Posts filed under 'Culture'
The most beautiful age
Kate Hudson
Women are at their most beautiful at the age of 31, according to a new study from QVC. Which means leading ladies Kate Hudson, Katie Holmes and Jennifer Love Hewitt are all apparently currently at their gorgeousness peak.
3 comments July 19, 2010
Classic reads
Heading to the cottage this weekend and looking for something to read?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to read the classics I’ve never gotten around to reading – think Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare — so I’m kind of excited about the new 100 Classic Books, which includes such novels as Pride and Prejudice to be read on any of the Nintendo DS systems.
(now if only the DS could emit that musty weathered book smell — I kinda like that scent, it’s oddly comforting…)
1 comment June 30, 2010
Fast food nation
Eating fast food is expanding our waistlines, but even just mere exposure to fast food has been discovered by researchers at the Rotman School of Management to be linked to making us more impatient and less willing to save money.
2 comments March 26, 2010
Soft Hands, Kind Heart
On Monday, I attended an exclusive screening of Playground, a documentary about child sex trafficking directed by Libby Spears (producers include George Clooney and Steven Sodorbergh). It was the film’s first screening in Toronto, however the documentary has received critical acclaim at film festivals around the world.
The screening marked the launch of The Body Shop’s Stop S*x Trafficking of Children & Young People campaign for 2010. Last year, The Body Shop, in partnership with ECPAT in Canada, Beyond Borders and the Somaly Mam Foundation, raised over $400,000 to help raise awareness and stop human trafficking through the sale of their Soft Hands, Kind Heart Hand Cream.
I wish I could give you info about where you can view this important film, but there are no details thus far about public screenings for Playground.
In the meantime, here’s how you can help:
(1) Raise awareness by visiting www.playgroundproject.com to view an excerpt from Playground and referring friends and family to the site as well.
(2) Raise money by picking up a tube (or two) of Soft Hands, Kind Heart Hand Cream ($10) at The Body Shop. $6 goes directly to Beyond Borders.
(3) Buy the new Bag for Life ($5), too – and $2 will go to the Somaly Mam Foundation.
Add comment March 17, 2010
Spilled Milk is swell, too
Finally tuned into the new free podcast Spilled Milk, which is hosted by Molly Wizenberg (of Orangette blog fame) and Matthew Amster-Burton (author of Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater) and if you love food and eating (and, OK, cooking – for me, the cooking is just a means to get to the eating) as much as I do, you’ll love this podcast, too.
Each podcast they focus on a particular food or cooking method, and the hosts have great rapport. And Spilled Milk has already opened my eyes to a good many things:
(1) to showcase a food, fry it (I like how Matthew thinks).
(2) I’ve never had a chocolate malt milkshake — add that to my to-eat list. I’ve had a date milkshake in Palm Springs, but not a chocolate malt milkshake.
(3) our hands feel gnarly when chopping a butternut squash because of a resin that causes dermatitis reaction.
Tune in (but not if you’ve skipped breakfast, as I had, or you might be on the subway at 8 a.m. seriously considering consuming an entire pack of gum as your first meal of the day).
Add comment March 11, 2010
Swell site
Just discovered the website Someone Once Told Me — my friend Maryam was featured on it this week (that’s her here) — and I’m loving it, the idea that “we are all shaped by the things someone once told us,” as illustrated by black and white photographs submitted by people around the world featuring their SOTM message.
Add comment March 11, 2010
Life lessons from TV
I love me some good television. Some of my all-time favourite shows? Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Felicity, Six Feet Under, Damages, Dexter, Oz and Beverly Hills, 90210 (yes, one can love both Oz and the adventures of Brandon, Brenda and Kelly equally). Anyhow, reading this post 17 Things I Learned about Life from Watching Movies and TV from Paxton Holley’s blog Cavalcade of Awesome over breakfast today was a fun way to start off the weekend.
Speaking of Buffy, about two years ago I was having dinner with a girlfriend in NYC at Gemma in the Bowery Hotel (fried zucchini blossoms — yum!) and Sarah Michelle Gellar was having drinks at a table nearby. “I HAVE to go talk to her,” I blurted out to the friend I was dining with. I mean, it’s not every day I am in the presence of the star of, like, only the best TV show ever. But the look of fear on my friend’s face of potentially being with the uncool, starcrazed fan, and the girlfriends flanking Gellar at their banquette (making it difficult to discreetly profess my love for Buffy) kept me from getting up to talk to SMG.
- sigh -
2 comments March 6, 2010
Swell read
It’s rare that I will read a book and it so moves me that I will push my friends to borrow it from me. Sure, I read plenty of books and if asked for recommendations, there are a handful that with some thought I’d suggest, but to be pushing the book into a girlfriend’s hand and say “You have to read this,” that’s not an everyday occurrence.
And ironically, the premise of Still Alice didn’t interest me initially. I knew it was about a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s and I didn’t think I’d relate to it or that it’d be a topic I’d be particularly interested in reading for enjoyment (besides researching and reading about lots of health topics as it is every day, it just seemed depressing). But the glowing praise on its back cover (“A work of pure genius” and “A masterpiece…”) was enough to convince me crack it open.
Still Alice is Lisa Genova’s debut novel and it’s simply stunning. Saying that it is vivid and eloquent hardly does it justice. The book takes you inside the experience of Alice (a Harvard professor) as she becomes increasingly forgetful and disoriented, and her viewpoint as her life evolves with her Alzheimer’s diagnosis and treatment.
And yes, it’s frightening, and you’ll be contemplating whether early-onset Alzheimer’s is something you will suffer from one day – but even if you have hypochondriac tendencies, I still think you should read this book. You’d be doing yourself a disservice by missing out on its beauty.
P.S. Genova so gorgeously depicts Boston that I’m hoping to return there someday soon for a visit. My first and only time there was back in university when I was more interested in picking up a Harvard sweatshirt and checking out Starbucks (which was not yet on every street corner in Canada).
4 comments February 24, 2010
