My new BFFs

This summer, I had two gargantuan celebrity encounters. I saw Britney Spears in concert and I met Sandra Bullock in a restaurant. I suppose the Britney experience wasn't an "encounter," as there were 20,000 other people there too, but I was standing really, really close to the stage, so in my mind, we're now BFF's. Sandra too.

My 2.1 readers will know that I have long harboured a not-so-secret-interest in Britney Spears, which is mainly fueled by my immature taste in music and appalled fascination with people who get pulled through the Play-Doh-Fun-Factory-of -Stardom. I have also been a longtime fan of Sandra Bullock, despite feeling only lukewarm about many of her movies.

(Note: This is not true of Bullock's breakout role in the movie "Speed," where she and Keanu Reeves drive a bomb-rigged bus on the highway, through Los Angeles, on the airport runway and, for an inexplicable 10 seconds, into thin air. I LOVE that movie. I had just broken up with my university boyfriend when it came out and every time I started feeling blue, my friend Graham hauled me out to see that movie in the theatre. It was cheap, wonderful, bicep-filled therapy. "Crash" and "Infamous" also prove that often the material she works with does not match her true abilities as an actor.)

As these two moments were certainly the most momentous of the summer, I thought I would do a compare and contrast treatment of the two life-defining moments. Students, take note; you're going to have to do this soon with books that I force you to read.

Similarities:

1.) Prettiness.

However pretty you thought Sandra Bullock was from the movies, multiply it by 1000 and that's what she looks like in real life. The fact that America thinks of her as "the girl next door" only makes sense if America lives next door to the "America's Next Top Model" house. Britney doesn't fare so well in this respect when it comes to how she has been seen on the billion feet of celluloid that have captured her every meltdown, but let me assure you, in real life she is pretty stunning. She may not look great in all of those candid shots of her, but her genetic material is pretty darn good - when she's all dressed up, she's awful purdy.

2. ... um ... well, maybe there's just prettiness.

Differences:

There is only one here too, and it's big. Life. Sandra Bullock has got one, Britney Spears doesn't.

When my friends and I were eating in the restaurant that Sandra (Sandy) owns in downtown Austin and she and her husband and stepdaughter took a table right next to us, we were all floored. After all, we had been joking all week, to ANYONE who would listen (and several people who didn't really care to) that we were going to meet Sandy there and we would become best friends forever. And here we were, eating together! Or near each other, at least.

I was instantly overcome with shyness, but I had to take advantage of this opportunity. I had to say SOMETHING to her, didn't I? I mustered my courage and blurted out:

"We like your restaurant!"

Sigh. Oh well, it could have been worse. I could have told her how much I liked her in "Pretty Woman," or something.

But then the most amazing thing happened. She turned to our table and had a conversation with us, like a real human being. About the restaurant, about her plans for a bakery down the street, about what she liked to eat there. It was short, but it was genuine. And as I looked around the restaurant, I realized that in this place, she wasn't a celebrity. Nobody in the restaurant was reaching for their cameras and cell phones when she walked in. The waitress asked her about the health of her dogs. There was no TMZ crew stalking her, no security detail. It was just a pretty lady out with her tattooed husband and their adorable daughter, and nobody lifted an eyebrow. Sandra Bullock seems to have found a balance between fame and anonymity; she is at once exceptional and normal.

Sadly, the same could not be said of poor Britney. She is exceptional in every way. Her show, I am not ashamed to say, was spectacular. There were jugglers and magicians and acrobats and circus freaks and in the centre of it was Britney herself. She certainly has that "it" factor; the Corel Centre was packed to the rafters with screaming Britney wannabes, and none of us, me included, could take our eyes off the stage. And for a moment, when she is performing in front of her adoring crowd, it seems that she has the best life in the world.

But of course, she has no life. At least when she was spiralling downwards into the mire two years ago she went out in her car for coffee and cigarettes. She has virtually disappeared from the tabloid media radar, and I'm sure that it's not for a lack of hunting. She is so carefully managed that we don't even see her at Starbucks anymore. You know that she is still drinking frappachinos, but you also know that now there is a team devoted to getting them for her while she is relentlessly shielded from the tabloid glare. Britney has become the most rare of all circus animals - one that is taken gingerly out of its cage for the performance of a lifetime, only to be packed carefully away again and whisked to the next town under the cover of night.

The concert was mesmerizing, but it was pre-fabricated and structured down to the last millisecond. No interaction with the audience was planned or permitted. When she slowed the show down for it's one ballad of the night, she did send out a "What's up, Ottawa?" but that was all we were allowed to see of non-singing, non-writhing Britney. Upon reading reviews of other shows in other towns, I see that the exact same pithy phrase was inserted in the exact same point in the show each night.

Most stars dread fading into obscurity. This is made painfully clear every time I turn on MTV only to learn that Biz Markee needs to lose weight or that Scott Baio is 45 and single. But Britney must yearn to have the kind of anonymity that is now enjoyed by former child stars like that kid from the Sixth Sense or the kid who played Natalie on "The Facts of Life," or the Karate Kid. (Although I do actually remember the name of the guy who played The Karate Kid - it was Ralph Macchio and he is the same age as Barack Obama. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, children of the seventies!)

I kind of wish that Britney would move to Austin. After all, she's a good old southern girl, and maybe she could learn a thing or two from beautiful, gracious Sandra Bullock, who took time out of her own dinner to converse briefly with a few stammering patrons of her lovely restaurant. Maybe she and Sandy could be neighbours and end up sharing iced tea on the porch and clucking their tongues about the latest Miley Cyrus exploits.

