Elisa on the hunt

The Time-Wasting Olympics

Fri, 21 May 2010 11:23:56 -0400

Hey all,

It’s spring - that blip in the year before it turns insanely hot and humid in Toronto. There’s construction going on outside my window, there is a lull in events so my work sched is light, I’ve got time on my hands, no boyfriend, no girlfriend, and no real hobbies to speak of. I’ve been going out a lot at nights, but then there are these long stretches of daytime you have to claw your way across. For instance, I’ve just spent the last hour picking at my nails, starting with my fingernails. I picked at the cuticles and created hangnails, then pulled the hangnails off, fingers started sprouting blood, i watched beads of blood form around the nails, then wiped them down, then filed my nails, then started on my toenails. Oh, I stopped this a couple times to make myself an ‘Awakening’ tea, then guzzled some Arizona Green Tea, then a coffee, because i still needed more awakening. Then went back to my toenails. I’m thinking of pruning my pubes.

I need a better way to waste time. Someone help me find a good new way to waste time - any suggestions? I’ll start a list, or send me your photos on twitter and i’ll post them. @elisaonthehunt.

the most thankless job

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:05:54 -0400

stopped into Lit Espresso bar in the middle of work and saw one mother pushing her stroller by the cashier and another one seated at a table with her toddler son. There she is sitting there with her legs crossed. He’s distracted. The conversation sucks. Intellectually she’s starved for anything, a tidbit.

Actually, this sounds like a lot of my evenings out. Still, I don’t know how women pull that off - staying at home with the baby. Having babies, in and of itself is mind-boggling. I know 2 women who don’t have partners and they’re going through artificial insemination to try and get pregnant. They’re in their late 30s. One of them is going through her 3rd attempt at it, and has been taking the hormone injections and the whole 9 yards to get her as fertile as possible.

It’s a sign of the times that women are financially and culturally liberated enough to even contemplate doing such a thing. Still the rub is you end up with a crying baby in your hands. And you’re all alone. Somehow, women’s lib or not, I’m not sure we’re anymore ahead in the game.

Forehead titties: a new French thing

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:43:03 -0400

You have to check this out, a video from Marion Cotillard, Oscar award-winning filmmaker. it’s on a website that is pretty reliable for great stuff:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5a52180b80/forehead-tittaes-w-marion-cotillard

okay okay

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 00:41:48 -0500

friends and strangers and even stranger strangers have been asking me when i’m going to write a new blog and i wanted to say i’ll be back in full force in 1 week. i was hit with a bunch of events i had to run (i can retire for a year now) and then had a couple brief intense encounters which consumed me if you know what i mean, and now i only have a couple more events this week, and then i’m free again to do what whom however... so of course i’ll be at my laptop typing up blogs like a wordnerd. in short, the latest status is: i’m single (still/again)

Culture Shock at Christmas

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:38:57 -0500

When my family gets together we go big. Mom calls in the reinforcements (her daughters) so that we can get all the cooking done. But cooking with her is like running with wolves, or being eaten by piranhas - sheer desperation, all you want is to get out of there alive.

I was supposed to make the bolinhos - the cod fritters, but as soon as I start dropping the batter into the oil my mom steps in.

‘Not like dat, like dis,’ my mom grabs the spoon out of my hand, scrapes out a perfect egg-shaped scoop of batter and drops it into the bubbling oil. She does it again and again until the frying pan is fuming, bubbling over with scalding oil. Oil so hot it looks like water. She pushes me away with her hip, says ‘Go wash de salada.’

Is there a feminine version of the word emasculate? Because that’s what my mother does to me, she efeminates me. She’s my own personal Martha Stewart. She glitters, not in a shiny nice way, but machine-like. You want to tap her with your finger to see if she’s made of metal or plastic.

Anyway Christian holidays, and Christmas in particular is her domain. Her kitchen, this holiday season, this evening, this life - it’s all her domain. And her kids, we too fall under her domain. She’s the kind of parent who makes adult offspring want to throw tantrums again. Coincidentally, regression comes easily to me.

