Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2024 i Zoomer Magazine

NOT A HAIR IN THE WORLD the moment that Larry David complimented my head, something did really change inside me. I went and looked in a mirror, and you know what? I looked okay. For the first time, I actually felt okay about being bald. It was a lovely feeling, but even without Larry’s help I’m sure I would have got there eventually. This book came about in anger. I was furious when I went bald. Furious at the unfairness of it. Furious about how weird it made me look. Furious that I had nothing to hide my lopsided ear behind any more. At first, I only wanted to write this book because I wanted to let the world know how unbelievably angry I was about suddenly being bald.…

“I ALWAYS MAKE ROOM FOR SOME POPS OF COLOUR, A MASHUP OF TEXTURES OR SOME JUXTAPOSED PATTERNS FOR CONTRAST” CLAIM TO FAME: My career has been a non-stop whirl of editorial shoots; styling for icons like reggae star Sean Paul and TV presenter Ben Mulroney; and a slew of Netflix content. I’m currently in production on Tall Pines with Toni Collette and Sarah Gaddon. MY FASHION FORMULA: My uniform (of sorts) is always grounded with a good shoe and crowned by a great hat. Everything in between is up for grabs! The usual suspects in my wardrobe are Dries van Noten, Comme des Garçons and Maison Margiela. I have also collected essential elements over the years that never seem to go out of style – I do love a…

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest contribution to the canon of pop intellectualism was not the book he set out to write. He was several chapters into a 25th anniversary update of The Tipping Point – the 2000 bestseller that turned a chatty wonk from Canada into a household name – before he realized the new material was taking on a shape of its own. The original book was the biography of an idea: that trends spread like viruses, eventually “tipping” into the mainstream at a certain popularity threshold. A quarter-century later, Gladwell found himself hung up on the underbelly of that original insight: If tipping points can be understood, they can also be manipulated. Revenge of The Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering reveals the individuals, corporations…

A PASSPORT TO TRAVEL INSPIRATION AND UNEXPECTED EXPERIENCES golf, even for people who are bad at it, is a game of control. And right now, I have absolutely none. It’s 8:30 p.m. as I stand in the middle of the fairway of the seventh hole of Thorlakshofn, one of Iceland’s true links golf courses – a natural layout shaped by the wind, rain and sea – located near the southwest coast of Iceland, a 40-minute drive from the country’s capital, Reykjavik. Even in April, at this hour, the sun is shining bright in the sky. It won’t fully set for another couple of hours. In June it will barely set at all. And on the fairway, the wind is absolutely swirling. A 100-yard shot from the middle of the…

BRAVE NEW WORLD although he didn’t drive America or the free world into a ditch, U.S. President Joe Biden was forced to give up the proverbial keys and suspend his re-election bid. At 81, Biden would not break his own record as the oldest to ever serve in that role. The immense power of his office held no sway over that great leveller, aging, and all it does to remind us that the flesh is indeed weak. “There is a time and place for long years of experience in public life,” Biden said. “But there is also a time and place for new voices, fresh voices – yes, younger voices.” True, but it was disheartening to see Biden’s advanced years and futile attempts at “youthiness” – cue the Dark…

He was born the year the Titanic sunk, eats fish and chips every Friday and attributes his longevity to luck, but when Englishman John Alfred Tinniswood, 112, was awarded the Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest living man, the Second World War vet and retired accountant had some advice for youngsters: “Always do the best you can, whether you’re learning something or whether you’re teaching someone. Give it all you’ve got. Otherwise it’s not worth bothering with.” —KH BACK AT YOU Some days, it’s hard enough to put one foot in front of the other, and now fitness experts are touting the benefits of walking backward. Retro-ambulation works the glutes, quads, hamstrings, hip flexors and calves, improves proprioception (body awareness in space and time) and may reduce stress…

