I met a mirl, finally

Boy must it suck to be a man these days! What with wearing pink and skinny jeans between 3 step beauty routines, you would think the "butch" man was slowly going into extinction. And as we know, pop culture is always quick to come up with convinient little annoying names for anything from Brangelina to Earworms (irritating songs that u can't help but sing along to .. think Katty Perry "I kissed a girl"). There is a term for the pink wearing, manicured, "girly maN" and he is known as a mirl...get it? girl? mirl? yeah I know, u kinda slow.. I think I may have encountered a mirl. Details are a bit hazy because I was knocking back J&B and lemonades on the flight back to Cape Town, so I may have dreamed him up. I mean its not everyday when one gets upgraded from Kulula (where there is a spaza shop on the flight) to British Airways, where I can be served as many J&Bs as my poor liver can handle by really cute flight attendants in tight pants. Back to why it sucks to be a man... So I was excitedly telling my friends that a mirl doesn't only exist in Cosmo magazine, and that I had met a guy who upon meeting me had guessed my bra and dress size as well as my age correctly and he didn't seem gay. I think he had superpowers (thats my story and I am sticking to it). Obviously I am expecting them to be on some "yeah, that's perfectly normally" but instead I get responses like "that guy is gay" etc etc. It didn't help that my "friends" were actually random facebook friends and this discussion was taking place on my status update and most of the responses were from men. I have noticed how the "pink" factor has made it so much easier for us to (wrongly) classify people. Take the fact that I spend all my time with my female friends and cousins, and some of which haven't been in relationships for a while and we are all immediately called a bunch of lesbians. It also doesnt help that took a trip to Cape Town and stayed at the most "pink" area one can find in the cbd, Green Point, and we didn't realise that our favourite eating spot was a gay bar, besides the guy in the menu with no clothes on..

International Jazz Festival not much of a feast

Mos Def

Zaki Ibrahim

340ml

You know every major festival needs a headliner, that one person who is gonna make you leave your bottle of red and the warmth of your home, to go stand on your feet till the early hours of the morning, while drinking out of a plastic cup and basically freezing ur ass off to death....

And I happily trodded along to the jazzfest because the headliner was none other than Mos Def. I mean he is a great rapper/sometimes actor/ and he's cute, more than enough reason to go to the show. But he was only to come on at like 10pm and I got there at about 5pm. So my friends and I went to see Zaki Ibrahim's performance, and she was beautiful, didn't disappoint. Then we saw 340ml, Rus Newhich (forgive my spelling) and they were cool too.

It was a nice build-up. As I was sipping out my plastic cup and eating fish/calamari and chips with my friends, I really didnt mind that I hadn't had a seat for the past four hours because Mos Def was about to blow us away. But a few songs into his set I really wished I was sitting down because he was singing "toxic" and tripping over his own band while I was standing there waiting for him to start rapping. I was disappointed. But what the hell was I expecting? It was a Jazz festival afterall.

So I dragged adecided to w friend of mine inside the main venue so we can see some real jazz and what else was up. There was an uninspiring exhibition of pictures of the late Merriam Makeba. I don't know about you, but I have seen better pics of Merriam in the local press than I did in that room. The only pic that I liked was one of her with her back to the camera on the stage performing.

Then nature calls and while standing in a long queue to relieve myself, I hear Hugh Masekela absolutely killing it in the venue next door to the loo. I see a few minutes of his performance because he was doing his last few songs and I really wished I had been there instead. He seemed like the real headliner of the show...for me at least!

bored of pseudo-political analysts

Finally the big day arrives. Election day. The day when we can all breathe a sigh of relief because now all the boring people who have been running their mouth about which party to vote for will have to find something else to talk about. I am so happy I could cry. Now I will be able to wait in that long queue at the bank without having to listen to someone I just met 2 seconds ago, telling me which party they are going to vote. Basically, now every self appointed pseudo-political analyst will go back to being boring again and I can happily ignore them the way I have been doing for years.