If that ever happens, I really, really hope they invite me. After all, they are my BFF's.

"Fashionista" or "Why I should try harder."

Note: This didn't actually happen today, as is written here. I just had trouble posting it last week for some reason.

Yes, another academic year is upon me, and as I think of how I will inspire my students to write freely and with aplomb this year, I turn shamefacedly towards my own, neglected blog. Poor little blog! How I have missed you!

Luckily for me, several elements of the universe have aligned to inspire me to pick up the blog again.

1.) It's September. For everyone in the world besides teachers (and perhaps students) years end on December 31 and begin on January first. But teachers begin each September with a vow to be better, stronger, faster and more organized than the year before, and to pick up things again that we have neglected over the summer.

2.) I saw Britney Spears in concert. If there is a more blogworthy topic, I'm not sure what it is. That will not be the subject of TODAY'S blog, however, because ...

3.) The weirdest thing happened to me today.

My faithful 2.1 readers will remember that I wrote a blog last year that detailed a highly entertaining and surreal ride in a taxi with a driver who (swear to God) claimed that he drove aliens around downtown Toronto. I will admit that this event isn't quite as cool as that, but it's pretty darn funny.

While my students will not return to school until next week, I have already been going in for a week, attending meetings, arranging my datebook, attending meetings, making photocopies, planning lessons and units attending meetings and attending meetings. Once this week I thought I was just eating my lunch, but it turned out that that was a meeting too.

I never find the transition to going back to work easy. It's not that I'm unhappy to go back to school - quite the contrary. It's just that I have forgotten how to get myself ready and out the door in an organized way. My showers take longer, I can never find my keys, I have to go back into the condo to get my forgotten laptop power cord, etc. It's only going to get worse when the students return because then I'll try to have to look nice too.

For many people, looking nice just seems to happen, but for me, it's not quite so simple. I don't really wear a lot of makeup, and no matter how long I spend, or how nice my hair looks when I leave the condo, by the time I get to the elevator it's all flat and insipid, so what's the point?

But hair and makeup is the least of my worries - my big problem is that I don't really know how to dress myself. I blame this on the fact that since I was about fourteen years old I had jobs where looking nice was not only not required, but downright foolhardy. My first job was at a horse stable, and my second was at a summer camp. Then a ranch, where I cared for and fed a myriad of animals which included (but was not limited to) 55 horses, 5 goats, 2 sheep, flocks of chickens and ducks and two giant pigs named Amos and Sochee. Then another farm. By the time I moved to Toronto to begin my teaching career, the only clothes I had were second-hand and came from Value Village. If I ever happen to actually look nice, rest assured, it's either a total fluke, or because I have allowed my friend Em to dress me.

(Note: I am not making this up. Em takes me shopping twice a year, picks out clothes for me and tells me what to buy and then tells me what outfits to wear. Conversations usually go like this:

Me: "Really? I should put a BELT over a SHIRT?

Em: "Yes, really. I'm telling you - it looks great."

Me: "Is it ... you know ... IN?"

Em: (patiently) "Yes, Alison, it's "in." I promise."

Me: (panicked) "What if it goes "out?" Will you tell me? Because I'll never know! I'll never know!"

Em: (soothingly) "Yes, yes, I promise."

Then we move to another store and have the exact same conversation about shoes or nail polish or pairing navy with black. I can't believe she puts up with me.)

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that because I am still in "meeting week" and I wasn't actually teaching today, I didn't put a whole lot of effort into my appearance. I just threw on a T-shirt and a long "hippie-ish" skirt and some sandals and ran out the door with wet hair. And this was all fine until I was engaged in conversation with the guy ahead of me in line at my local Tim Horton's. I was thinking about all of the things I had to do today which was mostly made up of ... you guessed it ... meetings ... and the guy looked at me and said:

"How are the meetings going?"

At this point I panicked. I thought that he must be someone involved with the school that I should know, but don't recognize. This happens to me fairly often - I can have trouble placing people when I don't see them in their usual context. Then he surprised me with:

"It's a good program, isn't it?"

This made me certain for a moment that he was connected to my school, because we do teach a very good program - the International Baccalaureate. But because I still had no idea who he was (or indeed, why he was talking to me) I decided to ask for clarification.

"I'm sorry ...what program are you talking about?"

And he said, "A.A."

At this point I thought he had mistaken me for someone else. "No, no," I clarified quickly, "I'm not in A.A.!"

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. "Huh," he said. "You know, seven out of ten times, I get that right."

Yes folks, that's right. He looked me up and down and thought that I was an addict of some kind. And he was convinced enough to make his guess publicly, in a very long Tim Horton's line. Publically and loudly. Needless to say, I was somewhat taken aback.

I mean, I knew that I wasn't dressed up, but I did take for granted that people would look at me and assume that I wasn't addicted to ... say meth, for example. I would have been hurt, if it wasn't so funny. The more I thought about it, the more restraint it took me to keep myself from bursting out laughing. At the next moment he was called forward to a cashier, and I to another, and so this life-changing exchange ended.

It did make me think about possibly trying a little harder with my general appearance. Therefore, in the spirit of the new school year, I hereby promise to try to move up to the fashion level of "trying but clueless" or perhaps even just "lame," rather than "obviously addicted to an illegal susbstance."

I do wish I had had the presence of mind to ask him WHAT he thought I was addicted to, though. In the grand scheme of things, it's not important, but honestly, I'm really, really curious.

Next blog - the Britney experience. Promise.