The 30 Days of Ben Mulroney - Day 20!

Ah Ben, the kooky things you do. My good friend Sam (www.popcultureaddict.com) who inspired this series, commented thusly on today's photo:

"Think those guys are fighting over which one gets to clock Ben?"

I don't know, Sam. I don't know if we'll ever know...

Today's Fun Fact: Ben made his big screen debut in Fantastic Four as an entertainment reporter. Obviously trying to stretch his acting muscles!

For Those Who May Not Read Both of My Sites...

I'm just going to link to my article about yesterday's school stabbing here in Oshawa.

The 30 Days of Ben Mulroney - Day 19!

Is there any Canadian personality more maligned than Benedict Mulroney? I think perhaps, of late, only Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. So here's a picture of Ben interviewing Chad Kroeger of Nickelback!

Canadian Idol did their own version of Idol Gives Back one year, and Ben and one of the judges, Farley Flex, went to Malawi. Ben is also a National Ambassador for UNICEF Canada. Here's the video clip of Ben and Farley's trip:

June Havoc Dies at 97 (Maybe?)

I recently shared my love of Gypsy Rose Lee. It was kind of a strange admission that was, in fact, me just posting a video to test it for a friend having trouble doing so on his own blog. It was, though, a completely true admission.

And so, since my interest wasn't just in the Broadway show, but also in the "real" Gypsy (if there actually was such a thing) I was naturally interested in the truth about her sister "Baby" June.

In the musical, June and Louise (later Gypsy) are shown as "the Star" and "the Other". Sort of like "The Heir and the Spare" as Princes William and Harry are somewhat horrifically known. Mama Rose sees June's talent and pushes her onstage, leaving no-talent Louise in the background, on-stage and off. The sisters are obviously not close, but at one point in the show "If Mama Got Married", they unite in their wish to be off-stage and in a real home.

In truth, Gypsy and June were estranged for many years. June didn't like her sister's choice of careers, and was even less impressed by her own portrayal in the musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable (the last part was added in part to appease June by admitting the show stretched the truth - or outright lied, depending on who you talked to). They did apparently reconcile shortly before Gypsy's death in 1970, but I still find it sad that they were so torn apart by their mother's favoritism.

Ellen Evangeline Hovick was born November 8, 1912, or so she surmised. It was hard for her to know exactly since her mother carried five different birth certificates around to circumvent the child labour laws in various states. "June" was a huge hit in Vaudeville starting at an insanely young age. At the age of 6 she said she was making $1500 a week - not bad for 1918. She claimed to have been dancing on pointe at the age of 2. If you've never seen Gypsy, you don't know stage mothers. Rose Hovick was the stage mother to end all stage mothers from most reports. In the musical, Mama Rose is portrayed almost as quirky or eccentric, but her daughter claimed that she was actually physically and psychologically cruel:  June was pushed on stage even with a high fever and chicken pox - just covered with makeup.

As a young teenager (possibly as young as 13 years old) June did actually run away with one of the dancers from their show and get married. The marriage didn't last long, but the two stayed together professionally on the Depression-Era marathon dance circuit. Eventually June became a successful Broadway actress (Pal Joey, Dinner at 8), and appeared in films like Anna Christie and Gentlemen`s Agreement. She also created and directed the Broadway show Marathon `33 about the age of marathon dancing, and there is even a small Off-Off Broadway theatre named in her honour.

You can read more about the life of June Havoc here.

The 30 Days of Ben Mulroney - Day 18!

This is Ben with his co-host on ETalk Daily, Tanya Kim.










Here's Ben on Corner Gas. Oscar is complaining about watching "that no-talent Ben Mulroney".

Liberals Get a Tongue-Lashing!

Big news today about Robert Fowler's remarks to the Liberals at their policy conference. Fowler is a former diplomat and Al Qaeda hostage (four months in Africa in 2008-2009). He said that the Liberal party had "lost its soul." He said that they don't appear to really stand for anything anymore. They're so obsessed with regaining power that they'll say anything they think that the public wants to hear.

I think he's right.

And honestly, it makes me sad. I've always considered myself a Liberal. I'm about as far from a Conservative as you can get on 90% of issues. I suppose to a certain extent I swing more NDP, but a) I'm not big on unions; and b) I can't see them ever taking power in this country, and I'm not interested in attaching myself to a cement block if I'm drowning.

I've considered actually joining the Liberal Party many times. I'd like to have some say in the future of the party. Ideally I'd like them to recognize my brilliance and personal charisma and elect me leader so that I can be the first elected female Prime Minister. Is that too much to ask? Oh...

