Housekeeping!
I’m doing a BIRTHDAY sale for 40% OFF annual subscriptions which gets you access to newsletters like today’s. I believe this is around $30 USD a year. I have NOT adjusted for inflation like everyone else because I’m terrible at doing business. This ends on Nov 26th.
I wrote a piece on dining solo all over the world for Chatelaine Magazine. Here’s a sample:
Solo dining is the only time I can concentrate on savouring the food at my own pace, and that freedom outweighs any discomfort I have with being seen alone. In the beginning I felt a bit awkward—it was like not knowing where to place your hands when posing for a photo. Now, I’ll have two martinis to give me the right kind of tilt that feels luxurious on my own, and I’ll eat until I’m full. I love to over-order. I think of Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread ordering an ample breakfast for one and falling in love with the woman waiting on his table: “with a poached egg that is not too runny…and jam—but not strawberry.”
I like the differing levels of alarm that come with asking for a table for myself. In New York and Toronto, it’s easier to get by, though restaurants sometimes bristle at giving up a table for a single cover. In Berlin, once, the host was so perplexed when I came in alone at 10 p.m. that he periodically stopped by the table and asked if I was alright. (It’s hard to know the cultural precedent for dining alone.) By the end of the meal, the kitchen staff sent over a cherry tart as a gift. I must give the impression that a woman dining alone is seeking refuge from her life, and that is not completely untrue.
I was in VOGUE GREECE for their December Issue talking about Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In print and online. I love being a woman of the world! READ IF YOU UNDERSTAND GREEK or translate it for FUN!
HEDDA
”You just do anything you want, don’t you.”
“Of course, otherwise what would be the point?”
I went into the TIFF premiere for Hedda having little background on the adventure I was about to embark on. I had not read the play it was based on, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (I amended this yesterday and read the play in one sitting! I suggest). It was all new to me! I had almost stayed home from going because I had been burning the candle at both ends (such is a theme for this last quarter of the year), but I watched the trailer and decided you know what, I feel like I will miss out on something if I don’t go. Anything that informs my work is worth getting out of bed for, this is an impetus for me these days.
If you have followed my writing for any amount of time, you know how much I love a difficult woman. Throw out the word “unlikeable”––let’s trade UP for incorrigible, disastrous, chaotic, monstrous. For example, I went to see Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love with my best friend and as the credits rolled she looked at me and said, “And I’d do nothing different!” Now, if the woman in question has a lot of chic and some comedic timing, then it’s simply catnip for me. To borrow from Sandra Bernhard, when I see a woman like that the story is about to get “funky and REAL!” Tessa Thompson’s Hedda glides through her house sowing seeds of strife as a party favour.
