Creampuff Revolution

Canadian Creampuff

When I sat down to bang out the four remaining scenes of my 19th century play the other day, I discovered that my internal repository of 19th century-speak had been completely used up in the frantic writing of the previous two weeks. As a result, while the new scenes I was writing expressed the jist of the scene, the actual dialogue looked something like this:

BILL: Gee, Mrs. Colliver, you’re lookin’ mighty chipper!

THURZA: Yes, well, it’s been nice having some help around the place. And Mary’s been great - at FUCKING me!

Anyway, I embarked on a search for my missing 19th century dialogue and came across a book I purchased at a used bookstore last spring called Casselmania: More Wacky Canadian Words & Sayings by Bill Casselman. I generally wouldn’t give the time of day to anything that refers to itself as “wacky", but I thought it might be helpful for research purposes - and it WAS.

Here’s a list of my favourite “wacky Canadian sayings” - see if you can pick out which ones are from the book and which three I just made up! Also, feel free to contribute some of your own - I could use the inspiration:

She could talk the hind leg off a mule, then whisper in the hole

Tired? If my arsehole drags any lower, I’ll have to stick it in the cuff of my pants

He’d pinch a penny ’til the queen screamed

You’d need the Father, the Son AND the Holy Ghost to pry those knees apart and one of ‘em had better be a blacksmith

She had a smile on her like poison come to supper

Fine words butter no parsnips

He went for a dump and the gophers got him

Someone’s been feeding you the chunky oatmeal (i.e. someone’s been telling you a tall tale)

This food is so bad it’d hare-lip a dog

I hope you get lockjaw and have to vomit

Poor as Job’s turkey. Couldn’t raise more than 3 feathers and had to lean against the barn to gobble

You didn’t lick that off the ground (i.e. it runs in the family)

He’s so thin his pyjamas only got one stripe

It’s been nice having some help around the place. And Mary’s been great - at FUCKING me!

Comments:

1. Here’s one of my faves: “Busy as a dime whore on Nickel Tuesday.”

   Comment by Old-Timey Mike — Monday, April 4, 2005

2. Classy, man. Classy.

   Comment by Rose — Monday, April 4, 2005

3. um…"that guy’s a couple of grappling hooks short of a spelunking expedition.”

   sorry, that’s just what came out. i have no idea what it has to do with toronot in the 1830’s, but you can’r argue with the muse. aitor would be better at this.

   Comment by becky — Wednesday, April 6, 2005

4. Becky, nobody said ANYTHING about the Canadianisms being period Canadianisms! And spelunking without adequate grappling hooks is a CRIME.

   Comment by Rose — Wednesday, April 6, 2005

5. How about one ol’ Slim Plaxton (I really did grow up around ranchers named “Slim” and farmers called “Spud") used the day I was trying to cut his lawn and the mower wouldn’t start, regardless of what we tried: “Well!” he spat, “That’d turn a preacher to cussin’!”

   Comment by radiorocket — Thursday, April 7, 2005

Easter Cream . . . puff

“The tomb is empty. The Easter Bunny hasn’t been.”

This Easter Sunday found Katr and I motoring off to Barrie, Ontario, for an Easter lunch hosted by my grandfather and step-grandmother. I had whipped up a batch of my famous “stuff we bought at Dominion on Saturday” and was all drugged up in advance. My step-grandmother, in defiance of the pet moratorium imposed upon her by my allergic, asthmatic family, brought cats into their home a few years ago and now every time we visit, I get to experience the watery eyes and gritty, disgusting cat-throat that are my birthrite. But lunch was delicious, the company rowdy (mainly due to a high level of children and the family close-talker) and the cranky old folk amusing.

I don’t know about you all, but Easter was a bittersweet holiday for me as a young creampuff. I was a greedy, candy-loving child and while I’m sure the contents of my Easter baskets were commensurate with those of the kids around me, it never felt like enough. I coveted my brother Jaro’s candy - I coveted Elku The Bum Checker’s candy next door and most of all, I coveted the dual Easter basket haul of Amwe, whose parents were guilty and divorced. Sure, their attempts to outdo each other over the years caused Amwe to develop the nervous facial tic she sports even to this day, but when I think about those glorious, groaning, glittering Easter baskets - Amwe, it may have been worth it.