But anyway, in the past few years I have grown more and more disillusioned with the Grits (where on EARTH did that nickname come from, anyway?) I was disappointed in my country for getting rid of Paul Martin after such a short tenure, when he, according to the Gomery Report, apparently had nothing to do with the sponsorship scandal which brought the Liberals out of power for the first time in 13 years. I honestly believe it had little to do with the actual "scandal" of the sponsorships, as it did with the very Canadian idea that after a while in power the majority Party always gets "too big for its britches". The fact that "the Right" finally united, when the Canadian Alliance (AKA The Reform Party) joined forces with the Progressive Conservative Party to form the Conservative Party of Canada (note that "Progressive" had to go) didn't help.

Since Martin's minority government was defeated four years ago, there has been a bitter struggle for power between the two major parties. The Liberals threaten to bring down the Conservative government, Harper prorogues Parliament to stall them, and by the time they go back somehow the CPC has managed to appease the Liberals enough to stay in power for a few more months before they start the dance all over again. The Liberals are desperate to regain power, the CPC is desperate not to lose it. That's the main focus of the Canadian government right now, and it's sickening.

Michael Ignatieff seems like an intelligent man. I just don't understand the rush for his coronation. Desperation to make people forget about Stéphane Dion? I like Justin Trudeau well enough, but I think that people expecting his father will be sorely disappointed, and sadly I think he'll be eaten up by the hordes expecting the Second Coming.

Robert Fowler is right: the Liberals need someone who has the guts to make a statement and stick with it. They need to come up with a comprehensive, understandable platform and make sure that every voter in the country can at least name the main points. They need to stand up for something, instead of sitting back and hoping that the Conservatives will trip and fall over their own feet. That could very well happen (and I can't say I won't be grinning like the Cheshire Cat if it does) but it's not a very proactive approach.

I hate seeing what the CPC is doing to this country, and I really hope that the Liberals take Fowler's comments seriously. When they're ready for me to take over, they can let me know!

Finding Myself - One Blog at a Time...

I spent a lot of time last night thinking about blogging - far too much time, truth be told. I watched Julie and Julia, the Nora Efron movie that used a double narrative to describe the lives of Julia Child, America's French cooking instructor, and Julie Powell, the woman who became famous for blogging about her adventures trying to follow Child's recipes.

My thought process went like this:

First off, as Julie's audience grew, I found myself wondering for the umpteenth time (How many is "umpteen"? Does that fall between 16 & 17 or 13 & 14?) how on earth she got so many readers. My green-eyed monster came out to play, in other words. It happens a lot when I see a really popular blog. I start to wonder exactly what I'm doing wrong. Not enough self-promotion? Not using the right keywords, to be picked up by search engines? Is there somewhere I'm supposed to list my blog so that people will find it? Or do I really just suck?

Then, while I was still contemplating my failure to generate readership, the scene came when Julie and her husband, Eric, fight over her obsession with her blog. At one point she asks him, "Isn't that what blogging is about? Me, me, me?"

At the same time, I was surfing around looking for ways to promote myself (still having follower-envy) and one directory listed their criteria for listing a blog:

1) Must be topical - no personal blogs (AKA No "Today we went to the market and I took this picture of Little Bobby biting on a lemon.")

2) Blog cannot contain material copied and pasted from other sources.

Okay, this one gave me pause. I make it a point to always credit my sources, so to me, that's not the issue here. But isn't the point of a blog to be writing?

I started my other site as a parenting site. I thought I'd have a lot to say about that. I really didn't want to blother on constantly about my own kids, though. I wanted to write about issues. I wanted the site to have some journalistic integrity.

But the fact is, being a parent is only a part of who I am. I found myself dying to comment on other issues on which I had an opinion - and believe me, there are many. All of which led to the spur-of-the-moment creation of this site.

Much like Julie and Julia, I think I'm trying to find myself these days. That's a concept I've always mocked, but I'm really starting to understand it now. My earliest ambition was to be a writer, so I suppose that's a logical place to start. Which is why it's all the more disappointing to me that I'm not doing a lot of writing. Copying and pasting someone else's article, and then doing a one paragraph, or even one-sentence commentary on it might work for someone like Perez Hilton, but it's not good enough for me.

I really do like this blog, and I have no intention of quitting. What I want to do, though, is assume intelligence on the part of my readers - at least enough to be able to click a link to an article if I feel more information is warranted on an issue. Me, though, I'll be focusing more on my opinions on the issues, rather than on trying so hard to be a reporter that I'm just regurgitating others' work.

One thing I liked about that movie: Julia Child was 37 when she started to learn to cook. I'm 33, at least for a few more weeks (I'm still 33... I'm still 33...) Despite my inner voice telling me that I should have it all figured out by now, I guess it's okay that I don't. Someday I'll figure out what I want to be when I grow up.