J'adore Justin Trudeau, in case it wasn't obvious by now. Many people don't, but I'm heartened to find that many others still do. In the first installment of this two-part holiday post, I'm taking inventory of the Trudeau-related items I've collected over the years, as the King of the North turns 50...
. . .
The idea for this post came from a fun piece in the Star about all the gifts that our man in Ottawa has received over the years, and in particular for this upcoming trip around the sun (not the Sun, obviously, because who would want to take a trip there?) As the perennially youthful member of the 800-year-old sparkly vampire club (alongside Paul Rudd and Rob Lowe) calls it, Justin Trudeau at 50 is celebrating "the twentieth anniversary of turning 30." (He's also the only member of the 800-year-old sparkly vampire club to also belong to the Queen's Privy Council. That alone should be worthy of a People Magazine honour. Justin Trudeau, the Sexiest Man Undead.)
Anyway, here's what I have on my shelves. Mostly, it came from Canadian elves.
(Disclaimer: I'm just doing this for fun. I'm not collecting commissions from links or pictures or anything else. Shop local if you can... otherwise, shop international!)
Justin never drinks a second cup of coffee at home
I really should get back to reviving the weekly (or semi-regular) Coffee Talk roundup post that I featured in the early days of this blog. In any event, among the trinkets I've accumulated honouring mon premier ministre d'amour is a collection of about eight coffee mugs with his likeness printed on it.
It's an interesting if peculiar choice of collectible, considering that I don't actually drink coffee — and reportedly, neither does he?
Obviously one can use coffee mugs for other beverages besides coffee, and other uses besides, well, beverages. Pencil cups, plants, or even just to decorate. Which, of course, I do.
Here's an example, from cleverly-named indie Canadian marketer Shelfies.com. Moosin' Trudeau is the name of the design — eat your heart out, Vladimir Poutine (that is, if you have one to begin with).
The others I have came from LookHuman.com and they are just as kitschy and adorkable. I bought sex. I mean, six! (Half a dozen of another?)
And finally, one from eBay that says "Hot AF? You know, it's Trudeau."
And the even better part of going to bed...
Bedroom politics
I kid, I kid. I know he's married. Doesn't make it any less fun to decorate the sleepytime room with J.T. memorabilia. After all, as Mae West (or was it Brigitte Bardot?) said, it's where a woman does all her best work.
Heh.
Anyway, it's back to Shelfies for our first item in this category: a comfy plush pillow with a fantasy design, Prime Minister McDreamy himself surrounded by magic and galloping on his gentle steed. (The actual throw pillow is sold out! But the pillowcase is still available.)
Over now to custom screenprint shop Zazzle, where I bought this adorable teddy bear with a Trudeau campaign shirt. Tru' to form, for a child of the Eighties looking upward towards the country that brought the world the Care Bears, I dubbed him... Tru-Heart Bear.
And I've really gone wild making other custom-print stuff on my wish list, to be purchased at some later date (if and when I have, you know, money).
Books, movies, music... these things matter
As I told Simon in a comment recently (and wrote about last year on this blog), on Boxing Day I like to treat myself with an annual viewing of God Save Justin Trudeau, the documentary about the PM's career-making prizefight with Senator Patrick Brazeau that served as a metaphor for his underdog political career.
I not only have that on DVD, but J.T.'s other cinematic offering: CBC's docudrama The Great War. (I can't bring myself to watch the second half because, spoiler, Papineau dies at the end.)
And again, to borrow a line from Weird Al (in the style of the Backstreet Boys), I found it on eBay.
As for books? I do have Common Ground, his memoir, which is one of only a few Trudeau items I received as a gift rather than bought for myself. But most everything else in this category came from the world's biggest online garage sale. Like the comic books (!) that he was in, Chapterhouse Captain Canuck and a special edition of Marvel's Civil War II.
(Another fun fact: Papa Pierre was featured in X-Men in the '70s... and Justin's crew in the last Parliament counted among its members Lenore Zann, the Nova Scotia-born voice actress who portrayed Storm in the animated series. Sadly, she didn't win her seat this time around, but she'll continue fighting the good fight against Con villains outside the cartoon chaos of the Commons.)
I also received as a gift the graphic-novel "unauthorized" biography of Trudeau, Political Power, that even includes a dig at the Castro birther conspiracy theorists. (So unoriginal. I mean, really, their response to the bullshit about a Kenyan Marxist Muslim is to label their guy a Cuban Marxist Muslim?)
