Halloween has come and gone, and here is the new crop of horror movies I saw during the spooooky holiday season:

-Eye 3
-They Wait
-Poltergeist
-Dead Calm
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I recently noticed that my favorite target, Canadian Club, was back with new and even crappier “Damn Right” ads, so I used my forum at Shameless to blog about it to a (hopefully) wider audience. Not that it would appear that Beam Global has any intention of pulling the campaign, but I suppose every little rant helps. I hope.

On the bright side, the discontent continues to spread. Fresca at Astronave was kind enough to link me to her post on the campaign, as well as Mark Simpson’s take on the use of the word metrosexual.

Stark and I have recently been taken on as volunteer bloggers for the Shameless blog, the website for Shameless Magazine. We’ve been tasked with ranting ceaselessly and in clever ways about the many ways that pop culture offends our feminist sensibilities. I’m excited about the prospect, as I was really burning to start a feminist ad-busting blog after the Canadian Club incident, but never could put together enough time to get it going. This promises to be equally as fun.

This weekend I wrote up my first post for Shameless. Y’all are free to head on over and leave comments so that we can trick my new editor into thinking I am really, really popular.

What follows under the cut is the unedited version of my post. I have a problem with being concise and have a hard time letting go of my long held belief that longwindedness is the soul of wit. So this is the much longer version that didn’t make it to print.

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Woooo! You guys, today I ran my first half-marathon! (That’s 13.1 miles or 21.0975 kilometres according to the incredibly anal Scotiabank race FAQ)

Six months ago, on March 26, I set the goal of running the Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, and this morning I actually did it! I met my goal! Which goes to show you - if something is non-refundable, I’ll get it done. No way I’m lettin’ Scotiabank keep my 75 bucks without getting something for it!

This morning, after getting up disgustingly early, Stark and I headed down to City Hall to line up for the start. Stark was the official photographer and cheering gallery. Here I am, waiting in the dark for the race to start:

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A few days ago I finished What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami. When I first heard about this new memoir, I resolved to wait until it came out in paperback to buy it. I ended up buying it while it was still in hardcover for a couple of reasons. Murakami is my favorite author, and I was eager to read something new in order to forget about the disappointment I felt after reading his last novel, After Dark. Also, next week I’ll be running the Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, my first half-marathon ever, and I thought I would reward/inspire myself after all my hard training by reading a book on running.

Yesterday, as I was off on an 11.5 mile jog, I was thinking about the Murakami book, as well another book I’ve read recently, “Slow River,” by Nicola Griffith, the TV show Heroes, and the Kowloon Walled City, which I’ve become obsessed with as of late.

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A few months ago I downloaded a copy of iTunes Publisher, with plans to keep track of my tastes and interests in music as they change. I wanted to save a new playlist for each month or each week and be able to revisit them in the future. This whole idea was inspired by my finding a stash of burned CDs from five years ago. At the time I had been obsessed with making mixes of the best track 8s or track 6s EVER RECORDED (in my opinion). These mixes all had cheesy names like “The Outrageous Eights” and “The Stupendous Sixes,” etc. I took them with me on the Road Trip of Champions and it was really disconcerting interesting to hear how my taste had changed. Since I don’t make mix CDs any more, this will be my attempt to record my possibly horrendous taste for posterity. I also hope it will help me weed through my obscenely large music library in the future, when looking for inspiration or just something to listen to while running. This first entry was taken from songs that from my “Recently Played” list in iTunes that had received a star or more in ratings.
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Books:
- After Dolores by Sarah Schulman
- Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain

