IF THIS IS CREEP WEEK, I'M GLAD IT'S ALMOST OVER

HI LADIES! I'M HUNGRY AND I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM! 
TXKING/SHUTTERSTOCK 

Is there some kind of weird "guy flu" going around that I haven't heard about?

Did Mayor Rob Ford make some kind of "It's My City, The Rules of Decorum No Longer Apply" pronouncement and forget to send out a press release?

Is this Creep Week and I just didn't get the memo?

Because in the space of less than five days, here are three strange but true things that have happened to me, all involving men.

No. 1, Monday: I am sitting at a restaurant. A bearded, woolly looking fellow comes out of the washroom, looks at me and laughs. I barely refrain from my favourite response, perfected during my teen years: the eye roll. He walks up to my table and says "Can I have one of those fries?" WHILE ALREADY REACHING FOR ONE. He walks away and leaves the restaurant. I decide I am done. "Cheque, please. And some hand sanitizer."

No. 2, Tuesday: I am in the LCBO parking lot. Makeup-free, red-faced and sweaty, having just left the gym. (I like a little post-workout martini, yes. Who doesn't?) A young man in a car looks at me with googly eyes and beckons. He looks about as safe as the fry-guy, so I keep walking. In the checkout, I see that he is hovering behind me and looking at me excitedly. This time, I permit myself the eye roll and consider maybe the bird flip as well.

No. 3, Wednesday: I am on my way home from work. Stopped at a light under the Gardiner in front of the ACC. Busy time of day, pedestrians and cars everywhere. A nicely dressed young man on the sidewalk turns to traffic, opens his zipper, pulls out his partner and relieves himself in full view of everyone. I scramble for my cellphone camera (note to self: from now on keep that thing handy) while a chorus of honking erupts, but he has finished and walked calmly off before I can find it. I do the eye roll, the bird-flip and the horn honk, all at the same time.

The temptation, of course, is to say, "You appear to be the recurring theme here, Marie." But Gardiner boy didn't even look up to see who was watching. (Everyone.) Anyway, I'm going with Creep Week...and I'm glad it's almost Friday. 

Editor's note: It might be a fun little game for readers to count how many times the word "LCBO" crops up on this blog. 

Creep's note: I've been counting. Three hundred and seventeen!

TOSCA, IN THE TEETOTALLING FLESH!

Tosca Reno and some guy who's 
so excited he can hardly breathe.

Well it took several hours of driving and parking and lining up, but I finally got to meet Tosca Reno, nutrition guru, fitness magazine model, author, reality TV star. 
And she is even lovelier in person, a vision who looks better at age 53 than most of the 20- and 30-somethings waiting to meet her. I lined up for the inevitable book, mag and swag peddling, but what I really wanted was to hear her motivational speech about the "anti-aging diet." 

I am at an age where the words "anti-aging" are catnip. And if she can look like THAT at 53, hot and toned and curvacious in a pair of skinny jeans and a T-shirt, I am listening to whatever it is she is saying and I am buying whatever it is she is selling.

So, aging, Tosca says. "You can't stop that train, but what you can do is can slow it down." (I like where this is going.)

"And one of the most important things you can do to achieve that is to find out where sugar is in your diet and cut it out." (Yes! I can do that. I don't even like desserts!)

"No processed foods," she says. "You want food as close to right out of the ground as you can get it." (Totally! This makes sense to me. I am COMMITTING to this. I am buying the books, baby!)

"Because sugar is everywhere," she continues. "It's in salt. It's in meat. It's in liquor." 

Yes! I am . . .

Whoa. 

What?

Did she just pretty much say "no more booze?"

Wow. Well, bye. Gotta go. 
As Meatloaf says (mmm, meat loaf!!), I would do anything for love . . . but I won't do that.

GREAT MOMENTS IN TRAVEL: BUFF BAY, JAMAICA

FRESH FRUIT and MOONSHINE FOR SALE. CHEAP.This roadside stand was in the remotest spot imaginable. I bought some fruit ... 
and two shots of rum, because that's what you do in Jamaica ... and asked if this 
was the road to Port Antonio. She laughed and said, "No, mon! Bush road dis."

