Jams Of The Week (Snakehips Presents Summer 2015 Edition):

 

 ~sarah p.

p.s. My summer jam for 2015 is, undoubtedly, anything Snakehips has done this year, because it's impossible to just pick one track.

Clubs: Hipster Vs Urban.

1. Entering into the club:

Hipster: You pay your entrance fee, though I'm pretty sure everyone and their grandma is on "the list",  and they might half-ass flashlight through one of the pockets in your bag if it's a night that's playing rap.

Urban: Get ready to have every pocket of your bag, plus any fold of skin on your body, aggressively fondled by a large female security guard. The few joints in the back of your bag are going to elicit no attention, but they are quick to ask a lot of questions about anything that might be able to be used as a weapon.

2. Drugs:

Hipster: There will only be three stalls at any hipster club you attend, and the line to get into these stalls will be a million miles long. Under the doors of each stall will be at least three pairs of feet. The gaggle of sniffling, coked-up girls will eventually come out, and tell you that they like your outfit, want to know what color of lipstick you are wearing, and that you look like someone they know but they can't remember who. Also, no matter what pair of shoes you're wearing, they will LOVE them.

Urban: At about 11:30PM, the air will be so thick with weed smoke you won't be able to see for a few feet in front of you. The DJ will simultaneously play songs about weed and shout "where are my weed smokers at?", all while politely announcing to please stop smoking weed in the club.

3. Pickup lines:

Hipster: "Um, excuse me, miss, but could I, um, buy you an overpriced cheap beer, if you are okay with that, and maybe try to dance with you later?"

Urban: "Biiiiiiiitch, you look fly as hell. I can take you home now, or I can take you home later. Oh, you got a man? Don't. Care."

4. Outfits:

Hipster: Dudes- beards, flannel, and Vans. Ladies- Birkenstocks (seriously y'all, WTF), black, and more black. Both require transport to and from the club in a older-looking bike that cost them significantly too much money.

Urban: Dudes- Did you bring your sunglasses to wear inside? That's basically the uniform. Also, if you have a chain that spells out your name? Good. The gaudier, the better. Ladies- Did you wear a bra tonight? Are your shorts cut at a respectable length? Then consider yourself overdressed.

5. Dance floor:

Hipster: Will mainly be empty until at least midnight, save for a few nineteen-year-olds that drank a whole bottle of wine before stepping foot inside the club, but will fill up relative to the amount/speed that cocaine is consumed. There will be a ton of awkward shaky-dances and sloppy attempts to round up a partner before the night is through. Got game? Got moves? Get your ass out of the hipster club. You do not belong here.

Urban: Everyone will be getting. the. fuck. down by about 11PM, even the pregnant chicks and the ones older than your mom. After 1AM, there won't be an azz in the place that isn't violently jiggling in one direction or another. There will be many songs with very specific dances that seem way to complicated to try and maneuver in an intoxicated state, but with very little choice, you will need to learn and participate in. If you have any class, or are a self-conscious individual, this may not be the dance floor for you. 

~sarah p.

Hasta La Vista, Davey.

I was a teenage insomniac. My high school years were spent alone, in front of the TV at three in the morning, where my only viable choices for entertainment were scrambled porn, that infomercial where Mr T cooks a turkey in a Flavor-Wave Oven, and late-night talk shows. In the mid-nineties, there was Jay Leno, who could have been funny for all I know but the chin was far too distracting, Conan O'Brien, who was still cutting his teeth in the late-late time slot, and Letterman, who taught me everything I know about comedy.

As his retirement week came to a close on Wednesday, the outpouring of love and gratitude was well apparent, and now it's my turn. Dave was well-known as an asshole. It was Gilbert Gottfried who said he was "nicely mean". He was sarcastic and deadpan. He found great joy in relatively small things, and could stretch anything into a multi-show bit. In the rest of the world, being a gas station owner named Richard Assman elicits a few genuine chuckles, but Letterman found it funny enough to visit him weekly for several years. It wasn't this gentleman's unfortunate name that made it hilarious, but rather the way that Dave would giggle any time it came up.

I watched every night as he made stars out of average joes; Manny The Hippie, whom he picked up off the ground at Haight-Ashbury and took travelling around the country, his mom, who balanced Dave perfectly with her genuine bewilderment of his comedic methods, Larry "Bud" Melman (Calvert Deforest), who Dave would send out onto the streets with an earpiece to bother people. Sometimes, Dave would just spend the beginning few minutes of his show throwing shit off of his roof, but still, people came back night after night to see what would happen next.

A true talent of Letterman's was not just in watching him perform well-loved comedy pieces, but also watching a bit fall flat with audiences. He could bring out a guest that people didn't care about, or take a Madonna joke a little too far, and instead of moving on to the next piece, would stare directly out into his stone-faced audience and lick the little space between his teeth, and adjust his tie furiously until he had the whole room in tears. 

