Further tales of stupidity...

Chances are that, in a lifetime, most people will never have a coat stolen. This is because people, for the most part, are sensible. They take care of their belongings. They are vigilant and careful.

And, let's say that they do have a coat stolen once, from a bar or restaurant coat check. Do you think they'll let it happen a second time? Unlikely.

Unless, of course, they are me.

Then they will have had coats stolen on three occasions. That's right. Three.

Small Town Bar, December 2000 - Goderich, Ontario

Imagine, if you will. A formerly small town girl, now living in the big city, returns home for Christmas.

She's out with her friends at the local bar, which used to have a sensible name and is now called Paddy O'Irish or something silly like that, and she hangs her coat, a long dark grey number, on the clothes rack just outside the bar entrance, by the toilets. There are other coats on this coat rack, so it's not like she's being all that careless. She proceeds to get very drunk, as you do when you go home for Christmas. At the end of the night, before making the twenty minute walk home in the blistering cold, she goes to get her coat.

Only, it's not there. She looks everywhere. She asks at the bar. She checks the now virtually empty coat rack again, just to make sure that it's really not there. It's really not there.

She walks home with her friends, in the blistering cold, wearing borrowed gloves and a hat to prevent freezing to death. She keeps saying "I can't believe someone stole my coat!" all the way home, to the annoyance of her friends.

She buys a replacement coat when she gets back to Toronto, but has to wear an old blue ski jacket of her mom's the whole rest of the Christmas holidays.

Work Christmas Party, December 2004 - London, England

Right, so this same girl? She lives in England now. And she has a winter coat of such beauty. She bought it in Toronto with her friend Teresa, and it's real pretty. It's got a faux-fur collar. She loves her coat.

At her work Christmas party, there is much drinking and merriment at the meal, and she and her co-workers decide to wander into Soho for a few more drinks and a bit of dancing. They end up in a basement bar on Old Compton Street, and snag a group of tables. The boys stand and chat, all manly like, while the girls take to the dance floor. The girls return to the tables, where everyone is milling around, chatting, drinking and flirting. Good times are had by all.

When the bar closes, and the group is finally kicked out, the girl looks for her coat in the pile on one of the chairs at their group of tables. It's not there.

She checks the other chairs, checks the floor, asks at the bar, looks everywhere she can think of. It's gone.

Her second coat has been stolen.

She bursts into tears. Keep in mind that she is very drunk, and she loved that coat. The loss of it makes her very emotional.

She gets in a cab with two co-workers to make the trek home, and makes them promise not to tell her how stupid she was to leave it sitting unattended. One of her co-workers, who shall remain nameless, immediately says "Yes, but you really should have ...". He isn't able to finish his sentence, because the girl bites his head off and they argue for the entire cab ride. The other co-worker sits quietly in the back seat and giggles to herself the entire way.

For the rest of the winter, the girl wears a leather coat the isn't nearly as pretty as her faux-fur one. But she makes due.

A Friend's Birthday Party, last Saturday night, March 2007 - London, England

You'd think that by now this girl would have learned her lesson, and kept her eye on her belongings when out, wouldn't you?

Oh, you know that she's not that bright.

Anyway, she's out at London's only Bavarian Beerhouse on a Saturday afternoon for a friend's birthday, and has hung her coat up on the hooks provided. There is much chatting, much laughter, and much drinking of German beer.

At about seven o'clock, after a good five hours of drinking, the group is asked to move to a different section of the restaurant. The group, girl included, pick up their belongings, settle their tabs, and move over to the back bit of the restaurant.

There is much more drinking.

At around one A.M., the girl realizes she is drunker than she's ever been, possibly drunker than anyone has ever been. She decides to go home. She grabs her bag, and goes to get her coat.

It's not there.

It's not where she'd originally hung it up either. And it's not on the table with the random left-behind coats. It's gone.

That's right. She's had her coat stolen. Again.

She's lent a jacket from a very nice young man, and heads home.

She has yet to replace the coat.

Seriously. Three times. What do you think the odds of that are?

Oh, and also?

The Steve Guttenberg Project has a new look too, and a few new posts.

Fashion Avenger

Dear Woman I Saw On The Stairs Transferring Between The DLR And Northern Line at Bank Station On Sunday,

I'd like to share something with you, if I may. In 1990, I was in the seventh grade. As I'm sure you're aware the pre-teen years are often not kind to girls, fashion wise. Not only did we all love New Kids On The Block, perms and super hairsprayed bangs, but we all either pinned or rolled our trousers.

See, the fashion at the time was to either fold in and roll the cuff of your jeans or trousers tight against your ankle, or pin your trousers, either just at the ankle or from the ankle to mid-calf.

You've got to keep in mind that this was 1990. The fashion was not for tight jeans. It was for baggy jeans. Baggy, pleated, often highly patterned jeans. So, this rolling or pinning created an upsetting effect that flattered no one.

We also wore them with slouch socks, often more than one pair, that we'd colour coordinate to our outfits.

It wasn't a good look. But, in my defense, it was 1990, and I was twelve. I've learned a lot since then.