Movies
- Roadhouse
- Magnum Force
- Friends With Money
- Batman

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So I haven’t been getting as much running in as I would have liked while in New York, what with all the drinking, Mets games, friends, drinking, my mother, and general stress, but today I decided I would go for an epically long run to make up for it. I set out, and as soon as I am as far away from home as I can possibly get, these sickly green and black rain clouds start to gather in the distance. I decide to turn back. I’m four miles from home when it starts drizzling, I pick up the pace. Then it starts to rain harder. I’m feeling great. The water is cooling off my skin and I’m feeling like I could go forever. I start running faster. I muse over the idea that my running always goes better when I feel like I’m being chased by something. I vaguely consider hiring someone to run behind me in a Godzilla suit yelling “RARRRRR!” at the half-marathon in September. Thunder starts overpowering my ipod. It’s getting a bit cold, but the new weather experience hasn’t lost the novelty yet. Usually I wear basketball-style shorts to run, but today I had decided to wear a pair of light blue little satiny running shorts. They’re turning navy with the water and sticking to my thighs. I look down at the fabric clinging to muscle and think “Holy crap, I’m really sexy! I look like a fucking athlete! This is the BEST!” And that… is when the heavens opened up and started dumping buckets on my head. I’m trying to make it home, but my shoes are making squishy, sloshy noises, my hat is soaked and just allowing water to flow into my eyes, I can feel blisters taking shape on my toes, there’s mud and twigs stuck to my calves, and, here’s the kicker - I don’t know what happened, if the last time I washed those shorts I didn’t get out all the detergent, or if suntan lotion was reacting with acid rain and friction or what, but my shorts started to get sudsy. My previously sexy shorts of awesomeness are now riding up uncomfortably and foaming some sort of white substance. I’m still far away from home so I head to Dunkin Donuts instead. And so that was the end of my run - standing around, soaking wet in Dunkin Donuts with a frothy crotch. Yes. Very sexy, that. But! I ran 8.33 miles at a record 10:38 minutes per mile pace. So maybe I should run in the rain more often. Just in different shorts.

What else? Oh, Stark has been very excited to hear about the free Liza concert I saw on August 7th.

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It’s hard to believe I haven’t been there for a whole year! That’s the longest I’ve ever been away from the city. I’m excited, if a little bit stressed, because what started out as a nice relaxing vacation has become a fully booked plans-and-packing-palooza. Poor Stark, I don’t think I’ve allowed us any time to ourselves. Between back to back games of Scrabble, bouts of beer drinking with assorted friends, Mets games, Liza concerts, trips to Coney Island, five mile runs, and voyages out to the outer reaches of Westchester, every evening is now occupied. And now that my parents have sold their house and need to be packed by the end of August, every morning will be spent working and every afternoon spent packing and going through the last of my stuff in New York. Fun fun fun!!

In my positive news: Porter Air for the win! This will by my first time flying Porter, and barring some horrible disaster, I am well pleased. I booked a flight from Toronto Island Airport to Newark a few months ago for $99 bucks. Already that’s cheaper than Air Canada, and leaving from and heading to way better airports. Air Canada requires an hour long trip out to the noisy, hectic Pearson, where they inevitably leave three hours late with no reason or explanation, and then eventually arrive in La Guardia, an even noisier and more overcrowded nightmare of an airport, out in the nether regions of Queens. Toronto Island Airport, on the other hand, is a short cab ride and/or free shuttle ride away, conveniently located to downtown Toronto. The island is a thirty second ferry ride away from land. You could swim it, if you felt inclined to touch Lake Ontario with bare skin.

But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. So, a few months ago I booked my flight. A few weeks ago, I realized I would have to change it to a week earlier. I called them, and not only did I not have to sit through five years of “Press 2 for French, press 3 for assisted suicide, press 4 to hold FOREVER AND EVER,” but a human actually picked up the phone after two rings. They were friendly and helpful and being that the flight I wanted to switch to was actually cheaper (only 59 bucks from Toronto to New York!!), THEY GAVE ME MONEY BACK. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

So, this morning I got up hella early to leave for the airport, expecting the usual hassle. No, I took my cab down to the cheery ferry dock, checked in, hopped on the ferry, admired the view of downtown on the short jaunt over the water, was through security in two minutes, dropped off my bag, and am now sitting in the clean, quiet, and peaceful lounge in a comfy chair with my FREE cup of coffee and my FREE cookie, typing away happily on my FREE Wi-Fi. What is this nonsense? This isn’t how air travel is supposed to be! Air travel is supposed to be overpriced and full of surly staff, extra charges, noisy terminals, and rude security guards. This is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Get me back to Air Canada. I can’t take this courtesy and competence.

Massive List of Things to Do
1. Finish processing backlog of photos
2. Add new photos to portfolio
3. Update website
   • Redo this ugly blog page
   • Rewrite photography page intro
   • Change “Video” button to “Audio/Video”
4. Rework running plan
5. Organize audio files
6. Backup documents, photos, music
7. Watch Final Cut Pro and Garageband tutorials, download Audacity and Painter
8. Get creative rear in gear
   • Coney Island
   • St. Jamestown
   • Lesbian short
   • Don Q
   • 101 Unfinished Movies
9. Start packing for NYC!!!!