly.

Ok, getting back into work mode. Meetings galore!

The term “jet-setter” implies that, on top of traveling a lot by plane, a person is very busy and fabulous (#2 word I hate = “fabulous”; #1 is “epic”). But let’s face it, if you’re at the airport waiting for your flight, I don’t care who you are; you’re just as bored as everyone else.

Airport boredom survival tactics:

- Switch iPods with a handsome stranger who’s just as bored with his playlist as you are with yours;

- Be very ostentatious with your iPad so everyone can see you’re reading the New Yorker;

- Remove location settings from your iPhone and iPad so that nobody needs to know where you are if you don’t want them to (Twitter and Facebook can be such tattlers);

cdp: hipster and cartoon

- Play cartoon games that let you illustrate your hipsterfied self;

- Choose your New Year’s Eve dress, which you’ll forget you have on New Year’s Eve and decide to stay in your hotel room instead because you think you don’t have anything to wear;

- Review the scripts you’re going to have to discuss when you arrive — try not to confuse them;

- Drink way too much coffee so that you practically caffeinate yourself to your destination (or repeatedly disturb the person sitting on the aisle because you can’t stop peeing);

- Make your dinner reservations from afar without having to call a single restaurant;

- Look at what people who are cooler and more beautiful than you wore at their parties this weekend;

- Write a note in the god-awful book you’re reading asking the person who finds it (after you leave it behind at the gate) to email you and tell you how it ends;

- Blog, because you’re about to be really very busy.

I’ll be bored at a lot of airports for the next couple of months, so please share your time killers too!

I recently audited my brother’s film studies class at Concordia. It was strange returning to that old stomping ground. The De Seve cinema was significantly smaller than I remembered. Felt somewhat like returning to your elementary school and realizing the water fountains stand right above your knees.

There was some discussion about narrative structure before the night’s screening, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. Some talk about linear and non-linear narratives. Multi-form narratives, bla bla bla. Not altogether surprising because — what occurred to me during the screening (my only viewing of RLR since I was in my mid-teens) is that this particular film is not unlike a very long, very didactic, not-so-subtly moralizing music video (do no harm and you shall prevail, etc. etc.).

The professor, during his lecture, repeatedly insisted that the most complex films are non-linear. A couple of times he added that this was an almost iron-clad rule. Complex. Narrative complexity. What are we really talking about when we talk about the complexity of a narrative film? The word ‘complex’ often comes up in calls with the financing institutions, and whenever an analyst says “this seems complex” I make a point of saying “complex, but not complicated.” I mean, I think we want films that are complex, don’t we?

But I don’t agree that narrative linearity (yes, that’s a real word) and complexity necessarily have any correlation. Again it depends what we mean. But it’s long been my feeling that we often laud non-linear narratives because we’re so busy trying to locate ourselves in time and space that we forget that we’re not relating emotionally to characters in really important ways.

A recent example of this — and this of course is a reflection of my personal taste/evaluation — is Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene. The repeated flashbacks and match-cuts are stylistic devices that don’t enhance our emotional relationship to the characters or offer any more insight into the portrayed events than had the film been structured as a linear narrative. So, you know, why the four stars and all the buzz?

I’m personally fond of linear narratives not because they’re “easier” in any way but that events and characters are portrayed so that less of my energy is spent untangling, and more is spent understanding, analyzing, and emoting. I think there’s something decidedly character-centric and psychological, though, in my approach — which I concede is very limited whereas cinema has so many possibilities.

I agree that non-linear narratives can heighten meaning impossible to communicate as viscerally in a linear narrative, but too often I see it as a cheap stylistic device intended to distract from mediocrity and laziness. A story isn’t necessarily better because you told it out of order.

Sometimes even the simplest, most-straightforward narratives — or even gestures — resonate the most. And that’s all I’ll say about this for now. Partly because I’m unsure of my own stance, this evening.

Ok. So I guess this winter thing is gonna happen again!

Which means it’s just about time to leave this place! First Toronto. And I’ve been invited to Paris (but will I have time to go?– probably not). And then…

Paradise. And then, Parr-adise (har-har).