In April of Grade 11, I went to New York for the first time. Dave was not filming that week, so I went to Joe G's Pizza for a slice, and Hello Deli for a sandwich hand-crafted by Rupert Jee himself. I went on the CBS tour. I walked through his studio and touched his chair. The set was smaller than I thought it would be, and every bit as chilly as I expected. I stared out at the empty studio, at the lofty rafters with hundreds of wires and boom-mics. I thought about how many times Dave had a few minutes to kill, and would bring out Bryant Gumbel or Regis Philbin for a good ribbing. It shouldn't have been funny, but Dave would have it no other way.

~sarah p.

Jams Of The Week (Drink, Drank, Drunk Edition):

 

 ~sarah p.

It's A Short Man's World.

This is great news. Some geneticists are finally discussing the fact that it's time the world stops being so tall, and are looking at the benefits of creating a humanity that is, on average, six inches shorter than it is now. As someone who is naturally short-statured, bordering on freakishly-so, it's about damn time. Let's face the facts: taller people use more energy. It takes more food to keep a tall body running (15-18% more!), furniture and cars go through more wear and tear, and for you tall folks that enjoy a good shower- that's gallons and gallons more water down the drain. If we really want make a change for sustainability in the world, it's time to start thinking short. Sure, we may be weird-looking and squirley, and possibly a little creepy, but we are energy-saving machines. Here are a few things to know before we become a short man's world:

 1. It's kind-of an unwritten rule of being short: it's okay to complain to others about your lack of height, but before you do, have a good look around you. If you see one person in the room shorter than you, keep your damn mouth shut. When I hear a girl complaining to her friends that she is short, and she's hovering at around 5'4, I can't help but to shake my head. How does she think I feel down here, eye-to-eye with elementary school children? In the same vein, however, if I was complaining about my height, and a little person overheard, they would probably be like "Sit your ass down, Yao Ming". It's all relative.

2. Fuck yes I want you to grab that shit off of the high shelf for me. Do you think I enjoy scaling the creaky-ass shelves at Safeway to get at my canned tomatoes? Do you get some amusement from standing two feet away from me and watching me struggle? I'm talking to you, surprisingly tall old lady. You may have fourty years on me, but you also have ten inches on me, so reach up and grab me that can.

3. Sometimes, people are just short. There's no use in asking if I started smoking young (I didn't), have a lot of short people in my family (I do, but I am the smallest), or ingested a huge amount of aspartame when I was little (hey, it was the 80's- nobody knew that Diet Coke was a real growth-stunter yet). When it comes to being short without having any form of dwarfism, I am the creme de la creme, so when they start the breeding process, there's going to be a shitload of little Sarah Parsons' running around. Get ready, world.

4. People always rip on me for being so specific about my height (4"10 AND 3/4), but when you're this tiny, that 3/4 counts. Most of the time, I lie and say that I'm 5", which makes people ask waaay less questions. Either that, or say I it in centimeters (150 cm). For a metric country, Canadians understand fuck all about metric conversions for height and weight, so once those wheels start turning in everyone's head to figure out my height in inches, it's pretty much guaranteed that there are no further comments. 

5. Yep, there are restrictions:
-I counted down the day until my eighteenth birthday, because I was sure it meant I would never get carded at the bar again, but that just stopped about three months ago.
-Your umbrella is probably going to poke someone's eye out someday.
-I can finally go on that roller coaster at West Edmonton Mall, but only because I am now old enough to sign a waiver that says that I am aware that the seats are not for people of my stature, and that if I go flying out that it's my own damn fault.
-Pants. If you are really tall and you remind me that pants are also difficult for you to buy, you can go straight to hell. Tall folks can just cuff pants in that casual, sassy way, and nobody knows the difference. When I roll my pants, it's just a giant fat sausage of material. I have a good tailor, but ain't no tailor in the world that can make the knee part of a slim pant leg look like it's not sitting at the lower part of my calf. I have a 26 inseam, and no sane pant-maker has ever attempted to make pants that short. It would be me and Bruno Mars buying that shit, and that's about it. "Just buy capris!", they say, "and wear them as pants!" Clever, if it weren't for the fact that capri pants haven't been commercially available at any store that doesn't have "-warehouse" in the title since 2002. 
-Sun visors in cars? Why bother.
-The biggest affliction among my tiny peers and I is, without a doubt, a condition called "tired little legs". You see, folks, for every step you take, we take two, or three, or four. However, though we may be tired, do not dream of trying to pick us up. We hate that the most. 

In a world catered to small people, there's not a water fountain spout too high, a chair that makes your legs dangle off the ground, or an inseam too lengthy, but until then, can you just stop patting me on the head and reach that damn can for me? Please?