Ignoring all sound advice to not drive in Jamaica, where Stop signs are just a suggestion and almost every road wants to murder your car with its bare hands, a friend and I rented a Jeep and toured the entire north coast, from Negril to Port Antonio. We learned a coupla things along the way. For instance, we learned that the term "highway robbery" was probably coined here. (The phrase was originally "muggers disguised as cops," but that wasn't as catchy.) We learned that the mountain people are the poorest and also the most generous. We learned that everybody in this country can cook even if all they own is an ackee tree, a chicken and a barrel. We learned that nobody can drive better than a Jamaican because they grow up thinking that the roads with hairpin turns and craters the size of mules are the "good" roads. Most of all, we learned that Jamaica is one mind-bendingly beautiful piece of island, and that rum is often a better . . . and always a more fun . . . travelling aid than a map.

WILL I GET TO MEET TOSCA? PLACE YOUR BETS HERE

Ordinarily on my day off, my plans consist of: thinking about housecleaning, browsing the sales bin at the LCBO, thinking about making a scrumptious dinner, ordering takeout, drinking discounted hooch while feeling guilty about my uncleaned house, drinking more discounted hooch until the guilty feeling goes away. 

TOSCA FRIGGING RENO

 Seriously. The woman is 53. 
If this is what eating clean does for you, 
pass me the soap RIGHT NOW!

But before any of that happens, I hit the Bramalea GoodLife step class. Every Saturday, without fail. Except for this Saturday. Because this Saturday, I am going to be changing my life.

This will mean nothing to people whose main food group is Cheetos (not that there's anything wrong with that; there are days when Cheetos are my main source of dairy), but Saturday is the CanFit Pro conference. 

Right now, many of you are saying "Fitness?!? Boring! Why isn't she talking about Pussy Riot or strippers or the fact that God gave Kim Kardashian all the good DNA?" And I'm sorry about that, but once in awhile one has to eat broccoli and at least think about healthy lifestyles.  

CanFit Pro features nutrition workshops, MMA demos and so many buff bodies your eyeballs get whiplash. (There's even an eyeball-whiplash treatment station, where you can sit in an armchair and look at pictures of overweight people smoking and eating Maple Bacon-flavoured chips until your orbs feel normal again.)  

But none of those things would bring me to downtown Toronto on a cherished day off. What will bring me to that show is one thing and one thing only, and that is Tosca Reno.

I know that sounds like a kind of wine, but in fact Tosca Reno is a person: a Canadian gem and an international celebrity, a reality show star who went from being a 200-lb divorced teacher to a hard-core fitness model. She founded the Eat Clean Diet and wrote the wildly successful books that explained it. 
(I'm not really sure what eating clean is but I don't think I'm doing it. In fact I'm pretty sure I'm eating dirty. Which is why it is imperative that I meet Tosca...)

Getting to her won't be easy. "The lineup to get to her is incredible," a GoodLife instructor warned me. "Everyone wants to meet her."

And I am one of those everyones. But I am not just anyone. I am Whorrified. 

So, how will I fare? Will I be able to stand out in the muscle-bound crowd? Will I get my moment with Tosca? Will I wear my seven-inch heels and an age-inappropriate getup to gain unfair advantage? I'm going to go ahead and say "Yes" here, but stay tuned. I'll let you know how it all went down.

In the meantime, wish me luck and clean eating. 

Editor's note: Check out this link to Tosca's website. She's an inspiration and, frankly, quite pleasant to look at: Tosca Reno.

HAS THE POPE BEEN ALERTED TO THIS BIG NEWS?

IN THE YEAR 2012 B.C. (Before Cut)
Here's Miley just days before she 
cut her hair and CHANGED THE WORLD! 
(In her defence, hair is a big deal in her family. 
Her dad practically built a career on the mullet.)

JOE SEER/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

I'm not  exactly sure why Miley Cyrus's new pixie haircut is pissing me off but i think it has something to do with GET OVER YOURSELF! 