Before Ruth Westheimer died in July at 96, the diminutive Manhattan sex therapist left the world a gift: The Joy of Connections, which came out in September. In it, the Jewish Holocaust survivor, American immigrant, two-time divorcee and widow provides a roadmap to escape social isolation. “Let me pull you out of the muck,” she wrote. “I’ve been sleeping with loneliness my entire life.” Westheimer, who had a PhD in education from Columbia University and did post-doc research into human sexuality, shot to fame in the ’80s with a New York radio show, Sexually Speaking, and The Dr. Ruth Show, a call-in TV program where she dispensed graphic, no-nonsense advice on sex and relationships to two million viewers. In the book, Westheimer said she lobbied for her 2023 job…

REAL ESTATE MOVIN’ ON UP Birds of a feather flock together and high-flying billionaires are no different. While many uber-rich Canadians nest in Toronto’s Bridle Path or Vancouver’s Shaughnessy Heights, others migrate to these south-of-the-border hotspots. BILLIONAIRE’S ROW, EAST COAST Where: A series of ultra-luxe, super tall and skinny skyscrapers on the south side of Central Park in New York City Locals: Tech mogul Michael Dell, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez, Jennifer Lopez and Sting New to the hood: The current Canadian consul general, Tom Clark, is the proud resident of a US$6.6-million, 3,600-square-foot apartment smack in the heart of this exclusive enclave. BILLIONAIRE’S ROW, WEST COAST Where: San Francisco’s hilltop Pacific Heights neighbourhood features stunning mansions with panoramic views of the Golden Gate…

WHEN I OPEN MY post-secondary educational institution, Feminist Unlimited Knowledge University (FUK U for short), the first course I’ll teach will be about Cher. Maybe she’ll even give a guest lecture, striding to the front of the class in a sequined Bob Mackie gown, and pointing to a whiteboard that contains one of her great self-descriptions: “I’m a messy icon.” It’s true, she is a messy icon. This is why we love her. But she is also an icon who is a beacon of strength, of humour, of creativity. Why Cher, you may ask? Why now? If you haven’t noticed, there’s a Cherevival going on. In short order, she’ll be releasing a greatest hits record and an autobiography that necessitates two volumes, thanks to “a life too immense for…

“Her only flaw is her perfection,” Truman Capote declares in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, describing New York socialite Barbara “Babe” Paley. “She’s almost too beautiful to look at.” The description is just as fitting for Naomi Watts, who brilliantly brings Paley to life in the Ryan Murphy TV series. The 55-year-old, British-Australian, Oscar-nominated actress, best known for her breakout roles in Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams, has just earned her first Emmy nomination for this role – one that seems tailor-made for her. With piercing blue eyes, perfectly blotted red lips and every blond strand of her sleek bob in place, she sits across from me in a private room at Hudson’s Bay in downtown Toronto. Dressed in an oversized black blazer, straight-legged jeans and pristine white sneakers,…

A CURATED COLLECTION OF NOSTALGIA AND THE LATEST POP CULTURE BUZZ Rock stars rarely use the R word, but Rob Baker of the Tragically Hip has come to embrace it. “I am fully retired,” he tells Zoomer. “I feel like I fulfilled what I wanted to do and I don’t really have a desire to get on stage. That’s it, it’s gone.” It’s been eight years since Baker and his brothers-in-arms, Gord Sinclair, Paul Langlois and Johnny Fay, stood behind their enigmatic and terminally ill lead singer, Gord Downie, at the band’s final concert in Kingston, Ont. You know the one, and you must remember where you watched it, singing along to Fifty-Mission Cap, Little Bones and Ahead By a Century, with tears streaming down your face. Baker, 62,…

THE SEQUEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz The New York author skewers the book industry again in the followup to The Plot, her 2021 tale about a creative-writing teacher who steals the idea for a novel from a deceased student, then dies by apparent suicide when someone threatens to expose him. In The Sequel, his not-so-sad widow Anna decides it can’t be that hard to write a bestseller, and it’s all too easy until her nefarious past catches up with her. Readers will love Anna’s twisted backstory while wannabe writers will find out why books end up in the slush pile. ABSOLUTION by Jeff VandeerMeer A surprise fourth book adds to the Florida author’s award-winning 2014 trilogy of speculative fiction. It’s told in three interlocking parts: the prehistory of Area…

