Your Face Like Snow

As I was approaching thirty, my good friend and companion Sage warned me of my impending need to settle. I narrowed my eyes.

My fair city is going through a massive babe drought and finding a suitable gnetleman or lady is a trying task for a lazy person like me. I've been on a few dates in the last few months and the majority have been with men still pining for their exes. In addition to that problem, Okcupid and Tinder contnue to be wretched hives of scum and villainy. And whenever I complain to either my sister or Sage about these dates with guys who tell me outright that they miss their ex, they tell me I should see where it goes.
 
In recent years I’ve found that I much prefer to be by myself. If it’s a choice between a second date with a dude who moped the whole time or a night by myself, I’ll go with the latter. Plus having been in an abusive relationship makes you realize that being alone isn’t all that bad.
 
One of the worst things that happened during my abusive relationship was how low my self esteem was brought down by it. Your self esteem is tied to your abuser during these relationships and it’s always kept at a lower level so you start to believe the lies the abuser is telling you. So, once I got out of that relationship, I wasn’t sure how I felt about myself. Luckily, I started to realize my own value and really begin liking the person I was.
 
I also met Bono during this time.

I’ve spoken about my massive u2 obsession in the past and the time I met three fourths of the band. I’ve also mentioned how awesome it was to speak to Bono. But I think that meeting was also a turning point in how I felt about myself and what I wanted out of someone else. It was because of this meeting that I started jokingly judging men on a scale of 1 to Bono.

At this time, I still felt that I wasn’t a person worthy of love. I liked myself but I didn’t feel like anyone else would, especially not someone I’d consider a potential romantic partner. Not that I would consider Bono a potential romantic partner, he’s like 4 feet shorter than me and wears platforms. But I digress.The thing I remember the most about meeting Bono was how I felt when we were speaking. I spoke to him about seeing u2 in Australia, how much I loved the show, how I spent my 25th birthday there, whatever. And he listened like we were best friends catching up, keeping eye contact and chuckling at my various witty remarks. The best part was how he made me feel like I was the most precious thing in the world to him. And not in the romantic way, just in a way that made me feel like I mattered to him. It was bizarre but one of the best moments of my life so far. 

Please ignore my weird face. I was probably two seconds from crying the whole time.

And it’s not that I want to be the most important person in a romantic partner’s life. It just felt great to realize I wasn’t broken after the abuse. I was still worthy of being thought highly of, of being seen as precious to someone and that was what I needed then. I reckon Bono calls every girl "sweetheart" but he'll never know how much it mattered to me that I felt like I wasn't as unworthy as my abusive partner made me feel. And I mattered to Bono. So fuck that other guy.
 
Though I've chosen celibacy for the next little bit, I know my worth now. And I really want other people to know their worth too. I felt so bad when I saw this girl at the salon talking about her horrible sounding boyfriend treating her terribly. If my head wasn't shoved into a sink, I would have told her to kick him to the curb. I think sometimes feeling bad is better than feeling alone. I know how it feels to think you'll never be loved again. But "love" isn't worth it.
 
So know your worth and be with someone who knows it. Even if it's yourself for now.

One Scene Wonder.

I love movies. I wouldn't make them if I didn't cause making movies is a long ass boring process. It's why I have a soft spot for movies that are terrible but still have some sort of redeeming quality. I also use this as my excuse for why I still love Street Fighter.

Fuck you, it's amazing.

 

But even in the worst movie with the most cliched story line or terrible acting, there's always a scene that can save it for me. Hence why I still love a lot of movies I hated as a kid. There's this Jonathan Taylor Thomas movie with Chevy Chase playing his dad that I thought was the shits as a child (mostly because of their faux Native hipster boy scout crap throughout the movie) but it has one of the best endings I've ever seen. Chevy Chase is about to marry JTT's mom in this beautiful outdoor   wedding while JTT in voice over is summing up the movie. And they play Return To Innocence for the whole thing and it's amazing! 

 

A single scene can save any movie for me. I hated Revenge of the Sith for the entire time I was sitting in the audience at the midnight showing opening night. But the second they show Obi Wan dropping off Luke with his Uncle and Aunt and they do the call back shot to A New Hope with Beru and Owen looking at the binary sunset I was like, "THIS WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVER."  

 

I'm fickle, what can I say?