‘Adriana, Lisabeta, go downstairs and bring up de bacalhao,’ Mae says. She does this shooing motion that makes the flesh on her upper arm flap. ‘Bring up everyding, everyding. Set de table.’

The basement fridge is the same old Frigidaire we had while growing up, with one of those old-fashioned handles you pulled down. My sister and I open the door to find the shelves stacked with foil-wrapped trays, dishes and casseroles. We grab four random trays and sidle up the stairs. One of the trays is full of deviled eggs, mom’s idea of Canadian cuisine.

We walk into the kitchen just as the garage door opens to the first onslaught of guests. The kitchen is overrun with women in embroidered sweaters flashing their gold rings, the smell of talc and hairspray.

‘Adriana, how is you baby?’

‘Elisa, when you gonna be married?’

My aunts Fatima, Lusiana and Maria and their church friends flutter around us, kissing, groping and petting us. The aunts have a proprietary sense about each others’ kids, even though we’re all adults now. Tia Fatima has me under her sharp eye.

‘Lisabeta, you’re so skinny! Working all da time. No food, no boyfriend, what’s a matta?’

‘The food Tia, I’m carrying food,’ I slide away from her.

‘You should eat it.’

Tia Fatima is my mother’s oldest sister, and the only unmarried aunt among all my relatives. She has a soft spot for me, which means she picks on me the most.

Adriana and I bring up the rest of the trays from the downstairs kitchen. We arrange the table with platters of shrimp and cod fritters, grilled dorado, bacalhau, grilled peppers, potatoes Parisienne, roast turkey, leg of lamb, boiled carrots and cauliflower, olives, salad and of course, the deviled eggs.

The table is literally drooping by the time we’ve all gathered around for prayer. I stare at the tray of gleaming roast turkey before me, thinking of the dinner scene from David Lynch’s Eraserhead. The room is unbelievably hot with all the steaming platters and close to 50 of us pressed against one another. Judging from the roses wilting in the vases, there is bound to be collateral damage. I include myself in that category. By the end of the night I will have had to answer 100 times that I’m single and that I haven’t met a good boy yet. Somehow the question of whether I want a ‘good’ boy or not, or whether I want a boy period, never seems to come up.

My dad says the prayer and it’s full on. He has this public prayer voice, a deep nasal croon, something between Yul Brynner’s Rameses in the Ten Commandments and Roy Orbison:

‘Danks God for bringing us all togeder on dis Christmas day. We give danks and love to you, our fader, your son, and de Holy Ghost. Danks God for to bring everyone came here. Danks God for bringing Luca into dees world, our first grandson, (Adriana’s son, she’s my younger sister) may your blessings be with him for alla his life. We pray your son Luca will grow up to be a good boy like his Pai (Paulo, my brother-in-law). An bless our family with many, many more cheeldren. Please to help our daughter Elisabeta find a good man to be her husband. She ees ready for to marry somebody, anybody. (nice touch dad) And please to help Christina’s poor Mae, we pray for her everyday. Guide us all, and watcha over all of us. In de name of Jesu Christo, Amen.’

My life always comes down to this in their eyes: marriage and kids and my delinquency in this regard. I never consciously chose to live my life differently from my parents, but somehow every decision I made since high school took me further and further from their world. Just moving out of the house as a single woman was problematic for them. In some ways, they still believe I’ll be moving back in with them. As for my career in event coordinating, they’re completely bewildered by it. All they know is I work at night, at parties. It worries them. They don’t understand how I make the money. I gave up trying to explain. The idea that you would hire someone to throw your own party is insanity to them. So I don’t tell them much. The less they know the easier it is for me. It’s gotten so that visiting them is like traveling to a foreign country with a fake passport; I keep my story straight, dress the part, and stick to the local language.

I spend the rest of the night washing dishes with the women, thinking about the 3 events I have to throw over New Years, and whether or not I have a bad boy fixation. New Years is a good time to be mingling with bad boys if you don’t have a good man already.

Considering a 3rd date? Get references first.

