POP CULTURE, GIRL CULTURE, TV, FILM, BOOKS, CELEBRITY, MEDIA, ONLINE, BEAUTY, FASHION, STYLE, DESIGN

“Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why” - Hunter S. Thompson

I wrote about how culture has flattened to the point that parents and children share TV, music, fashion, and their attendant values, for the National Post.

"Broke Girls and Rich Bitches" is one of the few headlines I've actually liked, not only on my stuff, but anywhere. This piece, for Grantland, is about women and class and TV.

I have a dramatic, stupid history with celebrity interviews that began when Bill Maher said "I don't think the next person I talk to will be as good as you" and ended with Whit Stillman being so hostile during an interview that I told my editor at VICE I wasn't going to write it, and didn't. (WS asked me why I didn't attend an Ivy League school, and "We don't have those in Canada" wasn't enough. I mean to be fair to him, not applying anywhere more competitive is an enduring regret.)

For the Guardian, I interviewed actress June Diane Raphael (JDR is a righteous babe but we couldn't hear each other on the phone; this was second only to the Emily Blunt debacle in terms of technological mishaps, when my interview tape was destroyed, or, actually, third, after what happened to my laptop when I was working on three papers in graduate school, and then Emily Blunt. I'm actually medium-okay with computers!) and Ezra Miller (I feel like I was supposed to do this one in a suite in the Trump but maybe did it in a Town Car or Mercedes van going to the airport? Do you remember?)

My favorite celebrity interview was probably Henry Rollins (which I had to change twice - the publicist told me I couldn't change it again, because "his dance card is full," which I thought was a sweet phrase to have proximity to Hank) but that went dark when the magazine closed. I declined an interview with Nicki Minaj, whose work I treasure, because it was one of those "Come by after the set" ordeals and I don't know how to "hang out."

I wrote about why we read so many books by men, "cool" men of the Kerouac, Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson (my lodestar) variety, for the Globe and Mail, and also something about women directors and a more savage feminine aesthetic, for the Globe and Mail, and about absent dads in TV and film, like Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, for the Globe and Mail. I've written a lot of party reports and general scene coverage (I believe that my disinclination to drink or stay out very late is due to the annual weeks of exponential party intensity I endured) about the Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF, because I have mostly lived in Toronto, but much of it drowned with the closure of EYE WEEKLY, where I was a staff and then senior writer from the very beginning of my baby journalist days until it closed, following a re-brand as The Grid, in 2014. BUT here is something I wrote about how TIFF functions for celebrities, and about TIFF more generally,

I reviewed books for a long time, which is the most fun and the worst-paying (on a per hour basis) journalism job you can find.

Wrote about Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance, Amy Poehler's book Yes Please, Emily Gould's novel Friendship and Choire Sicha's novel Very Recent History, a giant Norman Mailer book that I've only kept because it looks substantial and adult on my wild kingdom of a bookshelf, a Douglas Coupland book (perhaps unfairly because Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life After God, Microserfs and Polaroids from the Dead, all of which were released when I was a child or adolescent, are probably my very-most foundational, formational, influential books), Marisha Pessl's scary Night Film, which I read when I was staying in a beautiful cabin in the literal middle of the woods, Alissa Nutting's gross Tampa, Emma Forrest's... psychiatric memoir, Marc Maron's memoir, which was a lot about anxiety and anger, Wonder Women by Debora L. Spar, which I still think about every day, and Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, which I don't.

Wrote about Elizabeth Gilbert's book The Signature of All Things for the National Post, The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud (which was good but omg have you re-read The Emperor's Children lately?!) for the National Post, Katrina Onstad's novel Everybody Has Everything (which followed her first novel which was secretly about working for the National Post) for the National Post, and Caitlin Flanagan's book, a You In Danger Girl classic, Girl Land.

I started out as a music writer (HAAAAAA!) and wrote about a thousand billion music previews and reviews for Village Voice Media - LA Weekly, OC Weekly, SF Weekly, Phoenix New Times, Dallas Observer, truly one zillion trillion others, it feels like - and did a few covers for LA Weekly and OC Weekly. This one, for LA Weekly, is about indie-rock power couples.

Wrote about the “power nude” nail, for The Kit.

Wrote about spring fashion trends, but fun, for Jezebel, I think in 2014.

I wrote a feature about how Canadiana can be unexpectedly, weirdly, perfectly sexy, for the Globe and Mail and the return of vulgarity for the Financial Post.

I was seriously considering a vast, enchanted-princess engagement ring when I was like "Oh" and remembered what I am actually, you know, like, and wrote about it for Refinery29.

I wrote about weddings - attending; throwing - for Jezebel.

I pay an absurd amount for my hair cut (see below) but, when I had bangs, I cut them myself, which I wrote about for FASHION magazine. "The problem with cutting bangs isn’t just cutting bangs. The problem with cutting bangs is when you start to cut more bangs." Forever true. On my first wrinkle, also for FASHION magazine: "It’s thanks to this obsessive-non-compulsive vigilance – like, my hair is usually tangled, sure, but my SPF game is on point: face done, neck done, everything did – that I’ve mostly avoided the various “signs of aging” that are supposed to plague post-adolescent women." And, I interviewed my hair guy, Bill Angst, for a story about expensive haircuts for FASHION. (It felt exactly like the time I interviewed my dad for an assignment for school.) Once a colorist who was about to pull the hair tie out of my ponytail asked me who cut my hair; I said "Bill Angst," and before my hair fell down, he said "Ah. You have a good haircut."

Wrote about buying "less, but better" w/r/t fashion, for the Globe and Mail, and about style minimalism for The Kit.

Wrote about not having a well-developed set of "woman skills" for the Globe and Mail, and about my prom dress, for the National Post.

Wrote about judging women who don’t call themselves feminists for FLARE in like 2012. Holds up.