It is terrifying and portentous that the twitterverse and news outlets alike could be set afire by the shocking news that MC cut her hair and went all punk rocker. This might matter a little bit if she were a knockout talent, a heavyweight of, say, Beyonce's or Alicia Keys' calibre. 
But she is not.  
Yet she's reaping headlines for "bravely defending" her new look and advising the haters that "self-love is the greatest of all flatterers."  

OK, here's the deal. The haircut is cute. If my teenage daughter got it, I'd be like, "That's fun. I like the nose ring. You look a bit like Gwen Stefani. Moving on..."

For those of you who, like me, can't resist piffle and aren't sufficiently annoyed yet, here's a peek at her new look on The Hollywood Gossip.

KATE'S COUSIN EXPOSES THE FAMILY JEWELS

"SO, KATE, THIS COUSIN OF YOURS..."
"Not now, Harry." 
"But..." 
"Harry. No." 
"But..."

wayne howes/shutterstock 

Kate Middleton’s cousin, the one no one had even heard of two days ago, has pulled a very bold and unusual move that no one in the history of famewhoring has ever tried before. Katrina Darling, a burlesque dancer known for her God Save the Queen routine, has posed nude for Playboy.

Yes, aside from  Megan Fox, Tara Reid, Lindsay Lohan, Shannen Doherty, Jenny McCarthy, Pamela Love Hewitt, Pamela Anderson, Kim Basinger, Suzanne Somers, Belinda Carlisle, La Toya Jackson, Demi Moore, Kim Kardashian and maybe one or two others, no one has ever courted publicity by posing nude before. Or leaking sex tapes. That might be something Katrina wants to accidentally do when the buzz from this shocker dies down.

I would love to have been a fly on the fusty old-wallpapered wall in the Queen’s sitting room when this news broke.

Queen: “I say!” Teacup with handpainted periwinkles clatters into saucer.

Corgis strike up kneejerk chorus of mad barking.

Philip rouses from nap. “Eh?

Queen, glaring at news item. “One expects this sort of thing from Fergie, but Kate’s cousin?)

Philip: “Eh?”

Queen summons footservant. “Fetch the scold’s bridle and tell the chauffeur we’re taking a drive to the inferior side of town, would you? There’s a good lad.”

Harry enters room clutching magazine: "Jolly exciting news, Gram! You'll never guess!"

Lastly, I would LOVE to show you the Playboy issue here but I wouldn’t even have a clue where to purchase such a thing. (Psst. When Mom logs off, we’ll talk.) Instead, here’s a link to the Hollywood Gossip, whose mother is NOT a regular reader. Enjoy! Click here to see the Royal Shame

Editor's note: I've been meaning to ramp up my blog traffic and this might be just the ticket. From now on, I'm going to blog in the nude. In fact, I’m doing it right now!

THE TRAGEDY OF THE ONE-FOOTED CHILDREN

THE FIRST CLUE

Spotted on English St., Brampton

THE SECOND CLUE 

Spotted on Vodden St., Brampton

Even now, I can scarcely bring myself to speak of it. But it must be said. It has to be said! There is a sinister plot afoot in Brampton to hide the shameful plague of little one-footed children.

I stumbled across their sad plight quite by accident. I was out for a stroll in the city's west end in the evening, peeking in people's brightly lit windows, getting decorating ideas and what-not. 

And suddenly, there it was. A single little pink shoe, sitting on a sidewalk. 

I thought nothing of it, to be honest. I kept walking and peeking, walking and peeking. And then two blocks later, another little pink shoe. A block later, yet another. Not pink, mind you. But a shoe. A single shoe. 

I tell you in all sincerity that a frisson of foreboding skittered up my spine. 
Well, since I missed the shot of the creep peeing underneath the Gardiner (see 'Creep Week'), I make sure to keep my camera on me at all times. So I took a picture of two of the shoes. But at the third shoe, a woman came out of her house.