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:27:16 -0500

I was just finishing up with a client interview and the lady asked me for references. It’s not a common request in my business since I get most of my clients through word of mouth anyway, but it happens. As an event coordinator, usually my pitch and event pictures speak for themselves. But I’m always happy to oblige. I’ve got great references.
{ ... }
No question, checking up on references is essential. We do it in so many areas of our lives, whether it’s got to do with renting apartments, hiring, applying for school, applying for volunteer or aide work, even fostercare, petcare, babysitting - yada yada the list goes on, we check up on people’s references. We call people who’ve had first hand experiences with the person we’re going to engage, and we get confirmation about their character. It’s so sensible, isn’t it? 
Then why don’t we do it for our relationships? This is the highest stakes activity we’d ever want to engage someone in. And we don’t check their references?!!?

If I had called up Junky’s (my ex’s) previous girlfriends before I moved in with him, I would have saved myself a year and a half of grief. I moved in and after a handful of good months, spent a year trying to extricate myself from that relationship. If I had checked his references, I would have known that he was a neurotic packrat, that he was inflexible, that he couldn’t see how another person would have different needs than his own. According to Junky everyone’s hearts were essentially like his. The world was like that restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich where everyone in the room is John Malkovich saying John Malkovich. Except they were saying Junky Junky Junky Junky.

When you’re falling in love, you get a sense about these kinds of problems early on, but they don’t bother you. You’re still anesthetized by the endorphins running through your body - ahh yes, that feeling of love. But when those initial giddy feelings wear off, you suddenly see the real face of the person you love - in all its nakedness. And if you realize s/he might not be the one for you, you’re in for the heart-breaking slog at this point. It would have been much easier if you had nipped it in the bud.

So what am I saying? I’m saying:

1) ask him/her for references if you’re interested in a 3rd date
2) if s/he doesn’t give you any, then stop seeing them
3) if you’ve ignored #2 and you’re obsessed with them, then do alternative research. it’ll appease your obsession, and you might get some useful info besides. go on facebook, check out their friends, check out myspace, youtube, google, do whatever it takes to get yourself linked with anyone who might be able to give you a character reference. say you’re calling from their psychiatrist’s office and you were wondering if they had any concerns about their friend’s lifestyle/behaviour/sexual proclivities.
4) stop seeing them if any alarm bells ring, no matter how faint. especially if there are faint alarm bells, because that means you’re being triggered but you’re ignoring it

I’m going to ask for references before I go on a 3rd date with someone. If he’s serious about me, and he doesn’t have personality disorder, he shouldn’t have a problem coming up with a name or two right?

I guess this means I should get my references in order too... Yeesh.

Pork Chops at the ‘Oriental Buffet’

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:05:09 -0400

My aunt Lusiana is considered the ‘exotic’ one of the family because she has a thing for Chinese food. So when we all heard she booked a Chinese restaurant for my cousin Enrique’s wedding reception, we weren’t surprised. But it was strange. You can’t have a Portuguese wedding without piri piri potatoes and bacalhau, and of course the midnight Mediterranean seafood buffet. But then, Enrique and his wife had already had their big wedding in Portugal. This Toronto reception was just mop-up for all those who couldn’t afford to fly over.

Now I like Chinese food as much as the next guy, but Tia Lusiana booked the reception at the ‘Oriental Buffet.’ The name itself, in pink neon, was fair warning - that and the crumbling asphalt and patched up concrete parking lot. Still we parked the car and I helped my sister wheel her baby in.

We were late, and the family had already gotten up to load their plates at the trough. It was the kind of buffet place where 1/3 of the chafing trays were empty, the tiled floors were slippy slidey from all the spilled grease that never quite got mopped up. I tried to spot which one of the women at the buffet station was my cousin’s new wife. Wasn’t hard. She was the one dressed in a Chanel suit and 4 inch heels. Everyone else was wearing jeans or leisure suits. A couple of my relatives were wearing sweats (“expensive designer sweats, geez”).

Tia Lusiana came up and introduced me to my cousin’s wife, Teresa, who smiled shyly. I said hello and was about to ask her about the flight etc, but Tia talked over both of us and started getting on my case.