I don't have the glossy feature of J.T. on the cover of the Rolling Stone, but I did purchase a 2013 edition of Readers' Digest Canada with a (very appealing) cover story about him winning the Liberal leadership. This being the penultimate step on his road to becoming prime minister and "the second coming of Trudeau." (Man, having a December 25th birthday and, uh... long hair? really does find people laying the symbolism on pretty thick.)
And speaking of hot dates, three years in a row I bought the cheeky Canadian Boyfriend calendar. Sadly, they don't make these anymore (and believe me, I looked for a 2021 edition). Maybe Sophie took exception. Or Margaret. Or the publishers just didn't like the pandemic beard.
Either way, apologies to Neil Sedaka, but I love, I love, I love, I love my Calendar Boy.
Allow me to mix metaphors a bit and say that much of my childhood was shaped by CanCon even before I knew the name Trudeau. (Though I was a precocious preschool politico who used to read Doonesbury in the Sunday funnies.) The best being those titles in the CINAR/DiC and Nelvana catalogues that got imported to Nickelodeon. So put another nickel in the nickelodeon, 'cause all I want is loving him and music, music, music.
And, yes, Virginia, there is Trudeau-themed music. (Why Virginia? That's not a Canadian province.)
I did buy the celebratory single heralding the birth of the once and future king... that being Dinah Christie's 1972 Franglais toe-tapper "Justin Pierre."
I don't yet have Navet Confit's avant-garde stoner anthem "Justin Trudeau Kinda Party." (You know what all the cool Laurentian-elite kids say: ain't no party like a Liberal Party.)
But I do have a 45 of French singer Christian Lavoie's tune about "Margaret's little kids" ("Les Marmots de Margot").
(Yup, I bought it on eBay.)
My plan is to buy frames specially sized for single records and hang
them up on the wall. (Why scratch the record? I can just download from
YouTube and put on my iPod.)
Also on my wish list (but not in my library) is the counterculture political novelty record, "Go Go Trudeau" (about Papa's frenzied first run), by Quebec-based rock-pop rebels Les Sinners. It would be nice if someone could record a sequel for le fils. I would, but I can't speak or write in French (and I can't sing at all in any language). But it would be awesome just to hear the revamped lyrics:
"Hang down your head, Steve Harper, hang down your head and cry..."
Miscellaneous novelties and other good stuff
It drives the Tories crazy that Dearest Justin has what could be called... socks appeal. So naturally I, being perhaps the #1 fan of the man from Galilee Papineau south of 49, have amassed a whole bunch of, what else? Trudeau socks in my sock drawer. (Actually, a shoebox with other collectibles. I don't have a sock drawer. And even if I did I wouldn't put them in there!)
Back to Shelfies, where I bought a nice pair with his pretty face on them in repeat like a desktop wallpaper, which is why I just can't bring myself to put them on my feet.
The latter is the only pair I've actually worn. These are athletic socks with a snug fit, and I needed a cushion for when I broke not one, but both of my pinky toes (owwww!) bumping into the living room coffee table. (I have a long story about that incident that I'm not going to digress about here.)
From eBay, I've bought a few pairs as well:
(The last one in that assemblage was most infamously modelled by whiny wino Michelle Rempel Garner, who quite perversely defaced it. Put a sock in it, Marjorie Trailer Trash.)
I also bought Chewbacca socks, which are among the few items in my inventory that don't actually have Trudeau on them or anything Trudeau-related at all, except that they're the socks he wore to the friggin' World Economic Forum and made even the stuffiest of stuffed shirts go agog.
Now back to Shelfies for a moment, where I bought a Moosin' Trudeau notebook. I haven't had the courage to open it yet because who knows what my wild imagination would compel me to write in there. (Sadly, Shelfies ran out of that one too. So just picture a standard 5x7 spiral-bound journal, with the cover art being the aforementioned 'shoop of Justin mocking Vladimir Poutine.)
Then it's back over to Zazzle where I ordered myself a cutesy "Tru Love Forever" sticker sheet featuring the famous Pride photo of J.T. with heart hands. In the war between the brownshirts and the pink shirts, support the pink shirts.
I also bought two custom-printed items featuring a screenprint artwork of J.T. and a maple leaf background. One is a framed poster print, about the size of a calendar page or record album.
The other is a wrist watch (that I have to see about having the strap replaced), with some fancy script lettering on the front face that reads:
"Hey Girl... Ready for Prime Time?"
(Nobody'd ever accuse me of being "just not ready.")