"What are you doing?" she barked, as if I were some kind of weirdo for prowling around the streets, peeking in people's windows and taking pictures of shoes. She seemed kind of guilty, if you ask me. She snatched up that shoe and practically RAN back into her house. A child was waiting at the door for her.
"Mommy, did you get my shoe?"
"Yes I got your shoe! Now get back inside!"

A-ha, I thought. I mean it's obvious, right? This city is CRAWLING with hidden little one-footed children! They are leaving their shoes out as clues, cries for help as it were.
Since taking these poignant photos, I am haunted by visions of their suffering. 

Mother: "Hey kids! I hear the ice cream truck! C'mon!"
The two-footed children pelt to the door, shrieking with excitement. But the poor little one-footed child can't keep up.
One-footed child: "Mother! Mother! Wait for me, Mother! Let me put on my shoe!" 
But it's too late. The two-footed children are gone and back before the tot can hop to the corner to fetch her souliere and strap it on. It's . . . oh, I can't. I just can't bear it. I'm afraid I'll have to cut this one short and get back to you later. 

Editor's note: Wow. Tragic. So anyway, all this talk of shoes is making me want to go shopping. I hear there's a doozie of a sale on at Aldo!

 

TODAY'S SPECIAL: PIG-SLOP SOUP

Remember when you were a kid and your parents would adopt the "there are children starving in Africa" line to get you to eat and you'd still sit there for hours, thinking "I wish I could trade places with those African children right now because that stuffed eggplant looks NASTY!" 

THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL YOU 

I can't decide what's sadder, 
A) that someone made grey soup and 
decided it was good enough to sell, 
or B) that I bought it and ate it.
(Actually, I can decide. It's B.)

I thought of that line today when I went to the cafeteria during the Dead Zone. That's after they've packed up the "good food" (ie fresh salad bar and hot-off-the-grill food), when the pizza dehydrator has been running for, oh, about 7 hours now and all that's left are packaged sandwiches, some monstrous garlicky pickles and the soup. 

Some days you get lucky and the soup is ... adequate. 

Other days you do not. The soup sounds suspect ("shredded meat-like substance with beans and celery") and looks like a pot of barely warmed glue.

Some days ... oh, how I dread those days ... you didn't bring enough of your own food and you are so damn hungry that even the glue soup looks irresistible. 

Today was one of those days. 

So here I sit with my Styrofoam bowl of glue soup. My stomach is growling, my hands are shaking. That's how hungry I am. And yet I look at it and think, "I'm no expert, but this looks like friggin' pig slop." 

I decide I am not quite close enough to expiring of hunger to eat this. I mean the Grim Reaper is hovering over me whispering "Well, what's it gonna be? Soup or death? Soup? Or death? DECIDE!" and I'm like, "I don't know, I don't know, can you just GIVE ME A MINUTE!"

I quickly add a generous sluice of hot sauce and some salt and pepper. If I'd been able to get my hands on some moonshine, I'd have given it lashings of that as well. (Alas, the little mother-of-pearl flask I keep in my purse AT ALL TIMES is bone dry.)

At this point, I am finally ready to eat the damn soup. As I lift the spoon to my lips, the Grim Reaper shakes his head and says, "There's always tomorrow..."

Which is all the incentive I need to ensure that tomorrow, I make sure I pack a big, healthy lunch.
But for today, it's the soup. And the Tums. At least I remembered to pack those.

LOVEEEEE YOU SO MUCH, BATTLEAXE!!!

EXPLAINER: Now that I blog, my entire family goes into panic mode when the camera comes out.  Hence the squares over my loved ones' faces. My own face, I leave unsullied ... until someone begs me to cover that, too.

Most of us like to believe that we are individuals. That we have forged our own path, made ourselves who we are today.

That's a lovely thought. Unfortunately, it's about as correct as believing that Paul Ryan is going to be the next president of the United States.

People, listen to me and listen to me good: You are an apple. Your family is a tree. You can fall from it, you can even try to roll away, but you won't get far.

And it just takes a family gathering to prove this unalterable cosmic truth. 

Yesterday, for example, we gathered to celebrate mom's big big BIG birthday. 

