“Enough with the low hanging fruit”

I find people’s choice and use of catch phrases endlessly fascinating and remembered this email conversation between four friends two and a half years ago when we called ourselves the Exhiled Princesses (EP).

EP#3: Good afternoon EP’s! Baby Princess and I were out for a walk this fine misty afternoon and were in the middle of a deep conversation about our mutual irritation of catch phrases, in particular ones used in the work environment. Here are some we came up with – feel free to add.

1. At the end of the day….
2. Reinvent the wheel
3. Heads up
4. Push back
5. ‘Add meat to the campaign….sizzle to the steak’

EP #2: ‘Low hanging fruit’. ‘Moving forward’. Let’s go out this Thursday.

EP#1: Uhh I heard myself saying this today “I didn’t anticipate this kind of uptake.” HELLO WHO WAS THAT? That needs to ‘pop’ a little more. ‘We need to speak to the community, our constituents and key stakeholders.’ ‘It needs to be punched up.’

EP #2: I’m delighted there will be an opportunity for a gathering in the days (two to be exact) to come, affording us moments of enjoyment and libation (woo hoo, everyone say yay for libations!!!). I greatly look forward to speaking with all of you offline, even offside. That’s all I can pull out of my bafflegab stores for now, but will endeavour to pump up the volume, kick it up a notch, ramp things up by Thursday.

EP #1: I’m in for Thursday. AND I’m wearing my princess coat for real.

EP#4: That said, let’s make it for Friday.

EP #1: Baby Princess, you out of da loop. We’re on for Thursday.

EP#4: ‘That said’ is my hilarious contribution to the doublespeak/lame corporate phrasing.

EP #3: That said really baffles me – I know it’s short for That being said but Having said that makes much more sense to me. I guess people have to rephrase the old catch phrase.

EP #1: I have an entirely new one for all of you. I’m officially changing the word ‘ridiculous’ to redonkulous’. What do you think. If you’re being redonkulous then you’re a redonkuloid.

EP #3: Good to know what it means – I saw it used on a TMZ commercial – a girl’s big booty is described as ‘redonkulous’ – I assumed it was a booty term.

EP #2: Okay, that said, you redonkuloids with the booties, is it Thursday that we’re meeting?

EP #1: Okay redonkulums, we’re on. Having said that, is it 8:30 at 5 1/2 off Main?

EP#3: Your digits are twisted – it’s 5:30 at 8 ½ which is on 8^th Ave, first block East of Main, right Baby Princess?

EP #2: At the end of the day, having said all that, we’re redonkulonking at 8 ½ (think Fellini) off Main street.

EP#1: I’m going to come and have some low hanging fruit!

Dorian Gray + The Adjustment Bureau

I saw these two movies back-to-back and found each seeking answers to big questions on morality. In Dorian Gray, I agree that beauty alone and hedonism for hedonism’s sake  do not bring happiness.  In The Adjustment Bureau, I found myself disagreeing that career success and love can’t be part of the same path and that life is determined by either fate or free will. 

Some brilliant performances in both, but not quite brilliant films, I’m not unhappy I saw them for these reasons:

Dorian Gray

Most memorable lines:

“People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.”

“You see I envy you.  Everything’s possible for you because you have the only two things worth having: youth and beauty.”

“I too have news.  It seems my wife is with child.”  “Congratulations.”  “Don’t be absurd.  It’s the beginning of the end.”

Scene stealer: Rebecca Hall as Emily, daughter of Lord Henry (Colin Firth)

Strengths: Colin Firth and that it’s an adaptation of original Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The Adjustment Bureau

Most memorable lines:

“The situation between the two of you is a serious deviation from the plan.”

“Do you now we paid $7,300 to consultants to figure out the perfect amount of scuffing on my shoes.”

Scene stealer:  John Slattery (poor man seems to forever sport a fedora)

Strengths: every scene with Emily Blunt and Matt Damon, their chemistry akin to that of the old greats.

Jack Layton: “Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

“I remember a Stephen Harper once upon a time… You’ve become what you used to oppose. Mr. Harper, what happened to you? What changed?”

