Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2022 i Zoomer Magazine

Turns out the Fountain of Youth comes from a deep fryer. An Illinois couple found a bag of 63-year-old McDonald’s french fries in the wall of their home during renovations, telling NBC News “they were very well preserved.” I want to know more about Bertha; 92-year-old TikTok star Grandma Droniak posted a video outlining three rules for her funeral. Don’t cry too much, get drunk after and don’t invite Bertha, a woman she dislikes. A 100-year-old Brazilian man sets a world record after working for the same company for 84 years: Which made the timing of his downsizing the next day all the more unfortunate. Walk this way. A U.K. study showed people could shave up to 16 years off their biological age with regular, brisk walks. (AND DOWN) “So…

AFTER TAKING ON The Great Gatsby in the 2013 screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famed novel, Australian director Baz Luhrmann now turns his lens to the mega-star behind “Blue Suede Shoes.” Much like Gatsby, Elvis is a one-word entrée into Americana. Both, after all, instantly summon up a host of associations and feelings, even if they are sometimes only implied, or adjacent to the truth. Just think of the daffy invites sent out for Gatsby-themed ’20s parties, as if hosts are oblivious to the novel’s tragic ending, with a dead man floating in the pool. Likewise, Elvis, the man, is whisked so thoroughly into Elvis, the myth – with all the weirdness and excess, the camp factor and the conspiracy theories – that the person behind the personality seems almost…

THE CASE A 74-year-old woman is brought to the ER by ambulance after she dropped her fork at lunch and was barely able to speak. Her husband wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he did recall the stroke warning signs, so he looked for face drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty. Given she had two of the three signs, he called 911. THE SYMPTOMS She seemed to be awake and alert and tried to respond, but was unable to speak properly. She could not move her right arm or leg. When she tried to stand up, she almost fell, but her husband caught her. The ambulance arrived 10 minutes later. The paramedics took her vital signs and, when she arrived at the hospital, her status was unchanged.…

IFINALLY GOT SOME BUY-in from one of my brothers. For several years, I have been keen to take a trip to the places our parents came from, and the places where they met and made a life together as they ran away from Hitler. We don’t know much – they did not pass on many memories, fond or otherwise. They were lucky to escape Poland and Latvia with their lives. It’s definitely a journey to take with siblings. Sam, Moses (the founder and CEO of ZoomerMedia) and I agreed that Tajikistan, where my parents married and Moses was born, was too dangerous to visit because crime is rampant. As for Dubienka and Lodz in Poland, where my mother grew up, and my dad’s hometown of Kuldiga in Latvia, we know…

WHEN CANADIAN ACTOR Simu Liu went to the 2022 Oscars in a custom red Versace tux and black patent leather loafers, he looked “smoking hot,” a phrase he employs liberally in his memoir, We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story. In an intimate, conversational writing style peppered with F-bombs and lots of jokes, the guy Canadians know and love as Jung Kim on the CBC-TV sitcom Kim’s Convenience digs deep into the pain of a kid trying, and repeatedly failing, to live up to his parents’ impossibly high expectations. The boy who would be Shang-Chi, the first Asian Marvel superhero, spent a lot of time feeling like a burden. Liu was a “left-behind child” – a term non-governmental organizations use to describe children raised apart from their parents…

1 CAPITAL SPIRIT At Mādahòkì Farm in Ottawa, Indigenous Cultural Ambassador Maggie Downer leads an Ojibwe spirit horse named Kitagokons (both above) to us for a few precious pats. Four males – Mukaday-Wagoosh, Makwa, Migizi and Gwiingwiishi – romp across the field to get closer to the pretty mare. These beauties, with their trademark dorsal stripes, extra ear fur and an extra nose flap, roamed North America before colonization. The spirit horse breed was almost extinct by the early ’70s and, while it is slowly being saved, is still endangered. “They pretty much inspired us to get a farm,” says Trina Mather-Simard, the executive director of Indigenous Experiences, which leased the property in October 2021 and has plans to grow it into an agritourism offering, with culinary and cultural experiences.…

RICHARD ROHMER has some weighty accomplishments. The events he’s seen and the things he’s done in his life have a genuine heft. That thought occurs to me as I help him into the blue tunic of his air force uniform for the photographer. At 98, one of the most decorated living Canadians is long past the military’s retirement age of 60, but he still has occasion to don his fancy rig as the Honorary Lieutenant-General of the Canadian Armed Forces. “Even though it’s ceremonial, it’s a role I cherish,” he says. “Not bad for an air force officer.” He was granted that rank in 2015, while serving a three-year appointment as Honorary Adviser to the Chief of the Defence Staff, a role created specifically in recognition of Rohmer’s years of…

IF THE LATE Judy Garland needed a living ambassador to sustain her spirit on Earth, she couldn’t do much better than singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. The Canadian musical blueblood exalted The Wizard of Oz star with his 2007 album, Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall, where he – alongside marquee guests and a 36-piece orchestra – recreated Garland’s famed career-boosting 1961 concert. The soundtrack to the 2019 biopic Judy, which earned Renée Zellweger a Best Actress Oscar, featured a duet with Wainwright. Now he’s releasing Rufus Does Judy at Capitol Studios, a superb, intimate recording of Garland’s most famous songs, using the microphone she sang into at the famed Los Angeles venue, backed by a four-piece jazz ensemble. Recorded during Wainwright’s 2021 virtual livestreamed concert for an in-person audience of one…

IT WAS A MARCH night in Toronto in 1977. On stage at the El Mocambo Tavern on Spadina Avenue was a band that had been billed as the Cockroaches, opening for Canadian rockers April Wine. But wait: The guy in the white jumpsuit unzipped to the navel looked a lot like Mick Jagger and the guitar player to his left, standing in front of a Jack Daniels bottle on top of an amplifier, sure looked like Keith Richards. Then the band started to play “Honky Tonk Women,” and the ruse unravelled. More than 300 people, many of them winners of a contest held by a radio station, were stunned to find themselves at the first of two secret gigs by the Rolling Stones. (Margaret Trudeau, wife of then-prime minister…

THREE QUEENS Seventy years ago, this iconic image captured Queen Mary (Queen Consort), Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), and Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen) outside St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. Britain’s wartime king was just 56 when he died on Feb. 6, 1952. The picture – which came to be known as “Three Queens in mourning” – is a haunting photograph: It is a trio of grief, with the King’s mother, wife and daughter draped in their veils, three generations representing the stability and continuity of the British monarchy. Although photos exist of the three queens together, nearly all of them are official portraits. This news photo revealed a rarely seen side of royalty, as humans, with emotions. The next day, it made the front pages of every single…

AT THE DAWN OF THE ’90S, American fashion designer Donna Karan was in her mid-40s, and understood that sexy is not all about in-your-face T&A (although someone might want to tell the Kardashians that). Her designs, famously worn by former first lady Hillary Clinton and legend Barbra Streisand, suggested that a subtler hint of skin, a strategic slash of a V-neckline, a flash of clavicle and a curve of a shoulder are just as scintillating. In 2008, the late writer/director Nora Ephron, with that eternal headline, “I feel bad about my neck,” released a book of the same name, humorously musing on the state of women and aging. And currently, scarves, which Ephron famously wore to camouflage said signs, and chokers (thank you, Bridgerton), are back in style. With all…