13 December 2012

Unsubscribe me

Today is Unsubscribe Me Day. So far, I've unsubscribed myself from groupons, daily deals, newsletters, flash sales, department stores, fabric suppliers, meditation gurus, film institutes, makeup/drugstores/health foods/breath freshener/fur coat websites, travel sites (including a g-string of Vegas hotels), car rental companies, design/fashion and jewelry blogs, frequent flyer reports, art galleries, charities, human rights organizations, stock photo archives, menu pages, trade shows, foodie news, diet plan news, and blogs about blogs. I'm done, oversubscribed, up to here, TMI, opting out of any further communication. Uncheck my boxes!!!

27 September 2012

Comfort food


My guilty secret: pigs-in-a-blanket. Now that I’ve told you, I might have to kill you. Humanely, of course – I am a committed vegetarian, a conscious choice I made 5 years ago after viewing a graphic film depicting the killing fields of profit-hungry corporate carnivores. After that, I could almost smell the fear off a burger, and no, it wasn’t the Special Sauce.

Being a vegetarian sets me apart. I’ve gotten used to deciphering the ingredient lists on everything. Did you know, for example, that gelatin, often used as a thickener in anything from shampoos and face masks to marshmallows and puddings, is derived from boiling up animal skin, tendons, ligaments and bones? Knowledge like this is power: even birthday parties become battlegrounds. Convinced the icing on the cake might fluoresce under one of those lights they use in CSI, I wonder if I might have been better off not knowing The Truth. It may set you free, but unless you live near a Whole Foods, you may be free and hungry.

Quorn, quark, tofu, soya, beans, pulses, nuts, all beaten into submission and reshaped into faux meat. Why do we vegetarians find it comforting to eat ethically sourced protein parcels shaped like patties, sausages and nuggets? Which brings us back to pigs-in-a-blanket. A comforting thought, a squirming, squealing, chubby-cheeked Curly Sue of a piglet swaddled in white flannel, its racing heart so similar to ours that it’s the transplant organ-of-choice in a fix, unless the patient objects on religious grounds. A choice I’ll hopefully never need to make, yet… crack open the door of that pre-heated oven to reveal a baking tray lined with teensy sausage links tightly wrapped in crescents of buttery pastry (a veritable nursery of bite-sized, let’s-get-the-party-started snacks) and I morph into a cartoon dog, a bloodhound trailing a curl of food vapor to the four corners of the earth, snuffling the scent of that great leveler of appetizers, the pig-in-a-blanket. Stuffing one into my watering mouth, I forget whether I’m at a gathering in a mansion or a trailer park. And just for a second, to my shame, I forget that I’m a vegetarian.




31 August 2012

My fat

My fat is just that. Mine all mine. Handfuls of it, a sunken treasure chest glittering on the ocean floor, whopping knuckledusters winking at sharks. My fat enters the room before I do, the throne heralding the Queen. No, not the Queen, the Queen's a lightweight. All hail the King! I am Hen-i-ree the Eighth, I am (my parents did want a boy). My fat is MC Hammer, a taunt, a rap. My fat's a wrapper, a corn-husked tamale-clenching fist of steamy dough. Side view, my fat's a baby bump, a balloon ready to pop, full term, waddle swaddle coddle cuddle. My fat's a high chair, I'm a wee bairn. My fat is the spoon, the breast, the womb. Food has two o's, two more mouths to feed. My fat is all that. Thinner's a winner, a sinner. Thin's Fat's twin. At the Silent Disco, Fat mimes 'How do you like it, how do you like it, more more more!'. Thin keeps schtum, Thin says less. Fatty spelled backwards is almost taffy. Saltwater taffy tears. My fat is sweet, moreish. More to love. More to leave. More to bury. My fat has a big mouth. Mouthy. Shut it. My fat's a gated community, a trailer park, a football stadium. My fat's the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Torah, the Koran. My fat is the last word.


30 August 2012

Valenti me

Keni Valenti, aka The Party, brought us up to his Garment District showroom one night in 2011, the year before he packed it all in and moved to Miami to open his Retro Couture gallery, casting off the ash that had ossified the contents of his Ground Zero apartment. I was on the lam from my other life in Ireland, the one where I live in a country cottage on a dirt road with my furniture maker husband, two Akitas and a workshop in the field out back. Twenty years of Prozac had ossified my contents, and, as anyone who eats cereal knows,  contents may settle during shipping. I had left bella Italia for Belfast in 1990, and it was as if I, the prize inside the box, shrouded in plastic and sugar dust, awaited some eager hand to plunge in and grab me.

Brigid Baker, the flim to my flam, planned the heist: jewels everywhere, mugs, stooges and knuckleheads standing guard. All we needed was a getaway car and presto chango, we'd have our beautiful lives back. Keni agreed to supply the disguises, only he didn't know it yet.





Portraits by Keni Valenti


29 August 2012

Completely fake and extremely flammable

Beyond the acrylic full set, beneath the lace front, behind the superglue, untie the stays and a hundred swallows take flight, a white throat twists and arches as she bites back a cry only dogs can hear, the moist ruby slash forming an O - oh, who doesn't love a red lip? (Fire Down Below by NARS, a modern semi matte lipstick, velvety colour in a highly pigmented, non drying formula). A low moan, a shudder, a thrust, a sigh...absentmindedly, she dips a varnished fingertip between the swell of her breasts, fluffy meringues topped by fragoline di bosco - tiny, perfect wild berries best eaten warm, off the vine. She tastes herself, the slick of salty sweet sweat reminding her she hadn't eaten since last night's fish supper at The Bethany on the Newtownards Road in East Belfast. The batter had been light and crispy, the tea milky and steaming. She hadn't been able to resist assembling two chip butties from the stack of thickly buttered white bread, daggers of deep-fried golden Roosters bubbling with hot fat, which might explain how tight that damned corset felt during tonight's gig, especially by the end of the night, when she mouthed the words to the National Anthem. She hated singing that song, but the punters expected it, and they'd catch her out every so often if she just stood there in her thigh-high Gianmarco Lorenzi boots, shifting from foot to aching foot. Those boots รจ costato molto caro in Rome, from Re Mishelle near Piazza del Popolo, even during the sales. They were a size too big, but she'd bought them anyway, stuffed them with newspaper and just looked at them in her studio apartment near the Vatican, until she moved to Northern Ireland to be with him. Now they reeked of stale beer and kebab slop.