Do you see what I'm trying to tell you?

Because I'm trying to understand why you were rocking this look last Sunday. In 2007. When you were older than twelve.

I actually did a triple take when I saw your trousers. "Nice colour", I thought. "What the? No, I must have seen that wrong, " I thought. "Nope, didn't see that wrong. What the HELL?", I thought again.

Perfectly fine khaki trousers, ruined by being skin tight from the ankle to the knee, creating a very unfortunate jodhpur effect. I couldn't tell whether you'd modified them, or if they were designed that way. But, you know what? It doesn't matter.

Why, why, why? Why???

I already lived through this look once. I've dealt with a lot of unfortunate looks from my childhood becoming fashionable again, but I'm damned if I'm going to deal with this again.

Get it together lady. I'm not going to re-live the early nineties again. Buy some new trousers.

For all of us.

All the best,
Alice

New look!

I did a bit of updating, since Blogger has forced me to switch to their version 2 and lose all the fancy whatnots that were on the pretty version 1 blog.

What do y'all think?

Curse that Facebook!

Because I am easily coerced into doing almost anything, I signed up for Facebook today. And while I was procrastinating on that, I found this on a friend's page thingy.

And it's so true.

You Are 40% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

I often feel my potential for evil is underestimated.

Marketing Travesty

There's a Woolworth's just near my house, and as well as having cheap kitchen-y stuff, they also have a smallish DVD section, which often has super-fantastic deals.

Every once in a while, I go to persue their selection and have come away with many a bargain. The other week, I was taking a peek, and what did I stumble across?

Let's just take a moment to laugh at the fact that it was only £1.

Anyway, huh, I thought to myself. Did Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt make a movie together recently? Because that's a recent photo on the cover, yes?

And then I noticed the title.

Oh, that's right. It's Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

The NINETEEN EIGHTY FIVE film Girls Just Want To Have Fun. The film that was made 22 years ago, when Sarah Jessica Parker was 20 and Helen Hunt was 22. The film in which they play teenagers.

And don't even get me started on the layout - if you're going to have the tagline "Life will be serious soon enough, but for now...", then it really should be ABOVE the title so it makes sense!

But back to the blatantly misleading photo.

Perhaps they've just used this on the front, and the back will clear everything up.

Well, in the sense that they've used actual photos from the movie, yes. In the sense that by far the largest photo is of Sarah Jessica Parker circa the Sex & The City years, no.

For the record, this is what the cover should look like:

That's right. They're YOUNG! And it also stars Shannen Doherty. The 2007 cheater cover shows no Shannen Doherty love. (Also, please gloss over the fact that I now own two copies of this movie.) (Please gloss over the fact that I'd actually already replaced the VHS copy in that photo with a DVD, and I actually now own three copies of this movie.)

I can only imagine the disgust that someone would feel if they bought this movie based solely on the (obviously photoshopped, once you really look at it) image on the cover.

They'd expect a rom-com about thirty-something gals in the city. And what would they get?

A teen dance movie that features an awkward teenaged Sarah Jessica Parker competing in a dance competition on a show called "Dance TV" with her dreamy partner Jeff. Her wacky friend Helen Hunt, Jeff's best friend Jonathan Silverman and his sister Shannen Doherty help the crazy kids win the dance competion - and each other's hearts. And it contains the line "Eat flame, Bozo!"

For shame, DVD marketing people. For shame, I say!

Being back from holiday is always a letdown

I highly recommend a skiing holiday in which you don't do any skiing. I'm telling you, that's some good fun. Try not to get a cold though - that can be a bit of a downer.

Meribel is just beautiful. It's about a 3 hour drive from the Geneva airport, in the French alps. A fair bit of that drive was going up the mountain. Turns out? Mountains are tall.

There were 11 of us in the chalet, which really does sound like a lot, but it wasn't too crowded. We did need to have a kids table at dinner though, since you couldn't fit all of us around the dining table. But the kids table isn't too bad when you have copious amounts of wine and get to be in charge of various iPods of awesome.

It snowed the day we arrived, so it was all snowy and gorgeous, and really looked just like a French ski resort should.

Seriously. How pretty is this?

You can try and tell me it's not gorgeous, and I will ignore you, because you will be lying.

It really was such a relaxing trip. Lots of beer, card games - well one card game, Asshole, which really is the best game ever - good food, more beer, wine, more wine, skiing and snowboarding (only not for me), still more wine and much hilarity.

We also formed the world's best pub quiz team, comprising me, Jo, Sam, Leanne, Ivan and Mel (also known as the Girl Team. Sorry guys.) We seriously kicked so much ass. 38 out of 50 questions right, and the next best team only got 25. We are geniuses!! And also good looking. This is a team of victory, I tell you.

We had our winning jug of beer stolen by a team that couldn't handle our superiority, but which shall remain nameless.

Nameless, but I will post a photo. That beer they're drinking? Stolen. Poor losers, I say. Intimidated by our awesomeness.

It was such a fun trip. And it's really so beautiful there.

Being back at work is a bit sad now. Especially since I still have a cold.

I'd rather be back here.