 

My favourite bad movie has got to be The Next Karate Kid with a pre fame Hilary Swank playing the annoying as hell Julie. Despite her faults, Julie had a kick ass taste in music and she was the reason I got into The Cranberries. I was 10 years old when Julie went into the monastery to practice her drills and she put on Dreams by The Cranberries. Dolores O'Riordan's voice is one of my favourite sounds in the world and the last 2 minutes of Dreams is my favourite part of the song. I don't know if the scene is made because of Julie's shadow spar or the song or a mix of both. But I love the scene with its adorable dancing monks and Dolores' vocals. 

 

 

I also dig the movie for Julie kicking the crap out of the dude who was stalking her for the whole movie. Some guys just deserve kicks to the head. 

 

I love scenes that stand out and long after I have finished bitching about how much I hate a certain movie, I will recall scenes I really liked and made the movie worth it. I can't hate on a movie if it was entertaining even if it was only for one scene.  Anyway, I want to listen to Dreams again. 

Don't mess with his funky flow

I credit my friend Sage with getting me into one of my favourite shows of 2015: Steven Universe. It combines all my favourite things: fantasy, adventure, mystery, clever dialogue, and WOMEN KICKING ASS.

Female identifying sentient rocks to be exact

I wasn't originally interested in the show despite the abundance of GIFs I kept seeing from my Tumblr friends. I was incredibly obsessed with Gravity Falls and didn't want to go down the rabbit hole with a new show. But Sage kept pestering me to watch it so he'd have someone to talk to about it.

And I really liked it! I went through every available episode throughout the summer and continue to rewatch episodes I've enjoyed. I really love how much the show focuses on the strength and beauty of femininity, the value of friendship and family, and the joy of being yourself and fighting to protect that. 

According to Wiki: Steven Universe is "the coming of age story of a young boy named Steven, who grows up in the town of Beach City living with three magical humanoid aliens, the Crystal Gems: Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. Steven, who is half-Gem, goes on adventures with his human friends and helps the Gems protect the world from their own kind."

Each episode is 10 minutes and has filled me with wonder for that reason. I can't believe how this show can be so emotionally complex with only 2 seasons of 10 minute episodes. 

A message from Steven's mother to Steven aka the episode that broke my heart. 

This generation of animation that believes its audience can handle this complexity is just killing me with its greatness. 

My favourite part of this show has to be the fact that the most respected warrior in the galaxy with a legend that precedes her is a 7 foot tall woman in a wedding dress that loves pink. No, my favourite part of this show is how the Power of Love will kick your ass. 

I am made of love and it's stronger than you 

There is basically nothing I dislike about this show. Even the stuff I thought I'd dislike like the songs were things I came to enjoy.  As a child, I thought to be "girly" was the worst and this show made me realize that "girly" is just as or even more bad ass than lone wolf toxic masculinity. 

This show also blows me away with its positive representation of not only women but people of colour and general body positivity. ARGH THIS SHOW. It cannot return quick enough. Go watch it, I'll wait here and we'll talk about it later.

Awasis.

I was never as lonely as I felt when I was the only little Native girl in the world that liked Batman (or so I thought).

I wrote my short film Crash Site because I wanted a movie about a bunch of nerds that were either Native girls or girls of colour. I also wanted a Native super-heroine that was shy and from a reserve. I designed Maggie Thunderbird with my good friend Kelly Tindall and I was speaking to him about creating a pitch so we can get her an actual comic book! Here's hoping.

Maggie Thunderbird as designed by me and Kelly. 

I continue to be blown away by the response Crash Site has got. It's wonderful to know that other people want Native girls being nerds and being awesome. But I hadn't seen Crash Site with the audience I intended it for: Native kids. 

Cue my friend Cella and her mum, Silvana, asking me to speak at Strathcona School to their kids Grades 1-6. I showed the movie during the assembly and spoke to a group of grade 5s afterwards. I was nervous the night before as I knew how I reacted when I was a grade 3 kid and some loser came to speak to us at my school. I was ready to be thrown out because I was so boring. Yeah, there was a bit of unrest when I introduced the movie but once the movie was halfway through, the kids were quiet, laughing at the right moments, and enjoying everything.

Two parts that blew me away though were when Cella told me about hearing little girls being horrified at a character telling her sister, "You can't act like an Indian fresh off the reserve" and overhearing another little girl trying to repeat the Cree lines after she heard them. But the best part was when I got to talk to the kids of Grade 5 about the movie and what they thought about it. A bunch wanted to know if I was going to make it longer. One kid wanted me and Kelly to make the comic book. And they all wanted to know what I wanted to make next. The teacher mentioned that the kids had been thinking of questions to ask me all week and she had hadn't seen them so focused for a guest.