‘Ees your turn now Elisa, eay? What, still no boyfriend?’ She patted my cheek like she was checking for firmness. ‘You’re getting old. De rose is what’d you say... you’ve loss your bloom already. You better hurry, eay? Eay?!’ she repeated when I didn’t respond. ‘Ees too late senhora velha, pobre solteira,’ she cackled happily, then turned and clacked away in her cheap vinyl sandals. Tia Lusiana was missing certain things in her frontal lobe - like tact, logic. Watching her circulate and work a crowd was like watching a carpet bomber fly a mission. She was endlessly incendiary. She could decimate an entire room. Her new daughter-in-law didn’t know whether to laugh or look consternated. She looked constipated. I sized her up.

Teresa wasn’t old, but maybe not so young either. It was hard to tell. She was one of those women who was made up so heavily, yet so deftly that you weren’t quite sure if she was attractive or unattractive. From very subtly false eyelashes to perfectly blended foundation, to the pale lipstick with just that tasteful touch of glitter — you got the impression of attractiveness, but when you took in each of her features independently, none of them seemed attractive at all. I guessed this was what people called ‘well put-together.’  Oh you’d looove her. Teresa, I found out, adores beach locations. She insisted on Hawaii for their honeymoon. They go there and don’t see sand or water until day 4. She was mall-hopping non-stop for 3 days. 
So Teresa tottered on her heels, balancing a half empty plate as she walked back to the head table. She was trying not to look utterly dismayed, which was big of her, since this whole evening was shit really. I was totally embarrassed for my family who flanked her on either side, just maoing down on the food. (There’s no time limit on the food folks.) But the coup de grace was when I noticed my father, sitting 3 chairs away from the happy couple, was missing his front tooth. I watch in horror as he started telling a story to the entire head table, gap-toothed, spluttering food.

I took him aside as soon as I could and told him, ‘Pai get your teeth done.’ (It’s embarrassing.)
‘I deed,’ he says.
I looked at the hole in his mouth. Honestly, I was confused.

Turns out some dentist tinkered with his gold cap and the tooth fell out. My father was getting a false tooth made - a peg that would get screwed into his mouth, but get this, he was getting it made with the old gold cap glued to it. He wanted to keep it. It’s his idea of bling.
 Classy bunch, my family. Oh there’s more to tell. Like how the whole family is pressuring me to get married. Now that Enrique’s married off, I’m the last of the cousins to remain single...

But enough about that, I’ve got to get to work. And just in case you’re beginning to see me in a different light I want to tell you I have highly paid professionals in my family who have all their teeth – or better yet, very expensive dental work. I’m considering getting braces. Just cuz.

Go big

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:25:47 -0400

I’ve been busy with work since Burning Man. Lots of events including several film festival parties. I’m finally getting a couple moments to rub together. it’s late at night and i’m in a thoughtful mood. i have a half-written Burning Man entry still to put up - called lovedust... it’s about some of the people i met there and some of the positions we found ourselves in <grin> i haven’t finished writing that. but i had a quickie entry to put up tonight.

I had dinner with a girlfriend A, a writer and a filmmaker who’s a bit new agey the way you can be little flu-ey -- you know, she’s a little light-headed but still goes to work. Well actually she does brilliant work. Anyway, we were talking about what we’re doing with our lives (she’s in her mid-30s too) and something she said really stuck with me.

She was talking about thinking big. Going big. Basically we’re both at a point in our careers where we can choose our next project, and she was saying, why limit yourself? She got all biblical and basically said we’re like sowers casting seeds each time we undertake something. You could choose to cast seeds in a small patch of land in front of you, or you could cast it across the globe. Essentially, it’s the same action, a sweep of the hand, but the seeds’ll ‘take wing’ if you cast them with that intent. The same sweep of the hand could get you some sprouts at your door stoop, or it could create a trail of seedlings across the globe.

She was talking about the next book she was working on. But it also got me thinking about how it’s basically the same effort to throw a $10,000 party, as it is to throw a $100,000 party. Actually, it’s harder work with a small budget. And I got to thinking about how that principle applies to so many other things in life.

Burning Man 2: lovedust

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:55:55 -0400

not quite done yet

Burning Man 1: Sacred?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:21:21 -0400

5 days in Black Rock Desert with over 40,000 other people, getting caked in sand that’s as fine as gypsum dust. They call it playa dust - ‘playa’ being some kind of euphemism for this salty, crumbling, parched crust of earth. You spill water and it disappears into the cracks.