~sarah p.  

Jams Of The Week (Lucky Star Edition):

  ~sarah p.

p.s. Basement Jaxx's 'Rooty', where the above track is featured, and 'Crazy Itch Radio' are two of the most fun, playful albums I've ever, ever heard. They are tinged with Bollywood influences, and, though they went gold in the UK, didn't really hit it big on this side of the pond. Check them out!

Jams Of The Week (Do You, Or Do You Not, Want To Get Funky Edition):

 

 ~sarah p.

A Small List Of Things That Make Me A Terrible Calgarian:

1. I was super jazzed when The Flames got booted out of the playoffs last night. No more puke-lined sidewalks. No more cars with Flames flags driving up and down the street laying on the horn. No more using a hockey team as an excuse to sexually harass. And hockey? That's winter shit anyway. It's almost summer, bitches. This brings me to my next point:

2. I hate winter so fucking much. It snowed this morning,  and I seriously considered calling in sick to work so that I didn't have to leave the house. Instead of moving to a warmer climate, like anyone with a brain would do, I have decided to stew in anger for eight months of the year. I've always said that my hatred of the frost makes me love summer so much more, but that could just be a weird theory. I have a lot of those.

3. Nenshi? Meh. Sure, he's a super entertaining and likeable dude (and pretty adorable, like a big brown teddy bear), but city mayors have very little power over what happens. A sassy Twitter and a ride on a Pride float do not mean that you actually run the show around here. Plus, like all preceding mayors, he coddles the upper and upper-middle class folks. The Cycle Track Network seems like a great idea, but the reality is: people that can afford to own and maintain a cycle also have the functional ability to get to and from work by just riding down the street. After years and years of working with low-income families with huge financial barriers to getting around the city, I approached the mayor's office, presented them with the numbers I had crunched and a plan to offer all low-income folks the choice of a free bike for life (with repairs!) or a bus pass for the year; a plan that would actually leave the city with a transportation budget to spare. I was told that they need for dudes that wear spandex with padded butts was far greater than those of families that don't have bus fare to get to a doctor's appointment. In my mind, a mayor is a mayor is a mayor, with our precious Nensh' included. 

4. The Stampede. Lawwwwwd help me. There is not a more awful week on this planet. I guess it would be cool if it's your "thing" to get tanked on awful beer that you had to wait in line for an hour to get, all while a chubby mom in a tied-off gingham shirt and straw Cowboy hat tries to grab the asses of dudes in Wranglers (side note- dudes in Wranglers: is there anything worse?) while simultaneously screaming "Yahooooo" in your ear with wicked whiskey-breath. All of this "fun" will cost you a bare minimum of $300 in a single afternoon, and some people go every. fucking. day.

5. I firmly believe that Peter's Drive-In milkshakes are nothing special. Milk and ice cream and syrup are the same no matter where it comes from. Sorry.

 ~sarah p.

p.s. For the record, I love this city. My family is here, the Glenbow is a great museum, the zoo is kind-of a rockin' time, 17th Ave is a fabulous place to watch mentally ill folks, it's nice to be able to see the mountains, and it's still semi-affordable. Also, there is a candy store here that knows me by first name, and that is really fucking amazing.

This Week In Minor Annoyances:

 *When a gentleman leans out his car window and yells "Bitch, let me lick those titties!". Like, what happened to manners? It's "Bitch, may I please lick those titties", dude.

*When people come up to Dexter and I and tell us we're the "cutest little couple" they know, like we deserve our own show on TLC or some shit. Actually, I'm just pretending that I'm annoyed by this one. TLC, get at me.

*When dudes dress in norm-core gear. Why put all that effort into trying to appear like you don't give a fuck? It's quite a bit easier to deck yourself out in super fresh gear than to dig in donation bins for Seinfeld-facsimile outfits. Also, the time is nigh: cool it on the scraggly beards, ya'll. If you want to look like you truly don't give a fuck about your looks, do it the old-fashioned way and become a father.

*When someone give you a free food sample of something and then waits to see your reaction to the product. What am I supposed to do if I hate it? Spit it in your face and crush your dreams?

*When power-tripping, no-bullshit bus drivers spend their entire shift tapping the "no food or drink sign" and sass-talking old Asian dudes that don't speak enough English to understand the rules. We get it, dude. You're the king of your bus. Also, FYI, historically, the bus is all bullshit and nothin' but, so don't even attempt to change the system. 

~sarah p.

p.s. Here is a bonus gallery of Kanye looking annoyed:

Jams Of The Week (Deja Vu x VH1's Love & Hip Hop Edition):

 

 ~sarah p.

p.s. Today's rap-dork fact (that unintentionally tied this post into the above post): Made Men's 1999 album had several tracks that were produced by a then-unknown Kanye West.