Over to eBay, where I ordered another wall poster: A quite creative rendition of the famous Shepard Fairy "Hope" poster of Barack Obama. It's the same colour-block, "propaganda" pop-art style, but with one noticeable difference in the lettering: The "O" in "Hope" has a maple leaf cutout where the space should be. (I "hope" to actually be able to hang it on my wall at some point soon...)
eBay is, shall we say, addictive. I also bought decorative pins of the PM, both from campaign season and from an indie designer called the "Unemployed Philosophers' Guild." (They should branch out and enlist advertising from the Unemployed Bloggers' Guild.)
I also bought these commemorative Canada Mint "medallions" that (at least for now) I keep as trinkets inside the aforementioned coffee cups. (Multitasking!)
Also on eBay, I got not one, but two, um, action figures in the likeness of this, er, doll of a PM. One is a bobblehead that (I'm guessing?) came originally from the liberal.ca website, probably during the vintage era of Trudeau as party leader but not yet PM. (I say that because he's still got the long locks that made him a Springsteen doppelganger back in the day.)
The other handsome figure is the talking (!) commemorative doll, a must-have for the real hardcore Tru Grit. BuzzFeed featured this in an article and I knew I just had to have one, even though the author called it "creepy." (Probably having in mind the sort of collector with an Amanda Palmer mindset. No, I swear that's not me. Honest. Really. I mean it. It's Tru, 'deau!)
The problem that I had when attempting to order was that Bradford Exchange Canada doesn't ship to the U.S. Fortunately, a kind soul was selling one on eBay, so I bought it there. Unfortunately, his hands and shoes got damaged in the shipping process, but rather than send it back, I brought it to a local doll-hospital shop to see if he could be patched up.
Well, I'm still waiting (and waiting!) a year later for the owner to finish, but I really hope she does. At least before Didi becomes prime minister, or his grandchildren, or his grandchildren's grandchildren...
By the by, I also bought a pair of "Maggie T" jeans from eBay (TIL his mom used to be a fashion designer. Poor talented soul never had the opportunity to flourish under the cruel scrutiny of the male maple media machine.) I guess I must have been the oddball obsessive collector that BuzzFeed's columnist had in mind, because it is my dream to assemble a life-size figure form (just like the miniature one) and, uh... dress him up in it.
We go now live for reaction from the prime minister.
Oy. He's tired. (And that can't be a live reaction. That's beard-mode Trudeau. Fake news!)
Well, hate to break it to you, Prime Minister, but wait, there's more.
As if that weren't unusual enough, I used to assemble my collectibles on a dedicated Trudeaumania shelf, but I had to move my room around recently because of upheaval at the house. (Again, long story.) In ancient times people built shrines to their favoured deities, and placed wine or incense or other consumables around the statues or totems, to make the gods happy. J.T. does not drink (well, coffee at least?) so instead I placed two "personalised" Coke bottles — one says "Justin," the other says "A Leader" — and for good measure, a Canada Dry.
(They don't make Seagram's ginger ale anymore. Otherwise I'd place an offering to the Bronfmans.)
Also, you can't get much closer to a divine intervention than a votive candle. But I did. (And it's quite possible that I need an intervention.)
Geez, I must be at, like, Operating Thetan levels of TruAnon by now, right?
Finally (yes, finally), the most recent purchase in my collection (but probably not the last in my lifetime — no, seriously, you're probably going to find me at some point on a CBC spinoff of Hoarders Buried Alive). After years of holding out and keeping to my old-school flip phone, changing circumstances in my personal sphere made it necessary for me to get an iPhone, just in case.
So of course, I had to protect that investment. I went to RedBubble (a custom screenprint site, like Zazzle), and I ordered a... Justin Case.
Might as well do something good with all those lame puns on his name (Justinflation, Justincompetent, Justintrouble) that Skippy the pigeon and his ilk are flinging about. Justincredible, that's what you are...
Whew! That's my Justinventory (OK, that one doesn't really work). Yeah... I might just be a little obsessed. Spare me, though. It's a pandemic, the rest of my life isn't all that great, and, so what if I need an indulgence or two (or three, or... forty) to get through it? Retail therapy is therapy. (At least, until Shopaholics Anonymous becomes a thing.)
For Christmas proper, I'll offer a what-if gift list that I might give him if ever given the opportunity. Probably, like my own collection, bought off Amazon and eBay, since I don't know how to play the drums and can't afford gold, incense, or whatever myrrh is.
To get around this (and also because nobody wants a pigeon in a pear tree), J.T. recommends that in lieu of presents, his fans give to their favourite charity. Well, OK, but the Cons and NDP killed WE, and... an American can't donate to the Liberal Party of Canada...
When the Cons gripe, when the polls sting, when I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favourite things, and then I don't feel so bad.