It was great to hang out with a bunch of kids who were as nerdy as I was when I was their age. I loved cracking jokes about nerd memes and talking about Spiderman with them. And seeing their excitement to talk about making and acting in their own movies was infectious. I had a great time! And I felt really touched when they asked if I could send them a link to the movie.

Even though I am still terrified of being run out of the school cause I'm so boring, I would still like to visit another school. Here's to Native nerds!

 

Stronger Together

I'm a huge Superman nerd and will get into huge nerd arguments about how awesome he is. As a girl, I loved that he could fly. As an adult, I like that he's an endless fountain of hope and optimism in a world that tends to value anti-heroes.

I was also a HUGE fan of the Helen Slater version of Supergirl.

I always wanted to do that dip your hand in the lake as you fly over it thing.

So when I found out that there was going to be a Supergirl tv show. I was like, meh. Gotham turned out to be this batshit fanfic straight out of the mind of a 13-year-old girl and Man of Steel made me hate where DC was going with Supes so I had little hope for it.

Until I saw a Supergirl photoset on tumblr and saw that HER SHOES WERE SENSIBLE. 

So I watched the pilot and was charmed by her dorkiness, her optimism, and her sweetness.

Then I found out that this show is wall to wall women and I was down as hell for it!

AND HELEN SLATER IS HER MUM

I'm only two episodes in but I just went hard on that show. I love its celebration of femininity, that Kara has so many awesome women in her life, and that being a "girl" isn't a negative thing. She begins to take it and own it.

I also really love her relationship with her older sister and the season-long subplot related to her Kryptionian aunt's relationship with her birth mother. Kara and Alex's relationship is so refreshing and multifacted and ARGH THIS SHOW GOT ME SO HYPED.

But my favourite thing so far is the value of help to Kara. Kara tries to get all Superman in her first few outings as Supergirl and she ends up causing a mess of things. So she gets help from her friends James, Wynn, and her sister. In the second episode Kara tells James,

"Back on Krypton no one was their own man. Growing up I was taught that to accept help from people is not a shame, it's an honour."

AND I LIKE THAT. She's not just a refugee alien and one of the last of her kind that must go it alone. She's going to get help and be better for it.

SupergirlFanaticsTumblr

There's an unabashed sweetness about this show that I'm just loving. And it reminds me why I like the House of El: they inspire you to always aspire to be better. And this show is unabashed with its positivity, which I think people are missing the point of. It's not Gotham and it's not Daredevil. It's a show about a woman that wants to make things better. It's a show about women helping other women. AND I AM ONLY TWO EPISODES IN. ARGH I AM SO HYPED.

The Female of the Species

 I am a massive Sherlock Holmes nerd and nothing gets me annoyed than when I tell people that and they'll inevitably say, "Oh, do you watch Sherlock?"

Pinterest

I've seen Sherlock and enjoyed it at first. But then I realized that Sherlock's Sherlock is a really big douche. I didn't like that he lorded his intelligence over everyone and absolutely everyone was inept when he was around. I also didn't dig that Watson had absolutely no reason to hang out with him or be his friend.

Watson in the stories has always been a valued partner to Holmes. Holmes even told him:

"It makes a considerable difference to me, having someone with me on whom I can thoroughly rely."

Which, coming from Holmes, is a big deal. Holmes's relationship with Watson is one of the biggest weakness of Sherlock but it's one of the biggest strengths of one of my favourite shows Elementary.  

In Elementary, John Watson becomes Joan Watson, played with intelligent adorability by Lucy Liu. This caused a bunch of people to freak out when the show first premiered cause how DARE they make a white man an Asian woman! HOW DARE they not make her a solider! HOW DARE she not be a doctor (even though she is).

But Lucy quickly usurped Jude Law's position as my favourite Watson in fiction. And it's not just because of her fabulous Joan Watson wardrobe. 

Though I do try to steal her style

But she's such a great character. She starts the show as a disgraced surgeon turned sober living companion assigned to Sherlock Holmes after his stint in rehab. By season three, she's an NYPD consultant who takes over for Sherlock after he disappears to London and is probably just as good as he is at deduction. Together, they're unstoppable, working together as a great team that compliment each other perfectly. 

