a little while …

this is an excerpt from rohinton mistry’s a fine balance. i post it out of a sense of bewilderment …

What she disliked most was Ishvar’s morning ritual of plunging his fingers down his throat to retch. The procedure was accompanied by a primal yowling, something she had often heard emanating from other flats, but never at such close quarters. It made her skin crawl.
“Goodness, you frightened me,” she said when the series of yips and yelps rang out.
He smiled. “Very good for the stomach. Gets rid of the stale, excess bile.”
“Careful, yaar,” said Om, siding with Dina. “Sounds like your liver is coming out with the bile.” He had never approved of his uncle’s practice; Ishvar tried to teach him its therapeutic effects and had given up, faced with a lack of cooperation.

googling this book gives oprah’s book club as the first hit. had i known this was a recommendation from oprah’s book club, i wouldn’t have decided to read it.

i can’t believe i forgot that what-a-bagel gives you a dozen free bagels on your birthday.
my routine, which i adopted a couple of years ago involved taking a walk on yonge st. during my lunch break (back when i had a job) to pick up my 12 bagels, distribute about half to the homeless guys sitting on yonge st. on the way to grocery store, pick up some spreadables and eat bagels for lunch for a few days. and for those few days, i looked forward to the birthday bagel lunch.
usually, the grooves in time and space that the events in my life carve out are rarely distinguishable from each other … one event slowly morphs into another. that birthday bagel routine was one of the few things i could do every year that, for some strange reason, seemed better than the rest.

this year i forgot all about it.

other birthday deals in toronto.

i watched this at the cinema yesterday.
nobody’s counting, but that’s 2 movies in 3 days – i think a personal record for me. i’ve always found the theatres uncomfortable and i’ve never really enjoyed going, so i’m not sure what motivated 2 trips in 3 days. it seems i lucked out big time, i totally loved both movies.

the easiest way to describe ’stranger than fiction’ is to say that it’s a less exaggerated, and much more enjoyable and endearing kind of ‘truman show’. will ferrell is cast perfectly in that kind of role, he doesn’t over-act, as jim carrey is wont to do, and there is as much emphasis on the supporting cast as there is on him.
i really loved how the whole narration picked up at the point in ferrell’s life when he was about to make the transition from a loveless irs automaton to an emoting guitar playing guy who loves a girl, all the while keeping me guessing whether lily tomlin’s (WTF? lily tomlin? emma thompson?) third person omniscient character was guiding his transition, or just documenting it. in the end, they’re each just playing earthly roles, her life is to narrate his.
essential for me to elevate a movie from ‘well done’ to ‘fucking a!’ is a captivating love story, like the one that evolves between ‘irs agent’ and ‘anarchist baker’ … the kind of randomness that plucks at heart strings: she bakes him cookies, he brings her a box of flowers.
if i could pick my favourite part in the movie it would be where harold crick in a burst of honesty and brevity says to ana pascal, “i want you.”

i was at the friendly thai last night before going to watch Volver, and the best remix ever made started playing over the speakers.
so here it is, kid loco’s remix of talvin singh’s traveler:

Talvin Singh – Traveler (Kid Loco “once upon a time” remix)

(also, my other favourite track off the same album:
Kat Onoma – La Chambre (Kid Loco “where were you?” remix))

this film premiered locally last night to a somewhat limited release, and i went to see it. i’m glad i held out as i had it downloaded almost a month ago, being fed up that 2 or 3 weeks prior it had premiered in bigger cities to even more limited release.

watching an almodovar movie for me is a safe bet. i know, going in, that no matter how catering his filmmaking becomes to a hollywood audience, i will appreciate the narrative. i can’t figure out whether this is because i’m a sucker for movies about women, or whether i’m a sucker for movies about almodovar’s women. what i do know for sure is that he managed to employ penelope cruz in a way that completely hypnotized me. her face became an extension of almodovar’s hyper-active use of warm bright colours. she was extremely stylized; at one point, her mother casually asks her whether she’d had work done on her breasts, pushing to the forefront the intent with which almodovar exaggerated her features (she wore a fake ass in the movie). aside from her breasts, which in one occassion are presented beautifully from a bird’s eye view as she washes dishes, and her lips, which were never short of being bright bright red, and her voluminous hair, i fell in love with her eyes.
with cruz’ eyes, it’s as if almodovar managed to place two smaller symmetrical frames within the larger frame the film played out in – like a narrative within a narrative. her heavily black-liner lined eyes served as 2-dimensional almond shaped barriers to the stuff going on outside of them. you can kind of see it in that picture, the way the whites of her eyes glisten and the pupils are like giant glass marbles. but what i can’t really portray in still pictures is how dynamic the commotion in her eyes was throughout the movie, you just gotta see it. her eyes would well up with tears exactly when she needed to be the strongest. and she was by far the strongest.
i’ve never loved penelope cruz more than when i’ve seen her in almodovar’s movies and i’m sure she’ll be nominated for a whole bunch of awards for this role.

every class in ever society has protective nuclei; collectivist entities that sort of define the rules of the game, creating filters through which our perceptions are framed. a suburban life is the most obvious example of that, that when you’re in it and a part of it everything you do and think is formed in that context. it’s not until you really experience what it’s like to be cast out of that protection and understand what it’s like to be unsafe in the world, and when you realize that you’re not the first, that yours and other’s family’s entire history has been a lifetime of precariousness do you fully realize that however you end up and whatever nucleus you end up within the protective confines of, you can never forget. you’re forever left with an honest apprehension that at any moment the gates will again open up and you will be kicked out, violently or otherwise. you’re forever aware of your own insignificance. you’re always aware that behind those walls lies a violence and disparity you can’t turn away from, though it may be hidden from view. all you can really do is try to understand and love and be loved.