Traffic

What's traffic like in your hood? Gridlock? SUV's stopped at red lights, some woman errantly cutting her toe nails, while clicking away at her blackberry speading down the interstate? How provincial.
I got into quite the Faux Hill traffic jam myself this morning. As I walked to library to get some new reading material I encountered a spate of sidewalk blocked by six (6!!!!) nannies, two bugaboo strollers, and six dogs of the genetically modified bent. It's so nice to see "the help" walking the dogs as their owners sit at Starbucks drinking latte's and planning weekend trips to Muskoka. Speaking of... I'm late for a coffee date in the Village. Toodles. ;)

Cobb Salad 2

So back from New York, saw Brynnah and went to more village's then the Faux can shake a fist at: West, East, Greenwich. Upon my return who should I run into but one of the local celebrities of the Faux Hill, CiCi Cobstein.
I happened to spot CiCi, everyone's favourite heiress and village dilettante [sic], eating at David's around the time it turns over to Buzz by Night. Now I generally don't like making fun of people's physical appearances, but when you're on the zaftig side of fat, I do like to ask should a person be ordering a salad under this guise: "I don't want any lettuce, replace all the greens with avocado." No. No they shouldn't. But the higher fat quantity of avocado is the least of my worries, right?
Overhearing tales of CiCi's last job and being on the un side of employed I thought: with whom has CiCi been sharing her talents with [besides local cokeheads]? So I did a bit of sleuthing, called up my village informant Holt and ran the gossip through whatever mill used to grist flour up in these parts (uhm... like, we only serve Ace Bakery bread).
And what I unconvered is a classic tale of Faux Hillary so beautiful in its conception that one would assume it to be fictional. Only it isn't.
Upon graduation CiCi decided she wanted to work for a not-for-profit. You go girl! Daddy, wanting only the best for his little girl, arranged a job interview for CiCi at her charitable agency of choice. Yay.
Now do you think it was SO simple; a phone call to arrange a non-existent job? As someone who is unemployed I can tell you that no, no it isn't. To arrange said interview a lovely chunk of change was donated by Mr. Cobbstein to said charity, in exchange for his daughter's employment (gasp!). All's well that end's well right? Wrong. CiCi, always daddy's little girl and business minded at heart, decided that, having won over the hearts and minds of the interview committee with her 'talents', she was going to 'negotiate' for more money and health benefits [Are mani/pedi's covered by OHIP?]. Oy. The charity proceeds to call up daddy and cries poor; we can't hire your daughter unless you pony up more cash. So much like any eight year old needs a pony, daddy forks over the cash and CiCi spends a year working in the marketing department of a charitable organization.
Yet another tale of Faux Hillary Hilarity...

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

It's not too often that I talk about myself, much to the chagrin of Bold who feels she gets the raw deal round the blog.
I fail, however, to give credit where credit is due and I have to hand it to the Rents, Sim Sim Sima and Papa Len for handling the whole je suis gay with utmost class and empathy. So where did the Rents find themself pre-father's day. Why out to the Village (the rainbow coloured one) for dinner at a hot new boite. They raved about the food, the service, and "the nice walk we took down Church Street afterwards". It was "so alive with colour and people". Len even bought a t-shirt at American Apparel. PFLAG here they come.

I'm off to New York to see the non-hormonal sistah Brynnah. Faux in the Apple. GT's all around.

Bard of the Village; The Third Cut is the Bardiest

Life of a nanny:
Your "owner" buys you Starbucks
While you watch the kids.

Inherent Specialization

The problem with Starbucks... (and while I do love the company; sometimes I even joke that "I no longer study Kaballah; Starbucks is my new religion". Anyways the problem with Starbucks )is that it has created a culture of instant gratification and inherent specialization. (Big words eh? I'm kinda intense this week.)

Witness: Lulu mom ordering [and I shit you not] a grande, in a vente cup, soy, four splenda, extra hot, non-fat latte. Fair enough bitch... right? Maybe.
As she leaves her blackberry rings. Thank Sean Preston for her blackberry right? What life-threatening, earth-shattering crisis could this yoga mom possibly be a part of... I'll tell you:
"Yes... hello."
Pause
"Oh you're at which Shoppers Drug Mart?"
Pause
"Well... I was at the Eglinton location and I was looking for a size nine in the black jelly flip flops..."
Let me break down the Faux Hillish for those of you who don't speak the local dialect. This woman, who clearly has NOTHING better to do with her life, was at Shoppers, saw a pair of cheap flip flops that she liked but which were unavailable in her size(and which are probably on sale) so she has had some poor minimally paid employee scour the country for them so she could pick them up. Woman, get a life. Seriously.