And the relationship between Joan and Holmes never goes anywhere near romance, which is amazing! They value each other, they deeply care about each other, but when someone mistakes Sherlock for Joan's boyfriend, she reacts with annoyance and mild disgust. He looks out for her and she looks out for him. They're family. Their relationship is how I imagine Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr's Watson and Holmes would have started their relationship. 

I also love that she doesn't take any crap from Holmes. When he tries to get her to pour him a cup of coffee by rudely holding his mug up, she tells him to do it himself. Or one of my favourite situations is when they have sneaked into the morgue and Sherlock is trying to convince Joan to dissect a body, which she isn't going to do. He starts to dissect the body himself but he keeps mucking it up so she takes over. 

Sherlock: That’s lovely. You’re really quite skilled, Watson....

Joan: No! I am dissecting a body in the middle of the night. We are not having a moment.
 

This show treats female characters so well that I just love when they add new women. I hope they bring more Ms. Hudson into the show (played by the amazing Candis Cayne) and after the amazing Kitty Winter arc, I really hope they bring her back. 
 

And Sherlock. He is a real person in this show! One of my least favourite things about Sherlock Holmes adaptations is how Sherlock gets away with acting like an insufferable know-it-all. Sherlock is an ass in Elementary but people call him out on it and he does try not to be so much of a dick (which he is). I like watching his growth on the show. His change from the person who tells Joan he doesn't need her in season one to the person who tells her he's better when she's around.
 

Maybe I'm biased cause I think Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller are great actors but it's a legit awesome show. I've got about 10 episodes to finish in season 3 before season 4 starts on Thursday. I hope they bring back Ms. Hudson! 

Keep Winnipeg Weird 2: The Tunnel of BEER

Winnipeg has a weird history of underground tunnels. In a city that spends 9 months of the year covered in endless winter, I could imagine how a tunnel connecting buildings and heated with steam would be a wonderful alternative. The Pantages theatre had an attempted tunnel to City Hall that had been planned but ended as the Sand Room in the latter’s basement. The University of Manitoba has a network of tunnels that connect most of the major buildings to one another (the bit between the Fletcher Argue-Liz Dafoe Library and Duff Roblin is particularly scary) as does The Health Sciences Centre and Downtown Winnipeg.

However I’ve heard weird rumours about underground tunnels that have been out of use since at least the 40s located in the older parts of Winnipeg, connecting the oldest buildings in the city. The Free Press did an article a few months back gathering the various hearsay and rumours about these tunnels focusing on the tunnel system that (supposedly) connects most of the buildings in the Exchange District.

In my research, I’ve found mention of a tunnel that connects the Hotel Fort Garry to the Manitoba Club and Union Station. The Fort Garry was one of the first major hotels in the city and due to its proximity to the rail station, has had guests of very high statuses. Charlie Chaplin, however, stayed in the Windsor Hotel down the street when he was in Winnipeg. From what I gathered, the Fort Garry tunnel was used to transport guests to and from the hotel in the winter and also used to get dirty linen to the hotel from the Manitoba Club. I also read various accounts of the tunnel being used illicitly to secretly transport prostitutes from the train station to the Manitoba Club with the tunnel being haunted by a prostitute strangled and walled up down there. Security guards at Union Station can’t say for sure if the tunnels exist as the basement of the station is a labyrinth of entry points that have been out of use for a while. If the tunnel is there, it’s been closed up for years and may be flooded and unusable.

The Exchange Tunnels are the ones I hear the most about. Their primary use was for transporting goods in the winter and may have also been used to transport booze during prohibition. These have also been boarded up with the only entry point being the still used storage area that opens to the street near Main and Bannatyne. These tunnels were used by Al Capone during his time in Winnipeg.

The tunnel system I was most surprised by was the one connecting the Legislature building with the Vaughn Jail. It was used to supply steam heat from the power plant between the jail and the Leg as well as power the elevators within the Legislature. Later, it was used to transport mail by air tube. It was also supposedly used to allow politicians to escape angry mobs during the Winnipeg Strike. Like the other tunnels mentioned here, it's locked down to the public.

There are loads of underground secrets in Winnipeg that I couldn't find any information of. I've heard a lot about an old movie theatre under the Radisson hotel on Portage as well as a pool hall and second bar under the Windsor Hotel that was used during Prohibition. Here's hoping somebody can point me in the direction of these secrets.