“The federal government is in the process of engineering the largest land grab probably since the white man came over to Canada.”

“They need a new community on higher ground.”

“They’re about dimes and dollars. A few dimes to you in tax cuts, many, many dollars to banks and oil companies.”

“When you’re sick, you present your medicare card, not your credit card. New Democrats will not stand idly by. We will be fighting each and every day for our precious medicare system.”

“We effectively have a monopoly in the sector, a very small number of very large companies that are setting the prices.”

“What we need to do is stand up for ourselves when we’re unfairly treated.”

“In order to have the Canada you want, you have to vote for the Canada you want.”

Jack Layton’s last letter to Canadians: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/22/pol-layton-last-letter.html

happythankyoumoreplease (movie): review, best lines

Josh Radnor’s  first film (he wrote, directed, and acted), a relationship indie of twenty-something hipsters in NYC focuses on characterization, is low-key yet engaging, light-hearted but not trite, and not too heavy on the ah-ha moments.  Watching it was like enjoying a good, inexpensive bottle of wine.

Genuine performances by Zoe Kazan and Tony Hale and the score –14 beautiful songs by Jaymay, an indie  folk singer-songwriter from New York — are reasons to watch this gem.

Top lines:

“You want to marry me?  I’m not buying it.   Wow, you really want out, don’t you.”

“This was nice, thank you.”  “No, thank you……more please?”

“Finally here he was, a guy who wouldn’t let me get away with anything.  I always thought of that as the moment you came into focus.  There you were. “

“Let me love you.  I’m totally up to the task.  Actually I’ve already started.”

“Look at me.  I get it.  I’m not the guy you had in mind.  But what if you don’t know what’s best for you?” 

“And as he’s talking, the molecules on his face must have rearranged themselves, because when I opened my eyes, I am looking at the most beautiful, gorgeous man.”

“‘Maybe there is a beast….maybe it’s only us.'”

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and its stances on human nature seemed fitting in understanding what led to the riots in Vancouver.  

Lines  that gel: 

“‘We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything.'”

“He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling.”

“The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”

“Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!'”

“The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.”

“After all we aren’t savages really…'”

“Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

“Riot a black eye? Please let’s have some perspective”

 

  —  June 21 Vancouver Sun article by Stephen Hume “Riot a black eye? Try the desperation of Downtown Eastside”

 

Top lines  from Hume’s article:

 

Last week’s Lord of the Flies moment at Granville and Georgia having been examined, the gurus of shallow analysis now airily pronounce that Vancouver has received a black eye from the louts who looted London Drugs.

 

In fact, the high-minded hysteria in the aftermath of Vancouver’s latest hockey riot is about on par with that which afflicted the participants.

 

..this isn’t to condone what happened last week. Nor is it to minimize the damage, financial and physical, that must be borne as a consequence of the stupidity. But please, let’s have some perspective.

 

Even as a testosterone-charged army of young men converged in the city core for a hockey series hyped into the stratosphere as the defining moment in city sports history, bars, eateries and liquor stores were racking up more than $5 million in sales.

 

Perhaps we should be discussing the folly of hosing down a possible conflagration with gasoline.

 

There are gawkers and rubberneckers who provide the audience that eggs on the feckless.

 

There are cynical opportunists who seize the moment of chaos to steal. And there are anti-social elements cloaking aggression in claims they are political.

 

Now we’ve got a virtual counter-riot underway as another passive-aggressive mob, safe in its online anonymity, delivers vigilante verdicts without benefit of the rules of evidence, due process or the careful judgment that the law represents and justice requires.

 

Look, if you want a black eye, try the ongoing desperation of Downtown Eastside residents…..or consider the recent study that found homelessness cost Vancouver taxpayers $51.4 million for hospital, ambulance, policing, emergency shelter and food aid.

 

 

“I haven’t wanted to stir up anger but if they applauded me, I would have been uneasy,”

 

says John Kenneth Galbraith, an expatriate Canadian economist who spent a lifetime antagonizing the American Right. He was an abiding Liberal who worked with Democratic U.S. presidents Roosevelt, Truman, JFK and Johnson.  Of the 4 dozen books he authored, best known was American Capitalism, The Affluent Society , The New Industrial State.

