Shopping spree...

In all my life I've never done this before: gone out and bought a pile of clothes. I've bought multiple things at a Weekender party, maybe. But... first of all, I seldom scrape together enough money to buy more than one piece of clothing at a time, and then only when it's desperately needed: I have better uses for money, like books and travel.

Second, I need to feel I have a good excuse.

Well, losing 20 pounds felt like a good reason, and having earned a little extra money, I felt I could do it. So I did.

Cotton Ginny used to be my favourite clothing story - a Canadian chain where all the clothes they sold were made of cotton. It went out of business a while ago: I was disappointed. So were many of my friends - I know a lot of people who wear Cotton Ginny clothes. (So why did they have business problems? I guess the whole of Canada isn't like my friends.)

Just recently, Cotton Ginny miraculously reappeared.

I went last night with two friends, and we all bought clothes. Usually I hate clothes-shopping, but this was the ideal situation: and I found plenty of things I liked, and they look terrific, and best of all, everything fits. It made me all the more horrified by the ill-fitting shabby stuff I had been wearing. I can hear the ghost of my mother: "Now, Lizzie, you have to have some decent clothes!" Somehow I always have trouble remembering that.

This morning I'm wearing the new navy-blue pants and the shirt with the navy-blue diagonal pinstripe. This looks so good, no one will recognize me.

I'm going to try to save enough money that when I've lost another twenty pounds (a few months from now?) I'll be able to do the same again.

A waste of time....

I just finished reading a really bad, very long slash story.

Oh, it was awful. I had reasons for having high expectations - and my disappointment was all the worse because of that. It was ... stupid. My heroes were idiots. Among other stupidities, they spent most of the story *not* getting together because, after all, one of them was a sweet virgin whom the other couldn't bear to touch and consequently defile. I wanted to scream, "Defile him, dammit!"

I hate it when my heroes are stupid.

And then when finally they did get around to having sex (with great fear, trepidation and hesitation), it wasn't even worth it, for the most part.

There were much worse things than this n the story. Everybody was a wimp and... well, there were a few details that tend to squick me at the best of times, but which I might like in a tight, well-written story. There was nothing in this story to make me tolerant of the numerous offenses.

I hate reading about wimps with an emotional maturity of twelve and seriously subnormal intelligence when I want to be reading about my favourite slash guys.

So why was I so masochistic this morning as to read this interminable thing right through many dozens of pages of small print? Incredulity that anyone could write a slash story with a premise I might have loved, and make me hate it so much? Some sort of self-punishment? The hope it would get better? I know that doesn't happen. If a story starts badly, it's invariably bad in the middle and bad in the end. Idiot characters don't transform into clever ones. Not ever.

Maybe I need to remind myself how not to write.

Or simply learn that this particular author is a writer to avoid. (I'm sure she has many, many fans and I'm glad for them all.)

I've been reading so much good slash lately, I'd forgotten how annoying bad slash can be - or even mediocre slash. I know there's far worse than this one out there.

Horrible thought.

Much Ado About Theatrics....

I just saw the most inventive, funny, clever play.

It was Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, but not as I've ever seen it played.

It was theatre in the park, and not the first time I've seen Shakespeare in a park. I remember a rather terrible production of A Midsummer Night's Dream once in Regent's Park, London, and there have been other, less memorable park performances.

This is the first time the park with the performance has been a couple of blocks from my house.

I enveigled Beulah to go with me by promising to carry her chair. (And I did.) The performance was done by A Company of Fools, which has been performing in parks all over Ottawa this month. I'd heard it was good.

I had no doubt: Much Ado About Nothing is my favourite Shakespeare comedy, and it would be my favourite of all if it weren't for Hamlet. I've seen it in Stratford, Ontario; Stratford-Upon-Avon in England (where it was performed as in Colonial India); in London; in movies; at the National Arts Centre - anywhere I could. None of the performances were anything like this.

They call this the Torchlight Shakespeare series. The play had fifteen characters, played by three actors and a set of garden tools, with plastic flowers as props. Costumes converted Beatrice into the evil Don John in seconds; then into a ragtag Dogberry. A wall became a podium and a pulpit. Hero was played by a winsome mop with a Georgian accent and her father was a garden rake with rope hair and mustache. The priest was played by a garden gnome who talked like Porky Pig.

And they were all brilliant. I was particularly impressed by Margo MacDonald, who not only totally did justice to Beatrice, but was the funniest and best Dogberry I have ever seen - and I usually find Dogberry problematic. She was pretty sinister as Don John, too.

Scott Florence as Benedick was Beatrice's equal, and that's saying a lot.

There were between 100 and 150 people watching the show, at a guess - in lawn chairs or on blankets. Many of them were children and they particularly loved it, laughing loudly at all the really funny bits. So much for Shakespeare being difficult to get.

As the metaphorical curtain went up, it started to rain. They carried on bravely, and the rain stopped. Twenty minutes into the show it started to pour. They took a brief break to see if it would stop; it did, and, with the encouragement of the audience, they continued. Amazing that, despite being soaked, only a handful of people left.

From their programme:

We have big plans.... We plan to run shows in repertoire, so that you can come back more than once and see a different show. We envision a travelling wagon that converts into a stage. We dream of a large travelling tent, pennants snapping in the breeze, keeping the inclement weather from our heads. We see forty foot lollipops shaped like the Fools logo being licked by little children at every show....

That tent would have been useful tonight.

Rum and the ocean and a state of bliss....

Captain Jack Sparrow helps you get your horn on!
Boys in eyeliner = heaven for you! Drinks all
around!


What Character from Pirates of the Caribbean Serectly Fancy?
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I got this from sirose on arrrr.

Really, it's just an excuse to have a picture of Captain Jack Sparrow on my LJ.