BE READY WHEN LUCK HAPPENS by Ina Garten The Food Network star relates her abusive childhood, meeting her husband at 16 and buying a Hamptons food shop called the Barefoot Contessa – a leap of faith that started an empire. SONNY BOY by Al Pacino The legendary Godfather actor credits his single, working-class mom, who gave him the titular nickname, with keeping him out of trouble in the Bronx and, by taking him to movies beginning when he was three or four, setting him on the path to stardom. THE WALL OF LIFE by Shirley MacLaine This compendium from the 90-year-old Oscar-winning actor’s archive blends boldface anecdotes (about her brother, Warren Beatty, as well as Elvis, Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra) with her trademark woo-woo spirituality and covers her…

On a warm summer Wednesday, about 50 Lucy Maud Montgomery devotees, some in historical costume, travelled to Leaskdale, Ont., where the Anne of Green Gables writer watched her husband deliver Sunday sermons more than 100 years ago. Instead of a certain saviour, Canada’s bestselling author is depicted in an engraved triptych on the wall of the old Presbyterian church near the Leaskdale Manse National Historic Site, about 90 kilometres northwest of Toronto. At the podium, if you borrowed some of Anne Shirley’s ample imagination, was Montgomery herself. It was really Nova Scotian Rosalee Peppard Lockyer, dressed in a gorgeous lace gown in shades of blue and an elaborate wide-brimmed hat. The women’s musical oral historian has been portraying “Maud,” as the writer liked to be called, since 2017, when…

When Francis Ford Coppola was in the jungle, barely coping with the disastrous late-’70s production that was Apocalypse Now, his wife Eleanor was there to turn the camera on him. Eleanor Coppola was a filmmaker working in the shadow of her husband, who, at that point, had already helmed three all-timers: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Conversation. But making Apocalypse Now – a nightmarish vision of the Vietnam War that Coppola loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness – humbled the director. The Philippines set was hit with natural disasters. The cast and crew suffered mental and physical breakdowns, while their substance abuse rivalled the scene at Woodstock. And after self-funding the film, Coppola’s fortunes were on the line. Eleanor captured all of this…

SOMETIME IN THE DARK HOURS before dawn on Jan. 25, 2023, Theodora Lamb’s East Vancouver house began to burn. As she and her partner and three children slept, the house next door – vacant during renovations – caught fire and flames started licking at their walls. The family grabbed their shoes and jackets and fled into the street. No one was seriously hurt, but she and some neighbours lost their homes, and they are still rebuilding. After the initial shock, her family recovered their equilibrium, but she did not. “I would have waking terrors, night terrors, anxiety attacks, triggered by even a flicker that might look like a flame,” recalls Lamb, 41. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which she had always associated with first responders, soldiers…

THE VIEW FROM HERE Sailing is a freedom unlike any other; untethered from terra firma, the serenity is as profound as the ocean is deep. In Halifax, guests at the five-star Muir Hotel may spot tugboats, yachts, research vessels and even a submarine from its harbour-side balconies, but they can also experience the awe of wind and waves from the water, which offers a unique connection to this city shaped by the sea. From the teak deck of Little Wing, the hotel’s 36-foot (10-m) Morris yacht, the sounds of the busy working port recede and peace washes over me. Near Georges Island, a harbour seal gives two short honks as it surfaces, and the sailboat glides on, past McNabs Island and Point Pleasant Park, slipping into the Northwest Arm,…

Here’s a shocking statistic from What She Said: Conversations About Equality by Elizabeth Renzetti: The UN estimates it will take 300 years for women to achieve gender parity. The former Globe and Mail journalist builds on three decades of reporting from the frontlines of feminism to trace “the paradox of our condition right now – powerful and demeaned.” Renzetti explores issues like pay equity, violence against women and aging, with intellectual rigour. In the following excerpt from Chapter 1, What’s the Price of Silence?, she talks to a trail-blazing Canadian who took on the government and won. I’m determined to find hope in all these chapters. So let me start this redemptive episode by reeling back to 1977, in North Bay, Ontario, an unlikely setting for revolution if ever…