Fairly early on, my parents sneakily tried to divert my attention from the candy aspect of Easter by putting more THINGS in my basket than candy - books, toys, sugar-free gum - but I was having none of it. The issue became quite contentious and for a few years there, there was no match to the trauma caused by Easter, with the exception of the trauma caused by the OTHER “candy holiday” in the childhood calendar: Hallowe’en.

I attribute the healing of my Easter past to my ex-roommate Skip. Always a child at heart, she decided that we should have an Easter egg hunt, with elaborate clues and multiple hiding places, in our apartment every year. Unfortunately (for her), Skip is one of nature’s hoarders, which means that she could often draw her Easter candy out until the following year - unless she left her basket near my chair. I’d never take the big stuff, of which she kept a count on her computer. But there were many layers of little eggs under the fake grass of that basket and a few MAY have found their way to liberation. In my stomach. Where all things roam free.

I have carried on this Easter tradition with Katr, another creampuff in need of Easter healing. This year, she wrote all of her clues for me in haiku form. A sample:

Loud churning cleansing
vat; sometimes your dial is
set to delicate.

I know, I know - crackpot? Or GENIUS? I leave the question to posterity.

Anyway - I record this for any of you creampuffs out there whose inner children still feel deprived at Easter time. When the good news of the Lord’s resurrection doesn’t quite cut it, I highly recommend this intensive therapy. And if you missed doing it on actual Easter, all the better - ‘cause NOW, the candy is on SALE. Just keep your hands off that giant Lindor Rabbit - I pulled back the foil, I licked it already and that thing is mine mine mine.

Comments:

1. I want to hear more about The Bum Checker.

   Comment by E-dawg — Wednesday, March 30, 2005

2. Oh my god, WHO DOESN’T? That kid was a perv.

   Comment by Rose — Wednesday, March 30, 2005

3. I try to be good
   staff kitchen creme eggs taunt me
   there are still three left

   Comment by Shbu — Wednesday, March 30, 2005

4. I am pleased to see that the haiku is experiencing a resurgence! Everyone, post a haiku! See, if comment-spam ads were in haiku, I’d probably let them stay on my blog

   Comment by Queen Katicus — Wednesday, March 30, 2005

5. this has nothing to do with your current post.

   but here is some pastry-related artwork i promised:

   http://www.donuthos.com/
   http://www.mypapercrane.com/

   Comment by becky — Wednesday, March 30, 2005

A Creampuff Compares

Back on Monday, I promised a comparative analysis of the OTHER two shows we saw last weekend. I spent much of the week being distracted by deadlines and my Annie Sullivan eyes, but here, as advertised:

Blue Planet at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People vs. A Suicide-Site Guide to the City at Buddies in Bad Times

BP: Set on a planet where all the inhabitants are children who club their own seals.

SSGTTC: Set in Toronto.

BP: Show begins with the children frolicking on the planet. Then a stranger lands in a giant space vacuum cleaner.

SSGTTC: Show begins when Darren hands a toque to someone in the audience, saying that it belongs to a homeless guy outside and can we pass it around and help the guy out. After handling the hat, Katr breaks out the antibacterial hand foam.

BP: Technicians onstage in jumpsuits and headsets, operating the butterflies, the waterfall and the flying apparatus of the children.

SSGTTC: Technicians onstage in street clothes, running sound from one computer and Powerpoint, lights and smoke machine from the other.

BP: “Children” flying through the air.

SSGTTC: “Darren” flying on an plane, fantasizing about making the 19 year old girl snoozing in the seat next to him come in her sleep.

BP: Scene where the children on the dark side of the planet commit a beautiful act of selflessness and altruism.

SSGTTC: Scene where Darren invites someone from the audience to go and make out with him on stage. He pops a breath mint and waits. Sadly, no one goes up, so he is forced to say “Alright - then I am going to make out with EACH and EVERY ONE OF YOU. Chickenshit ass-fuckers.” Then he steps into some mood-lighting and makes out in the direction of the audience. From where I was sitting, he looked like a pretty good kisser. Confident yet gentle - non-invasive tongue.

BP: About a half an hour too long.

SSGTTC: Smoke machine.

BP: Turns out the stranger in the vacuum cleaner is trying to steal the children’s youth.

SSGTTC: Turns out that hat doesn’t belong to a homeless guy. It was Darren’s all along! It was all part of the show!! But the hand foam has a nice gardenia scent, so we regret nothing.