I actually blame Starbucks for creating this instant gratification mantra of consumption and for creating a culture where the "customer is always right". [Truly I'm just practicing a bit of university pschology: according to transference psychology it isn't the woman's fault, rather it's society in general, which allows her to get away with it, blah blah blah].
But really IT IS Starbucks which has taught the customer to specialize his/her drink to thesis sized proportions; IT IS Starbucks where consumption is instantaneously gratified and by providing such excellent customer service that by default the cusomters of Starbucks assume that every store plays by the same rules. And that if you haven't gotten the memo via your blackberry is insanity.

Bard of Village Part Deux; Bardier

Todays Haiku:

Grande, Vente, Soy?
So many options to choose
That's why life is hard.

Fat Dan* Quote of the Day

"I just lost sixty grand on the stock market!" Gleefully shouted across the Village.

*Fat Dan is yet another Village Rat. Trust fund baby who tools around the Village doing very, very litte.

Cobb Salad

CiCi Cobbstein... the closest thing the Village has to a celebrity heiress [a la Paris Hilton]has been all over the Faux Hill this summer. And like any afflicted Faux Hillary CiCi is known as a bit of a princess. I know her from our brief respite in grade school when she asked if my parents had a private jet a la hers. No. We drive a Toyota. But I digress.
The Cobbstein family is old Jewish money (circa mid-century). Finance I think but I don't really know and Google searches bring up shell companies upon holding companies. Needless to say, however, there is a LOT of money behind this rather unpleasant girl. What does CiCi do you might ask? CiCi spends a lot of time in the Village ordering salad's at David's.
Tongues, however, have been wagging over the more recent debocles of her existence. It seems that mummy and daddy bought our CiCi a post-grad present - a house! In Faux Hill. Round these parts we're probably talking very high six figures or 1 million plus for an unrenovated Faux Hill pile. Please sir can I have a somemore?
Although not quite house-poor CiCi, always a party girl, took to having high rolling poker parties (texas-holdem is all the rage) as a little side-venture. This lasted till the cops got involved, illegal gambling + drugs + guns = messy PR disaster. So the house was sold and CiCi was installed in a nearby condo avec doorman.

London School of Hardknocks (LSH)

Today, while having coffee with my village informant: Holt [Upper Canada Old Boy turned embittered Village Waiter, you serve $11.00 salads for a year with a BA and see how you feel], I saw a member of the Helmet Brigade (the Helmet Brigade are forty-something + women who get their hair blow dried once a week to the point of consistent hard helmet hair - look around it's all over the place). As a family friend of this particulary Helmet Brigade member (holla holla Linda), I asked how her daugther was doing at teacher's collge. "Fabulous of course! She doesn't like Buffalo... but other then that it's great."
As Linda walked away Holt turned to me and said, "Buffalo? Who goes to teacher's college in Buffalo?"
Ha ha... dearest reader's welcome to Faux Hill where people do in fact go to teacher's college in Buffalo. Why? For the exact same reason that Jessica Goldenstein goes to law school in East Lansing. That is where the progeny of Linda and Jessice Goldenstein got accepted.
Welcome to Faux Hill in 2006 where getting into a Canadian grad school is really really tough :( but getting into some sketchy American grad school that offers equivalency programs, if you're willing to pay top dollar (let's say 20,000 americano - lowball ballpark figure), is really really easy. This is good news if you're thinking of opening an American Apparel outlet in East Lansing; bad news if you tend to think that people should work hard for their future and not simply buy it. Oh wait - this is a capitalistic society, isn't it?
Witness the rise in popularity of going teacher's college in Australia, Buffalo or the favoured grad school of the jetset, LSE. Oh London School of Economics... an interesting case of an international school which has succesfully marketed itself to cash-rich North American's hoping for a bit of Old World Cache (this is an historical consistent... the Vanderbilts foamed with glee at being able to marry off their daughters to poverty stricken British royals). LSE has invented hundred's of master's programs in almost every discipline you could think of... and well to be honest, this kind of shit works. LSE = master's = high paying job... Remember those people who get their teaching degrees from D'Youville College Buffalo will compete for the same teaching job that Sally Smalltown, who worked her ass off to get into teacher's college at Queen's, wants. Who said that life was fair and that we are all given the same opportunities? What do you think this is Communism? Bitches, I saw a Ferrari in Faux Hill today; it's called inheritence... Those who have it have an easier job maintaining it.
So at the end of the day, where does that leave Holt and I? Feelings of imbued superiority and poverty with a mix of a grande Sumatra. Holt, however, did say he was thinking of working on his portfolio for Parsons School of Design... natch.

Bard of the Village

I've decided that as I'm basically the Poet Laureatte of Faux Hill every Friday I will write a new Faux Hill Haiku:

Sittin at Starbucks
Watching Cars Parallel Park
Their Uggs are too tight.