(I won't tell you the number, but I will say the waitress developed an immediate and painful RSI from lighting all the candles. We may very well be sued.)

The guests included: Mom, her sister, my daughters, their husbands and kids, my youngest brother Pat and me. My betrothed, Ryan Gosling, was also supposed to be there but cancelled at the last minute on account of he has never heard of any of us.

Even without Ryan, it was a potent combination of personalities. So it wasn't long before the polite pleasantries gave way to "zingers."

Example 1: When I posed for a photo with Mom and my aunt, my aunt said, "The Three Stooges!" at the exact moment the shutter clicked.

Example 2: When the servers brought in the cake and performed the public shaming ..."I don't know but I've been told; Someone here is gettin' old!"...delivered in a flurry of clapping, Mom clapped along and smiled and blew out the candles. The second the singing servers left, she muttered to my firstborn: "I couldn't make out a word they were saying."

Firstborn (without missing a beat): "That's cuz you're old!"

Example 3: My daughter is married to a computer whiz. When I told her I'd be coming down next weekend to "pick his brain,"  she tossed back, "That won't take long."

Is this normal? It is to us. I see other family members sending hearts to each other on facebook and saying "Loveeeee you so much!!!" And I think that's sweet. 
But if my mom ever said that to me I would instantly suspect she'd been doing Whip-Its. 

In my family, if you love someone, you lob a "leftie" at them. You show affection by being cheeky. You show caring by reminding each other, when needed, that if we ever get to thinking we're hot stuff, someone will be there to bring our feet (and big head) back to the ground. 
It sounds crazy, but it's what we do and who we are.
Isn't that right, Auntie Stooge?

HELEN GURLEY BROWN: A LIFE WELL TWEETED

REST IN PEACE, HGB 
 Helen Gurley Brown at the world premiere 
of 'The Manchurian Candidate,'  July 19, 2004,
 Beekman Theatre, in New York City. 
(Photo by Evan Agostini)

Helen Gurley Brown has passed away at the age of 90. There is no tragedy in living nine fantastically successful decades, but the loss is, nevertheless, enormous. Longtime editor of Cosmo magazine and author of Sex and the Single Girl, she was a trailblazer, a feminist who admired women and adored men, a woman who understood how to be smart and successful and sweet and steely all at the same time. A child of the Ozarks who should by all rights have married, had kids and never even registered on our radar, but who said instead: "I never liked the looks of the life that was programmed for me — ordinary, hillbilly and poor — and I repudiated it from the time I was 7 years old.” (Having It All,1982.)

When I heard the news of her passing (via Twitter; I just joined two weeks ago and already it's changing my life), I texted the news to my daughters. 

"So sad. Helen Gurley Brown died. :-( "

Hours later, I heard back.

"Who's that?"
Who's that? The mortal shame! My daughters don't know who Helen Gurley Brown is. Yet another way that I have failed them! Will this never end?

For those of you who are young enough to have an excuse not to know who HGB is and why she mattered, or are old enough to know and want to reflect on why she mattered, here are two links that sum it up nicely, at New York Times and The Toronto Star.

And in honour of the mini-skirt-loving mouse that roared, I include a sampling of Tweets that resonate with love and admiration. 
(OMG. I have compiled a list of Tweets. I guess it's official now...) 

Christine Kirk ‏@LuxuryPRGal

"I married the right man. He is kind not just to me, but to everyone. Marry a decent, caring person." ~ Helen Gurley Brown @Cosmopolitan #RIP

Cosmopolitan ‏@Cosmopolitan

"Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere." -Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmo's original fun & fearless editor -- http://spr.ly/6016TZBn 

Katie Couric ‏@katiecouric

Knew & loved her.. RT @MatchbookMag: "Don't use men to get what you want in life -- get it for yourself." -Helen Gurley Brown #RIP

Donna Toailoa ‏@lilidonna

Just heard that we lost Helen Gurley Brown yesterday... Rest peace in peace you amazing, strange, trailblazing lady. Love, women everywhere.