BP: Moral of the story: your actions have consequences, so don’t be a jerk.

SSGTTC: Moral of the story: I haven’t actually figured that out yet. But the scene where Darren comforts a streetcar stalled by the blackout of August 2003 was oddly moving. The scene, not the streetcar.

Darren O’Donnell has a blog in which he recounts his experiences working on the show. He’s a pretty smart guy, so I’m a little sorry to have missed the Q & A after his show, where they apparently discussed “the role of theater, the state of theater and the relationship between art and activism.” SOUNDS cool, but knowing me, my question would have been something like “It kinda smells like lentil soup in here. Is that the vegans?” Probably best that Katr and I chose Slurpees instead.

Creampuff Buys a Homeless Person Breakfast at McDonald's

Yonge Street. 8:00 a.m. I don’t usually put pants on this early in the morning, but there’s something wrong with my eyes. I spent yesterday worrying about how I was going to go blind like Helen Keller’s teacher Annie Sullivan, but without having actually taught anyone shit. This morning, Katr encouraged me to go to the Shoppers to get some freakin’ drops.

I’m not going to lie to you. I was feeling a little sorry for myself this morning. Other than the eye thing, I didn’t have a particularly good reason, or really any reason - I got my tax return the other day, my work is going really well, I didn’t fall for the banana in the tailpipe - but still.

When your eyes are red and itchy and it’s 8:00 a.m., and you’ve bought the $11.00-no-hand-job-included drops and you’re feeling like a self-indulgent twat, the next step, naturally, is to set yourself up with breakfast from McDonald’s. Did I NEED to have Raunchy’s for breakfast? No. Did I really WANT McDonald’s for breakfast? Not really. But a Sausage McMuffin fest just seemed like the suitably pathetic choice and I was all ready to make it.

I was next in line when I felt a gentle pressure on my arm and heard a voice whisper “Cafar nan a brochkeh?” I looked around for Helen Keller, who probably had a little trouble being understood when she learned to speak. Instead, I saw this woman I’d passed on the street outside on my way in. She had no front teeth, which made her a little harder to understand, but she was calmly and assertively asking me if I would be interested in buying her combo #2.

I like a woman who knows what she wants. We got up to the counter and Meg gave the clerk her order. She took her coffee black and said to me “Mind if I super-size it?” “Be my guest,” says I. “Anything else?” the clerk asked. “Nope.” I handed over the cash and got my change as Meg got her breakfast. I told Meg to “have a good day", ‘cause it’s a hip phrase right now. Also, it seemed to me like MY day had suddenly gotten a lot better. Meg nodded at me approvingly, then went off with her tray. And I walked out McMuffin-less.

I came home. I put the drops in my eyes and then I made myself some breakfast. Because hey - I had food at home the whole time!

So, that’s my story. I could finish with a moral to the story but I think that might be a little obvious. All I can say is that I hope Meg enjoyed her breakfast. ‘Cause that’s the LAST CENT THOSE HOMELESS ARE GETTIN’ FROM ME.

Creampuff at the Falls

So we went to Niagara Falls to see Spirit of the West in concert for St. Patrick’s Day - as you do. We stayed over at a fine hotel with a view of the falls, the evening was hosted by the angry Scotsman with the giant sideburns from the Alexander Keiths commercials and the band was KICKIN’. Literally, which is impressive! Aren’t they, like, 50?

Also, knowing of my fondness for the brilliant music and lyrics, Erar, Sahi, Rela and Subr got together for my birthday this year and hooked me up with tickets to Bat Boy, which, sadly, closed a month early this past weekend due to shitty reviews and poor attendance. Having seen the show and enjoyed it IMMENSELY from fantastic front row seats ("Sink your fangs into my soul - only you can make me whole! Hoooooooooooooooold me, Bat Boy!") I must reiterate (or “iterate", I suppose, as I have not previously discussed it here) that some (read: most) of the theatre critics in this town are humourless, self-important shitheads whose only joy in life is their deep hatred of theatre.

Anyway - as there are few things more revealing than a comparative analysis, here is mine:

Spirit of the West at the Fallsview Casino vs. Bat Boy at the Bathurst St. Theatre

SOTW: Beverage of choice: beer.

BB: Beverage of choice: blood.

SOTW: Opening act was the Celtic Tenors. You haven’t LIVED until you’re at a ballroom at a casino, wearing green foam moose antlers, drinking a pint and listening to Pavarotti and pals singing “Whiskey in the Jar".