I think it would take all of 48 hours for a stranded human to dehydrate, dessicate and basically rejoin the dust.

I came as a virgin (burner) and got completely dusted, deflowered, drugged, drained and inspired. In my next blog I’ll talk about the people I met and what I got into (the profane). For this one, I’ll talk about what might be sacred about Burning Man - more pictures I could show you - mostly mine, some taken by a friend TC, like these shots of these 2 central pieces:

the Man in a forest of trees made by 2x4s on which people scrawled whatever they wanted to give up this year.

The main temple which got burned on the last night. Each panel was designed or made by a different person. Again, people tagged pretty much every panel of the temple.

These were only 2 of the many installations that were scattered in the desert. I don’t know if you can fathom the scale of this thing. Think of a huge desert you wouldn’t want to get lost in, then imagine a giant shaker in the sky sprinkling down a bunch of art toys. Basically, it’s 7 square miles of desert made into an art exhibit/event space. In a dust storm you’d be lost, dead meat, strips of beef jerky in a couple days.

We went around in packs exploring and discovering new works, new ‘happenings’ every day er, every evening. You had to get around on foot, or by bike, or in art cars - mutant vehicles made into fantastical creatures and fire-blowing machines. You had to wear masks and goggles when it got dusty.

you’d find weird moments like this: a guy
lying in the middle of the desert, or a
woman checking out a sound installation
also in the middle of nowhere. there were
surreal moments of solitude - particularly in
the day, when most people slept

but a lot of burning man was about being
among hordes of people. DJs were
incl spinning 24-7, so that people would be
dancing at all hours, day and night. Guys
like Carl Cox, Base Nectar were there,
and what a great place to spin - some
of the most extravagant outdoor clubs. It
was Mad Max meets Baron Munchausen.

Fire and light. All the exhibits, costumes
and cars used fire or light. Like moths we
were drawn to them. Because there was
no electrical grid, you were engulfed in
darkness at night. Wearing glow-sticks was
de rigeur, to avoid getting run over by art
cars in the dark. There were amazing night
time exhibits which just couldn’t be
documented - like a length of balloons,
miles long, tied together with blue LED lights clipped to them. They formed a string of floating points of blue in the sky. The line hovered above the playa and people could pull it down and walk around with it, transforming the LED light formation in the sky. When they let go, it was like a flock of birds taking to the sky. The photos below are of a metal temple that was constructed, with a gas flame that would flicker and roar across the ceiling.

But of course the main moment everyone
had gathered for was burning the Man. I didn’t think there’d be much to it. I figured you’d watch a stick figure burn, and then go away to party again. But with 40,000 people gathered together, the excitement and tension reached a religious fervour, or tapped into some primal nerve. It was the power of the Crowd - mob mentality played out on a level I’d never experienced before. 40,000 people stood in the middle of a desert before an unconscionable amount of firewood, waiting, waiting for someone to light a match.
Of course, it wasn’t going to happen right away. They had to draw it out. First there were the fire dancers - the pre-show: (the Man is lit up in white neon)

then fireworks exploded

when the Man finally caught fire
it took my breath away

The silhouetted people are actually standing in the mid-ground, hundreds of feet away from the fire. It was so huge, you could feel the heat from a distance. It was breathtaking and moving to watch a fire of such magnitude. Even if the Man held no symbolic significance for you, you couldn’t help thinking that this was the largest act of immolation you would ever witness. I choked up.

After the whole thing had burnt down, people went back to the site, drawn back to ‘ground zero’ where the embers still burned, as if volcanic. People were actually hopping through the fires, picking through the rubble looking for remains of the Man to take with them as souvenirs.

It’s strange to be part of an event like this where there’s a lot of sound and fury signifying uh, maybe not much. Thing is, the experience itself is still powerfully cathartic. When I met up with people after the burn the first phrase that came to my lips when I saw them was ‘Happy New Year’ - and it wasn’t because I was high. It just felt like we had burned down the old and seared clean, we were about to step into a new beginning.