Melissa Murphy ‏@MelMurphyTweets

RT @jeffpulver: “My success was not based so much on any great intelligence but on great common sense.” - Helen Gurley Brown

Ree ‏@Ree532

“Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.”- Helen Gurley Brown #RIP

Carrie Ferguson Weir ‏@CarrieFWeir

Thank you, Helen Gurley Brown: http://ow.ly/1Oqzuk

THIS IS OBVIOUSLY THE WORK OF AUTO-SATAN

WAITING. WAITING. WHAT THE? STILL WAITING.

Once upon a time, when the world was young, people

 turned taps on with their bare hands! Crazy.

A funny thing happened to me this morning that says a lot about how far we have come as a society. And also how far we have slid.

I was in a washroom at a mall, hands lathered up and under the tap, waiting for it to turn on automatically. Nothing. I stood there daftly, wondering, "What's going on? Where's the water?"
Then I realized, "Oh! It's the OLD kind of taps! The kind you have to turn on yourself!" 

These "advancements" are cropping up everywhere: there are automated hand dryers, soap dispensers, flush toilets, those weird moving floors at airports that spit you out like an olive pit at the end of the ride.
At work I can no longer be bothered to walk the gruelling 1.5 metres to a co-worker's desk to ask her a question: I send her an instant message instead. We have wheels on our chairs and we roll around the entire office, dragging ourselves by our heels; we can go hours without ever leaving our seat. It's fantastic and goddawful at the same time.

When this "automated" craze first started, I was as confused by its arrival as I am now in its absence. I once stood, stymied, in front of a touch-screen bank machine trying to get it to do something. (Kids, this was in the Dark Ages, when you called people on rotary phones and if they didn't answer, you had to CALL BACK, because they didn't have answering machines either. If we wanted to change a channel on the television, we actually GOT UP OFF THE SOFA, walked to the TV and turned the dial. Life was hard back then, by God, but we were happy.) 

Anyway, the bank machine: I thought maybe you had to talk to it. “Hello,” I said. “I would like two hundred dollars.” I half-expected canned laughter and a mechanical boot to come out and kick me: “You only have 70 dollars, broke-ass!”

I have to wonder where this will end.
Soon we will have "advanced" to the point where we wake up, hit a button to be ejected from our beds, slide downstairs on a moving floor, open our mouths and have our toast popped right into our maw by "smart toasters." Relationships? Who needs that grief? You will simply lie in your bed while a black-light machine stimulates your ovaries and tells you you're beautiful. Nine months later, a baby will be delivered to your door.
It's creepy to think I may actually be prophesying, here. 

Editor's note: Whatever. That black-light thingie sounds awesome. Check out these other "advanced gadgets for crazy people." (Loving the hands-free sandwich holder.)  Click on How friggin' lazy can we be?

STRESSED MEN DIG 'BIG BONED-ED' WOMEN

Ladies, if you’re carrying a few extra pounds and would rather stick pins in your lips than go on a diet and give up cheesecake, you are IN LUCK! You don't need willpower, you need a man. (A whimpering nervous wreck of a man who is clinging to life by his chewed-to-the-quick nails, but still: a man.)

NORMAL MAN: "Mmm. Fried chicken."

STRESSED MAN: "OH.MY.GOD. I am 

totally going to ask that fine piece 

of fried chicken to marry me."

A "new study" (code for "pure bullshit that will be completely disproven when the next new study comes along") has found that stressed men find heavier women more attractive. It speculates that where calm men see these women as just plain fat, the poor stressed-out bastards see comely rolls and go into free-association mode: MOTHER! COMFORT! 
FRIED CHICKEN! 

As usual the researchers didn’t bother to study "stressed women," probably because they don't think there's any other kind. But as someone with some familiarity with that category, I feel I can take a pretty good stab at answering the question, "What do stressed women find attractive?” 

And the answer sure as hell isn't "heavier men." 

It's heavier bottles, heavier boxes of chocolate and heavier doses of sleeping till noon. 

If you'd like to read more about this hard-hitting scientific breakthrough (and really, who wouldn't?), here's the link: Oooh, I LOVE me some larger ladies!