Galbraith was part of a legion of men who not only worked in “The New Deal”, an economic program in response to the Great Depression, but believed in it through and through. 

At 95 years of age, his acerbic wit shines through in a 2004 Life  & Times interview.  (He passed away 2006)

“We were all quite young in those days.  That was a thought that never crossed my mind.  I was young but I considered myself superior to older economists who were…..wrong.”

Of the years of George W. Bush’s reign, he says “I never thought I would one day yearn for Ronald Reagan.”

“The test of economic progress that I’ve always thought important and that is a perceptible level of groans from the very fortunate. “

Outside of the interview:

“It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.”

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”

“Rise Up!”

…..bar none, most unconvincing delivery of a slogan in recent political campaigns.   Sorry Iggy, even charisma deficient, of the incumbents, you still would have represented our country best to the world.  As with Obama, there’s a more suited arena for you to make a difference outside of politics.

More inspiring quotes:

The Clairvoyant….

“I think the surest guarantee of the future for the Liberal Party of Canada is four years of Conservative government and four years of NDP opposition.” — Michael Ignatieff

The Idealist……

“I remain committed, as I’ve been throughout this campaign, to rejecting the politics of cynicism of fear, to embracing hope and to bringing respect back to our House of Commons.” — Green Party Leader Elizabeth May

A conservative to the core….

“They made me pop this champagne and … wanted me to guzzle it out of the bottle. Some of you know, I’m not much of a drinker but I did. However, they tricked me; there was only like that much in it. So much for my wild side.” — Prime Minister Stephen Harper

The new kid on the block…..

“We’ll have a lot of new energy, new blood, new talent and new knowledge coming into the House of Commons. And when people vote for change, that’s exactly what they’re hoping will happen.” — Jack Layton

“It’s only wrong if you regret what you do,”

says Xiaolan Zhao, a 55 year old Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor from Toronto.  In an interview with Sarah Hampson in today’s Globe and Mail, she says she doesn’t believe in chemotherapy but adds that she supports people’s personal decisions.  Zhao has a client roster of one in four female patients who are battling cancer and cult-like following including literati such as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. 

She works with the body’s 12 meridians and assesses jing (genetic imprint), qi (energy flow) and shen (spirit or mind).  This all sounded familiar.  A former renter was an energy healer and shared her reiki and ortho-bionomy treatments with us.  I once asked her why some people who had unhealthy vices and ate poorly seemed to have no health issues and she replied, “Because they believe in it.”  

It didn’t ring completely true for me but Zhao’s inclusion of genetic and energy flow components in addition to the spirit/mind does.

A trained abdominal surgeon, Zhao says “as a young person, Western medicine is very attractive, that at that age, you believe everything has an answer.  Then you realize that with many illnesses, almost 90 per cent, the cause is not known.”

Eat Pray Love (the movie): review; best lines

“When I look into your eyes, I hear dolphins clapping.”

“I disappear into the person I love. If I love you, you can have it all……(lists all the things given)…I will give you all this and more, until I am so exhausted and depleted, the only way I can recover, is by becoming infatuated with someone else. ”

These are lines from a play written by the heroine Elizabeth within the screenplay of Eat Pray Love, and is one of many life revelations fed to viewers through the narrative of her journeys.

After she packs everything up in storage…..

“My whole life in a 12 foot square box.”

“Know how many times I hear that in a day? Most never come back for their whole life.”

I haven’t read the memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert. The film serves as unabashedly seductive canvas for women to project yearnings to escape from well, pretty much anything.

It lacks the vulnerability portrayed by Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun. One always feel the unwavering certainty in Julia Robert’s persona, a common thread in many of her lead roles.

While the predictability assures viewers that the heroine will find the meaning of life and her prince in the 2 1/2 hours you never get back, this food/travel/chick flick is not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday morning at home.

• Food/Travel show: 4 star
• Feature film with redeeming features : 1 star