BB: No opening act, but killer opening SONG. “Hear the cry that no one hears! Come and lick away my tears! Hold me, Bat Boy!!”

SOTW: No creampuffs on stage.

BB: One very talented creampuff.

SOTW: More tits!

BB: More fangs!

SOTW: Shitty song about “July” that sounded nauseatingly like “Love is All Around” by Wet Wet Wet.

BB: Hilarious song about Garden of Eden style inter-species mating, which featured copulating stuffed animals and much enthusiastic licking of a stuffed beaver.

SOTW: Ended with two encores and subsequent gambling. YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

BB: Ended with three deaths and many hard lessons learned. About acceptance and love. And how scary hicks are.

Suffice to say that both shows were excellent. What an exceptional start to the weekend. And that was just Thursday and Friday!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s entry, a comparative analysis of Blue Planet, the children’s show that just closed at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People (in which friend Padu rocked the Casbah as a cute, flying child) vs. A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, which just closed at Buddies (in which Darren O’Donnell played himself). A sample:

SSGTTC: “Chickenshit ass-fuckers".

BP: “The butterflies only come out once a year on a very special day!”

Creampuff Shuffle

So Queen Katicus bought this creampuff an iPod shuffle for her birthday and its maiden voyage was to the gym earlier this week. My previous personal listening device was a no-name walkman that I bought at the Bay in Winnipeg for $40.00 during the Air Canada strike of 1998. You had to TAKE THE TAPE OUT AND TURN IT OVER to change sides and only one of the headphones worked, so even with my one pathetic tape of “workout music” cranked as loud as it would go, I could still hear all the snorting and horking and heavy breathing happening around me in the elliptical bay at the Y. With the shuffle, it was just me and Stevie Wonder. And then Stevie Nicks. And then the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, because that’s how the shuffle works.

I could tell when I walked into the Y that my shuffle was being eyed by all and sundry. As a creampuff at the gym, I am occasionally self-conscious but with my shuffle on and “Superstitious” funking in my ears, I fairly strutted about the place and nearly tore my deltoids out in my efforts to stick with the beat. And then, I got on the elliptical machine.

As I elliptercized my cares away to Spirit of the West, I noticed that my shuffle was getting even MORE attention from everyone around me - people next to me on the machines, people across the room on the bikes, the lady with the white nylons and bodysuit who reads the paper on the stairclimber. I made sure to suck my stomach in and puff my chest out proudly as the shuffle bounced against it. As one song finished, however, I heard kind of a short, screaming noise, like a pterodactyl, coming from somewhere in the room. It gave me pause, but then the next song began and I thought no more about it, until I noticed, during a quieter moment in the song, that the short, screaming pterodactyl noise was still happening underneath the song. In fact, it was happening EVERY TIME I MOVED MY LEFT FOOT. I paused the shuffle and sure enough, the angry pterodactyl continued to scream from beneath my sneakers. I was about 3/4 of the way through my workout and had to make a decision:

a) Would I continue grinding the pterodactyl until either the machine gave out or my time was up?

b) Would I just get off immediately and slink away, clinging to my shuffle and my last shreds of dignity?

c) Or, would I compromise and retain my creampuff pride by releasing the pterodactyl machine and finishing my workout on the free machine next to it?

I chose c) and breathed a sigh of relief when the new machine worked silently for the last few minutes of my workout. Just before I finished, a slim young gal sidled up to the ellipterdactyl and hopped on to begin her workout and the fucking thing DIDN’T MAKE A SOUND.

Dark chocolate is more sophisticated but I am a hick and like the milk.

Creampuff on the Web!

My girlfriend, Katr Baibri, had a dream one night that she was locked out of her office building on a weekend. Being a workaholic, she did what any normal woman would do if she found herself locked out of her office in a dream - she called the police. Naturally, the police had a key to the building and the two officers dispatched to the scene let Katr into the office. She expected them to leave but instead, they stuck around, watching her and distracting her from her very important work. She realized then, in the manner of dreams, that they were waiting for her to STEAL something so that they could arrest her and go back to THEIR office. As this dawned on her, one of the officers’ radios crackled and an unintelligible voice issued from it. The officers looked at each other, then at Katr, then one of them switched on his radio and said:

“The creampuff is still here.”

Welcome to the Creampuff Revolution.